After ten years of incessant labours by the preacher, which form a large part of the writings preserved to us, the see of Constantinople fell vacant by the death of the patriarch Nectarius. Theodosius had died in 395, leaving the great eastern empire in the hands of his elder son Arcadius, scarcely out of his boyhood. The young emperor was unwilling to trust the see of his capital to any one of his clergy, and he listened to the advice given to him to call from Antioch the man whose genius was as great as his character was stainless. The great officer who carried out the imperial invitation, or command, at Antioch, was obliged to use artifice for the purpose of securing the preacher. His people would not knowingly have suffered him to leave them. He was taken out of the city under a plausible pretence. ‘Asterius, count of the East, had orders to send for him and ask his company to a church without the city. Having got him into his carriage, he drove off with him to the first station on the high road to Constantinople, where imperial officers were in readiness to convey him thither.’[1] Thus he was carried across Asia with all possible speed. Upon his arrival at Constantinople he was chosen bishop with one voice, and consecrated on the 26th February, 398. His consecrator was Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, who very unwillingly performed this office. He had striven to get a certain priest who was devoted to himself appointed. His subsequent enmity to St. Chrysostom was a main cause of the banishment and death which befel the man whom he had consecrated. Archbishop of Constantinople