John Chrysostom

John Chrysostom was archbishop of Constantinople, the most admired preacher of the early church, and was exiled twice and died on the road. The name is a nickname given long after his death, meaning golden-mouthed. He trained in rhetoric under the pagan Libanius at Antioch, spent years as an ascetic in the mountains until his health was permanently damaged, and made his reputation preaching in Antioch, notably during the crisis of 387 when the city smashed the imperial statues over a tax and expected to be destroyed for it. He was taken to Constantinople in 397 effectively by abduction, the government fearing a riot if the Antiochenes learned they were losing him. As archbishop he cut the household expenditure of the see, sold its silver for hospitals, disciplined the clergy, and preached against wealth and against the court in terms that made the empress Eudoxia his enemy. Theophilus of Alexandria convened the Synod of the Oak in 403 and deposed him on assorted charges; he was recalled after a night of popular protest and an earthquake, then exiled again the following year, and died in 407 being marched through Armenia in bad weather. His liturgy is the one used most Sundays in the Orthodox churches. His homilies survive in enormous quantity and are the largest body of writing from any Greek father. They include a series of sermons against Judaizing Christians, delivered in the specific circumstances of Antioch in 386 and 387, whose language was quoted extensively by antisemitic writers in the twentieth century, and which the churches that honour him have had to address directly. His relics were taken to Rome after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and returned by John Paul II in 2004. He was declared a Doctor of the Church. Chrysostom means golden-mouthed and was not used of him until some two centuries after his death.

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