HistoricalChristian.Faith

John Chrysostom and the quarrel with Theophilus of Alexandria

Dates: c. 347–407 (bishop of Constantinople 398–404) · Wikipedia
Summary: John of Antioch, called Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”), was taken from his city by a ruse, made bishop of Constantinople against the wish of Theophilus of Alexandria, and destroyed by him within six years. This page tells the affair from John's side: the election he did not seek; the reforms and sermons that made enemies at court and among his own clergy; the fugitive Egyptian monks he sheltered without communicating, which gave Theophilus his opening; his refusal to appear before a tribunal composed of his accusers; two depositions and two exiles; the letters from Cucusus and the appeal to Rome; the forced march to Pityus; and his death at Comana on 14 September 407 with the words he had used all his life. He appears on this wiki also as a witness on several belief-timelines — among them the Old Testament canon and the real presence.

Antioch, and an election he did not seek (c. 347–398)

From the caves to the cathedral

Born at Antioch about 347, John was baptized and made lector about 370, spent some years as an anchorite in the caves outside the city until his health broke, was ordained deacon in 381 and priest in 386, and made his reputation as a preacher — the homilies On the Statues, delivered in Lent 387 after the tax riot, are the best-known of that period.¹

Fetched by a ruse; consecrated by his opponent

Nectarius of Constantinople died on 27 September 397 and the court sent for John, “for there was a report that he was very instructive, and at the same time eloquent.” Antioch would not have let him go: the general of the East invited him to a meeting “as if he had need of him,” and then “at once made him get into his chariot, and conveyed him with dispatch to a military station… where he delivered him to the officers whom the emperor had sent in quest of him.”² He was consecrated on 26 February 398 by Theophilus of Alexandria, who had campaigned against him and had been made to do it under threat of trial — and who, Socrates says, began plotting his overthrow “immediately after his ordination.”³

A bishop who made enemies (398–401)

The court, the clergy, and the Asian depositions

He preached against wealth and display, cut the episcopal household's spending, and lost the court. He also lost much of his own clergy: Socrates heads a chapter “John draws down upon Himself the Displeasure of Many Persons of Rank and Power,” and records his deacon Serapion's advice that “You will never be able to govern these men, my lord, unless you drive them all with a rod.”⁴ In early 401 he went to Ephesus, appointed a new archbishop, and deposed six bishops for simony — canonically defensible, jurisdictionally exposed, and a standing grievance among the Asian bishops who would later sit in judgment on him.⁵ Nothing in his conduct made him harmless, and his defenders do not pretend otherwise: he was tactless, hot in speech, and abrupt with men he thought corrupt. What the record does not show is any charge against him that was tried and proved.

The fugitive monks: hospitality without communion (401)

When Theophilus's raid on Nitria drove the “Tall Brothers” and some eighty monks to Constantinople, John did the careful thing rather than the generous one:

John, although he received them with kindness, and treated them with honor, and did not forbid them to pray in the church, refused to admit them to participation in the mysteries, for it was not lawful to do this before the investigation. He wrote to Theophilus, desiring him to receive them back into communion, as their sentiments concerning the Divine nature were orthodox; requesting him, if he regarded their orthodoxy as doubtful, to send some one to act as their accuser. Theophilus returned no reply to this epistle.

— Sozomen, Church History VIII.13, source. A false report that he had communicated them reached Alexandria anyway, and Theophilus “resolved not only to be revenged on Isidore and Dioscorus, but also if possible to cast John out of his episcopal chair.”⁶ This is the whole of his connection with Origenism: he sheltered men accused of it, asked for the accusation to be made properly, and withheld the sacrament until it was. Whether that is what he was actually brought down for is weighed on its own page.

The Oak, and the refusal (403)

Judges or accusers — but not both

Summoned four times to a synod meeting across the water at the Oak, John would not come, and set out his terms. The passage is the centre of his case:

I hereby declare that if any man has aught to say against me, up to this moment I do not know what it is; but if any one has spoken against me, and you wish me to appear before you, put out of your assemblage my open enemies, who are filled with malice towards me because they think themselves slighted. Further, I raise no question as to the venue of my trial, though the fittest place would be the city. Those to whom I object as judges are Theophilus, whom I call to account for having said both at Alexandria and in Lycia, ‘I go to the court to depose John.’ … I beg you therefore, if you really desire me to appear, in regard to these four; if they are entered as judges, remove them from the panel; if as accusers, put them into the witness-box, that I may know how to prepare to meet them——whether as opponents or as judges. Then I will appear at all costs, not only before your love, but before any synod in the world.

— Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of St John Chrysostom, ch. VIII, source. He waived the jurisdictional objection Theophilus had made his own defence a year earlier — he “raise[d] no question as to the venue” — and asked only that his accusers not also be his bench. Photius, summarizing the lost acts, records the demand in the same terms and notes that it was refused.⁷ The synod deposed him on the sole ground of non-appearance, and referred to the emperor the one charge it said it could not try: treason, for words about the empress.⁸

Forty-seven articles

The charge-sheet, as Photius read it, ran to twenty-nine articles from the deacon John and eighteen more from Bishop Isaac. Two touch Origenism. The rest include selling Church property, calling Epiphanius “a fool and a demon,” not praying on the way into church, receiving women alone, having a bath heated for his exclusive use, eating “gluttonously alone, living like a Cyclops,” dressing and undressing on his throne, and eating a lozenge. Photius's whole comment is: “Such were the charges against this holy man.”⁹

Exile and recall

He surrendered himself quietly on the third day to prevent a riot, and was taken to Praenetum; within days the palace reversed itself and sent a eunuch to bring him back. He refused to re-enter until a larger synod had cleared him, then gave way to the crowds. Palladius records what he said before it all began, to the forty bishops who stood with him: “Pray for me, brethren, and, if ye love Christ, let none desert the Church of which he is in charge on my account.”¹⁰

The second fall (403–404)

The statue, and a canon borrowed from the Arians

A silver statue of Eudoxia was raised near the great church and dedicated with games; John denounced the spectacle from the pulpit, and Socrates places here the sermon beginning “Again Herodias raves; again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John's head in a charger.”¹¹ That sermon cannot be traced to him: the homily that carries the line is reckoned spurious, and the contemporary record has only an allegation that he called the empress something else. The provocation is secure; the famous words are not his on the surviving evidence. The bishops who gathered next dropped the substance entirely and convicted him on a single canon — that he had resumed his see after deposition without a synod's leave. He answered that sixty-five bishops had restored him, and that the canon was an Arian one framed at Antioch to keep Athanasius deposed; they “would not listen to his defence, but immediately condemned him, without considering that by using this canon they were sanctioning the deposition of Athanasius himself.”¹²

“Thrust me out by force”

Told to leave voluntarily, he would not:

I have received this Church from God our Saviour, for the care of the salvation of the people, and I cannot desert it; if, then, this is your will——for the city is yours——thrust me out by force, that I may plead your authority in defence of my desertion of my post.

— Palladius, Dialogue, ch. IX, source. His people were driven from the Easter vigil of 404 by soldiers in the baptistery itself; on 24 June he was taken away for good, and that day the Great Church burned. Charged with the arson, he asked for the hearing he had never been given: “at least let me have a hearing in regard to what happened to the church, as to whether I am guilty, as you allege, of the incendiarism.”¹³

Exile, and the end (404–407)

Cucusus, Rome, and the road to Pityus

He was sent to Cucusus on the Armenian frontier — a place raided by the Isaurians, chosen, his defender says, “in the hope of getting him killed” — and there spent a year feeding the Armenian poor through a famine, and writing. He appealed to Rome, and Innocent I replied that no accusation had been proved and none even heard: “John, our brother and fellow-minister and your bishop, has been the first to suffer this unjust treatment without being allowed a hearing. No accusation was brought, none was heard.”¹⁴ That an exile still frightened the men who had won is the burden of Palladius's most bitter page: “Men supported by the powers of the world and by the wealth of the Church … turning pale and writhing in fear of a priest, alone, disfranchised, infirm, exiled!”¹⁵ In 407 a rescript ordered him on to Pityus within a fixed time; the escort marched him three months through rain and sun, under instructions that made his death an advantage to them.¹⁶

Comana, 14 September 407

They lodged at the shrine of the martyr Basiliscus outside Comana. Palladius reports a dream, a collapse some thirty furlongs down the next day's road, and a return:

On his arrival, he asked for white clothes——clothes befitting his life——and taking off those he was wearing, he put these on, deliberately changing everything down to his shoes. All but these he distributed among those present. Then he partook of the symbols of the Lord's appointment, and offered his last prayer, in the presence of those who stood by, using his customary formula, ‘Glory to God for all things;’ and signing himself at the last Amen, he raised his feet…

— Palladius, Dialogue, ch. XI, source. Socrates records the bare date; neither he nor Sozomen reports any dying words, so the saying rests on Palladius alone — who does not present it as a last word invented for the occasion but as “his customary formula.”¹⁷ Mourners came from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus, and Armenia, “so that many supposed that they had been summoned by signal.”¹⁸

Rehabilitation (c. 412 – 438)

His followers, the “Johannites,” were persecuted, and Rome broke communion with Constantinople until his name was restored to the diptychs — done under Atticus, who had testified against him at the Oak. Alexandria held out longer under Theophilus's nephew Cyril. On 27 January 438, under the patriarch Proclus, his body was brought back from Comana and entombed in the church of the Apostles, where Eudoxia had been buried in 404.¹⁹

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