Chrysostŏmus
（
Χρυσόστομος) (St. John). An eminent Father of the Church,
born of a noble family at Antioch, A.D. 347. His father's name was Secundus, and the surname
of Chrysostom, or “golden mouth,” obtained by the son, was given to him on
account of his eloquence. He was bred to the bar, but quitted it for an ascetic life: first,
with a monk on a mountain near Antioch, and then in a cave by himself. He remained in this
retirement six years, when he returned to Antioch, and, being ordained, became so celebrated
for his talents as a preacher that, on the death of Nectarius, patriarch of Constantinople, he
was chosen to supply his place. On obtaining this preferment, which he very unwillingly
accepted, he acted with great vigour and austerity in the reform of abuses, and exhibited all
the mistaken notions of the day in regard to celibacy and the monastic life. He also
persecuted the pagans and heretics with great zeal, and sought to extend his episcopal power
with such unremitting ardour that he involved himself in a quarrel with Theophilus, bishop of
Alexandria, who enjoyed the patronage of the empress Eudoxia; which quarrel ended in his
formal deposition by a synod held at Chalcedon, A.D. 403. He was, however, so popular in
Constantinople that a formidable insurrection ensued, and the empress herself interfered for
his return. Towards the end of the same year, owing to his zeal relative to a statue of
Eudoxia, placed near the great church, and causing a disturbance of public worship, all his
troubles were renewed. If true, that in one of his sermons the empress was compared by him to
Herodias, who asked the head of John in a charger, the anger of Eudoxia was not altogether
unjustifiable. The consequence of her resentment was the assembling of another synod, and in
A.D. 404 the patriarch was again deposed and sent into exile. The place of his banishment was
Cucusus, a lonely town among the ridges of Mount Taurus, on the confines of Cappadocia and
Cilicia. He sustained himself with much fortitude; but having, by means of his great influence
and many adherents, procured the intercession of the Western emperor, Honorius, with his
brother Arcadius, he was ordered to be removed still farther from the capital, and died on the
journey at Comana in Pontus, A.D. 407, at the age of sixty. Opinion was much divided in regard
to his merits for some time after his death, but at length his partisans prevailed, and thirty
years from his decease he was removed from his place of interment as a saint, and his remains
were met in procession by the emperor Theodosius II., on their removal from the place of his
original interment to Constantinople. The Roman Church celebrates St. Chrysostom on the 27th
of January; the Greek Church, on the 13th of November.
Chrysostom was a voluminous writer, but more eloquent than either learned or acute. Although
falling short of Attic purity, his style is free, copious, and unaffected, and his diction
often glowing and elevated. The numerous treatises or sermons by which he chiefly gained
his reputation are very curious for the information they contain on the customs and manners of
the times, as elicited by his declamation against prevailing vices and follies. The first
entire Greek edition of the works of Chrysostom was that of Sir Henry Saville, at Eton, in 8
vols. folio
(1613); but that of Montfaucon, Paris, with annotations and his life,
11 vols. folio
(1718-38, reprinted by the Abbé Migne, Paris, 1863), is
by far the most complete. Some of the homilies will be found translated in the Oxford
Library of the Fathers. The reader is referred, also, to the work of Neander,
translated by Stapleton
(1838), and to
Newman's Historical
Sketches (1873);
Stephens, St. Chrysostom: His Life and
Times (1872); Thierry,
Chrysostom et l'Impératrice
Eudoxie (2d ed. 1874); and
Busk, Life and Times of St.
Chrysostom (1885).
