The Fall of Eutropius

Eutropius was originally the chief of the eunuchs, and he was the first and only man of that rank we have ever known or heard of to reach the dignity of consul and patrician. When he was raised to power, he gave no thought to the future or to how unstable human affairs are, but had those who had taken refuge in churches thrust out of them. He treated Pentadia, the wife of Timasius, in this way. Timasius was a general of the army, able and much feared, but Eutropius obtained an edict banishing him to Pasis in Egypt, on the pretext that he was aiming at the throne. I have been told that Timasius died of thirst; or that, dreading something worse still to come, he was overtaken in the sands there and found dead. [a]

Eutropius issued a law that no one should take refuge in churches, and that those who had already fled there should be driven out. Yet he was the first to break this law. Not long after it was enacted he offended the empress, and at once he left the palace and fled to the church as a suppliant. While he was lying under the table, John preached a sermon in which he condemned the pride of power and turned the people’s attention to how unstable human greatness is. John’s enemies took this as an occasion to blame him, because he had rebuked, instead of pitying, a man suffering the blows of adverse fortune. Soon afterward Eutropius paid the penalty for his impious plan and was beheaded, and the law he had enacted was erased from the public inscriptions. Since the wrath of God had been so quickly brought down on the injustice done to the church, prosperity was restored to it, and divine worship increased. The people of Constantinople were more diligent then than before in attending the singing of the morning and evening hymns.