Western Bishops Break Communion over Deposition of St. John Chrysostom

 

So upset were the Orthodox Bishops of the West at the pseudo-deposition of St. John Chrysostom at the "Synod of the Oak", and his death in such a state in exile, that they broke communion with the Bishops of the East.  St. Theodoret records the following:

"I think it needless to prolong my narrative by relating how many Bishops were expelled from the Church on Chrysostom's account, and sent to live in the ends of the Earth, or how many ascetic philosophers were involved in the same calamities, and all the more because I think it needful to curtail these hideous details, and to throw a veil over the ill deeds of men of the same Faith as our own.  Punishment however did fall on most of the guilty, and their sufferings were a means of good to the rest.  This great wrong was regarded with special detestation by the Bishops of Europe, who separated themselves from Communion with the guilty parties.  In this action they were joined by all the Bishops of Illyria.  In the East most of the cities shrank from participation in the wrong, but did not make a rent in the Body of the Church.

"On the death of the great teacher of the world [St. John Chrysostom], the Bishops of the West refused to embrace the Communion of the Bishops of Egypt, of the East, of the Bosphorus, and in Thrace, until the name of that holy man had been inserted among those of deceased Bishops.  Arsacius his immediate successor they declined to acknowledge, but Atticus the successor of Arsacius, after he had frequently solicited the boon of peace, was after a time received when he had inserted the name in the role."

[Book V, Ch. 34, Ecclesiastical History of St. Theodoret of Cyrrhus]

It was only around 415 that Patriarch Alexander of Antioch first restored St. Chrysostom's name to the Diptychs to commemorate the reposed Patriarchs of Constantinople; Patriarch Atticus of Constantinople then did the same; Patriarch St. Cyril of Alexandria followed suit in 417.  

Additional material that causes schisms among the Churches, the separation of 40 Bishops who took up Communion with the Orthodox West in the name of St. Chrysostom (with these Canonical Bishops being driven from their Sees, and replaced by Uncanonical Interlopers by Uncanonical "Officialdom" in the East) can be learned by reading Palladius "Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysosomt".