Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/188

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CHRYSOSTOM, JOHN
CHRYSOSTOM, JOHN

those de Continentia, de Perfecta Caritate, de Consolatione Mortis, and numerous ones on single texts or separate parables.

On his homilies, expository and practical, Chrysostom's fame chiefly rests, and that deservedly. He was in truth "the model of a preacher for a great capital. Clear, rather than profound, his dogmatic is essentially moulded up with his moral teaching. . . . His doctrines flow naturally from his subject or from the passage of Scripture under discussion; his illustrations are copious and happy; his style free and fluent; while he is an unrivalled master in that rapid and forcible application of incidental occurrences which gives such life and reality to eloquence. He is at times, in the highest sense, dramatic in manner" (Milman, Hist. of Christ. iii. 9).

IV. Letters.—The whole of Chrysostom's extant letters belong to his banishment, written on his road to Cucusus, during his residence there, or in the fortress of Arabissus. The most important are 17 addressed to the deaconess Olympias, who shared his hopes and fears and all his inmost feelings. The whole number is 242, written to every variety of friend—men of rank, ladies, ecclesiastics of every grade, bishops, presbyters, deacons and deaconesses, monks and missionaries, his old friends at Antioch and Constantinople, and his more recent acquaintances at Caesarea and other halting-places on his journey—and including every variety of subject; now addressing reproof, warning, encouragement, or consolation to the members of his flock at Constantinople, or their clergy; now vigorously helping forward the missionary work in Phoenicia, and soliciting funds for pious and beneficent works; now thanking his correspondents for their letters or their gifts; now complaining of their silence; now urging the prosecution of the appeal made in his behalf to Innocent and the Western bishops, and expressing his hope that through the prayers of his friends he would be speedily given to them again; and the whole poured forth with the undoubting confidence of a friend writing to friends of whom he is sure. We have in this correspondence an index to his inner life such as we possess of few great men. The letters are simply inestimable in aiding us to understand and appreciate this great saint. In style, as Photius remarks, they are characterized by his usual brilliancy and clearness, and by great sweetness and persuasive power (Phot. Cod. 86).

V. Liturgical.—It is impossible to decide how much in the liturgies passing under the name of St. Chrysostom is really of his age. There are very many editions of the liturgy, no two of which, according to Cave (Hist. Lit. i. 305), present the same text; and hardly any that do not offer great discrepancies. It would be, of course, a fundamental error to attribute the composition of a liturgy de novo to Chrysostom or any of the old Catholic Fathers. When a liturgy is called by the name of any Father, all that is implied is that it was in use in the church to which that Father belonged, and that it may have owed some corrections and improvements to him. The liturgy known in comparatively late times by the name of Chrysostom has been from time immemorial that of the church of Constantinople.

The best and most complete edition of Chrysostom, as of most of the Christian Fathers, is the Benedictine, prepared by the celebrated Bernard de Montfaucon, who devoted to it more than twenty years of incessant toil and of journeys to consult MSS. It was pub. at Paris, in 13 vols. fol. in 1718. The value of this magnificent edition lies more in the historical and critical prefaces, and other literary apparatus, than in the text, which is faulty. It has been reprinted at Venice in 1734 and 1755, and at Paris in 1834‒1839. The most practically useful edition is in the Patrologia of the Abbé Migne, in 13 vols. 8vo. (Paris, 1863). It is mainly a reprint of the Benedictine ed., but enriched by a judicious use of the best modern commentators. The chief early authorities for the life of Chrysostom, besides his own works, are the Dialogue of his contemporary Palladius, bp. of Hellenopolis, which, however valuable for its facts, deserves Gibbon's censure as "a partial and passionate vindication," and the Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates (lib. vi.), Sozomen (lib. viii.), and Theodoret (lib. v.), the Lexicon of Suidas (sub voc. Ἰωάννης), and the letters of Isidorus of Pelusium (ii. Ep. 42). The biography by George of Alexandria is utterly worthless, being more an historical romance than a memoir. Of more modern works, it will suffice to name "the moderate Erasmus" (tom. iii. Ep. 1150), the "patient and accurate" Tillemont (Mém. Eccl. tom. ix.), and the diligent and dull Montfaucon. The brilliant sketch of Gibbon (Decl. and Fall, c. xxxii.) must not be omitted. Neander's Life of St. Chrysostom is a work of much value, more for the account of Chrysostom's opinions and words than for the actual life. Amadée Thierry's biographical articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes describe Chrysostom's fall and exile most graphically, though with the licence of an artist. The most satisfactory biography is by Rev. W. R. W. Stephens (Lond. 1872), to which the foregoing article is largely indebted. Translations of several of his works are contained in the Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Schaff and Wace. S.P.C.K. publishes cheaply St. Chrys. On the Priesthood, by T. A. Moxon, and extracts from his writing in St. Chrysostom's Picture of his Age and Picture of the Religion of his Age.

[E.V.]

Claudius (1), A.D. 41‒54. The reign of this emperor has special interest in being that to which we must refer the earliest distinct traces of the origines of the church of Rome. Even before his accession, the new faith may have found its way there. The "strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes " (Acts ii. 10), who were at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, or some of the "synagogue of the Libertines" (Acts vi. 9), yielding to the arguments of Stephen, may have brought it thither. "Andronicus and Junia or Junias," who were "in Christ" before the conversion of St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 7), and at Rome when that apostle wrote to the church there, may have been among those earlier converts. When Herod Antipas and Herodias came to court the favour of Caligula (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 7) and gain for the former the title of king, they must have had some in their train who had known—perhaps those who had reported to