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).