Глава четвертая. Св. Иоанн Златоуст в заточении и его блаженная кончина (404–407 гг.)

Thus, unrighteousness triumphed, the wicked persecutors celebrated their victory, and the greatest righteous man, a truly great lamp for a sinful world, was insulted and driven out. But this triumph was only external and illusory. The real winner is always the truth, and even though it was persecuted and trampled upon, even if it was crowned with thorns and lifted up on a shameful cross, its victorious face cannot be darkened by any torment or execution, and it will triumph over its imaginary victors. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). And to whomever belongs the kingdom of heaven, victory also belongs, because it alone is the goal of all aspirations and the highest aspirations of the human soul. Whoever is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven is the most unfortunate of the unfortunate, who ruined his earthly life and, although apparently triumphant in victory, in reality is defeated, cast into the dust and destroyed. All this was justified in the subsequent fate of both the great saint of God, John, and his cruel persecutors. Having expelled the great saint from the capital and thus achieved the desired goal of her evil harassment, Empress Eudoxia, however, had not yet calmed down and tried to succeed in quickly destroying the very traces of John’s existence. Even in captivity, as a helpless prisoner, John was still terrible for her, and accusatory words still thundered in her criminal conscience: “Again Herodias is raging, again she is restless, again she dances and applauds, again she seeks the head of John.” Just the memory of these words drove her into an angry frenzy, and she actually continued to look for the chapter of John. She did not fail to give the soldiers who sent him into captivity a strict order so that they would treat their prisoner as mercilessly as possible and insult him in every possible way, and this with the goal “so that he would die sooner.” Such is the satanic cruelty of this wayward woman! The barbarian warriors, of course, were happy to try and inflicted all kinds of insults on the great righteous man, trying in every possible way to poison his life. Having placed him on the bare back of the mule, they drove the animal with cruel haste, making such journeys in one day that should have been done only in two or three days. Without giving him the slightest rest during the day, they stayed at night in dirty hotels, sometimes in Jewish taverns, and sometimes even in prodigal houses, committing all sorts of abominations in his presence. He was not allowed to enter the church anywhere, and when he expressed a desire to do so, he was subjected to all sorts of curses and insults and was tormented by hunger, taking away his rations. Such was the way of the cross of the great saint of God, heading to the place of his imprisonment. But it was not only rude barbarian warriors who insulted him. When they happened to pass through cities where the friends of Theophilus of Alexandria lived and, therefore, the bitter enemies of John, these unworthy shepherds tried in every possible way to pour out their anger on the sufferer; some did not allow him into the city at all, while others even encouraged the soldiers to deal with him as mercilessly as possible. One of his mortal enemies, the bishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, a certain Pharetrios, who disgraced the glorious see of Basil the Great by the fact that his main occupation was hunting hares with dogs, almost ruined John’s life. With feigned hospitality, having reserved a special house for him, Faretrius persuaded the monks to attack this house, and the saint, fleeing the rage of these worthless people, had to flee from the city at night, making his way along rough mountain paths. At the same time, the mule under him stumbled, and the sufferer, falling from it, received such a severe bruise that he lay in a life-threatening faint for a long time. The position of the sufferer would be terrible if he did not carry in his own soul the source of that indescribable joy, which no one can take away in this world and which often burst out when the saint, in boundless trust in the all-seeing and beneficent Providence of God, repeatedly said: “Glory to God for everything.” It was no small consolation for him that in some places he was greeted with the deepest sympathy by both bishops and people, and they shed burning tears for him. Particularly touching was the sight in Taurokilicia, where many virgins came out to meet him, who had either once heard his golden conversations, or at least read his great works about virginity, which became an eternal source of edification and encouragement for all ascetics of this kind. Seeing the great saint led into captivity, they filled the air with loud weeping and, shedding bitter tears, cried out: “It would be better that the sun should go out than that the mouth of John should be silent.” This sight touched the sufferer to the depths of his soul, and he cried himself, at the same time finding himself great consolation in such sincere and deep sympathy, even from those whom he had never seen before and had no care for. Place of exile for St. John was assigned to the remote and poor village of Kukuz in Lesser Armenia, lost in one of the remote valleys of the wild Taurus, where the robber tribe of Isaurians nested, who continually raided the surrounding villages, carrying out robberies and murders. The former patriarch of the capital city was supposed to live in this living grave. His enemies could finally have calmed down if the wrath of God and an indignant conscience had not been a terrible punishment for them for the injustice they had committed. The rumor of violence committed in Constantinople outraged everyone even in the distant West. Pope Innocent I, having learned about the details of the case, reported everything to Emperor Honorius and asked him to intercede with his brother, to whom, for his part, he wrote a strong and touching letter. “The blood of my brother John,” he wrote, “cries to God against you, king, just as in ancient times the blood of the righteous Abel cried out against the fratricide Cain, and it will be avenged, because during the time of peace you instigated persecution against the Church of God, expelled its true shepherd, expelling Christ at the same time, and entrusted the flock not to shepherds, but to mercenaries.” Honorius, for his part, also wrote to his brother, reproaching him for unreasonable cruelty, and sent an embassy to investigate the matter. But Arkady, considering the matter already irreparable and most of all fearing Eudoxia’s evil temper, passed, as usually happens with weak natures, from cowardice to insolence and treated his brother’s embassy with insulting disdain, although in his soul he was tormented by the consciousness of the wrong he had committed. Meanwhile, the righteous wrath of God began to bring due retribution to all the perpetrators of evil. In September 404, a terrible storm broke out over Constantinople with monstrous hail, which in an instant destroyed the harvests and gardens. At the same time, dull underground blows were heard, and Mother Earth groaned and swayed under the feet of the wicked, as if unable to bear the shame that had been committed. On October 6 of the same year, Empress Eudoxia herself was recalled to the judgment seat of the living God. Thirsting for the death of the great righteous man, she herself rather suffered death and died in excruciating suffering from childbirth. After her, with amazing speed, other main criminals and enemies of the saint of God suffered the well-deserved punishment. Thus, Bishop Kirin of Chalcedon - one of the main figures of the sad cathedral "At the Oak" - suffered a terrible illness from a callus he had taken care of, which Bishop Marufa accidentally stepped on: his legs rotted, and, despite the fact that amputation was performed several times, he died from Antonov's fire. One of the saint’s enemies received a fatal bruise when falling from a horse, another died from purulent dropsy, the third from cancer of the tongue, which forced him to confess to the dark crime that weighed on his soul. Theophilus of Alexandria, having temporarily escaped the judgment of man, also subsequently did not escape the judgment of God. From extreme stress in his evil tricks, he went crazy and died suddenly - from paralysis. If not physically, then even more mentally, the ill-fated Emperor Arkady was tormented, who, having finally freed himself from the unbearable tyranny of his malevolent wife, wanted to find relief from the pain of his heart in the prayers of the hermits. But when he asked the famous Sinai hermit Nile to pray for him, the hermit, with true firmness and boldness of the ancient prophets, wrote to him: “By what right do you want the reigning city to be delivered from the earthquakes that devastate it, when such crimes are committed in it, wickedness is elevated to law with unheard-of impudence, and when the pillar of the church, the luminary of truth, the trumpet, is expelled from it? Christ's, blessed Bishop John? How can you want me to agree to pray for this unfortunate city, shaken by the all-crushing wrath of heaven, when I am languishing with grief, shaken in spirit and when my heart is breaking from the atrocities committed before your eyes against all laws? 29. Thus, the righteous wrath of God punished the creators of evil, and they, thinking to celebrate their victory, actually suffered terrible defeat and punishment, tormented both in soul and body. And at this very time, the great saint of God, holding on to the Christian conviction that “the earth is the Lord’s and its fulfillment,” found peace and even joy in Kukuza himself, who, with his distance from the bustle of the sinful world, seemed to return him again to desert living, so sweet for his spirit, tired of adversity. And there he found admirers in the person of the local bishop Adelphius and the eminent resident of the village Dioscorus, who put his house at the disposal of the saint and took care of all his needs. His old friends did not forget him either, and many of them came to visit him in captivity even from Constantinople and Antioch. The Antiochians, these most beloved spiritual children of his, whom he loved most and for whose benefit he worked most of all, responded especially sympathetically. When the rumor about the imprisonment of St. John reached Antioch, whole caravans of admirers and admirers flocked from there to Kukuz, so that the insignificant Armenian village became for them a kind of place of pious pilgrimage. No wonder the embittered enemies of the saint said with ardent envy: “All Antioch is in Kukuza!” And the saint himself did not forget his former friends and spiritual children. He carried on a lively correspondence with them, and especially with the pious deaconess Olympias, the letters to whom that have survived to us breathe the deeply Christian love of the saint and father of the church, who did not cease to care for the spiritual well-being of his children even in his imprisonment. He corresponded with many bishops, both eastern and western, and in these letters he remained the same great saint, who, as if forgetting about his own sad situation, continued to care about the good and prosperity of the Church of Christ. Moreover, he did not abandon his cherished dream - to spread the kingdom of God as widely as possible among those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. While himself in captivity, he, like the Apostle Paul during his time in prison, continued to care about the salvation of others and again turned his gaze to Phenicia, where he had already done so much to disperse pagan darkness. He took care of equipping a new mission there and tried to establish the churches that had already been founded there. Not far from it was Persia, which initially provided very favorable soil for the spread of the Gospel, but at that time Christians there began to be subjected to fierce persecution as enemies of the state. Many Christians sealed their devotion to the faith with blood, and the situation of all was oppressed. And so the great saint came to the aid of these oppressed Christians and, with his apostolic zeal, supported Christianity in this country as well. But most of all, he was occupied by the thought of enlightening the semi-barbarian Goths with the light of the Gospel truth, this young force, which in its unenlightened state posed a threat to the Christian civilized world, and with the adoption of the Orthodox faith could renew the decrepit Greco-Roman world. Thus, the insignificant Armenian village, which previously hardly anyone knew about, now became the focus of the apostolate, the rays of which spread far - to all countries of the world, and all this because in this village the great spiritual luminary of the world was imprisoned, shining not with borrowed, but with its own spiritual light. When the patriarch, deposed and humiliated in every possible way in such a rude and cruel manner, and in his distant imprisonment continued to remain the same luminary of the world as he had been in Antioch and Constantinople, and when the miserable village of Kukuz threatened to eclipse Constantinople itself, all this began to worry to the extreme those for whom the rise of John was tantamount to their own disgrace. All his enemies who survived the righteous punishment of God and recovered from their fears (and there were still many of them) again began to move and began to plot new intrigues against the saint they had overthrown. They thought that he had already died for them, but meanwhile he turned out to be alive and began to focus the eyes of the entire Christian world on himself. “Look,” they said to each other, “how this dead man becomes dangerous for the living and his victors.” They were already imagining a terrible specter, as if John would not return again to the throne of Constantinople, where, in their opinion, he would properly deal with his enemies. And this seemed all the more natural since his weak successor, Arsakios, soon died. It was necessary to take measures to bury him as quickly as possible. And indeed, they took all measures to ensure this. All the usual intrigues and approaches in such cases were put into action in order to destroy such a dangerous nest for them as the village of Kukuz had become. And so they achieved that it was ordered to remove John from there and transfer him to a new place of imprisonment - to Pithiunt. It was the most remote city of the empire, lying between Pontus and Colchis, on the shores of the Black Sea, in a wild and deserted country, almost entirely left to the barbarians. The order was given suddenly (in June 407), with any delay prohibited. And so the soldiers rudely grabbed the great saint and, not allowing him to say goodbye properly to the inhabitants of the village of Kukuz, which had become dear to his heart, they dragged him again on a distant, difficult and unknown path. Saint John was already extremely weakened by adversity and illness, which hastened the onset of senile infirmity for him, and therefore this new terrible journey under the escort of rude soldiers, who were ordered to treat him cruelly and mercilessly, was no longer within his power. He was still cheerful in spirit, unshakable in his trust in the Providence of God and with boundless submission to the will of God, without any fear, he was ready to move to a new place of his imprisonment, remaining with the same conviction that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulfillment of it” (Ps. 23:1), and no suffering could tear out any murmur or complaint from the torn chest of the one whose lips were accustomed to repeat: “Thank God for everything.” But his body was already decrepit and weak, and therefore, when the cruel warriors, fulfilling the orders of their inhuman commanders, forced the great saint of God to walk with his head naked along a rocky road under the scorching, burning rays of the sun, or to tremble under the pouring rains, the sufferer could not stand it. His strength began to quickly decline, and when, after three months of continuous travel, the soldiers arrived with their prisoner in Comana, in Pontus, and, according to their custom, without stopping in the city itself, they made a halt with him outside the city, near the church of St. Basilisk, then Saint John became completely weak and could no longer move. At night he had a vision: St. himself appeared. Basilisk (the bishop martyred under Maximin) and said to him: “Take courage, my brother John, tomorrow we will be together!” When morning came, the saint, feeling completely exhausted, asked the soldiers to postpone the journey for at least a few hours; but they rudely refused him this and cruelly dragged him further and, only after making sure that he was at his last breath, returned back to the church of St. Basilisk. Then, concentrating all his strength, the sufferer entered the church and, having asked for full church attire, put on it, and distributed travel clothes to those present. Having performed the Divine Liturgy, he then received Holy Communion. Tine and then prayed for some time fervently and in a loud voice. But his voice began to weaken more and more. Those present approached him with surprise and reverence and, supporting his bowing body, heard his lips barely intelligibly babble: “Glory to God for everything.” Having then made the sign of the cross, the great saint of God stretched out his feet and said: “Amen!” - gave up his spirit to God 30. It was September 14, 407 31. He was 60 years old - not a great age, and of that time he was an archbishop for six and a half years, and spent three years and three months in captivity. The glory of the great saint was so great that the news of his death quickly spread throughout all the surrounding areas, and priests, virgins, and hermits gathered in large numbers from everywhere, and behind them countless masses of people, and everyone reverently crowded to the tomb of the deceased ruler in order to look at least once into the face of the saint of God and worship his ashes. His ashes were buried in triumph in the church, next to the relics of the holy martyr Basilisk, who the day before called him to himself - to stay together not only under the arches of the earthly church, but also in the luminous kingdom of ineffable glory. When the news of the death of the golden-talking teacher reached Antioch and Constantinople, it plunged everyone there into indescribable grief. The people wept loudly and cursed those who had destroyed the great saint, and everyone who knew him closely spoke enthusiastically about the great deeds of his mercy, about his holy life and about his wondrous, golden teaching. Subsequently, when the malice of mortal enemies fell silent before the tomb of the deceased saint, namely under the emperor Theodosius, and his relics were solemnly transferred to Constantinople (438), and thus the ashes were placed in that very church of St. Apostles, from which its living bearer, Archbishop John, was once expelled in disgrace. Here is a brief outline of the life of that great and universal teacher of the Church, St. John Chrysostom, whose works in their entirety are offered to the pious Russian Orthodox people. His life was wondrous and extraordinary, full of exploits and suffering. In this regard, he forever became a brilliant example of Christian selflessness, patience and submission to the will of God. His life's path was difficult and sorrowful, but at the same time it was illuminated by the rays of that indescribable joy, which even in the darkness of earthly hardships and suffering already anticipates the sweetness of heavenly bliss. The life path of all true Christians is just as difficult and sorrowful, to whom their Divine Teacher Himself said: “In the world you will have sorrow” (Matthew 10:24). But all of them also have access to the source of that inexpressible joy that St. John in the midst of his terrible suffering. And he revealed the secret of this spiritual happiness in his wondrous creations, reading which with reverent attention every Christian will comprehend the true meaning of life and will repeat with him from the fullness of his heart: “Thank God for everything. Amen." Nilus, Epist., 265, ibid. 279.3. Dialog. Histor. Palladium, cap. XI, p. 38 (vol. I. Bened. ed.). Socrates, Church. East. VI, 21. You might be interested in: