FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE OFFICE OF
READER, A.D. 345 OR A.D. 347 TO A.D. 370.
It has been well remarked by Sir Henry Savile, in the preface to his
noble edition of Chrysostom’s works, published in 1612, that, as with
great rivers, so often with great men, the middle and the close of
their career are dignified and distinguished, but the primary source
and early progress of the stream are difficult to ascertain and trace.
No one, he says, has been able to fix the exact date, the year, and the
consulship of Chrysostom’s birth. This is true; but at the same time
his birth, parentage, and education are not involved in such obscurity
as surrounds the earliest years of some other great luminaries of the
Eastern Church; his own friend, for instance, Theodore, Bishop of
Mopsuestia, and yet more notably, the great Athanasius.
There is little doubt that his birth occurred not later than the year
A.D. 347, and not earlier than the year A.D. 345; and there is no doubt
that Antioch in Syria was the place of his birth, that his mother’s
name was Anthusa, his father’s Secundus, and that both were well born.
His mother was, if not actually baptized, very favourably inclined
to Christianity,[4] and, indeed, a woman of no ordinary piety. The
father had attained the rank of “magister militum” in the Imperial
army of Syria, and therefore enjoyed the title of “illustris.” He
died when his son John was an infant, leaving a young widow, about
twenty years of age, in comfortable circumstances, but harassed by the
difficulties and anxieties of her unprotected condition as mistress
of a household in days when servants were slaves, and life in large
cities altogether unguarded by such securities as are familiar to us.
Greatly did she dread the responsibility of bringing up a son in one of
the most turbulent and dissolute capitals of the Empire. Nothing, she
afterwards[5] declared to him, could have enabled her to pass through
such a furnace of trial but a consoling sense of divine support, and
the delight of contemplating the image of her husband as reproduced
in his son. How long a sister older than himself may have lived we
do not know; but the conversation between him and his mother, when
he was meditating a retreat into a monastery, seems to imply that he
was the only surviving child. All her love, all her care, all her
means and energies, were concentrated on the boy destined to become so
great a man, and exhibiting even in childhood no common ability and
aptitude for learning. But her chief anxiety was to train him in pious
habits, and to preserve him uncontaminated from the pollutions of the
vicious city in which they resided. She was to him what Monica was to
Augustine, and Nonna to Gregory Nazianzen.
The great influence, indeed, of women upon the Christianity of
domestic life in that age is not a little remarkable. The Christians
were not such a pure and single-minded community as they had been.
The refining fires of persecution which burnt up the chaff of
hypocrisy or indifference were now extinguished; Christianity had a
recognised position; her bishops were in kings’ courts. The natural
consequences inevitably followed this attainment of security; there
were more Christians, but not more who were zealous; there were many
who hung very loosely to the Church—many who fluctuated between
the Church and Paganism. In the great Eastern cities of the Empire,
especially Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, the mass of the
so-called Christian population was largely infected by the dominant
vices—inordinate luxury, sensuality, selfish avarice, and display.
Christianity was in part paganised long before it had made any
appreciable progress towards the destruction of Paganism. But the
sincere and ardent piety of many amongst the women kept alive in many
a home the flame of Christian faith which would otherwise have been
smothered. The Emperor Julian imagined that his efforts to resuscitate
Paganism would have been successful in Antioch but for the strenuous
opposition of the Christian women. He complains “that they were
permitted by their husbands to take anything out of the house to bestow
it upon the Galilæans, or to give away to the poor, while they would
not expend the smallest trifle upon the worship of the gods.”[6] The
efforts also of the Governor Alexander, who was left in Antioch by
the Emperor to carry forward his designs of Pagan reformation, were
principally baffled through this female influence. He found that the
men would often consent to attend the temples and sacrifices, but
afterwards generally repented and retracted their adherence. This
relapse Libanius the sophist, in a letter[7] to the Governor, ascribes
to the home influence of the women. “When the men are out of doors,” he
says, “they obey you who give them the best advice, and they approach
the altars; but when they get home, their minds undergo a change; they
are wrought upon by the tears and entreaties of their wives, and they
again withdraw from the altars of the gods.”
Anthusa did not marry again; very possibly she was deterred from
contracting a second marriage by religious scruples which Chrysostom
himself would certainly have approved.[8] The Pagans themselves
admired those women who dedicated themselves to a single life, or
abstained from marrying again. Chrysostom himself informs us that when
he began to attend the lectures of Libanius, his master inquired who
and what his parents were; and on being told that he was the son of a
widow who at the age of forty had lost her husband twenty years, he
exclaimed in a tone of mingled jealousy and admiration: “Heavens! what
women these Christians have!”[9]
What instruction he received in early boyhood, beside his mother’s
careful moral and religious training; whether he was sent, a common
custom among Christian parents in that age,[10] to be taught by the
monks in one of the neighbouring monasteries, where he may have
imbibed an early taste for monastic retirement, we know not. He was
designed, however, not for the clerical but for the legal profession,
and at the age of twenty he began to attend the lectures of one of
the first sophists of the day, capable of giving him that secular
training and learning which would best enable him to cope with men of
the world. Libanius had achieved a reputation as a teacher of general
literature, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as an able and eloquent
defender of Paganism, not only in his native city Antioch, but in
the Empire at large. He was the friend and correspondent of Julian,
and on amicable terms with the Emperors Valens and Theodosius. He
had now returned to Antioch after lengthened residence in Athens
(where the chair of rhetoric had been offered to him, but declined),
in Nicomedia, and in Constantinople.[11] In attending daily lectures
at his school, the young Chrysostom became conversant with the best
classical Greek authors, both poets and philosophers. Of their teaching
he in later life retained little admiration,[12] and to the perusal
of their writings he probably seldom or never recurred for profit
or recreation, but his retentive memory enabled him to the last to
point and adorn his arguments with quotations from Homer, Plato, and
the Tragedians. In the school of Libanius also he began to practise
those nascent powers of eloquence which were destined to win for him
so mighty a fame, as well as the appellation of Chrysostomos, or the
Golden Mouth, by which, rather than by his proper name of John, he will
be known to the end of time.[13] Libanius, in a letter to Chrysostom,
praises highly a speech composed by him in honour of the Emperors,
and says they were happy in having so excellent a panegyrist.[14] The
Pagan sophist helped to forge the weapons which were afterwards to be
skilfully employed against the cause to which he was devoted. When he
was on his deathbed, he was asked by his friends who was in his opinion
capable of succeeding him. “It would have been John,” he replied, “had
not the Christians stolen him from us.”[15] But it did not immediately
appear that the learned advocate of Paganism was nourishing a traitor;
for Chrysostom had not yet been baptized, and began to seek an opening
for his powers in secular fields of activity.[16] He commenced practice
as a lawyer; some of his speeches gained great admiration, and were
highly commended by his old master Libanius. A brilliant career of
worldly ambition was open to him. The profession of the law was at that
time the great avenue to civil distinction. The amount of litigation
was enormous. One hundred and fifty advocates were required for the
court of the Prætorian Prefect of the East alone. The display of
talent in the law-courts frequently obtained for a man the government
of a province, whence the road was open to those higher dignities of
vice-prefect, prefect, patrician, consul, which were honoured by the
title of “illustrious.”[17]
But the pure and upright disposition of the youthful advocate recoiled
from the licentiousness which corrupted society; from the avarice,
fraud, and artifice which marked the transactions of men of business;
from the chicanery and rapacity that sullied the profession which he
had entered.[18] He was accustomed to say later in life that “the
Bible was the fountain for watering the soul.” If he had drunk of
the classical fountains in the school of Libanius, he had imbibed
draughts yet deeper of the spiritual well-spring in quiet study of Holy
Scripture at home. And like many another in that degraded age, his
whole soul revolted from the glaring contrast presented by the ordinary
life of the world around him to that standard of holiness which was
held up in the Gospels.
He had formed also an intimate friendship with a young man, his equal
in station and age, by whose influence he was diverted more and more
from secular life, and eventually induced altogether to abandon it.
This was Basil, who will come before us in the celebrated work on
the priesthood. He must not be confounded with the great Basil,[19]
Bishop of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, who was some fifteen years older
than Chrysostom, having been born in A.D. 329, nor with Basil, Bishop
of Seleucia, who was present at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451,
and must therefore have been considerably younger. Perhaps he may be
identified with a Basil, Bishop of Raphanea in Syria, not far from
Antioch, who attended the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.
Chrysostom has described his friendship with Basil in affecting
language:[20] “I had many genuine and true friends, men who understood
and strictly observed the laws of friendship; but one there was out of
the many who exceeded them all in attachment to me, and strove to leave
them all behind in the race, even as much as they themselves surpassed
ordinary acquaintances. He was one of those who accompanied me at all
times; we engaged in the same studies, and were instructed by the same
teachers; in our zeal and interest for the subjects on which we worked,
we were one. As we went to our lectures or returned from them, we were
accustomed to take counsel together on the line of life it would be
best to adopt; and here, too, we appeared to be unanimous.”
Basil early determined this question for himself in favour of
monasticism; he decided, as Chrysostom expresses it, to follow the
“true philosophy.” This occasioned the first interruption to their
intercourse. Chrysostom, soon after the age of twenty, had embarked
on a secular career, and could not immediately make up his mind to
tread in the footsteps of his friend. “The balance,” he says, “was no
longer even;” the scale of Basil mounted, while that of Chrysostom was
depressed by the weight of earthly interests and desires.[21] But the
decisive act of Basil made a deep impression on his mind; separation
from his friend only increased his attachment to him, and his aversion
from life in the world. He began to withdraw more from ordinary
occupations and pleasures, and to spend more of his time in the study
of Holy Scripture. He formed acquaintance with Meletius, the deeply
respected Catholic Bishop of Antioch, and after three years, the usual
period of probation for catechumens, was baptized by him.
A natural question arises: Why was he not baptized before, since his
mother was a Christian, and there is abundant evidence that infant
baptism was and had been the ordinary practice of the Church?[22] In
attempting a solution of the difficulty, it will be proper to mention
first certain reasons for delaying baptism which were prevalent in that
age, and which may partially have influenced the mind of Chrysostom’s
mother or himself. It may sound paradoxical to say that an exaggerated
estimation of the import and effect of baptism contributed in two ways
to its delay. But such appears to have been the case. It was regarded
by many as the most complete and final purgation of past sin, and
the most solemn pledge of a new and purified life for the future. To
sin, therefore, before baptism was comparatively harmless, if in the
waters of baptism the guilty stains could be washed away; but sin after
the reception of that holy sacrament was almost, if not altogether,
unpardonable—at least fraught with the most tremendous peril. Hence
some would delay baptism, as many now delay repentance, from a secret
or conscious reluctance to take a decisive step, and renounce the
pleasures of sin; and under the comfortable persuasion that some
day, by submitting to baptism, they would free themselves from the
responsibilities of their past life. Others, again, were deterred from
binding themselves under so solemn a covenant by a distrust of their
ability to fulfil their vows, and a timorous dread of the eternal
consequences if they failed. Against these misconceptions of the true
nature and proper use of the sacrament, the great Basil, the two
Gregories, and Chrysostom himself contend[23] with a vehemence and
indignation which proves them to have been common. Many parents thought
they would allow the fitful and unstable season of youth to pass before
they irrevocably bound their children under the most solemn engagements
of their Christian calling. The children, when they grew up, inherited
their scruples, and so the sacrament was indefinitely deferred.
It is not impossible that such feelings may have influenced
Chrysostom’s mother and himself; but considering the natural and
healthy character of his piety, which seems to have grown by a gentle
and unintermitting progress from his childhood, they do not seem very
probable in his case. A more cogent cause for the delay may perhaps be
found in the distracted state of the Church in Antioch, which lasted,
with increasing complications, from A.D. 330, or fifteen years prior to
Chrysostom’s birth, up to the time of his baptism by Meletius, when a
brighter day was beginning to dawn.
The vicissitudes of the Church in Antioch during that period form
a curious, though far from pleasing, picture of the inextricable
difficulties, the deplorable schisms, into which the Church at large
was plunged by the Arian controversy. Two years after the Council of
Nice, A.D. 327, the Arians, through the assistance of Constantia,
the Emperor’s sister, won the favour of Constantine. He lost no
time during this season of prosperity in procuring the deposition
of Catholic bishops. Eminent among these was Eustathius, Bishop of
Antioch. He was ejected by a synod held in his own city on false
charges of Sabellianism and adultery.[24] An Arian Bishop, Euphronius,
was appointed, but the Catholic congregation indignantly withdrew to
hold their services in another quarter of the town, on the opposite
side of the Orontes.[25] The see remained for some time entirely in
the hands of the Arians. When the Council of Sardica met in A.D. 342,
and the Arian faction seceded from it to hold a Council of their own
in Philippopolis, Stephen, Bishop of Antioch, was their president.
He was deposed in A.D. 349 by the Emperor Constantius, having been
detected as an accomplice in an infamous plot against some envoys
from the Western Church.[26] But “uno avulso non deficit alter;” he
was succeeded by another Arian, the eunuch Leontius.[27] He tried
to conciliate the Catholics by an artful and equivocating policy,
of which his manner of chanting the doxology was an instance. The
Arian form of it was “Glory be to the Father BY the Son _in_ the Holy
Ghost;” this the bishop was accustomed to slur in such an indistinct
voice that the prepositions could not be clearly if at all heard,
while he joined loudly in the second part of the hymn where all were
agreed.[28] He died towards the close of A.D. 357, when the see was
fraudulently seized by Eudoxius, Bishop of Germanicia. He favoured the
extreme Arians so openly that the Semi-Arians appealed to the Emperor
Constantius to summon a General Council. Their request was granted; but
the Arians, fearing that the Catholics and Semi-Arians would coalesce
to overwhelm them, artfully suggested that Rimini, the place proposed
for the Council, was too distant for the Eastern prelates, and that
the Assembly should be divided, part meeting at Rimini, and part at
Nice.[29] Their suggestion was accepted, and the result is well known.
Partly by arguments, partly by artifices and delays which wore out the
strength and patience of the members, the Arians completely carried the
day; the creed of Rimini was ordered by the Emperor to be everywhere
signed, and in the words of Jerome, “the world groaned and found itself
Arian.”[30] An Arian synod sat at Constantinople. Macedonius, the
archbishop, being considered too moderate, was deposed, and Eudoxius,
the usurper of Antioch, was elevated to the see in his stead;[31] and
Meletius, Bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia, was translated to the vacant
see of Antioch, A.D. 361. But in him the Arians had mistaken their man.
He was one of those who attended more to the practical moral teaching
than to the abstract theology of Christianity; and, being not perhaps
very precise in his language on doctrinal points, he had been reckoned
an Arian.[32] After his elevation to the see of Antioch, he confined
himself in his discourses to those practical topics on which all could
agree. But this was not allowed to last long. The Emperor Constantius
paid a visit to Antioch soon after the appointment of Meletius, and he
was instigated by the Arians to put the bishop to a crucial test. He
was commanded to preach on Proverbs viii. 22: “The Lord _possessed_
me” (Septuagint ἔκτισε, that was the fatal word) “in the beginning,”
etc. The interpretation put on the word “formed” ἔκτισε would reveal
the man. Two other bishops discoursed first upon the same text: George
of Laodicea, Acacius of Cæsarea. The first construed the passage in a
purely Arian sense: the Word was a κτίσμα, “a created being,” though
the first in time and rank; the second preacher took a more moderate
line. Then came the turn of Meletius; short-hand writers took down
every word as it fell. Meletius was a mild and temperate man, but he
had his convictions, and he was no coward. To the horror of the Arians
(the secret joy, perhaps, of those who disliked him) he entirely
dissented from the Arian interpretation. The people loudly applauded
his sermon, and called aloud for some brief and compendious statement
of his doctrine. Meletius replied by a symbolical action: he held
up three fingers, and then closing two of them, he said: “Our minds
conceive of three, but we speak as to one.”[33] This was conclusive;
the objectionable prelate was banished to Melitene, his native place
in Armenia, thirty days after he had entered Antioch. Euzoius, who had
been an intimate friend and constant associate of Arius himself, was
put into the see. The Church of Antioch now split into three parties:
the old and rigid orthodox set, who, ever since the deposition of
Eustathius in A.D. 327, had adhered to his doctrine, and were called
after his name; the moderate Catholics, who regarded Meletius as their
bishop; and the Arians under Euzoius. The synod which had deposed him
published a thoroughly Arian creed, which declared the Son to have been
created out of nothing, and to be unlike the Father both in substance
and will.[34]
This first banishment of Meletius, which occurred in A.D. 361, did
not last long. Julian, who became Emperor the same year, recalled all
the prelates who had been exiled in the two preceding reigns; partly,
perhaps, from a really liberal feeling, partly from a willingness to
foment the internal dissensions of the Church by placing the rival
bishops in close antagonism. Athanasius returned to Alexandria amidst
great ovations.[35] One of the questions which occupied the attention
of a synod convened by him was the schism of Antioch. Eusebius, Bishop
of Vercelli, a staunch Italian friend of Athanasius, was despatched
to Antioch in order to heal the division; but he had been unhappily
anticipated by another Western prelate, Lucifer of Cagliari, in
Sardinia, a brave defender of orthodoxy, for which with Eusebius he had
suffered exile, but a most unskilful peacemaker. He only complicated
the existing confusion by consecrating as bishop a priest of the
old Eustathian party, named Paulinus, instead of strengthening the
hands of Meletius.[36] The unhappy Church at Antioch, where the whole
Christian community amounted to not more than 100,000 souls,[37] was
thus torn to tatters. There were now three bishops: the Arian Euzoius,
Meletius, generally acknowledged by the Eastern Church, and Paulinus
by the Western. And, as if three rival heads were not sufficient, the
Apollinarians soon afterwards added a fourth. But the mild, prudent,
and charitable disposition of Meletius procured for him the affection
and esteem of the largest and most respectable part of the population,
as well as of the common people. Even when he was banished for the
first time after he had been only a month in Antioch, the populace
endeavoured to stone the prefect as he was conducting the bishop out
of the city. He was saved by Meletius himself, who threw a part of his
own mantle round him, to protect him from their fury. And after he
returned from exile the popularity of Meletius increased. In paintings
on the walls of houses and engravings on signet rings, his face was
often represented, and parents gave his name to their children both
to perpetuate his memory and to remind them of an example which was
worthy of their imitation.[38] Once more in A.D. 367, and yet again
in A.D. 370 or A.D. 371, when the Arians recovered the favour of the
Court under the Emperor Valens, he was sent into exile, but he returned
after the death of Valens in A.D. 378; and it was as Bishop of Antioch
that he presided over the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, and
died during its session.[39] His funeral oration, pronounced by Gregory
Nyssen, is extant. The final reparation of that schism which he nobly
and constantly endeavoured to heal was not effected for nearly twenty
years, when Chrysostom, then Archbishop of Constantinople, accomplished
that good service for his native city.
It is interesting to dwell at some length upon the history of the
Church in Antioch at this period, because it represents the painful
feuds in which the Church at large became entangled through the baneful
influence of the Arian controversy, that first great blow to the unity
of Christendom; when bishop was set up against bishop, and rival
councils manufactured rival creeds, when violence, and intrigue, and
diplomatic arts were employed too often by both sides to gain their
ends. But the distracted state of the Church at Antioch also supplies
a possible answer to the question why the baptism of Chrysostom was
delayed so long. One of the reasons frequently alleged for deferring
the reception of that sacrament was the desire of the candidate to
receive it at the hands of some particular bishop.[40] Now who were
the bishops of Antioch during the infancy and boyhood of Chrysostom?
The Arians were in possession of the see at the time of his birth, and
retained it till A.D. 361, when Meletius was appointed, but banished
almost immediately. The pious sensible mother and the well-disposed
youth would not unnaturally hold aloof from a Church over which
presided such prelates as Stephen, Leontius, Eudoxius, Euzoius. Their
minds may well have been so sorely perplexed and suspended between the
claims of opposing factions as to delay the reception of baptism from
the hands of any.
But the prudent, conciliatory policy, the mild and amiable disposition
of Meletius, would engage the sympathy and respect of an affectionate,
pious, and sensible youth, such as Chrysostom was. He was about twenty
when Meletius was banished in 367 by the Emperor Valens; but the bishop
returned in a short time, when Chrysostom’s friend Basil had withdrawn
into religious seclusion, and he himself was feeling an increasing
repugnance to the world. He presented himself as a candidate for
baptism to the bishop, and after the usual three years of preparation
as a catechumen, was admitted into the Christian Church.
There can be no doubt that baptism, from whatever cause delayed, must
on that very account have come home to the recipient with a peculiar
solemnity of meaning. It was an important epoch, often a decisive
turning-point in the life, a deliberate renunciation of the world, and
dedication of the whole man to God. So Chrysostom evidently felt it;
from this point we enter on a new phase in his life. He becomes for
a time an enthusiastic ascetic, and then settles down into that more
tranquil and steady, but intense glow of piety and love to God which
burned with undiminished force till the close of his career.
The wise Bishop Meletius, however, desired to employ his powers in some
sphere of active labour in the Church. As a preliminary step to this
end, he ordained him soon after his baptism to the office of reader.
This order appears not to have been instituted in the Church before
the third century; at least there is no allusion to it in writers of
the first two centuries, and frequent references in writers of the
third and fourth.[41] The duty of readers was to read those portions
of Scripture which were introduced into the first service or “Missa
Catechumenorum,” which preceded the Communion, or “Missa Fidelium,” so
called because only the baptized were admitted to it. They read from
the Pulpitum or Tribunal Ecclesiæ, or Ambo, the reading-desk of the
Church, which must not be confounded with the Bema, or Tribunal of the
Sanctuary. This last was identical with the altar, or rather the steps
of the altar, and no rank lower than that of deacon was permitted to
read from this position. By the Novells of Justinian,[42] eighteen was
fixed as the youngest age at which any one could be ordained to this
office. But previous to this limitation, it was not uncommon to appoint
mere children. Cæsarius of Arles is said to have been made a reader at
the tender age of seven, and Victor Uticensis, describing the cruelties
of the Vandalic persecution in Africa, affirms that among 500 clergy or
more who perished by sword or famine, were many “infant readers.”[43]
The ceremony of ordination appears to have been very simple. The Fourth
Council of Carthage ordains that the bishop should testify before
the congregation to the purity, the faith, and conversation of the
candidate. Then in their presence he is to place a Bible in his hands
with these words: “Take thou this book, and be thou a reader of the
word of God, which office if thou discharge faithfully and profitably
thou shalt have part with those who have ministered the word of
God.”[44]