John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom collapsed and died at Comana Pontica on the 14th of September 407, on a road he never chose to walk. He was being marched toward Pitiunt, a remote outpost on the far edge of the empire, having already been banished twice from the city he led. His last words, the tradition holds, were a quiet line of surrender and praise: "Glory be to God for all things." This was the end of a man born around 347 in Antioch, trained to be a lawyer, who instead became the Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the most uncompromising voices the early Church ever produced. The name Chrysostomos was not given at birth. It is Greek for "golden-mouthed," a title earned by his preaching long after he had abandoned the courtroom for the desert. How does a man celebrated for his eloquence end up dragged to his death by the very empire that crowned him archbishop? Why did emperors and patriarchs fear a preacher? And why, more than fifteen centuries later, is his name still attached to a liturgy, a skull venerated in three countries, and choral works by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky? The answers begin in a city in Roman Syria, with a boy raised by his widowed mother.
Anthusa raised her son alone in Antioch after his father, a high-ranking military officer, died soon after John was born. Through her connections in the city, John studied under the rhetorician Libanius in the Sophist school, where he gained both a career path in rhetoric and a lasting love of Greek language and literature. He became a lawyer. The Christian historian Sozomen reports that Libanius, on his deathbed, said John would have been his successor "if the Christians had not taken him from us."
Diodorus of Tarsus, founder of the re-constituted School of Antioch, drew John away from the courts and into theology. John was baptised in 368 or 373 and tonsured as a reader, one of the minor orders of the Church. Around 375 he chose extreme asceticism and became a hermit. For two years he stood almost continually, scarcely slept, and committed the Bible to memory.
The cost of that devotion was physical and permanent. His stomach and kidneys were damaged so badly that poor health forced him to return to Antioch. The man who would later shame the rich for their banquets had already starved his own body into ruin in the wilderness.
For twelve years, from 386 to 397, John preached at the Golden Church, the cathedral of Antioch, and his reputation grew with every homily. He had been ordained a deacon in 381 by the bishop Meletius of Antioch, then a presbyter around 388 by Evagrius. His expositions of Bible passages drew crowds because they were practical, explaining how Scripture applied to everyday life rather than dissolving into the allegory favored by the rival Alexandrian school.
Wealth and poverty were his constant theme. He told his listeners not to pay homage to Christ in silk inside the temple while neglecting him cold and hungry outside. "What good is it," he asked, "if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger?" He scorned conspicuous consumption with deliberate crudeness, asking once whether a man would honor his own excrement with a silver chamber-pot while another, made in the image of God, perished in the cold.
The weight of his words showed during Lent in 387. Citizens had rampaged through Antioch, mutilating statues of the emperor Theodosius I and his family. Bishop Flavian rushed to intercede with the emperor while John preached more than twenty homilies begging the people to see their error. Many pagans converted as a result, and the city was spared severe punishment. That same period also produced his darkest sermons, eight homilies against Jews and Judaizing Christians, delivered to congregants who were drawn to the synagogue's liturgy, the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and the festivals of a Jewish faith revived in Antioch in 361.
In the autumn of 397 John was named archbishop of Constantinople, nominated without his knowledge by the eunuch Eutropius. He had to leave Antioch in secret, since officials feared that losing so popular a figure would spark unrest. The capital proved far more dangerous than the pulpit he left behind.
His austerity made enemies as fast as it made admirers. He refused to host lavish gatherings, which endeared him to common people but alienated wealthy citizens and clergy alike. He sent visiting regional preachers back to the churches they were supposed to serve, with no pay-out, and he founded hospitals in the city. Reform of comfortable clergy met resistance and only limited success.
Powerful figures gathered against him. Theophilus I of Alexandria wanted Constantinople under his influence and accused John of favoring the teachings of Origen, after John sheltered four Egyptian monks called "the Tall Brothers." The empress Aelia Eudoxia, wife of Arcadius, took John's denunciations of extravagant feminine dress as attacks on herself. In 403 his enemies convened the Synod of the Oak, charging him partly through his connection to Origen, and they deposed and banished him.
Arcadius recalled John almost immediately, because the people grew so tumultuous over his departure that they threatened to burn the imperial palace. An earthquake struck the night of his arrest. Eudoxia read it as a sign of God's anger and asked Arcadius to reinstate him.
The peace did not last. A silver statue of Eudoxia was raised in the Augustaion, near the cathedral, and John denounced the dedication ceremonies as pagan. He turned on the empress in scalding terms: "Again Herodias raves, again she dances, and again desires to receive John's head on a charger," invoking the death of John the Baptist. He was banished a second time, toward the Caucasus in Abkhazia. The riots that followed burned down the cathedral built by Constantius II, forcing construction of a second on the site, the Theodosian Hagia Sophia.
Facing exile, John appealed to three churchmen of the West: Pope Innocent I, Venerius the bishop of Milan, and Chromatius the bishop of Aquileia. Innocent protested the banishment and in 405 sent a delegation led by Gaudentius of Brescia, but it met endless difficulties and never reached Constantinople. John was moved from Cucusus, where he stayed from 404 to 407, toward Pitiunt in modern Georgia. He died on the journey, in the community of clergy belonging to the church of Saint Basiliscus of Comana.
An anonymous supporter known as pseudo-Martyrius wrote a funeral oration almost immediately after John's death, reclaiming him as a symbol of Christian orthodoxy. Even so, the wound did not close quickly. Historians such as Wendy Mayer and Geoffrey Dunn describe a struggle between Johannite and anti-Johannite camps that persisted for years, and some of his adherents in Constantinople remained in schism three decades on.
Reconciliation came through one of his own disciples. Proclus, archbishop of Constantinople from 434 to 446, preached a homily in Hagia Sophia praising his predecessor. "O John," he declared, "your life was filled with sorrow, but your death was glorious." Public opinion shifted, and the emperor permitted the return of John's relics. They were enshrined in the Church of the Holy Apostles on the 28th of January 438, thirty years after his death.
The honors accumulated over the centuries. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him as a "Great Ecumenical Teacher" and ranks him among the Three Holy Hierarchs with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, celebrated together on the 30th of January. The Catholic Church counts him among the four Great Greek Church Fathers. In 1908 Pope Pius X named him the patron saint of preachers.
Some 600 sermons and 246 letters survive under John's name, along with a commentary on the Book of Acts, more than any other Greek Father left behind. His exegetical homilies are vast: sixty-seven on Genesis, fifty-nine on the Psalms, ninety on the Gospel of Matthew, eighty-eight on the Gospel of John, and fifty-five on Acts. The best known is also among the shortest, the Paschal Homily read at the midnight service of Pascha in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
His treatises reached beyond the pulpit. On the Priesthood, written around 390 to 391, defends his flight from ordination and lays out his exalted view of the priesthood. An earlier work, Against Those Who Oppose the Monastic Life, addressed parents whose sons were drawn to the monastery, noting that Antiochenes already sent their boys to be educated by monks. He also wrote seventeen surviving letters to the deaconess Olympias.
Not all of his words have aged gently. His fourth homily on Romans condemned same-sex desire in fierce terms, and the scholar Michael Carden argues he helped shape early Christian thought on the subject, though theologian Stephen Morris warns that his preaching was often situational and that he "not infrequently does he contradict himself." The Catechism of the Catholic Church still cites him in eighteen sections, especially on the Lord's Prayer.
Crusaders looted most of John's relics from Constantinople in 1204 and carried them to Rome. Some of his bones were returned to the Orthodox Church on the 27th of November 2004 by Pope John Paul II, and since then they have rested in the Church of St. George in Istanbul. His skull, however, took a stranger road, having escaped the crusaders by being kept at the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos.
The skull became an object of state bargaining. In 1655, at the request of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it was taken to Russia and the monastery compensated 2,000 rubles. In 1693 Tsar Peter the Great refused Vatopedi's request to return it, ordering instead that the monastery be paid 500 rubles every four years, with payments documented up to 1735. The skull sat in the Moscow Kremlin until 1920, when the Soviets confiscated it and placed it in the Museum of Silver Antiquities. In 1988, for the 1,000th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia, it was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Today the question of where his skull rests has no single answer. Vatopedi claims to hold it still, and so do two sites in Italy, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Dal Pozzo chapel in Pisa. His right hand is preserved at Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos. His liturgical legacy traveled further than his bones: the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom remains the normal Eucharistic service of the Byzantine Rite, and his name is sung in choral settings by Rachmaninoff, composed in 1910, by Tchaikovsky, and by the Ukrainian composer Kyrylo Stetsenko.
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Common questions
Who was John Chrysostom and why is he called golden-mouthed?
John Chrysostom was a Church Father who served as Archbishop of Constantinople and lived from around 347 to 407. The name Chrysostomos is Greek for "golden-mouthed," a title earned by his preaching and public speaking.
When and where did John Chrysostom die?
John Chrysostom died on the 14th of September 407 at Comana Pontica, in modern-day Gümenek, Tokat, Turkey. He died on the journey toward his place of exile at Pitiunt, in the community of clergy belonging to the church of Saint Basiliscus of Comana.
Why was John Chrysostom exiled from Constantinople?
John Chrysostom was banished after making enemies of wealthy citizens, the clergy, the empress Aelia Eudoxia, and Theophilus of Alexandria. His enemies convened the Synod of the Oak in 403, which deposed and banished him, partly using his connection to the teachings of Origen against him.
What did John Chrysostom write?
Some 600 sermons and 246 letters by John Chrysostom survive, along with a commentary on the Book of Acts. His exegetical homilies include sixty-seven on Genesis, fifty-nine on the Psalms, ninety on the Gospel of Matthew, eighty-eight on the Gospel of John, and fifty-five on Acts.
Why is John Chrysostom honored as a saint?
John Chrysostom came to be venerated as a saint soon after his death and is honored in the Catholic and Eastern churches. The Eastern Orthodox count him among the Three Holy Hierarchs with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, and in 1908 Pope Pius X named him the patron saint of preachers.
Where are the relics of John Chrysostom kept?
Most of John Chrysostom's relics were looted by crusaders in 1204 and taken to Rome, with some returned to the Orthodox Church in 2004 and now enshrined in the Church of St. George in Istanbul. His skull is claimed by the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos and by two sites in Italy, while his right hand is preserved at Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos.
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