§ 166. GKEGORV NAZIANZiiX. 91 '^
and the departure of this ho\j soid, which is gone out from ns, only to go in to the Lord, after having already prepared itself for this through its whole life." He was at that time bodily and mentally very much depressed. In a letter to the rhetori cian Eudoxius he wrote : '• Tou ask, how it fares with me Very badly. I no longer have Basil ; I no longer have Csesarius ; my spiritual brother, and my bodily brother. I can Bay with David, niy father and my mother have forsaken me. My body is sickly, age is coming over my head, cares become more and more complicated, duties overwhelm me, friends are unfaithful, the church is without capable pastors, good declines, evil stalks naked. The ship is going in the night, a light nowhere, Christ asleep. What is to be done? O, there is to me but one escape from this evil case : death. But the hereafter would be teiTJble to me, if I had to judge of it by the present state."
But Providence had appointed him yet a great work and an exalted position in the Eastern capital of the empire. Ir the year 3Y9 he was called to the pastoral charge by the orthodox church in Constantinople, which, under the oppressive reign of Arianisin, was reduced to a feeble handful ; and he was exhorted by several worthy bishops to accept the call. He made his appearance unexpectedly. With his insignificant form bowed by disease, his miserable dress, and his simple, secluded mode of life, he at first entirely disappointed the splendor-loving people of the capital, and was much mocked and persecuted.' But in spite of all he succeeded, by his powerful eloquence and faithful labor, in building up the little church in faith and in Christian life, and helped the Nicene doctrine again to victory. In memory of this success his little domestic chapel was afterwards changed into a magnificent church, and named Anastasia, the'Chm-ch of the Resurrection.
Once the Arian populace even stormed his church by night, desecrated the altar, mixed the holy wine with blood, and Gregory but barely escaped the fury of common women and monks, who were armed with clubs and ston s. The next day he was summoned before the court for the tumult, but so happily defended himself. that the occurrence heightened the triumph of his just cause. Probably from thi« circumstance he afterwards recdved the honorary title of confessor. See Ullraann, p. 1V6.
918 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. oJ 1-590.
People of all classes crowded to his discourses, which (vei« mainly devoted to the vindication of the Godhead of Christ and to the Trinity, and at the same time earnestly inculcated a hoh' walk befitting the true faith. Even the famous Jerome, at that time already fifty years old, came from Syria to Constantinople to hear these discourses, and took private instruction of Gregory in the interpretation of Scripture. He gratefully calls him his preceptor and catechist.
The victory of the J^icene faith, which Gregory had thus inwardly promoted in the imperial city, was outwardly completed by the celebrated edict of the new emperor Theodosius, in February, 380. Wlien the emperor, on the 24tli of December of that year, entered Constantinople, he deposed the Arian bishop, Demophilus, with all his clergy, and transferred the cathedral church ' to Gregory with the words : " This temple God by our hand intrusts to thee as a reward for tliy pains." The people tumultuously demanded him for bishop, but he decidedly refused. And in fact he was not yet released from his bishopric of Nazianzum or Sasima (though upon the latter he had never formally entered) ; he could be released only by a synod.
When Theodosius, for the formal settlement of the theological controversies, called the renowned ecumenical council in May, 381, Gregory was elected by this council itself bishop of Constantinople, and, amidst great festivities, was inducted into the office. In virtue of this dignity he held for a time the presidency of the council.
When the Egyptian and Macedonian bishops arrived, they disputed the validity of his election, because, according to the fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, he could not be ti-ansferred from his bishopric of Sasima to another; though their real reason was, that the election had been made without
■ Not the church of St. Sophia, as Tillemont assumes, but the church of the Apostles, as Ulhnann, p. 223, supposes ; for Gregory never names the former, but mentions the latter repeatedly, and that as the church in which he himself preached. Constantine built both, but made the church of the Apostles the more magnificent and cho?e it for his own burial place (Kuseb. Vita Const, iv. 58-60); St. Sophia afterward? became under Justinian the most glorious monument of the later Greek architecture, and the cathedral of Constantinople.