Riots over John’s Banishment, and His Recall

The people then became uncontrollably turbulent. And, as often happens in such cases, many who had earlier been hostile to him now turned their hostility into pity, and said of the man they had so recently wanted to see deposed that he had been slandered. In this way those who cried out against both the emperor and the synod of bishops became very numerous; but they laid the origin of the plot most of all at the door of Theophilus. For his deceit could no longer be hidden. It was exposed by many other signs, and above all by the fact that immediately after John’s deposition he had entered into communion with Dioscorus and those called the Tall Monks. But Severian, preaching in the church and thinking it a fitting occasion to attack John, said: “Even if John had been condemned for nothing else, the haughtiness of his manner was crime enough to justify his deposition. People are forgiven all other sins, but ‘God opposes the proud,’ as the divine Scriptures teach us.” [a]

These reproaches made the people still more inclined to resist, so that the emperor ordered John’s immediate recall. So Briso, a eunuch in the empress’s service, was sent after him. He found him at Praenetum, a trading town lying across the water from Nicomedia, and brought him back toward Constantinople. But although he had been recalled, John refused to enter the city, declaring that he would not do so until a higher court had acknowledged his innocence. So he stayed at a suburb called Marianae. As he lingered there, the uproar grew, and drove the people to break out in very angry and abusive language against their rulers. So, to check their fury, John was forced to go on. On his way a vast crowd escorted him with reverence and honor straight to the church, and there they begged him to take his seat in the bishop’s chair and give them his usual blessing.

He tried to excuse himself, saying that this ought to come about by an order from his judges, and that those who had condemned him must first revoke their sentence. But that only made them more eager to see him restored and to hear him speak to them again. Finally the people prevailed on him to take his seat again and to pray for peace on them as usual; after which, under the same pressure, he preached to them. This compliance on John’s part gave his opponents another ground for accusation; but they took no action on it at that time.