Note 3 — PAUL CARUS (continued 2)

We may mention incidentally that a contributor to Ohne Staat reproduced one of the Homilies of St Chrysostom, in which he harangues after the fashion of the early Christian preachers against wealth and power. The state's attorney, not versed in Christian patristic literature, seized the issue and placed the man who quoted the old Byzantine saint behind the prison bars. In the issue of Nov., 1898, Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt mentions the case and says: "Thus we have an exact and historical proof that the liberty of speech and thought was incomparably greater in miserable, servile Byzantium than it is now in the much more miserable and more servile despotism of modern Europe." Does not Dr. Schmitt overlook the fact that in the days of Byzantine Christianity the saints were protected by the mob, which was much feared by the imperial government and was kept at bay only by a nominal recognition of its claims and beliefs?