Homilies on the Statues
Twenty-one sermons preached by John, then a presbyter at Antioch, in the weeks after a riot in which the people threw down the statues of the emperor Theodosius and his family. They are a day-by-day record of a city waiting to learn its punishment.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗The same translation (CCEL) ↗
The sermons were preached at Antioch during Lent while the bishop, Flavian, travelled to Constantinople to ask the emperor’s pardon for the city. John speaks to a congregation in fear: he describes the emptied streets, the arrests and trials, the monks who came down from the hills to plead with the judges, and at the end the bishop’s return with the news that the city was spared. Between these reports he preaches against swearing and on fasting and repentance.
They are the words of an eyewitness and the main source for the episode. They show the preaching that made John’s name before he was called to Constantinople. They do not explain the cause of the riot; for that the later historians must be used.
Cited in
- AD 398 to AD 407, firm date