But the ‘Court’s stern martyr-guest,’ who was also ‘the glorious preacher with soul of zeal and lips of flame,’ could not go on long practising the life of a saint with the power of a patriarch under such sovereigns as the weak Arcadius and the imperious Eudoxia. His virtues offended many in a city of intense worldliness. His censures, delivered with his wonted eloquence from the pulpit of the cathedral, roused great enmities. In Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, he had a watchful enemy, eager to punish, in the person of Chrysostom, the new rank which his see arrogated of being the second in the Church, as the see of Nova Roma. By that arrogation, the see of St. Mark at Alexandria was degraded from a rank which it had held since the beginning of the Christian hierarchy. Not only among the magnates of the court, but among his brother bishops, Chrysostom found much opposition: and at last the empress set herself at the head of his opponents. While he was absent in Asia Minor, restoring to order the exarchate of Ephesus, Severian, bishop of Gabala in Syria, sought, by sermons delivered in the cathedral itself, to take from him the favour of the people. But it received him with acclamation on his return, and drove Severian out of the city. Synod of the Oak But certain disturbances about the doctrine of Origen which had broken out among the monks in Egypt involved him in unfortunate difficulties. Among many monks who fled to Constantinople from the desert of Nitria in Egypt, under excommunication from Theophilus, were the ‘four tall brothers’. They came to accuse their patriarch before the emperor and Chrysostom. He took them up, showing kindness and sympathy, though he did not admit them to communion. Theophilus was summoned to Constantinople by the emperor, to answer for his conduct before a synod. To escape this humiliation he used every effort to ruin Chrysostom, whom he took to be his own opponent. He accused Chrysostom himself of Origenism. This scheme of the Egyptian patriarch brought over to his side all the opponents of Chrysostom at the court. Theophilus even ventured to appear as the accuser and judge of the patriarch in the capital itself. He was able to draw together a synod of thirty-six bishops at the Oak, a country-house near Chalcedon, and to summon the bishop of Constantinople to appear before it. Chrysostom, on the double ground of his own rank and his innocence, refused to appear. The unlawful synod ‘of the Oak’ condemned him, supported by the influence of the empress. Forty bishops around him in Constantinople attested his innocence, and objected to a proceeding utterly unlawful and, until then, unknown. Chrysostom was willing to obey a command of the emperor that he should cross the Bosphorus and attend; but the people threatened insurrection if the command were not withdrawn. Chrysostom had to return, and was reseated in his church with the joyful acclamation of his people.