229 



CHRYSOSTOM, ST. JOHN. 



CHUBB, THOMAS. 



230 



Antioch, the capital of Syria. In early life he lost his father Secvmdus, 

 who was commander of the imperial army in that province ; and his 

 mother Anthusa, from the age of twenty, remained a widow, in order 

 to devote herself wholly to her Bon's improvement and welfare. He 

 was educated for the bar, and studied oratory at Antioch under 

 Libanius, who declared him worthy to be his successor, were it not 

 that the Christians had made him a proselyte. He was taught philo- 

 sophy by Andragathius, and spent some time in the schools of Athene. 

 After a very successful commencement of legal practice, he relinquished 

 the profession of law for that of divinity. At this time the rage for 

 monachism was extremely prevalent, and Chrysostom retired to a 

 monastery in a mountain solitude near Antioch, where, in opposition 

 to the pathetic entreaties of his mother, he adopted and adhered to 

 the ascetic system with rigid austerity during four years. The man- 

 ners and discipline of the anchorites with whom he associated 

 resembled, as described by himself, those of the Essenes, in fasting, 

 praying, reading, subsisting on vegetable food, maintaining silence and 

 celibacy, and discarding all consideration of meum and tuum. (Homil. 

 72, on ' Math.,' and 14, on ' Timoth.,' torn, ii.) At the age of twenty- 

 three he was baptised by Meletins, bishop of Antioch, after which he 

 withdrew into a solitary cavern, where, without any companion, he 

 spent about two years in committing to memory the whole of the 

 Bible, and in severely mortifying his carnal affections. Having neither 

 bed nor chair, he reposed suspended by a rope slung from the roof of 

 his cave. The damp and unwholesome air of the place reduced him 

 at last to so ill a state of health, that he was obliged to return to 

 Antioch, where, being ordained a deacon by Meletius (381), he com- 

 menced his career as a very eloquent popular preacher, and published 

 several of his declamatory discourses and argumentative treatises. 

 Five years afterwards he was ordained priest, and at the age of forty- 

 three wu made vicar to Flavianus, successor to Meletius. His fame 

 as a church orator was now so established, that, on the death of 

 Nectariu-, archbishop of Constantinople, he was enthusiastically chosen 

 by the people and priesthood of the city to fill that important office. 

 Chrysostom, on this and former occasions, appears to have reiterated 

 with sincerity the noli me epitcopari : however, by the mandate of the 

 Kmperor Arcadiu>, he was consecrated and enthroned in 398 by 

 Theopliilus, patriarch of Alexandria, who afterwards proved to be 

 one of the most envious and malignant of his enemies. 



Chrysostom bestowed upon the indigent the whole income of his 

 large patrimonial inheritance ; and with the revenues of his episcopal 

 see he founded and endowed an hospital for the sick, which procured 

 for him the appellation of John the Almoner. Several times a week 

 he preached to crowded audiences, and his oratorical sermons were 

 received by the people with such shouts and acclamations of applause 

 that his church became a sort of theatre, which attracted great num- 

 bers who had hitherto attended only the circus and other places of 

 amusement The resolute and fearless zeal of Chrysostom in the 

 reformation of clerical abuses, and in the denunciation of licentiousness 

 among the great, soon began to draw upon him the enmity of a con- 

 federate party, whose bitter retaliation finally effected his banishment 

 and death. Much is said by various writers both in commendation 

 and reprehension of his character and conduct. The church historian 

 Socrates describes him as being "sober, temperate, peevish, irascible, 

 simple, sincere; rash, rude, and imprudent in rebuking the highest 

 personages; a zealous reformer of abuses ; extremely ready to reprove 

 and excommunicate; shunning society, and apparently morose and 

 haughty to strangers." Such qualities embroiled him in continual 

 quarrels with the secular clergy, courtiers, and statesmen, and espe- 

 cially with the wealthy female devotees of luxury and fashion, whom 

 he reproved without the slightest reserve. Hia zeal for the promotion 

 of his own sect was equalled only by his intolerance towards all 

 others. He caused many temples and statues in Phoenicia to be 

 demolished, and especially persecuted the Arians, refusing them the 

 use of a church in the city, and parading in the streets Trinitarian 

 singers of hymns, with banners and crosses, until the opposition 

 vocalists fell to fighting and bloodshed. The vigour and perseverance 

 of his efforts to reform the loose ecclesiastical discipline permitted by 

 his indolent predecessor, occasioned the formation of a faction which 

 sought to be revenged by his assassination. In his visitation in Asia, 

 two years after his consecration, he deposed at one time no less than 

 thirteen bishop* of Lydia and Phrygia; and in one of his homilies 

 (torn, ix., p. 29) he charges the whole episcopal order with avarice and 

 licentiousness, saying that the number of bishops who could be saved 

 bore a very small proportion to those who would be damned. It 

 appears to have been a common custom at that time among the clergy 

 to have each one or more young females residing with them, ostensibly 

 for the purpose of receiving pious instruction as pupils. When there- 

 fore Chrysostom enjoined the discontinuance of this custom, as in all 

 cases very questionable, and in many most evidently criminal, he at 

 once excited in a great portion of his clergy the bitterest personal 

 animosity. In his invectives against the vanity and vices of the 

 female sex he used no reserve in reproving even royalty itself. The 

 personal resentment and indignation of the beautiful and haughty 

 Empress Kudoxia was probably therefore the real cause, as Gibbon 

 miggests, of all the disasters by which he was henceforth overwhelmed, 

 for she patronised the confederation which the deposed bishops formed 

 with his adversary Theophilus, who assembled at Chalcedon a nume- 



rous synod, by which there were preferred against Chrysostom above 

 forty accusations, chiefly frivolous and vexatious, which, as he refused 

 to acknowledge himself amenable to such a tribunal, and made no 

 defence, were subscribed by forty-five of the bishops present, who in 

 consequence resolved upon his immediate deposition. He was there- 

 fore suddenly arrested and conveyed to Nicaea in Bithynia, A.D. 403. 

 This Theophilus is described by Socrates, Palladius, and several others, 

 as a bishop addicted to perjury, calumny, violence, persecution, lying, 

 cheating, robbing, &c. After Chrysostom's banishment, Theophilus 

 published a scandalous book concerning him a sort of collection of 

 abusive epithets -in which Chrysostom is called a filthy demon, and is 

 charged with having delivered up his soul to Satan. It was translated 

 into Latin by the friend of Theophilus, St. Jerome, who joined in the 

 abuse. Chrysostom was the idol of the great mass of the people. He 

 was a pathetic advocate of the poor : his pulpit orations were calcu- 

 lated to excite their strongest emotions ; when it was known therefore 

 that their popular preacher was banished an alarming insurrection 

 ensued, which rolled on with such fury to the palace gates that even 

 Eudoxia entreated the emperor to recall Chrysostom, for already the 

 mob had begun to murder the Egyptian attendants of Theophilus in 

 the streets. Only two days elapsed before Chrysostom was brought 

 back to Constantinople. The Bosporus on the occasion was covered 

 with innumerable vessels, and each of its shores was illuminated with 

 thousands of torches. The archbishop however gained little wisdom 

 from experience ; for soon after, when a statue of the empress was 

 set up near the great Christian church, and honoured with the cele- 

 bration of festive games, he preached in very uncourteous terms 

 against the ceremony, and compared Eudoxia to the dancing Herodias 

 longing for the head of John in a charger. The result of this offensive 

 conduct was the calling of another synod, which ratified the decision 

 of the former, and again Chrysostom was arrested, and transported to 

 Cucusus, a place in the mountains of Taurus. Another uproar was 

 made by the mob, in which the great church and the adjoining senate- 

 bouse were burnt to the ground. The death of Eudoxia shortly after- 

 wards, and a tremendous storm of hailstones, were regarded by the 

 people as the avenging visitation of heaven. A great number of the 

 poorer classes, who were always Chrysostom's most faithful adherents, 

 refused to acknowledge his successor, and formed for some time u 

 schism, under the name of Johannites. 



Chrysostom bore his misfortunes with fortitude, and being still 

 possessed of abundant wealth, he carried on very extensive operations 

 for the conversion of the people about his place of banishment. His 

 enemies soon determined to remove him to a more desolate tract on 

 the Euxine, whither he was compelled to travel on foot, beneatli a 

 burning sun, which, in addition to many deprivations, produced a 

 violent fever. On arriving at Comana, he was carried into an oratory 

 of St. Basil, where, having put on a white surplice, he crossed him- 

 self and expired, September 14, 407, beiug about sixty years of age. 

 Thirty-five years after his death and burial at Comana, his remain* 

 were brought with great pomp and veneration to Constantinople by 

 Theodoeius II. It is said they were afterwards removed to Rome. 

 The Greek Church celebrates his feast on the 13th of November ; the 

 Roman on the 27th of January. 



The works of St. Chrysostom are very numerous. They consist of 

 commentaries, 700 homilies, orations, doctrinal treatises, and 242 

 epistles. The style is uniformly diffuse and overloaded with metaphors 

 and similes. The chief value of Chrysostom's works consists in the 

 illustration which they furnish of the manners of the 4th and 5th 

 centuries. They contain a great number of incidental but very 

 minute descriptions that indicate the moral and social state of that 

 period. The circus, theatres, spectacles, bath?, houses, domestic 

 economy, banquets, dresses, fashions, pictures, processions, chariots, 

 horses, dancing, juggling, tight-rope dancing, funerals, in short every 

 thing has a place in the picture of licentious luxury which it is the 

 object of Chrysostom to denounce. Montfaucon has made a curious 

 collection of these matters from his great edition of the works of 

 Chrysostom, 13 vols. folio (editio optima). (' Me'moires de 1'Acad. des 

 Inscrip.,' vol xiii., p. 474, and vol. xx., p. 197; also Jortin, 'Eccles. 

 Hist.,' vol. iv. p. 169, et seq.) The ' Golden Book' of St. John Chrysos- 

 tom concerning the education of children, 12mo, published in 1659, is 

 translated from a manuscript found in the cardinal's library at Paris, 

 1656. The precepts are very curious. The boy is to see no female 

 except his mother; to hear, see, smell, taste, touch, nothing that gives 

 pleasure ; to fast twice a week, to read the ' Story of Joseph ' 

 frequently, nnd to know nothing about hell till he is 15 years old. 

 Chrysostom is described by his biographers as being short in stature, 

 with a large bald head, a spacious and deeply-wrinkled forehead, short 

 and scanty beard, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, having a look of 

 extreme mortification, but in his movements remarkably brisk, 

 energetic, and smart. He was strongly attached to the writings of 

 St. Paul. His surname Chrysostom was not applied until some time 

 after his death. The biographers of Chrysostom are very numerous : 

 Socrates, lib. vi. ; Sozomeu, lib. viii, ; Theodoret, lib. v. ; ' Vie de St. 

 Jean C.,' by Hermaut, 8vo, 1665; Menurd; Erasmus; Du Pin; Tille- 

 rnont ; Palladius ; Photius ; Ribadeneira ; "Gibbon, c. 32 ; Moreri's 

 ' Diet.' contains a further list ; Usher, ' Historia Dogmatica," p. 33. 

 There is a recent life of Chrysostom by Neander. 



CHUBB, THOMAS, was born in 1679, at East Harnham, a small 



