Chrys'ostom, ST JOHN (Gr. Chrysostōmos, 'golden-mouthed'; so named from the splendour of his eloquence), was born at Antioch about 347 A.D. His mother, Anthusa, was a pious woman, wholly devoted to her son, who grew up under her loving instructions into an earnest, gentle, and serious youth, passing through, as Neander significantly observes, none of those wild, dark struggles with sinful passions which left an ineffaceable impress on the soul of Augustine, and gave a sombre colouring to his whole theology. He studied oratory under the famous heathen rhetorician, Libanius, and began the career of an advocate; but, soon dissatisfied with this, he placed himself for three years under the instruction of Bishop Meletius, by whom in his twenty-third year he was baptised and ordained an anagnostēs or 'Reader.' After six years spent as a monk in the mountains near Antioch, an illness forced him to return in 380 to that city, where he was ordained deacon by Bishop Meletius in 381, and presbyter by Bishop Flavianus in 386. The eloquence, earnestness, and practical tone of his preaching excited the attention of Jews, heathens, and heretics, and secured for him the reputation of the greatest orator of the ancient church. In 398 the Emperor Arcadius elevated him to the archiepiscopate of Constantinople. Chrysostom immediately began to restrict the expenditure in which his predecessors had indulged, and bestowed so large a portion of his revenues on hospitals and other charities that he gained the surname of 'John the Almoner.' He also endeavoured to reform the lives of the clergy, and sent monks as missionaries into Scythia, Persia, Palestine, and other lands. His faithful discharge of his duties, especially in reproof of vices, excited the enmity of the patriarch Theophilus and of the Empress Eudoxia, who succeeded in deposing and banishing him from the capital in 403. He was soon recalled, to be banished again in 404. After a short stay at Nicea, he was removed to the little town of Cucusus, in the desert parts of the Taurus Mountains. Even here his zeal was not abated. He laboured for the conversion of the Persians and Goths in the neighbourhood, and wrote the seventeen letters or rather moral essays to Olympias, to whom he also addressed a treatise on the proposition—'None can hurt the man who will not hurt himself.' The intercession of Innocent I. of Rome and the Emperor Honorius only moved Arcadius to order that he should be more remotely banished to Pityus on the Euxine, at the very verge of the Eastern Roman empire. Accordingly, the old man was made to travel on foot, and with his bare head exposed to a burning sun. This cruelty proved fatal. Chrysostom died on the way at Comana, in Pontus, September 14, 407 A.D., blessing God with his dying lips. A sect sprang up after his death called Johannists, who refused to acknowledge his successors; nor did they return to the general communion till 438, when the Archbishop Proclus prevailed on the Emperor Theodosius II. to bring back the body of the saint to Constantinople, where it was solemnly interred, the emperor himself publicly imploring the pardon of Heaven for the crime of his parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia. The Greek Church celebrates the festival of Chrysostom on the 13th of November; the Roman, on the 27th of January. St Chrysostom's works are very numerous, and consist of Homilies on parts of Scripture and points of doctrine; Commentaries on the whole Bible, part of which have perished; Epistles addressed to various people; Treatises on different subjects, such as Providence, the Priesthood, and the like; and Liturgies. Of these the most valuable, as well as the most studied, are the Homilies, which are rightly held to be superior to everything of the kind in ancient Christian literature. Thomas Aquinas said he would not give in exchange those on St Matthew for the whole city of Paris. Here his exegesis is sound, practical, and very 'English,' in Cardinal Newman's phrase. In general he rejects the allegorical system of interpretation, and adheres to the grammatical, basing his doctrines and sentiments on a rational apprehension of the letter of Scripture. He is, however, far from being a bibliolater. He recognised the presence of a human element in the Bible as well as a divine; and, instead of attempting by forced and artificial hypotheses to reconcile what he thought irreconcilable in Scripture statements, he frankly admitted the existence of contradictions, and shaped his theory of inspiration accordingly. But his greatest excellence lay in that power, springing from the fervour and holiness of his heart, by which the consciences of the proud, the worldly, and the profligate were awakened, and all were made to feel the reality of the gospel message. The historian Sozomen says of him, that he was 'mighty to speak and to convince, surpassing all the orators of his time.' The surname Chrysostom was first applied some time after his death, and is first found in Isidore of Seville, who died in 636.
The best edition of St Chrysostom's works is that of Bernard de Montfaucon in 13 vols. folio (Paris, 1718-38; reprinted by the Abbé Migne, Paris, 1863), which was largely based on the splendid edition of Sir Henry Savile, printed at a cost of £8000 (Eton, 8 vols. 1613), 'the first work of learning on a great scale,' says Hallam, 'published in England.' Some of the Homilies are translated in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.
See the older church historians; and cf. the moderns, especially Neander, both in his History and in his special book on St Chrysostom, translated by J. C. Stapleton (1838). See also Thierry, Chrysostom et l'Impératrice Eudoxie (2d ed. Paris, 1874); Newman's Historical Sketches (1873); W. R. W. Stephens, St Chrysostom: His Life and Times (1872); R. W. Busk, Life and Times of Chrysostom (1885); and F. H. Chase, Chrysostom (1887).