II. THE FOUR GREEK FATHERS

The Four Greek Fathers are St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Athanasius, and St. Gregory Nazianzen. To these, in Greek pictures, a fifth is generally added, St. Cyril of Alexandria.

From the time of the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, these venerable personages, who once exercised such an influence over all Christendom, who preceded the Latin Fathers, and were in fact their teachers, have been almost banished from the religious representations of the west of Europe. When they are introduced collectively as a part of the decoration of an ecclesiastical edifice, we may conclude in general that the work is Byzantine and executed under the influence of Greek artists.

A signal example is the central dome of the baptistery of St. Mark's at Venice, executed by Greek artists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the four spandrils of the vault are the Greek Fathers seated, writing (if I well remember), and in the purest Byzantine style of Art. They occupy the same places here that we find usually occupied by the Latin Doctors in church decoration: each has his name inscribed in Greek characters. We have exactly the same representation in the Cathedral of Monreale at Palermo. The Greek Fathers have no attributes to distinguish them, and the general custom in Byzantine Art of inscribing the names over each figure renders this unnecessary: in general, each holds a book, or, in some instances, a scroll, which represents his writings; while the right hand is raised in benediction, in the Greek manner, the first and second finger extended, and the thumb and third finger forming a cross. According to the formula published by M. Didron, each of the Greek Fathers bears on a scroll the first words of some remarkable passage from his works: thus, St. John Chrysostom has "God, our God, who hath given us for food the bread of life," etc.; St. Basil, "None of those who are in the bondage of fleshly desires are worthy," etc. St. Athanasius, "Often, and anew, do we flee to thee, O God," etc.; St. Gregory Nazianzen, "God, the holy among the holies, the thrice holy," etc.; and St. Cyril, "Above all, a Virgin without sin or blemish," etc.

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The Greek bishops do not wear mitres; consequently, when in the Italian or German pictures St. Basil or any of his companions wear the mitre, it is a mistake arising from the ignorance of the artist.

The Fathers of the Greek Church have been represented by Domenichino at Grotta Ferrata, placed over the cornice and under the evangelists, their proper place: they are majestic figures, with fine heads, and correctly draped according to the Greek ecclesiastical costume. They are placed here with peculiar propriety, because the convent originally belonged to the Greek order of St. Basil, and the founder, St. Nilus, was a Greek.1

As separate devotional and historical representations of these Fathers do sometimes, though rarely, occur, I shall say a few words of them individually.

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Lat. Sanctus Johannes Chrysostom. Ital. San Giovanni Crisostomo, San Giovanni Bocca d' Oro. Fr. St. Jean Chrysostome. Died September 14, A. D. 407. His festival is celebrated by the Greeks on the 13th of November, and by the Latin Church on the 27th of January.

St. John, called CHRYSOSTOM, or oF THE GOLDEN MOUTH, because of his extraordinary eloquence, was born at Antioch in 344. His parents were illustrious, and the career opened to him was of arts and arms; but from his infancy the bent of his mind was peculiar. He lost his father when young; his mother Arthusia, still in the prime of her life, remained a widow for his sake, and superintended his education with care and intelligence. The remark of Sir James Mackintosh that "all distinguished men have had able mothers," appears especially true of the great churchmen and poets. The mother of St. John Chrysostom ranks with the Monicas and Sylvias, already described.

John, at the age of twenty, was already a renowned pleader at the bar. At the age of twenty-six, the disposition to self-abnegation and the passion for solitude, which had dis

1 For an account of St. Nilus, and the foundation of Grotta Ferrata, see the Legends of the Monastic Orders.

tinguished him from boyhood, became so strong that he wished to retire altogether from the world; his legal studies, his legal honors, had become hateful to him: he would turn hermit. For a time his mother's tears and prayers restrained him. He has himself recorded the pathetic remonstrance in which she reminded him of all she had done and suffered in her state of widowhood for his sake, and besought him not to leave her. For the present he yielded: but two years later he fled from society, and passed five or six years in the wilderness near Antioch, devoting himself solely to the study of the Scriptures, to penance and prayer; feeding on the wild vegetables, and leading a life of such rigorous abstinence that his health sank under it, and he was obliged to return to Antioch.

All this time he was not even an ordained priest; but shortly after he had emerged from the desert, Flavian, bishop of Antioch, ordained him, and appointed him preacher. At the moment of his consecration, according to the tradition, a white dove descended on his head, which was regarded as the sign of immediate inspiration. He then entered on his true vocation as a Christian orator, the greatest next to Paul. On one occasion, when the people of Antioch had offended the Emperor Theodosius, and were threatened with a punishment like that which had fallen on Thessalonica, the eloquence of St. John Chrysostom saved them he was so adored by the people, that when he was appointed patriarch of Constantinople it was necessary to kidnap him, and carry him off from Antioch by a force of armed soldiers, before the citizens had time to interfere.

From the moment he entered on his high office at Constantinople he became the model of a Christian bishop. Humble, self-denying, sleeping on a bare plank, content with a little bread and pulse, he entertained with hospitality the poor and strangers indefatigable as a preacher, he used his great gift of eloquence to convert his hearers to what he believed to be the truth: he united the enthusiasm and the imagination of the poet, the elegant taste of the scholar, the logic of the pleader, with the inspired earnestness of one who had authority from above. He was, like St. Jerome, remarkable for his influence over women; and his correspondence with one of his female converts and friends, Olympias, is considered one of the finest of his works remaining to us; but, inexorable in

his denunciations of vice, without regard to sex or station, he thundered against the irregularities of the monks, the luxury and profligacy of the Empress Eudosia, and the servility of her flatterers, and brought down upon himself the vengeance of that haughty woman, with whom the rest of his life was one long contest. He was banished: the voice of the people obliged the emperor to recall him. Persisting in the resolute defence of his church privileges, and his animadversions on the court and the clergy, he was again banished; and, on his way to his distant place of exile, sank under fatigue and the cruel treatment of his guards, who exposed him, bare-headed and bare-footed, to the burning sun of noon: and thus he perished, in the tenth year of his bishopric, and the sixtythird of his age. Gibbon adds, that, "at the pious solicitation of the clergy and people of Constantinople, his relics, thirty years after his death, were transported from their obscure sepulchre to the royal city. The Emperor Theodosius advanced to receive them as far as Chalcedon, and, falling prostrate on the coffin, implored, in the name of his guilty. parents, Arcadius and Eudosia, the forgiveness of the injured saint."

It is owing, I suppose, to the intercourse of Venice with the East, that one of her beautiful churches is dedicated to San Gian Grisostomo, as they call him there, in accents ast soft and sonorous as his own Greek. Over the high altar is the grandest devotional picture in which I have seen this saint figure as a chief personage. It is the masterpiece of Sebastian del Piombo,1 and represents St. John Chrysostom throned and in the act of writing in a great book; behind him, St. Paul. In front, to the right, stands St. John the Baptist, and behind him St. George, as patron of Venice; to the left Mary Magdalene, with a beautiful Venetian face; behind her, St. Catherine, patroness of Venice; close to St. J. Chrysostom stands St. Lucia holding her lamp; she is here the type of celestial light or wisdom. (Dante, Inf. c. xi.) This picture was for a long time attributed to Giorgione. There was also a very fine majestic figure of this saint by Rubens, in the collection of M. Schamp; he is in the habit of a Greek bishop; in one hand he holds the sacramental cup, and the left hand rests on 1 According to Sansovino, begun by Giorgione, and finished by Sebastian.

the Gospel the celestial dove hovers near him, and two angels are in attendance.

I cannot quit the history of St. John Chrysostom without alluding to a subject well known to collectors and amateurs, and popularly called "La Pénitence de St. Jean Chrysostome." It represents a woman undraped, seated in a cave, or wilderness, with an infant in her arms; or lying on the ground with a new-born infant beside her; in the distance is seen a man with a glory round his head, meagre, naked, bearded, crawling on his hands and knees in the most abject attitude: beneath, or at the top, is inscribed S. JOHANNES CRISOSTOMUS.

For a long time this subject perplexed me exceedingly, as I was quite unable to trace it in any of the biographies of Chrysostom, ancient or modern: the kindness of a friend, learned in all the byways as well as the highways of Italian literature, at length assisted me to an explanation.

The bitter enmity excited against St. John Chrysostom in his lifetime, and the furious vituperations of his adversary, Theophilus of Alexandria, who denounced him as one stained by every vice, "hostem humanitatis, sacrilegorum principem, immundum dæmonem," as a wretch who had absolutely delivered up his soul to Satan, were apparently disseminated by the monks. Jerome translated the abusive attack of Theophilus into Latin; and long after the slanders against Chrysostom had been silenced in the East, they survived in the West. To this may be added the slaughter of the Egyptian monks by the friends of Chrysostom in the streets of Constantinople; which, I suppose, was also retained in the traditions, and mixed up with the monkish fictions. It seems to have been forgotten who John Chrysostom really was; his name only survived in the popular ballads and legends as an epitome of every horrible crime; and to account for his being, notwithstanding all this, a saint, was a difficulty which in the old legend is surmounted after a very original, and I must needs add, a very audacious fashion. "I have," writes my friend, "three editions of this legend in Italian, with the title La Historia di San Giovanni Boccadoro.' It is in ottava rima, thirty-six stanzas in all, occupying two leaves of letter-press. It was originally composed in the fifteenth century, and reprinted again and again, like the ballads and tales hawked by itinerant balladmongers,