Saint John Chrysostom: Golden Mouth and Doctor of the Church

Saint John Chrysostom, called "Chrysostomos" (Greek for "Golden Mouth") for the eloquence of his preaching, is one of the four Great Eastern Doctors of the Catholic Church and one of the Three Holy Hierarchs of the Byzantine East. As Patriarch of Constantinople in the early fifth century, he reformed the imperial court, defended the poor against luxury and corruption, and was twice exiled for his pastoral courage.

Early life and Antiochene formation

John was born around 347 at Antioch, the great Hellenistic city of Syria, into a Christian family of moderate means. His father, a high-ranking imperial military officer, died when John was an infant; he was raised by his mother Anthusa, who became a Christian widow consecrated to virginity. Anthusa devoted her life to John's education, sending him to study rhetoric under Libanius, the leading pagan orator of the age. Libanius would later remark: "Anthusa, what mothers there are among the Christians!"

John was baptized around age twenty, then withdrew into the Syrian desert as an ascetic hermit, spending two years in solitary mountain prayer and fasting. His health permanently damaged by the austerities of these years, he returned to Antioch and was ordained deacon (381) and priest (386).

The Antiochene homilies

For twelve years (386-398) John served as principal preacher of the Antiochene clergy. His homilies (on the Gospels of Matthew and John, on the Pauline epistles, on the Psalms, on the moral and devotional duties of Christian life) are the largest single body of patristic homiletic literature preserved from the early Church.¹

A famous early sequence is the Homilies on the Statues (387), preached during a civic crisis in Antioch. After a riot in which citizens toppled statues of the Emperor Theodosius I and his family, the city feared imperial reprisal. John preached daily through Lent on the seriousness of public sin and the need for repentance. The crisis was resolved when an emissary from the emperor extended clemency; the homilies were read widely throughout the patristic East as a model of pastoral response to civic anxiety.

Patriarch of Constantinople

In 398, John was forcibly removed from Antioch by imperial order and consecrated Patriarch of Constantinople. He had not sought the office and would have refused if given the choice. As patriarch he undertook a series of reforms that made him enemies at court:

He sold off the patriarchal treasury (gold, silver, marble, tapestries) to feed the poor of Constantinople.
He lived simply in the patriarchal palace, refusing the banquet culture of the imperial court.
He preached publicly against the luxury of the imperial wife Eudoxia and against the corruption of high officials.
He convened a synod that deposed several Asian bishops for simony and other abuses.

The Empress Eudoxia, supported by the Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria, retaliated by convening the so-called Synod of the Oak (403), which deposed John on trumped-up charges. He was sent into exile but was recalled within days due to popular pressure. The conflict resumed; John was exiled a second time in 404, to Cucusus in remote Armenia, and finally died in 407 on a forced march to a more remote exile at Pityus on the Black Sea.

His last words, spoken at a roadside chapel at Comana Pontica, were "Glory be to God for all things." He died on September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom

The most enduring liturgical contribution of John Chrysostom is the eucharistic liturgy that bears his name. The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is the standard liturgical text of the Byzantine Rite, used by the Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome (the Melkite, Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Romanian Greek Catholic, and other Byzantine Catholic Churches) and by the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The eucharistic prayer (anaphora) attributed to John Chrysostom is among the most ancient surviving Christian liturgical texts. The Catholic Church has not formally defined which elements were composed by John himself versus inherited by him from earlier Antiochene liturgy; what is certain is that John transmitted and shaped the form that has been continuously celebrated since the late fourth century.

Patronage and devotion

Saint John Chrysostom is patron of preachers, lecturers, orators, of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), and of the Eastern Catholic Churches that celebrate his liturgy. He was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568, in the same group as Saints Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the four Great Eastern Doctors). His feast in the Roman Calendar is September 13; in the Byzantine Rite it is November 13 (the date of the translation of his relics to Constantinople in 438).

The Three Holy Hierarchs of the Byzantine East (John Chrysostom, Saint Basil the Great, and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus) are celebrated jointly on January 30 in the Byzantine Rite as a single feast of the great patristic teachers of the Church.

For the broader Catholic understanding of doctoral status, see What is a Doctor of the Church?. For the related Catholic teaching on the Eucharist that John's liturgy formalizes, see What is the Eucharist?.

Sources

The principal collection of Chrysostom's homilies is in the Patrologia Graeca vols. 47-64, with critical editions in Sources Chrétiennes (Cerf, Paris). Modern critical biography: J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom, Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Cornell University Press, 1995). ↩