CHRYSOSTOM, John, Saint, archbishop of Constantinople, greatest of the Greek Fathers of the Church: b. Antioch, the capital of Syria, about 347; d. near Comana, in Pontus, 14 Sept. 407. His cognomen, the golden-mouthed (chrysostomos), which was given to him after his death, he owes to his extraordinarily rich, fervid and persuasive eloquence. In his youth he attended the school of Libanius, a celebrated Pagan sophist, was his favorite disciple and would have been his successor had he not been won for the service of the Church by his pious mother Anthusa. In accordance with the general usage of that time, he did not receive baptism till he had attained maturity, and then he lived devoted in religious contemplation and studious seclusion in a desert place for six years. There the austerities he practised undermined his strength, and being called back to Antioch by the bishop, he was ordained deacon in 381 and presbyter in 386. By his zeal, his urbanity and his eloquence, he won to the Church heretics, pagans and Jews in great numbers; and his fame spreading to the capital city of the Eastern empire, he was, with the approval of the Emperor Arcadius, chosen to be archbishop of Constantinople in 397. Here he led in the episcopal palace the life of an ascetic, eschewing the pomp and lux ury of his predecessors, and out of the reve nues of the see maintained numerous charities. Meanwhile his homilies or pulpit discourses, which are still extant, were even a stronger attraction for the masses than the shows of the amphitheatre. But he had many rivals, who left no means untried to blacken his character, his reputation for piety, zeal, disinterestedness and for orthodoxy, and his life was accord ingly full of •trials and vicissitudes. His en forcement of the Church's laws regarding the relations between ecclesiastics and the female inmates of their households; his 'deposition of bishops for simony and licentiousness; the re straints he put upon the vagrant habits of the monks, called forth a host of enemies, who brought against him the charge of sympathiz ing with heretical monks of the Nubian desert who had been excommunicated by their eccle siastical superior, Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria. Theophilus now added himself to the malcontents of Constantinople, and he called a synod of bishops to be held in the im perial city to, judge Chrysostom. But because of the menacing attitude of the common peo ple, who were to a man loyal to their arch bishop, the synod had to be held in the neigh boring city of Chalccdon. To this synod
Chrysostom was four times summoned, to re ply to the charges that were to be made against him, but he ignored the summons, and was declared guilty of favoring the heresies of Origen. By order of the Emperor Arcadius he was exiled to Nicma in Bithynia; but so great was the commotion of the common peo ple in Constantinople when the degree of ban ishment was published, that the emperor, alarmed, ordered his recall. The re-entry of Chrysostom to the city was attended with all the pomp of a Roman triumphal procession, and he abated no jot of his zeal for the repression of the evils of Church and state. His lan guage was, as it had ever been, sufficiently emphatic, sufficiently plain-spoken, but his ene mies put in circulaticin a spurious version of the opening passage of his first discourse after his return: he was reported by them to have commenced his address with these words in denunciation of the Empress Eudoxia: "Hero dias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she once more demands the head of John.° The report was false, but the fate of Chrysos tom was sealed. Barbarian troops were brought into the city to overawe the commons while another synod was in session in the city: it confirmed the decree of the synod of Chalce don. By decree of the emperor, Chrysostom was banished to Cucusus, a place in Mount Taurus. The people of Constantinople, not to be restrained by the garrison of Gothic mer cenaries in the city, set fire to the cathedral and the senate house on the day the decree was published; and Chrysostom, though absent, was a more formidable power than ever: his correspondence with bishops, both in the East and West, arrayed the whole Catholic Church against Theophilus and the court of Arcadius. Indignant at the contumacy of the exiled arch bishop, Arcadius ordered his transfer to a more inhospitable region still, the desert of Pityos. He died on the way thither in his 60th year. His day in the calendar of the Greek Church is 13 November; in that of the Latin Church, 27 January. His last words are reported to have been "God be in all things praised.° His works consist of homilies or discourses sug gested by or illustrating passages of Scripture ; commentaries on the sacred books; epistles, and treatises on the truths of religion, virtues and vices, etc. Consult Martin, 'Saint Jean Chry sostome, ses muvres et son Perthes, 'Life of Saint John Chrysostom and His Biographers); Tauscher, 'Life); both in Ger man; and a biography by Aline Puech, in English.