Χρυσόστομος, (golden-mouthed, so surnamed from the power of his eloquence), was born at Antioch, most probably A. D. 347, though the dates 344 and 354 have also been given. His father Secundus was a general in the imperial army, and his mother Anthusa was left a widow soon after his birth. From her he received his first religious impressions, so that she was to him what Monica was to Augustin, though, unlike Augustin, Chrysostom from his earliest childhood was continually advancing in seriousness and earnestness of mind, and underwent no violent inward struggle before he embraced Christianity. To this circumstance, Neander (Kirchengesch. iii. p. 1440, &c.) attributes the peculiar form of his doctrine, his strong feeling that the choice of belief or unbelief rests with ourselves, and that God's grace is given in proportion to our own wish to receive it. Libanius taught him eloquence, and said, that he should have desired to see him his successor in his school, if the Christians had not stolen him. Before his ordination, he retired first to a monastery near Antioch, and afterwards to a solitary cavern, where he committed the whole of the Bible to memory. In this cavern he so injured his health that he was obliged to return to Antioch, where he was ordained deacon by the bishop Meletius, A. D. 381, who had previously baptized him, and afterwards presbyter by Flavianus, successor to Meletius, A. D. 386. At Antioch his success as a preacher was so great, that on the death of Nectarius, archbishop of Constantinople, he was chosen to succeed him by Eutropius, minister to the emperor Arcadius, and the selection was readily ratified by the clergy and people of the imperial city, A. D. 397. The minister who appointed him was a eunuch of infamous profligacy, and Chrysostom was very soon obliged to extend to him the protection of the church. Tribigild, the Ostrogoth, aided by the treachery of Gainas, the imperial general, who hated and despised Eutropius, threatened Constantinople itself by his armies, and demanded as a condition of peace the head of Eutropius, who fled to the sanctuary of the cathedral. While he was grovelling in terror at the altar,
The sermons of the archbishop soon gave great offence at Constantinople. The tone of his theology was always rather of a practical than a doctrinal kind, and his strong sense of the power of the human will increased his indignation at the immorality of the capital. He was undoubtedly rash and violent in his proceedings, and the declamatory character of his preaching was exactly adapted to express the stern morality of his thoughts. He was also disliked for the simplicity of his mode of living, and the manner in which he diverted the revenues of his see from the luxuries in which his predecessors had consumed them, to humane and charitable objects. Many of the worldly-minded monks and clergy, as well as the ministers and ladies of the court, became his enemies, and at their head appeared the empress Eudoxia herself, who held her husband's weak mind in absolute subjection. His unpopularity was spread still more widely in consequence of a visitation which he held in Asia Minor. two years after his consecration, in which he accused several bishops of simony and other gross crimes, and deposed thirteen of them. (Comp. Hom. iii. in Act. Postt.) Meanwhile, a contest had arisen in Egypt between Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, and certain monks of Nitria, who followed the opinions of Origen. At their head were four of one family, known as the Tall Brothers (ἀδελφοὶ μακποί), against whom Theophilus seems to have been prejudiced by a strictly private quarrel. (Palladius, apud Chrysost. ed. Montfauc. vol. xiii.) He excommunicated them, and they fled to Constantinople, where they sought the protection of Chrysostom and of the empress. A long dispute followed, in the course of which Theophilus, by artfully working on the simplicity of Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus, and other prelates hostile to the opinions of Origen, prejudiced them against Chrysostom as implicated in the charge of heresy with which those views had recently been branded by a synod. Eudoxia, who had summoned Theophilus to Constantinople to answer the charge of persecuting the Nitrian monks, became his warm friend when she saw in him her instrument for the destruction of Chrysostom; and he arrived at the capital of the East not as an accused person, but as the judge of its archbishop. But the same causes which had brought on Chrysostom the hatred of the higher orders had made him the idol of the people; and as it was thought unsafe to hold a synod against him within the city, it was summoned to meet on an estate at Chalcedon, called the oak, whence it is known by the name of su/nodos pro\s th\n dru/n. The accusations against him were various; his inhospitality was especially put forward (ὅτι τὴν φιλοξενίαν ἀθετεῖ, μονοσιτίαν ἐπιτηδεύων, ὅτι μόνος ἐσθίει, ἀσωτῶς ξῶν Κυκλώπων Βιόν, Phot. Bibl. 59), and the charge of Origenism was used to blind the better part of the assembly. Before this council Chrysostom steadily refused to appear, until four bishops, notoriously his enemies, were removed from it, who are called by Isidore of Pelusium (1.152) σύνερλοι ἢ υᾶλλον συναπόσταται with Theophilus. He was therefore deposed for contumacy, forty-five bishops subscribing his sentence, to which was added a hint to the emperor, that his sermons against Eudoxia subjected him to the penalties of treason. At first he refused to desert the flock which God had entrusted to him; but, on hearing that there was a danger of an insurrection in his favour, he retired from Constantinople, to which he was recalled in a few days by a hasty message from the empress, whose superstitious fears were alarmed by an earthquake, which the enraged people considered as a proof of the divine anger at his banishment. But in two months after his return he was again an exile. The festivities attending the dedication of a silver statue of Eudoxia near the cathedral had disturbed the worshippers, and provoked an angry sermon from the archbishop, who, on hearing that this had excited anew the enmity of the empress, began another sermon with this exordium: -- "Herodias again rages, once more she dances, she again requires the head of John." This offence Eudoxia could not forgive. A new synod of Eastern bishops, guided by the advice of Theophilus, condemned Chrysostom for resuming his functions before his previous sentence had been legally reversed, and he was hastily conveyed to the desolate town of Cucusus, on the borders of Isauria, Cilicia, and Armenia.
Chrysostom's character shone even more brightly in adversity than it had done in power. In spite of the inclement climate to which he was banished, and continual danger from the neighbourhood of Isaurian robbers, he sent letters full of encouragement and Christian faith to his friends at Constantinople, and began to construct a scheme for spreading the gospel among the Persians and Goths. He met with much sympathy from other churches, especially the Roman, whose bishop, Innocent, declared himself his warm friend and supporter. All this excited jealousy at Constantinople, and in the summer of A. D. 407 an order came for his removal to Pityus, in Pontus, at the very extremity of the East-Roman empire. But the fatigues of his journey, which was performed on foot under a burning sun, were too much for him, and he died at Comana in Pontus, in the 60th year of his age. His last words were those of Job,-- δόξα τὧ Θεὧ πάντων ἕεκεν, and formed a worthy conclusion of a life spent in God's service. His exile nearly caused a schism at Constantinople, where a party, named after him Johannists, separated from the church, and refused to acknowledge his successors. They did not return to the general communion till A. D. 438, when the archbishop Proclus prevailed on the emperor Theodosius II. to bring back the bones of Chrysostom to Constantinople, where they were received with the highest honours, the emperor himself publicly imploring the forgiveness of heaven for the crime of his parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia. Chrysostom, as we learn from his biographers, was short, with a large bald head, high forehead, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. The Greek church celebrates his festival Nov. 13, the Latin, Jan. 27.
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