Easter Night, and Plots against John’s Life

After his deposition, John held no more assemblies in the church, but stayed quietly in the bishop’s house. At the end of the season of Lent, on that same holy night on which the yearly feast in memory of the resurrection of Christ is kept, John’s followers were driven out of the church by the soldiers and by his enemies, who attacked the people while they were still celebrating the mysteries. Because this came without warning, a great uproar broke out in the baptistery. The women wept and wailed, and the children screamed. The priests and the deacons were beaten and thrown out of the church by force, in the priestly vestments in which they had been officiating. They were charged with such disorderly acts as anyone admitted to the mysteries can readily imagine; but I think it necessary to pass over them in silence, in case my work should fall into the hands of the uninitiated. [a]

When the people saw the plot, they did not use the church the next day, but celebrated the Passover feast in the very large public baths named after the emperor Constantius. Bishops and presbyters, and the others whose right it is to administer the affairs of the church, officiated. Those who took John’s side were there with the people. They were driven out of there, however, and then gathered at a place outside the city walls which the emperor Constantine, before the city was built, had had cleared and fenced in with a palisade for holding the races of the hippodrome. From then on the people held separate assemblies, sometimes in that place, whenever it was possible, and sometimes in another. They came to be called Johannites. [c]

About this time a man who was either possessed by a demon or pretended to be was seized carrying a dagger, intending to murder John. The people arrested him as a man hired for this plot and took him to the prefect; but John sent some bishops of his party to have him released from custody before he could be questioned under torture. Some time later, a slave of Elpidius the presbyter, who was an open enemy of the deacon, was seen running as fast as he could toward the bishop’s residence. A passerby tried to stop him to find out why he was in such a hurry; but instead of answering, the slave plunged his dagger into him. Another man standing nearby, who cried out on seeing the first one wounded, was wounded the same way by the slave, and so was a third bystander. All the people around, seeing what had happened, shouted that the slave ought to be arrested. He turned and fled. When those chasing him called out to the people ahead to seize the fugitive, a man who had just come out of the baths tried to stop him, and was so badly wounded that he fell dead on the spot. At last the people managed to surround the slave. They seized him and took him to the emperor’s palace, declaring that he had meant to murder John and that the crime ought to be punished. The prefect calmed the people’s fury by putting the offender in custody and assuring them that justice would take its course against him.