John Chrysostom and the customs of his time

An essay awarded the prize of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. The unusually loud fame, which the name of St. John Chrysostom quite deservedly enjoys, frees the author and translator from the obligation to acquaint the reader with his life and activities. The author of the proposed work assumes that the reader will become acquainted with the high personality of the universal teacher. Only sometimes, in a cursory sketch, does he review the facts of his life, and if sometimes he dwells in some detail on certain moments of his activity, such as, for example, his archbishop's service in Constantinople and the struggle with the Empress Eudoxia, he does this mainly because such moments are essential for the moral characterization of the depicted era. The appearance of the work of the French scientist proposed in this translation was caused by the proposal of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences “to study the works of St. John Chrysostom, what were the morals of his time, and consider from a moral point of view the way he judged them." The same Academy awarded the research a prize. Since “up to the present time this subject has not been investigated fully and with such detail as it deserves,” it is quite natural that in carrying out his task the author should have encountered very considerable difficulties. “I do not hide from myself,” the author says in the preface to his book, “that work like mine presented particular dangers, because at the same time it belonged to both the field of monograph and the field of general history. I tried, as far as possible, to combine the requirements of both. It is up to the reader to judge how successful I am; for my part, I only ask you to remember that the difficulty lay in the very nature of the subject.” “It seems to me that the society of the 4th century, by the acute crisis it is experiencing, by what it preserves from the past and creates for the future, by the incredible confusion of beliefs and instability of morals, by the contrast of extreme licentiousness and the noblest impulses towards the highest ideal, finally, by the indifference or superstition of some and by the fiery and enlightened faith of other people of that time, is of the greatest interest to everyone those interested in history, psychology and morality. But most of all, I wanted to express in this book the deep surprise that animated me as I became more and more aware of the personality of the man who, of all the Christians of his age, was undoubtedly the most faithful to the gospel spirit.” About the full possibility of carrying out work undertaken on the basis of the works of St. Chrysostom, without constantly comparing his testimony with the testimony of other writers, the author speaks quite thoroughly in the introduction to his book about the novelty of his work, about the difficulties presented in the study of this distant era, and, finally, about the plan of his research. In the first half of this introductory article, he sets out to “before starting a new study, briefly review previous works and express an opinion regarding both the main publishers of the works of St. Chrysostom, and regarding his main historians.” But since all the works under discussion, with one exception, have not yet become the property of Russian theological literature, a critical assessment of them can only be of interest to a very small part of the Russian public who is familiar with these works in the original. And the translator will hardly be reproached for the fact that he considered himself entitled to limit himself to only citing the second half of the introduction, which sets out the author’s views on the essence of his work and is of undeniable interest to everyone. Creations of St. Chrysostom is replete with interesting information about the customs of his time. In this regard, no church speaker can be compared with him. Since his preaching is purely practical and everyday, we will not find a single conversation or treatise in him where he does not directly expose some vice that is most common to the flock he leads. Moreover, there can be no talk of a fruitless waste of eloquence. He enters into a merciless fight against vices and is too good a moralist not to know that the first way to heal a moral illness is to recognize it well and clearly depict it, penetrate into its deep causes, and make one feel its immediate and remote consequences. This is how he understands his task, and this is how he fulfills it with the deep insight of a man accustomed to reading hearts, with the lofty eloquence of one of the most gifted orators who has ever existed, with the ardent zeal of a Christian, unstoppable by any personal consideration. But that's not all. St. Chrysostom is a native of the East, a Syrian, and the Syrians, as Montfaucon noted 1, referring to the expression of the bl. Jerome, especially loved to use comparisons: this was one of the usual techniques of their rhetoric. And at St. John’s comparisons are indeed very frequent and are not only sketched out in cursory outlines, but in most cases they are willingly developed and brought to detail. Hence a new source of accurate information and picture descriptions. Undoubtedly, the Syrian-Hellenic civilization of the 4th century comes to life before us in the conversations of St. Chrysostom is much better than in the speeches of Livanius or in his rather meaningless correspondence, and much brighter than in the work of Ammianus, although, it is true, both the historian and the sophist tell us a lot about their fatherland, about that Antioch, which they both loved with reverent love. Moreover, St. John, who offers us both an animated and an accurate picture, not only gives us a story, but also pronounces his judgment. And if his faith and jealousy necessarily make him sometimes somewhat biased, then the superiority of his mind - so brightly shining in comparison with the mediocrity of Libanius that no comparison is possible between them - and together the sublimity of his character, from which, no doubt, even the complacent Ammianus is far from, with all his directness and honesty - give his judgments extraordinary strength. So, the image, based on the testimony of St. Chrysostom's morals of the 4th century, in particular - Antioch and Constantinople, as well as the discussion of this evidence and its strict assessment - have not yet been the subject of special study, although all the scientists who wrote about Chrysostom took the opportunity to touch upon the most essential features in their works. True, the famous publisher of the works of St. Chrysostom, Montfaucon, wrote a special dissertation entitled: “customs and rituals of the century of Theodosius the Great and his son Arkady” in which he collected the main texts of the writer he published: about the luxury of the court and the rich, about the circus, theater and games, about superstitions, courts, marriages, public roads, philosophers, funerals, etc. But in this series of articles, not connected by any plan - as can be seen already from the list of titles we have made - one cannot find anything other than a very dry set of facts. This is nothing more than an index, or, if you like, a selection of texts for notes to the dictionary of antiquities, and not at all the kind of research, both historical and moral, that the Academy intended to bring to light. Such research presents some special challenges that need to be addressed. And above all, the difficulty lies in the need to evaluate the testimony of St. Chrysostom. The opinion that the preacher is usually prone to exaggeration is very widespread, and that therefore one should be wary of taking the preaching word literally. We do not know whether we should treat only mediocre preachers with such distrust, or whether even the best of them should be considered less truthful than we are inclined to think, but, in any case, when it comes to St. Chrysostom, this danger is less than most others. He avoided commonplaces and rhetorical declamations and was keenly interested in the effect that he daily had on his listeners. We do not think that he shared the opinion that a preacher should always increase his tone (“knock like a deaf person”), since he was always sensitive to the slightest impressions of his flock, both when they left the church and often in the church itself. At this school it did not take him long to convince him that a lesson achieves its goal only when it is fair and strictly proportionate. Having once allowed an exaggeration to cause a smile, he would be in danger of destroying the fruit of very reasonable and legitimate exhortations, among which it had mistakenly slipped through. We think that in general one can treat the word of St. with complete confidence. Chrysostom, and the judgment of one who, yielding to the first impression and especially being struck by the heat and brilliance of ardent eloquence, will not notice the treasures of wisdom and moral knowledge that it contains. St. Chrysostom is not only an orator - he is a confessor, the confessor of an entire city, who managed, in carrying out this overwhelming task, to show an art equal to that shown by Francois de Sales, Bossuet or Fenelon in relation to a few selected souls. And if, nevertheless, we sometimes have to question his testimony, or even find it disputable, then this will rather happen when we see him polemicizing with his personal opponents than when we ask him about the vices or virtues of the flock entrusted to him. In addition, although in that age of theological turmoil he retained in most cases the greatest gentleness, however, its lack is occasionally felt during the struggle caused by his episcopal ministry. But in any case, when we study his conversations, spoken in Antioch and representing the most beautiful and original part of his works, we must make this reservation only very rarely. Is it not possible, however, to verify the testimony of St. John through other evidence? It is true that Montfaucon, in the dissertation already mentioned, claims that most of the messages he made would have remained unknown without this church speaker, and it would have been in vain to look for them in other authors of that time - but there is some exaggeration in these words. Although other St. Fathers, both Greek and Latin, such as St. Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, bl. Jerome and Augustine, while not as rich in detail as he, offer many interesting details. We will find the same information from panegyrists, the latest poets and the latest classical historians. Sometimes we will turn to both, and would willingly turn to them much more often if our work did not then threaten to increase immensely and go into the general history of morals of the 4th century. That's why we always mean only St. Chrysostom and we resort to the mediation of other witnesses only when it seems necessary to verify him or in the case when we see special interest in confirming his words with their testimony. We should only occasionally turn to Bl. Jerome, giving information about Rome, to St. Basil, who lived mainly in Caesarea, and Bl. Augustine, who described the state of African morals, but it would be impermissible to neglect the reports given about Antioch by writers born or who lived there for a long time, i.e. Livanius, Ammianus and Julian. Finally, the last difficulty could cause hesitation. Life of St. Chrysostom took place in Antioch and Constantinople. He spent most of his life in the Syrian metropolitanate, but the few years he spent in Constantinople were full of events and acquired special importance due to the greatness of the role to which St. John was then called. Meanwhile, Antioch and Constantinople were noticeably different from each other. Undoubtedly, both cities had similarities in that they owed their unexpected origins to a new dynasty, but the ancient Seleucid capital, inhabited by Hellenized Syrians, had its own traditions and its own national mores. She was the first to be enlightened by the gospel by the disciples of Jesus Christ and gave Christianity his name. It thus seemed doubly original among the great cities of the empire and was easily distinguished from its Bosphorus rival. At first glance it would seem necessary to divide our study into two parts and, having previously studied St. John in his first residence, then follow him in his second. Such a plan would, of course, have its advantages, but it contains much more difficulties. Without a doubt, although there remains some hesitation as to the time of the appearance of the famous works of St. Chrysostom, however, it is now possible to establish quite correctly which of them relate to Antioch and which to Constantinople. This study was already of interest to Patriarch Photius, who sometimes, however, used a somewhat deceptive criterion 2 . With much greater insight and erudition, it was later undertaken by Tilmont and Montfaucon, although quite often they came to different conclusions. But, if an error was possible for one or another of them, then they almost always indicated decisive or very plausible arguments, so that there are almost no completely unresolved doubts. The real difficulty lies elsewhere. No matter how sensitive the differences were that separated the Antiochian society from the society of Constantinople, the similarities between them were even more significant. In the 4th century the entire empire, even in the most remote provinces, presents almost the same spectacle. Everywhere there is a decisive struggle between the ancient dying civilization and the Christian civilization, which has now reached maturity - the struggle is different in some places, but identical in its deep causes and general results. Rome, Carthage, Milan, Bordeaux, Trier, Barcelona and Aquileia in the Latin countries suffered from the same reasons, were strewn with the same ruins, as Constantinople, Nicomedia, Alexandria, Caesarea or Antioch in the Greek countries. Moreover, in each of the two halves of the empire - in the eastern and in the western - local differences were quite well combined in a great general unity. From this it follows that a special study of both places of residence of St. John, Antioch and Constantinople, would lead to many fruitless works, would require unnecessary references to many already reported information, in a word, then repetitions would be inevitable. Therefore, we have chosen to divide the material according to the order of the material, rather than chronologically, but in such a way that the first and last chapters will enable us to take advantage of the benefits of a chronological division. First of all, we depict the preacher before his audience, with the purpose of determining the way of preaching of one and showing the disposition of the other. Thus we can establish from the very beginning the difference between the private character of the Antiochene and Byzantine listeners. Further, in the next three chapters the following are subject to study: classes of society, the establishment of the family, beliefs and religious customs 3. We considered it necessary to introduce a special chapter on public holidays and spectacles, which occupied such a prominent place in the life of that time. In the last chapter - On the Court and the State - it was possible to combine everything that is truly new and special in the years of the bishopric of St. John and what was not even planned in his Antiochian period. Finally, in conclusion, we, on the one hand, examined what the practical results of the preaching of St. Chrysostom, on the other hand, tried to find out the true foundations of his morality and clearly show the ideal he created, which he tried with such faith and courage, as far as possible, to realize in his contemporary society. In offering the book to the Russian public, the translator considered himself entitled to omit those - however, very insignificant in size - places where the author makes references to little-known facts of French history, or uses national comparisons that are completely alien, and sometimes completely incomprehensible to the Russian reader (for example, comparing the activities of St. Chrysostom with the preaching activities of a modern missionary preacher in France, etc.). The translator made somewhat more significant omissions for religious reasons. Quite a few notes from the author, where appropriate and convenient, are included in the text or stored under the line; interlinear quotation borrowed from the works of St. John's places have been eliminated, in order to save space. Bernard Montfaucon, a monk of the Benedictine Order († 1741), who worked for more than twenty years on the publication of the complete collection of works of St. John Chrysostom and left extremely valuable research on the authenticity, time and place of writing and content of the works of St. John. He took it as a rule that the best creations of St. Chrysostom belongs to the Antiochian period, and all those in which some kind of negligence slips in were compiled in Constantinople, where St. John had so little free time and so much work and worries. But it is clear that, on the one hand, there must be exceptions to the rule and, on the other, that too delicate taste is required to accurately draw the line between the two groups thus formed In this kind of work, if you want to achieve a strict composition, it is very difficult to completely eliminate arbitrariness in the distribution of material. The main divisions are established, but the placement of details between the various chapters can often be questionable. Wouldn't it be better than the well-known custom denounced by St. Chrysostom and placed by us in the chapter on the family, should it be attributed to the chapter on religion, or vice versa? But, upon reflection, we came to the conclusion that we should not bother ourselves too much with such trifles, which could increase to infinity. We will consider ourselves satisfied even if the main plan we have adopted seems truly consistent with the essence of the subject.