CHAPTER XXII

UNLAWFUL EXPULSION OF JOHN FROM HIS BISHOPRIC. CONFLAGRATION OF THE CHURCH BY FIRE FROM HEAVEN. EXILE OF JOHN TO CUCUSUM

FROM this period the most zealous of the people alternately guarded the house of John by night and by day. The bishops who had condemned him complained of this conduct as a manifest violation of the laws of the church, declared that they could answer for the justice of the sentence that had been enacted against him, and asserted that tranquillity would never be restored among the people until he had been expelled the city. A messenger having conveyed to him a mandate from the emperor enjoining his immediate departure, John obeyed, and escaped from the city, unnoticed by those who had been appointed to guard him. He made no other remark than that in being sent into banishment without a legal trial, or any of the forms of the law, he was treated more severely than murderers, sorcerers, and adulterers. He was conveyed in a bark to Bithynia, and thence continued his journey. Some of his enemies were apprehensive lest the people, on heaving of his departure, should pursue him, and bring him back by force; and therefore commanded the gates of the church to be closed. When the people who were in the public places of the city heard of what had occurred, great confusion ensued; for some ran to the sea-shore, and others fled hither and thither, and awaited in great terror the calamities consequent on sedition, and the vengeance of the emperor. Those who were within the church pressed towards the doors, and by thus obstructing the entrance, rendered it impossible to force open the doors. While they were endeavouring to effect an exit, and while efforts were being made by another party without the edifice to break open the doors by means of stones, the church was suddenly discovered to be on fire; the flames extended to the grand council-chamber, which is situated towards the South. The two parties mutually accused each other of incendiarism; the enemies of John asserted that his partizans had been guilty of the deed from revenge, on account of the sentence that had been passed against him by the council: these latter, on the other hand, maintained that they had been calumniated, and that the crime was perpetrated by their enemies, with the intention of burning them in the church. In the meantime, while the conflagration was spreading on all sides, the officers who held John in custody conveyed him to Cucusum, a city of Armenia, which the emperor had appointed as the place of his detention. Other officers were commissioned to arrest all bishops and priests who had favoured the cause of John, and to imprison them in Chalcedonia. Those citizens who were suspected of attachment to John were sought out and cast into prison, and compelled to proonunce anathema against him.