John Chrysostom, Preacher and Exile

John Chrysostom was born at Antioch, studied under the rhetorician Libanius, lived for some years as a monk, and was ordained there (Socrates, Church History 6.3) (Palladius, Dialogue 5). In 387 a crowd protesting a new tax pulled down the imperial statues, and the city waited for the punishment of Theodosius I (Theodoret, Church History 5.19). While the bishop went to plead with the emperor, John preached through Lent to a frightened congregation, until the bishop returned before Easter with a pardon (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues 2.1–4) (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues 21.1–4).

When the bishop of Constantinople died in 397, the court sent for John, and he was ordained on 26 February 398 (Socrates, Church History 6.2). His supporter Palladius describes what he did with the office: he disciplined clergy who kept women in their houses, cut the bishop’s household expenses and gave the money to hospitals, reformed the order of widows, held night services for working people, and preached against the greed of the rich (Palladius, Dialogue 5). Socrates says that his severity and freedom of speech offended many, and that people who did not know him found him haughty (Socrates, Church History 6.3).

Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, then came to the capital with a party of bishops. The empress Eudoxia, angered by a sermon against women that was taken as aimed at her, backed him (Socrates, Church History 6.15). A synod of thirty-six bishops met at a place called the Oak, outside Chalcedon, and summoned John to answer a list of charges. He refused to be judged by his declared enemies and asked for a general council; the synod deposed him for not appearing and sent the emperor a charge of treason, that he had called the empress Jezebel (Palladius, Dialogue 8) (Socrates, Church History 6.15). He was sent away, and the anger of the people soon forced the court to bring him back (Socrates, Church History 6.16).

When games were held around a silver statue of Eudoxia set up near his church, John denounced them; Socrates reports that he preached a sermon beginning “Again Herodias raves”. A second gathering of bishops ruled that he had resumed his see unlawfully (Socrates, Church History 6.18). John’s own letter to Innocent, bishop of Rome, tells how soldiers broke into the churches on Easter eve and drove out those about to be baptised, and asks the western bishops to declare the proceedings void (Chrysostom, Letters to Innocent 1–4). On 20 June 404 he was taken into exile (Socrates, Church History 6.18). Eudoxia died that October (Socrates, Church History 6.19).

He was held first at Cucusus in Armenia, then moved; ordered on to Pityus on the Black Sea, he died on the road at Comana on 14 September 407. Palladius gives his last words as “Glory to God for all things” (Palladius, Dialogue 11) (Socrates, Church History 6.21). In 438 his body was brought back to Constantinople and those who had left the church on his account returned to it (Socrates, Church History 7.45).