was no equal in the Western Church.'2 There was another who rendered a yet more dubious assistance. Maximus or Heron was one, of the class of those wild Egyptians

Maximus.

who played some years later so disgraceful a part in the train of Cyril of Alexandria. He had once been a philosopher of the Cynical sect, and, although ordained, still wore their curious costume. In all these disturbances his figure was conspicuous. He wielded a long staff in his hands. A tangled mass of curls-half of their natural black, half painted yellow-fell over his shoulders.3 A dirty shirt enveloped his half-naked limbs, which he occasionally drew aside to show the scars of wounds which he professed to have received in some persecution. At every word of Gregory he uttered shouts of delight, at every allusion to the heretics he uttered yells of execration. The most sinister rumours, however, were circulated against his private character. Even the marks on his back were whispered to be the effects of a severe castigation with which he had been visited for some discreditable transaction. But Gregory was infatuated, as is sometimes the case with the most sagacious and the most incorruptible of men, by the charms of assiduous flattery, and by the advantage of having near him an ally who stopped at nothing in defence of a cause which he thought right. Such is the secret of the ridiculous eulogy which Gregory pronounced on Maximus in his presence, in a sermon which still remains as a monument of the weakness into which party-spirit can betray even a thoughtful and pious man. His dear Heron was a true model of the union of philosophy and religion' 'friend from an unexpected quarter-a 'dog'

-a

4

2 Many questions passed between them on Biblical criticism and on ecclesiastical policy. (Jerome Contra Rufin. i. 13; De Viris Illustribus, c. 117.)

3 De Vit. 754, 766.

Gregory Naz., Or. xxv. 1, 2. It is from his companion St. Jerome that we are able to substantiate the identity of Maximus with the Heron of this strange discourse. The names were changed,' says Jerome, 'in order to save the credit of Gregory from having alternately praised and blamed the same man.' (De Viris Illustribus, c. 117.)

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alluding to the title of his philosophical sect of the Cynics or Dogs'-' a dog indeed in the best sense a watch-dog, who guards the house from robbers '-finally, it was not too much to say, 'his successor in the promised see of Constantinople.' This last hint was not thrown away on 'the Dog.' There was no time to be lost. The Emperor was on his way to Constantinople. Whoever was the orthodox champion in possession of the see, would probably be able to keep it. Maximus communicated his designs to his Egyptian fellow-countrymen amongst the bishops. They, as the orthodox of the orthodox, entered at once into his plan, which received the sanction of Peter, successor of Athanasius in the see of Alexandria. Alexandria at that time was, saving the dignity of the new capital of Constantinople, the chief city of the Eastern world. Its ecclesiastical primacy in the East had hitherto been undisputed. The Bishop of Alexandria was at this time the only 'Pope' or Father' of the Church. He had long enjoyed the title. It is a probable conjecture that in this stroke of elevating an Egyptian of the Egyptians to the see of Constantinople there was a deliberate intention of grasping the primacy of the Imperial Church. All was prepared. A large sum of money, placed at the disposal of Maximus by a Thasian presbyter who had been to the Golden Horn to buy marble, was employed in securing the services of a number of Alexandrian sailors. Gregory was confined to his house by illness. With this mixed multitude to represent the congregation, the Egyptian bishops solemnly consecrated Maximus at the dead of night. The elevation to this high dignity was rendered still more marked by the metamorphosis in his outward appearance. They took "the dog," says Gregory, in whose eyes the Cynic now assumed a very different aspect, and shaved him; the long locks in which his strength resided were shorn off by these ecclesiastical Dalilahs.' But Maximus had overreached himself. This was too startling a contrast. When he appeared in the 5 Milman's History of Christianity under the Empire, vol. iii. p. 115.

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morning, cropt, and well-dressed as a bishop, an inextinguishable roar of laughter resounded through the city. Gregory felt that he was included in the general ridicule. He determined on leaving Constantinople. Then a reaction took place. The mob veered round. They insisted on forcing Gregory at once into the contested see. They dragged him in their arms to the episcopal chair. He struggled to escape. He stiffened his legs, so as to refuse to sit. The perspiration streamed from his face. They pushed and forced him down. The women wept, the children screamed. At last he consented, and then was left to repose. He endeavoured to recover his equanimity by retiring for a time to a villa on the shores of the Sea of Marmora, there to wander, as he tells us, at sunset-unconscious of the glory which at that hour lights up that wonderful prospect with a glow of magical splendour, but not insensible to the melancholy sentiment inspired by the rolling waves of the tideless sea along the bays of that winding shore.

There were two other claimants for the vacant see-each waiting with the utmost expectation the only hand which could seat them securely in their places, the hand of Theodosius. At Thessalonica the Emperor met Maximus, who, seeing that he was coldly received, took refuge at Alexandria, under the shelter of the prelate who was at that time. the eastern oracle of the ecclesiastical world. Theodosius in this difficulty appealed to the western oracle at Rome. The Bishop of Rome was glad of the opportunity of striking a blow at once at the independence and the superior civilisation of the East. Damasus, who had a sufficient tincture of letters to write the verses that may still be read in the Roman catacombs, fired off an answer which by the same blow killed one and wounded the other rival. Maximus was to be rejected, not on account of his scandalous vices, but because he still wore the garb of a philosopher. No Christian can wear the clothes of a pagan philosopher.' And then, with a covert attack on Gregory himself, he added,

Philosophy, friend of the world's wisdom, is the enemy of faith, the poison of hope, the war against charity.' The advice thus proffered was followed up by a recommendation to the Emperor to summon a General Council for the settlement of the disputed succession.

This accordingly was the origin of the Council of Constantinople. Theodosius meanwhile took the matter of the See of Constantinople into his own hands. To the actual Bishop, the Arian Demophilus, he proposed the orthodox confession or resignation; Demophilus honourably resisted the temptation. 'Since you fly from peace,' said the Emperor, 'I will make you fly from your place.' So summary was the deposition of a prelate in those days, when the breath, not of a prelate but of an Emperor, was sufficient to depose the greatest bishops in Christendom. To Gregory he turned with a no less imperious expression of his will: Constantinople demands you, and God makes me his instrument to give you this church.' The election was still nominally in the hands of the people, but the mandate of the Emperor was more powerful than any congé d'élire. It was on the 26th of November-one of those dreary days on which the winds from the Black Sea envelop the bright city of Constantinople with a shroud of clouds dark as night, which Gregory's enemies interpreted into a sinister presage of his ill-omened elevation. The Emperor rode in state to the church where the ceremony was to take place. The immense multitude of the Arian population who were to lose their bishop, and perhaps themselves to be banished with him-old men, women, and children, threw themselves in vain before his horse's feet. The Spanish soldier rode on immovable, as if he were on his way to the field of battle. It was, says Gregory himself, the likeness of a city taken by storm. By the Emperor's side was the pale, stooping, trembling candidate for the see, hardly knowing where he was till he found himself safe within the church, behind the rails of the chancel, where he sat side by side with the magnificent Emperor,

who in his imperial purple was raised there aloft as the chief person in the place. It was the Church of the Apostles,' that earliest mausoleum of Christian sovereigns, the first germ of St. Denys, the Escurial, and Westminster Abbey, where Constantine and his successors lay entombed, and where in after days was to rise a yet more splendid edifice, the mosque which the Mussulman conqueror Mahomet II. built in like manner for himself and his dynasty. There was still a hesitation, or seeming hesitation, as to which way the popular feeling would turn. Suddenly, by one of those abrupt transitions common in Eastern skies, a ray of sunlight burst through the wintry clouds, and flashing from sword to sword along the ranks of soldiers, and from gem to gem on the rich dresses of priest and courtier, finally . enveloped the bald white head of Gregory himself as with a halo of glory. The omen was at once accepted. A shout like thunder rose from the vast congregation, 'Long live our Bishop Gregory!' In the high galleries rang the shrill cries of the women in response. With a few faint protestations, Gregory consented to mount the Episcopal chair, and the long dispute was terminated.

Funeral of

Within six weeks after this event, took place one of those double-sided movements which, without revealing any actual duplicity in the actors, disclose the hollowness of Athanaric. their pretensions and opinions. On the same day that a rigid decree condemned and banished the Arians of the empire from the walls of every city, there arrived in Constantinople the chief of the whole Arian world, Athanaric the Goth, seeking shelter in the court of his conqueror from a domestic revolution. He was received with as much honour as if he had been the most orthodox of mankind, and then a few days after his arrival he wasted away and died. His funeral, heretic as he was, was conducted with a magnificence which

Demophilus the Arian bishop, on the promulgation of this edict, very naturally quoted the evangelical precept, 'If they persecute you in one city, flee to another.' 'Not so,' says Socrates the ecclesiastical historian. The text means that you must leave the city of the world and go to the city of the heavenly Jerusalem.'