Letters from Exile

John ChrysostomAD 404–407

Letters written by John Chrysostom after his deposition: his appeal to Innocent, bishop of Rome, setting out his own account of the synod that condemned him, and letters of consolation to the deaconess Olympias from his places of exile.

More than two hundred letters of John survive, nearly all from the three years of his exile. The first letter to Innocent was written at Constantinople in 404, before his final removal, and was sent with four bishops to Rome; copies went to the bishops of Milan and Aquileia. It tells how Theophilus of Alexandria came to the capital, refused communion with him, and had him condemned in his absence, how he was recalled and expelled again, and how soldiers broke up the baptisms on Easter eve. John asks the western bishops to declare the proceedings void.

The letters to Olympias, a wealthy widow and deaconess of Constantinople who was punished for supporting him, describe his journey through Asia Minor, his illnesses and the conditions at Cucusus in Armenia. They are his own testimony, and in the letter to Innocent it is the testimony of a party to the case.

Cited in