John Chrysostom, 347-407.

Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the leading Church Fathers in the formative years of the late 4th..

John Chrysostom was a fiery and gifted preacher, and formidable disputator, commentator and moral reformer

John, nicknamed Chrysostom ("Golden Mouth"), son of a rich army family, was trained in law and rhetoric at Antioch, under the tutelage of patriarch Meletius of Antioch.  In the aftermath, John retired to monastic life, but subsequently came out of solitude and was ordained deacon at Antioch in 381, and priest in 386.

These were heady years for the fledgling Christian church in the Roman empire.  Although Christianity had been unbanned by Emperor Constantine back in 312 and a uniform creed of Christian doctrine had been hammered out at Council of Nicaea in 325, it was far from universally embraced. Later Roman Emperors, keen on asserting their power over the church, had sponsored heretical thinkers and bishops who propounded innovations and deviations from the Nicene creed, and even revivals of pagan religion, and drove the Nicene-adherent clergy underground..

After the death of (Eastern) Roman Emperor Valens, a partisan of Arian Christianity, in 378, Nicene (Catholic-Orthodox) Christian exiles began to stream back to Constantinople. John Chrysostom emerged at this time as the protégé of a group of orthodox theologians, known as the "Cappadocian Fathers", which included Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, who used their gifts of disputation to challenge Greek pagan philosophers, proving that Christians can hold their own against Plato and Aristotle, and encouraging Arian and semi-Arian bishops and others to shift their allegiance back to Nicene Christianity. The Cappadocian fathers shined at the Synod of Antioch in 379, and cleared the way for the all-important Council of Constantinople in 381 (the "Second Ecumenical Council"), which restored and finalized the "Nicene Creed", the theological formula of Catholic-Orthodox Christianity that had been first articulated at Nicaea in 325 (but had been discarded during the Arian ascendancy of the mid-4th C.)

John Chrysostom succeeded Nectarianus as Archbishop of Constantinople in 398.  But his rigorous moral stance proved discomforting to the powers that be (although his denunciations of the immorality of the city's clergy and ruling classes were immensely popular with the populace). Having offended the Eastern empress Eudoxia, and aroused the jealousy of Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria (who feared Chrysostom might elevate the prominence of Constantinople above Alexandria), a conspiracy soon evolved to depose him. At the Synod of the Oak in 403, assembled by Emperor Arcadius, John Chrysostom was accused of being in league with the followers of Origen (a Christian theologian sympathetic to Greek paganism), and he was deposed and banished.

Tumults in Constantinople prompted a brief recall, but he was banished again when he renewed his diatribes against the empress. During his banishment, much of the population of Constantinople (and many bishops and priests outside of it) refused to recognize the successors in his seat, insisting on the restoration of John Chrysostom. The death of John Chrysostom in 407 was a relief to the imperial authorities.

John Chrysostom's main works are a massive collection of biblical commentaries (scriptural homilies).  His treatise on the priesthood and on divine nature are also well known.  . His Adversus Judeus is notorious for articulating the characterization of Jews as "christ-killers" and denouncing "Judaizers", Christians who congregate in synagogues and observe Jewish rituals (like circumcision) and holidays in order to imitate the earlier life of Christ.

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