[966] I have followed the Latin here. The Greek version of the passage seems to me hopelessly confused.
[967] The Council of Sardica was convened A.D. 343, (or A.D. 344?) with a view of settling the Arian controversy. The Oriental bishops, however, of whom the majority belonged to the Arian faction, seceded from Sardica, and held a separate council at Philippopolis, where they drew up a creed which was condemned by the Western bishops as heretical.
St. Chrysostom:
the Homilies on the statues
to the people of antioch.
the oxford translation and notes, revised by
rev. w. r. w. stephens, m.a.,
prebendary of chichester cathedral, and rector of woolbeding, sussex.
PREFACE TO THE BENEDICTINE EDITION.
1. Among the events which occurred in the time of John Chrysostom, [968] there is none more memorable than that sedition of the inhabitants of Antioch, in which the Statues of the Emperor Theodosius and Flacilla his wife were thrown down and dragged about the city, at which Theodosius was so exasperated, as even to think of destroying the city entirely. This afforded ample matter for our Chrysostom to exercise his powers of preaching. For as the people of Antioch were fluctuating between hope and fear (sudden accidents offering of course daily some fresh cause for hope or alarm) Chrysostom, compelled as he was to adapt his style to circumstances as they arose, almost always without preparation, delivered on the spur of the occasion these Homilies, which are certainly well deserving of admiration. At one time his object here is to console a people struggling with present distress; at another, to strengthen minds that were sinking under the extremity of danger; and above all, by repeated admonition, to persuade the people of Antioch, on occasion of the threatened calamities, to correct the vices and to wipe away the crimes that had thus provoked God's wrath; which endeavour on the part of Chrysostom certainly ended in results agreeable to his desire, as he sometimes acknowledges.
2. But the cause of this great sedition was, according to the testimony of Zosimus, excess of taxation, which was daily inventing new imposts; an exaction required either for the celebration of the fifth year upon which Arcadius had entered, from the time he was proclaimed under the title of Augustus, and the tenth year of the Emperor Theodosius, commencing in the year 388, or for the expenses of the war against the tyrant Maximus, [969] or on account of both these events, as well as for other necessities of the state. The people of Antioch, that is to say, the superior class of the citizens, dismayed at the burden of this impost, first approached the prefect, and with tears lamented the excess of the tax that had been announced, and implored the Divine assistance. And next, a multitude of vagabonds and foreigners of the lowest class of the people, [970] in a state of excited feeling, broke out into deeds of violence. At first they turned every thing upside down in the public baths; hence they proceeded to the prefect's palace, and attacked the doors and windows, and were scarcely repelled, when they turned their rage in another direction, and attacked the painted tablets of the Emperors with stones, covered them with filth, and reduced them to a ruinous condition, while they loaded the Augusti themselves with curses and reproaches. At length they threw down the Statues of the Emperor Theodosius and Flacilla his deceased wife, [971] and dragged them through the streets of the city; and had already commenced further outrages, when they were put down by a band of archers, dispatched from the prefect. The sedition being thus extinguished, fear took the place of madness, and the expectation of impending punishment caused the burdensome tax that had been imposed to be entirely forgotten. What followed afterwards will be narrated below in the review of the Homilies. Something must now be said as to the year of the sedition, in which these Homilies were delivered.
3. Dismissing the narrative of Sozomen and Theodoret, according to whose account, this sedition, and the delivery of these discourses, must have been after the war against Maximus, learned men, and Tillemont especially (at length in note 27 appended to his Life of the Emperor Theodosius) have proved from far more certain notes of time, that these events took place before the war against Maximus. In opposition to that former opinion, he produces a most convincing argument from Chrysostom's own words, who in the sixteenth Homily (No. 2.), testifies that this was the second year since he had begun to preach; but he began when he was first ordained presbyter at the end of the year 385, or at the beginning of 386. Wherefore these discourses ought to be attributed either to the year 388, or rather 387. For the former opinion Baronius contends, and after him, Petavius and Henry Valesius, who assign them to the year 388, for this reason, that the tenth year of the reign of Theodosius then commenced, for the celebration of which the tax before mentioned was imposed. But what is adduced from Libanius for the defence of this opinion is full of perplexity, [972] and is capable of being twisted to support either opinion. A still more certain indication than any of these is gathered from the circumstance, that the Emperor Theodosius was certainly at Constantinople during the winter and Lent of the year 387, in which year also the sedition must necessarily have occurred; for at the time of the sedition he was most certainly staying at Constantinople, [973] but on the other hand at the same season in the year immediately following, he was living at Thessalonica. But what is alleged to the contrary from the celebration of the tenth year of Theodosius, which commenced in the year 388, amounts, as I said, to nothing; since it is evident from the Fasti of Idatius and of Marcellinus, that he anticipated by one year the celebration of the tenth year of his reign, in order that he might celebrate his tenth together with his son Arcadius, who entered upon the fifth year of his reign in 387; just in the same manner as Maximianus Herculius did, when he celebrated the twentieth, though it was only the eighteenth, year of his reign, along with Diocletion, whose twentieth year of empire it was. [974]
4. But another and not a less difficulty arises, which has been already treated of in the Preface to the work, "Against the Jews;" viz. that in a certain discourse against the Jews, held in the month of September of the year 386, Chrysostom in reproving many of the Christians at Antioch who fasted and kept Easter [975] with the Jews, or at the same time observed by the Jews, "Behold," saith he, "the first day of unleavened bread in this year falls on Sunday, and it is necessary that we should fast throughout the whole week, and after the Passion is past, and the Cross and the Resurrection arrived, [976] we should continue fasting; and very often the same thing occurs, that after the Passion has passed away, and the Cross and the Resurrection arrived, we are still keeping the fast, the week being not yet finished." From these words it is further evident, that those Christians, who acted as Jews in keeping the fast and celebrating the Passover, must sometimes have fasted when other Christians were celebrating the Paschal feast, and at other times not so; for example, they fasted on the day of the Resurrection when the Jews celebrated the feast of the Passover later than the rest of the Christians did, but they did not fast when the Jews celebrated the same feast earlier than the Christians. But in the discourse of Chrysostom above mentioned, and held about the month of September of the year 386, he is doubtless treating of Lent and Easter of the year 387. But in that year, according to the Paschal tables, the feast fell on the 25th of April, that is to say, as late as it can possibly occur. How then could these judaizing Christians be fasting this year during the Paschal feast, and celebrate that feast too late, when this could not occur later than on the 25th of April, on which day the other nonjudaizing Christians celebrated it this year, at least if the Paschal tables are to be relied upon? This is certainly a very great difficulty; but one which, as Tillemont himself confesses, is not sufficient to overturn the marks of the period by which we assign the Homily, "Against the Jews," to the month of September, in the year 386. For as we have said in the Preface to the Homilies against the Jews, it has not yet been made out to us so certainly, whether the people of Antioch always followed by an invariable rule the Alexandrian reckoning as to the Feast of the Lord's Passover, and if they had always followed it, can we affirm that they never fell into error in their reckoning? Certainly the persons best skilled in the Paschal reckonings, whom I have consulted, have admitted that an error of this sort sometimes does happen in such reckonings, and did happen not many years since; and that it is not always safe to prefer the Paschal indications to any other notes of time.
5. Tillemont, however, who notices this kind of difficulty, and discusses it in his notes to the Life of Chrysostom, where he treats of the Homilies against the Jews, has not mentioned it in the notes to the Life of the Emperor Theodosius, where he arranges these Homilies of Chrysostom to the people of Antioch as if the Feast of Easter had fallen on the 25th of April, as the Paschal tables have it. The first Homily therefore he places a little before the sedition; but the sedition on the 26th of February, ten days before Lent, which at Antioch began on the Monday of our Quinquagesima, falling that year on the 8th of March. The second Homily either on the Thursday, or the Saturday before Lent; viz. on the 6th of March, the eighth day after the sedition. The third on the following Sunday, the 7th of March, or thereabout. The fourth, on the Monday following, March 8. The fifth, on Tuesday, March 9. The sixth, about the next Wednesday, on March 10. The seventh, on Thursday, March 11. The eighth, on Friday, March 12. The ninth on the Monday of the second week in Lent, March 15. The tenth, after the lapse of a few days. The eleventh, (considering it transposed,) on the Monday of the fourth week in Lent, March 29. The twelfth, on the following Tuesday, March 30. The thirteenth, on the following Wednesday, March 31. The fourteenth, a little after that one which is numbered the eighteenth, which was delivered on the fifth Sunday in Lent, April 5. The fifteenth, on the Saturday of the second week in Lent, or March 20. The sixteenth, on the third Saturday in Lent, March 21. The seventeenth, about the end of the fourth week in Lent. The eighteenth, Sunday, April 5, or thereabout. The nineteenth, after the fourteenth, about April 11. The twentieth, on Easter Day, April 25. The twenty-first, about the same time as the twenty-second following it, which was delivered on the Friday after Passion Sunday, April 16. [977] Thus does Tillemont endeavour to restore with the utmost accuracy the deranged order of these Homilies. Whilst however we agree with him in many things, we are compelled to differ from him in others. The order of the Homilies, as he lays it down, we may here further represent in one tabular view.
Tillemont's 1st is placed in Edition of Fronto Ducæus First
2d........... Second
3d........... Third
4th........... Fourth
5th........... Fifth
6th........... Sixth
7th........... Seventh
8th........... Eighth
9th........... Ninth
10th........... Tenth
11th........... Fifteenth
12th........... Sixteenth
13th........... Eleventh
14th........... Twelfth
15th........... Thirteenth
16th........... Seventeenth
17th........... Eighteenth
18th........... Fourteenth
19th........... Nineteenth
20th........... Twenty-second
21st........... Twenty-first
22d........... Twentieth
But before we discourse singly of the Homilies, and make a few observations as to the order as well as the argument of each, it may be worth while to remark, that from the title of the Homily which formerly was numbered the twenty-second, but not the twentieth, which title it has in the notes of Fronton, and in our mss.; it must have been spoken ten days before Easter; and that from these words likewise, just before the end of the Homily, "Forty days have already passed away," Tillemont justly infers, that Lent among the people of Antioch began on the Monday after Quinquagesima; and that among them the whole Lent extended through seven weeks; and he rightly assigns this Homily to a Friday during Lent; [978] so that that day was both the fortieth from the beginning of the fast, and the tenth before Easter. Hence we hold it as a thing established, that Lent, which in divers Churches was defined by various limits, was observed at Antioch during seven [979] weeks.
Moreover, since for the causes before related, we may account the diurnal Paschal tables, which place the Easter of the year 387 upon the 25th of April, as of doubtful authority, [980] at least those for the use of the Church at Antioch; we have not discovered with certainty on what day the people of Antioch kept Easter in this year 387, we shall abstain from mentioning the day of the month in the review of the Homilies, and we shall account it sufficient to have indicated, when that may be safely done, on what day of the week the Homilies were spoken.