The People Rise, and John Is Recalled

The people of Constantinople learned of the council’s decree toward evening, and at once they rose up in revolt. At daybreak they ran to the church and shouted, among many other demands, that a larger council ought to be called to look into the matter. They prevented the officers whom the emperor had sent to carry John into exile from carrying out the order. John was afraid that another charge might be brought against him, on the pretext that he had disobeyed the emperor’s command or stirred up an insurrection among the people. So when the crowd had dispersed, he slipped away from the church in secret at noon, three days after his deposition. [a]

When the people realized that he had gone into exile, the revolt became serious. Many insulting things were said against the emperor and the council, and especially against Theophilus and Severian, who were regarded as the authors of the plot. Severian happened to be teaching in the church at the very time these things were happening. He took the opportunity to praise John’s deposition, and said that even if John were innocent of other crimes, he deserved to be deposed for his pride, because, while God willingly forgives people all their other sins, he resists the proud. At this sermon the people grew restless under the wrong done to them. Their anger flared up again, and they broke into a revolt that could not be restrained. They ran to the churches, to the marketplaces, and even to the emperor’s palace, and with howls and groans they demanded John’s recall.

At last the empress was overcome by their persistence, and she persuaded her husband to give in to the people’s wishes. She quickly sent a eunuch she trusted, named Briso, to bring John back from Praenetum, a city of Bithynia. She declared that she had taken no part in the schemes that had been carried on against him, but had, on the contrary, always respected him as a priest and as the one who had initiated her children.

On his way home John reached the suburbs that belonged to the empress, and he stopped near Anaplus. He refused to enter the city again until a larger synod of bishops had recognized the injustice of his deposition. But since this refusal only increased the people’s excitement and led to many public outcries against the emperor and the empress, he let himself be persuaded to enter the city. The people went out to meet him singing psalms composed for the occasion, and many carried lighted wax candles. They led him to the church. Although he refused, and kept insisting that those who had condemned him ought first to reconsider their vote, they compelled him to take the bishop’s throne and to speak peace to the people, as the priests customarily do. He then gave a sermon on the spot in which, with a pleasing figure of speech, he declared that Theophilus had planned an injury against his church, just as the king of Egypt had planned to violate Sarah, the wife of the patriarch Abraham, as the books of the Hebrews record. Then he went on to praise the people’s zeal and to commend the emperor and the empress for their goodwill toward him. He stirred the people to such applause and cheering for the emperor and his wife that he had to leave his sermon half finished. [c]