HistoricalChristian.Faith

John Chrysostom on the saints as advocates and patrons

Dates: c. 390 (the homilies and panegyrics of his Antioch presbyterate, 386–397 — the Homilies on 2 Corinthians and the Eulogy on St. Ignatius); John Chrysostom c. 347–407 · Wikipedia
Summary: Chrysostom is the heavyweight Antiochene (later Constantinopolitan) witness whose preaching both describes and endorses petitionary recourse to the saints. Commenting on 2 Corinthians he holds up the spectacle of the emperor, "laying aside his pride," who "stands begging the saints to be his advocates with God" and "implores the tent-maker and the fisherman, though dead, to be his patrons" — the apostles Paul and Peter — and offers it approvingly, as proof of the apostles' glory and of the resurrection. That carries his witness past mere intercession-belief: he reports and commends the strict, second-person act of begging a saint to intercede. His Eulogy on St. Ignatius shows the same world from inside the cult — relics, a feast, the faithful summoned to "come hither with faith" to the martyr's tomb, and the closing hope that the living may be saved "through the prayers of the saints themselves." So he sits among the later-fourth-century witnesses in whom the developed cult of the martyrs and the practice of seeking their patronage are simply assumed and praised.

"Begging the saints to be his advocates with God" — Homilies on 2 Corinthians 26

Preaching through 2 Corinthians at Antioch, Chrysostom reaches the apostle's boast in his sufferings and turns to prove the power of the crucified Christ from the honour paid, after death, to Christ's servants. The tombs of the apostles, he says, outshine the palaces of kings — and his proof is the conduct of the emperor himself at those tombs:

And the tombs of the servants of the Crucified are more splendid than the palaces of kings; not for the size and beauty of the buildings, (yet even in this they surpass them,) but, what is far more, in the zeal of those who frequent them. For he that wears the purple himself goes to embrace those tombs, and, laying aside his pride, stands begging the saints to be his advocates with God, and he that hath the diadem implores the tent-maker and the fisherman, though dead, to be his patrons. Wilt thou dare then, tell me, to call the Lord of these dead; whose servants even after their decease are the patrons of the kings of the world?

Three things are worth fixing precisely. First, the act Chrysostom describes is invocation in the strict sense: the emperor does not merely believe the apostles pray for the church, he begs and implores them — second-person petition addressed to Peter (the fisherman) and Paul (the tent-maker) at their shrine, asking them "to be his advocates with God" and "his patrons." Second, Chrysostom relates it approvingly: it is the climax of an argument for the apostles' glory and the resurrection, not a practice he reports in order to correct it. Third, the testimony is a witness's, not a performance: Chrysostom is describing what emperors do rather than himself saying "O Peter, pray for me." But because he frames that begging as admirable and as evidence of the saints' heavenly power, the page belongs with the witnesses who attest invocation as an established and esteemed practice, not merely with those who attest the underlying belief that the saints intercede.¹

The cult from the inside — the Eulogy on St. Ignatius

On the feast of Ignatius of Antioch — whose relics, by a tradition Chrysostom accepts, had been carried back from Rome and laid in the cemetery outside the Daphnitic gate — Chrysostom preached a panegyric that shows the same devotional world from within. He urges the whole congregation to have recourse to the martyr's tomb for every trouble of life:

Wherefore I beseech you all, if any is in despondency, if in disease, if under insult, if in any other circumstance of this life, if in the depth of sins, let him come hither with faith, and he will lay aside all those things, and will return with much joy, having procured a lighter conscience from the sight alone.

And the homily closes by grounding the hearers' final salvation in the martyrs' ongoing prayers:

… in order that rejoicing at once, and profiting, we may be able to become partakers with these saints, both of their dwelling and of their home, through the prayers of the saints themselves, through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Read carefully, the Eulogy's explicit petitions are still directed to the living — "I beseech you all … come hither" — and its closing appeal to "the prayers of the saints themselves" is intercession-reliance in a doxology rather than a second-person address to Ignatius. In the precise vocabulary this timeline uses, the Eulogy attests a fully public cult of the martyr (shrine, feast, relics, the conviction that touching the tomb wins "great power") and robust intercession-belief — one careful step short, by itself, of the strict invocation. It is the 2 Corinthians homily that supplies the strict step, and the two together make Chrysostom a strong, unembarrassed late-fourth-century witness to seeking the saints' patronage.²

Where Chrysostom sits on the timeline

The Homilies on 2 Corinthians and the Eulogy on St. Ignatius both belong to Chrysostom's Antioch presbyterate (386–397; this page is slotted c. 390). The Benedictine editors place the 2 Corinthians homilies at Antioch, and the apparent exception — the passage in Homily 26 that names Constantinople and then says "here" — reads naturally as "here, in the place I am speaking of," i.e. Chrysostom at Antioch describing the imperial capital, not preaching in it. He thus stands a little after the Cappadocians (Basil, c. 373; Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, c. 379–381) and Ambrose (c. 377), confirming from Antioch what they attest from Cappadocia and Milan: by the last quarter of the fourth century the cult of the martyrs and recourse to their patronage are public, settled, and preached without apology.³

Notes

• This witness bears on both of this doctrine's grouped arguments. For the invocation / intercession-belief distinction Chrysostom is a useful test case in which the two are layered: the Eulogy furnishes intercession-belief and the cult, while the 2 Corinthians homily furnishes (and endorses) the strict second-person petition — the emperor begging the apostles to be his advocates. For the development-vs-apostolicity question he is a data-point on the "flowering" side of the ledger: the practice he assumes and praises is the developed late-fourth-century one, the same that crystallizes in the Cappadocians and Ambrose.
• The objects of the imperial petition Chrysostom commends are the two apostle-martyrs, Peter ("the fisherman") and Paul ("the tent-maker"), at their tombs — the same pair invoked in the San Sebastiano catacomb graffiti ("Paule et Petre petite pro nobis") a century earlier, now described as honoured by emperors.

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