The Bones of John Chrysostom

The Bones of John Chrysostom

            While visiting St. Peters Basilica in Rome in 2013 the name on a sarcophagus marked “Corpus S Joannis Chrysostomi” caught my attention so I took a picture. Later at home, I confirmed the casket belonged to John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the 4^th century c.e.  John Chrysostom, considered by theologians to have been the foremost orator and preacher in the Eastern Orthodox Church, wrote the Divine Liturgy that Orthodox Christians recite throughout the world.  So why were the relics of the bishop of Constantinople interred in Rome especially when he was reportedly buried in the Byzantine capital?  The answer is a complicated one that involves two popes, Pope Urban II (1088-1099) and Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), separated by close to 800 years. 

         

             Chrysostom was born circa 349 c.e. in or around Antioch.[i]  His father died when he was young, but his family had the resources to provide him with an excellent education in rhetoric and later Christian Scripture.  After his mother’s death in the early 370s, Chrysostom spent four years living in the desert outside of Antioch under the direction of a Syrian monk.  He then spent two years in monastic seclusion where he continued to read Scripture.  Upon his return to the city, Chrysostom was ordained a deacon in 381, and then a priest in 386.  In 398 he was elevated to the office of bishop of Constantinople. In a short time, however, the new bishop made powerful enemies in the capital and beyond.  
 

          His zeal for moral reform, his disapproval of luxuriant court life, and his forthrightness in homilies (moral sermons) all provoked opposition.  Eventually, Chrysostom’s attempts to address financial corruption in the Church and his sympathies with Egyptian monks put him at odds with the bishop of Alexandria.  His sharp criticism of imperial opulence invoked hostility from the Byzantine Palace.  In 403 near Constantinople, a gathering of bishops condemned Chrysostom in absentia and temporarily deposed him from office.  After a brief reinstatement as bishop, Chrysostom was again deposed in 404 and driven into exile, at first to Armenia and then after three years to the eastern shore of the Black Sea.  As a result of the severe conditions of his exile and forced marches, he died in 407.  Yet, support for Chrysostom remained strong among many Christians and in subsequent years come to be greatly admired.

          Our story begins on November 1095 in Clermont, France with a rousing speech given by Urban II to a vast Christian assembly promising salvation to soldiers who would enlist in a great struggle to free the Holy Land from the tyranny of the Muslims.  Several factors motivated Urban II’s speech.  In 1095 the Byzantines requested help from the Pope to keep the Turks from advancing closer to Constantinople.  Assisting the Byzantines coincided with a hoped for reconciliation of the Roman and Orthodox Church after Rome had excommunicated the Byzantines in 1054.  Another motivating factor concerned the Turkish attacks on Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and other Muslim attacks on Christians in Spain.  Curbing uncontrollable violence rampant in French society was another motivating factor.  France had fragmented into small kingdoms where authority was backed by armed knights.  A crusade to Jerusalem would advance the ideal of Christian knighthood fighting God’s enemies in a land far from France and remove the knights from French society.

          Six crusades in all were sent to the Holy Land but the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) is important for our story.  While plundering their way to Jerusalem, the crusaders were hoodwinked into helping a pretender to the Byzantine throne, Alexius Angelus, regain the throne for his father and himself.  Alexius promised financial help for the indebted crusaders and in the bargain would require the patriarchate of Constantinople to submit to the papacy in Rome.  When promises failed to materialize the crusaders captured Constantinople and not Jerusalem to the horror of the pope at the time, Innocent III. 

For three days in 1204 the city was sacked.  Constantinople was famous for being the greatest storehouse of relics in Christendom and the crusaders stole anything of value that could be looted.  Today in Venice one can see the Triumphal Quadriga, a set of Roman bronze statues of four horses taken from Constantinople, on the loggia above the porch of St Mark's Basilica.  The loot from Constantinople appears all over Western Europe including hundreds of relics.  One of those relics was the bones of John Chrysostom.  John Chrysostom along with another Church father, Gregory the Theologian, were stolen from the Church of the Holy Apostles and interred in old St. Peters Basilica. 

By allowing the bones of Chrysostom to be kept in old St. Peters, Innocent III’s behavior could be interpreted as condoning the sacking of Constantinople.  To right a wrong, in 2004 the relics of two major saints of the Orthodox Church, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Theologian, were returned to Constantinople after an absence of eight hundred years during a solemn service at the Vatican in Rome, attended by the current Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, and celebrated by the Pope of Rome, John Paul II.  The sarcophagus marked “Corpus S Joannis Chrysostomi” that can be seen in St. Peters today contains a few bones of Saint John Chrysostom.

        An interesting sideline about John Chrysostom concerns his views on Jews.  During his first two years as a priest in Antioch (386-387), John denounced Jews and Judaizing Christians in a series of eight homilies delivered to Christians in his congregation who were taking part in Jewish festivals and other Jewish observances.  It is disputed whether the main target was specifically Judaizers or Jews in general. According to scholars, opposition to any particular view during the late 4th century was conventionally expressed in a manner, utilizing the rhetorical form known as the psogos, whose literary conventions were to vilify opponents in an uncompromising manner; thus, it has been argued that to call Chrysostom an "anti-Semite" is to employ anachronistic terminology in a way incongruous with historical context and record.  That does not, however, prevent one from claiming that Chrysostom's theology was a form of supersessionism meaning Christianity has succeeded the Israelites as the people of God.

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[i]Graves Michael, ed., "John Chrysostom." in Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress  Pub., 2017), 197-214 JSTOR (This content downloaded from 157.89.65.129 on Wed, 24 Jan 2018).

Empty Boots

The Empty Boots

Stalin statues sprang up everywhere in Eastern Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were cult objects that demonstrated the almost mystical powers of Stalin. Hungary was no exception. In December 1951 a large monument of Stalin was erected on the edge of Városliget, the city park of Budapest, as a gift of the Hungarian People to Joseph Stalin on his seventieth birthday. Stalin’s Monument stood 25 meters tall overall with eight of the meters the height of the bronze statue. He was portrayed as a speaker, standing tall and rigid with his right hand at his chest. The sides of the tribune were decorated with relief sculptures depicting the Hungarian people welcoming their leader. The Hungarian sculptor, Sándor Mikus, created the statue and was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the highest distinction that can be attained by a Hungarian artist.

Around the same time Stalin was being celebrated, liberal Communists in Hungary began to distance themselves from Stalinism.[i]  Encouraged by earlier Soviet concessions to Poland and Yugoslavia, they began to place less emphasis on heavy industry and more on consumer goods. Moreover, Imre Nagy, the Prime Minister of Hungary, took actions that further distanced the politics in Hungary from that of Stalinism. He tolerated peasant resistance to further agricultural collectivization. He also gave amnesty to some political prisoners, and even abolished labor camps. These rapid changes frightened hard-liners who arrested Nagy in 1955, and expelled him from the Party for anti-Soviet beliefs. The hard-liners were too late however, as the movement for reform had already taken root throughout the country. Reformers were further encouraged by fateful comments made by Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev in 1956. Krushchev denounced Stalin, effectively admitting that Stalin's way of imposing control on the Soviet bloc was perhaps too severe. This concession was significant, as Soviet Party leaders rarely strayed from the Party view of history, which honored Stalin and other leaders of the Communist Revolution.

Against this backdrop of change, intellectuals and students formed groups that discussed reform such as the compulsory instruction in Russian language and the philosophies of Marxism-Leninism. The intellectuals went even further in demanding the reinstatement of Imre Nagy. The movement gained momentum with protests becoming more common and visible as some workers joined the intellectuals. On October 23, 1956, the violence escalated.  Protesters turned their anger on the Stalin’s Monument. They demolished the statue of Stalin, leaving only his boots in which they planted a Hungarian flag. Police responded by firing into the crowd. Hungarian troops were sent in, but some refused to fire, and even joined the protesters. Frantic, and faced with a revolt that their own army was perhaps not able to control, the Hungarian Communist leadership requested Soviet assistance. Thus began the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

In an effort to appease the demonstrators, the Hungarian government renamed Nagy as Prime Minister. They hoped that the Soviets would help them stop the protests, while having Nagy as Prime Minister would be enough to placate the protesters. However, once reinstated, Nagy continued his reforms. In an important symbolic move, he freed Cardinal Jozsef Mindszentz, the former head of the Hungarian Catholic Church. Mindszentz had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1948 for his opposition to the Communist leadership. Nagy went on to name a new coalition government that included liberal Communists. Conscious of the fact that he was defying Soviet wishes, Nagy alerted the Soviets that he was willing to negotiate the governmental structure of Hungary. He also planned to end the one party system in Hungary by adding non-Communists to the government. In a move that angered the USSR even further, he called for further independence from the Soviet Union. He also requested the removal of Soviet troops that had been stationed in Hungary since the end of the Second World War. The situation briefly stagnated as both sides waited to see what would happen next. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped and a sense of normality began to return.

But on October 31, 1956 Nagy broadcast that Hungary would withdraw itself from the Warsaw Pact. The foreign minister of Hungary, Janos Kadar, left the government in disgust and established a rival government in eastern Hungary supported by Soviet tanks. Moscow responded to Nagy’s announcement on November 11th, when the Soviets arrested the new Hungarian Defense Minister, Maleter, and his entire delegation of advisers. This arrest was strategically important, as Maleter was perhaps the only individual capable of leading a coordinated Hungarian defense. Early the next morning, the Soviets invaded, bringing in twelve divisions consisting of 200,000 troops and 2,500 armored vehicles. The Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to liberate it from what the Soviet government called "fascist elements." The troops quickly gained control of the airport and of the major bridges on the Danube, a major river flowing through Budapest.

The Soviets suppressed the uprising with brutality. Tanks dragged round bodies through the streets of Budapest, even killing wounded people, as a warning to others who were still protesting. The citizens of Hungary attacked the Russian troops with small arms fire. The average citizen supported the rebels, and frequently protected them from Soviet detection. For their part, the Hungarian forces were at an even greater disadvantage. They had little or no organization, limited small arms, and very few anti-tank weapons. Moreover, they were greatly outnumbered, and faced not only the Soviet army, but also the Hungarian secret police and the Hungarian Communist Militia. The stronger Soviet army began to eliminate pockets of resistance one by one. This required particularly destructive methods; any building from which the Soviets detected enemy gunfire was completely destroyed. In a few short days, they quelled all opposition. Fearing for his life, Nagy attempted to obtain asylum in the Yugoslav embassy. He was unsuccessful and later arrested. He was tried in a mockery of a trial, executed, and buried in an unmarked grave. By November 14th order had been restored. Kadar was put in charge. Soviet rule was re-established.

But the Hungarians paid a high cost. When the Soviets left on November 14th, 25,000 Hungarians were dead, 20,000 were imprisoned, and 200,000 had fled to the West. Another 2,000 of the imprisoned were later executed. Only 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict. The entire Eastern Bloc again tightened up as the Soviets had shown how little reform would be tolerated. President Eisenhower said “I feel with the Hungarian people.” J F Dulles, American Secretary of State, said “To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us.” But America did nothing more. It has come to light that throughout the fighting, the reformers were encouraged by radio broadcasts from western countries that aid would be forthcoming. Believing they may be helped by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries, the rebels pushed on. However, occupied with the Suez Canal Crisis and fearful of upsetting the Cold War balance, the West never intervened.

The Hungarian Uprising represented both the pinnacle and the end of liberalization in the Soviet bloc countries. It cemented the Soviet belief that force was the only way to hold on to the Eastern Bloc, and the western belief that armed revolt in Eastern Europe would not work. In fact, some of the remaining issues of 1956 have only recently been addressed in Hungary, with the end of Communism. Thirty years after Nagy's death, those attempting to publicly remember him were suppressed by police. Ironically, thirty-one years after his death, the government sponsored a funeral in Budapest and rehabilitated the memory of Nagy. In 1990, the government began legal proceedings against members of the former Communist Militia who were allegedly responsible for civilian deaths. This continued attention to the uprising and to the memory of those who died underlines its significance not only in Hungarian history, but for Cold War history.

Stalin’s Monument holds a special place in Hungary’s history as ground zero for the October Uprising of 1956 when police fired on protesters on that fateful day. Interestingly the statue was never replaced and only the empty boots remained.  Not until the last Soviet troops left Hungary in 1991 would the boots be relocated to Memento Park in Szoborpark. Located six miles southwest of the city center, Memento Park is a repository for communist era propaganda statues in the Budapest area.   Since 2005, a new memorial, The Memorial to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence,   resides in the place where Stalin’s Monument stood in Városliget. 

The empty boots should be a metaphor for the empty promises of communism, a lesson fading from today’s consciousness. The promises of communism can never become reality because communism runs contrary to human nature and human dignity and violates the laws of economics.  It must resort to control and violence in order to force its ideology on unwilling subjects. The late Russian historian Robert Conquest wrote of the twentieth century, “Ideas that claimed to transcend all problems, but were defective or delusive, devastated minds, and movements, and whole countries, and looked like plausible contenders for world supremacy. In fact humanity has been savaged and trampled by rogue ideologies.”[ii]  Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideology, religion, or movement, including Nazism. The statistics of victims include deaths through executions, man-made hunger, deportations, and forced labor. The twentieth century saw the death toll by Communist regimes to be estimated at 100 million. Empty boots, empty promises, empty shelves.

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[i] Marta Schaff, introduction to Hungarian Uprising Of 1956 (Ipswich, MA: Great Neck Pub, 2009), 1, Primary Search, EBSCOhost (accessed January 20, 2018).

[ii] Robert Conquest, introduction to Reflections on a Ravaged Century (New York: Norton, 2000), xi.

My Merrell's

My Merrell’s

When I take photographs I try to include perspective which is something that can be lost in a photograph.  I usually use my traveling buddy but sometimes I resort to my feet.  This blog is dedicated to my now worn-out Merrell shoes.

By Nerak Seldnar

In the first photograph I shot a section of the floor in the Santo Giovanni in Laterano.  One of the seven pilgrimage churches in Rome, San Giovanni was the first Christian church constructed in the city.  The basilica was built in 313 c.e. but transformed by Francesco Borromini into a Baroque church in the mid 1600’s.  It was the home to all the popes until the Renaissance renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica.  Until 1870 all popes were crowned here and the basilica continues to be the home church of the Bishop of Rome who happens to be the pontiff (or pope.)  The floor resembles ancient Roman mosaics as can be seen at the Baths of Caracalla.  The floor appears three-dimensional in person and in the photograph.  Consequently, adding my shoe to the photo helped to emphasis the floor’s faux effects.  The basilica is an easy Metro ride and worth the time.

The Tokyo Tower in Tokyo, Japan, not to be confused with the Tokyo Skytree, is 333 meters or 1093 feet making it higher than the Eiffel Tower on which it is based.  The observation deck at 250 meters includes a glass floor.  The orange Merrell’s appear again.  I should note that the Tokyo Skytree is far more impressive At 634 meters or 2080 feet it is the tallest tower in the world displacing the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China and the second tallest structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa, the incredibly tall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  Imagine being in any one of these towers during an earthquake.

The Merrell motif continues at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.  The causeway was formed by volcanic eruptions.  As the surface of the lava flow cooled, it contracted and crystallized into hexagonal (six angles and six sides) columns.  However, the real story is far more interesting and being Ireland a legend will do.  According to Irish legend Giant’s Causeway was built by Fionn mac Cumhaill (transcribed into English as MacCool), a mythical hunter-warrior who built the causeway as stepping stones to Scotland so as to engage in battle with a rival Scottish giant by the name of Benandonner.  He once scooped up part of Ireland to fling it at a rival but it missed and landed in the Irish Sea becoming the Isle of Man.  The beautiful strangeness and bizarre regularity of the stones make the place memorable. Visitors are allowed to walk and climb on the stones.

Standing on the meridian (0⁰ longitude) at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, the Merrell’s provide the needed perspective.  The historic town of Greenwich is an easy Metro ride from London and should not be missed.  The town contains many worthwhile sites such as the Queen’s House, designed by Inigo Jones in 1637 and the first Palladian-style villa in Britain, and the Cutty Sark, a clipper launched in 1869 to transport tea from China, to name a few.  Referred to as the Longitude Problem, the difficulty of determining a ships east-west position on the sea could not be fixed without a fixed point from which to measure.  The problem was solved by John Harrison in 1760 after 45 years of effort.  The solution meant that every 15⁰ of longitude equals an hour when comparing the difference in sunrise or sunset times between two places.  For example, the time gap between Greenwich and New York City is five hours which translates into a longitudinal difference of 75⁰.  Consequently, Greenwich became a baseline for world time and the prime meridian.  Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the current time anywhere in the world.

In the final photograph the Merrell’s have been replaced with my Ecco sandals.  Let me explain.  When I packed for a central European vacation I figured the weather in May would be warm enough for sandals.  I was wrong thus explaining the socks.  Always a fashion diva, the use of socks with sandals caused somewhat of a stir in Europe but I figured after I left a new trend in footwear would appear.  The photograph was taken at the Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) in Berlin.  The gallery holds many German works from the Middle Ages and Renaissance including Cranach’s The Fountain of Youth and Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.  Photographs are allowed in the gallery but no flash.  The other foot in the photo belongs to the guard who wanted me to prove my flash was disabled so I pointed to the floor and pressed the shutter release.  The result contained a bit of humor and a reminder to check the weather at one’s destination before leaving home.

Thus concludes my experiences with shoes and the good memories they conjure.