Antioch: Youth and Formation

The early life of St. John Chrysostom in Antioch (c. 347–349 to his early twenties): his birth and the disputed birth-year, his widowed mother Anthusa, his rhetorical education under the great pagan teacher Libanius, his baptism around 368 under Bishop Meletius, and his entry into the asketerion of Diodore of Tarsus where the Antiochene exegetical tradition was bred into him.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

Birth in Antioch (c. 347–349)

John — the surname “Chrysostom” (Chrysostomos, “Golden-mouth”) was a posthumous epithet, attested from the sixth century onward, not a name he bore in life — was born in Antioch on the Orontes, one of the three great cities of the late Roman Empire and the seat of an ancient and quarrelsome church. He came from a family of some social standing; his father Secundus, an army officer of the Syrian military command (magister militum), died while John was still an infant (Kelly, Golden Mouth, 4–5).

His birth-year is not securely fixed. [Disputed: the older scholarship, following the Benedictine editor Tillemont, dates his birth to c. 347; a number of modern scholars argue for a later date of c. 349 or even into the 350s. Kelly (Golden Mouth, 4) favours c. 349; the long-conventional date remains c. 347.] The compendium follows the conventional c. 347 while noting the uncertainty. What is not in doubt is that he was an Antiochene through and through: the city, its Greek culture, its church, and its poor would all be the matter of his life’s work.

Anthusa, His Widowed Mother

The decisive human influence of John’s childhood was his mother Anthusa, widowed at about twenty and left with the boy and his property. She refused remarriage and devoted herself to his upbringing and education. John himself recounts her widowhood and her resolve in his treatise On the Priesthood (De Sacerdotio I.5), where he uses her plea that he not “make her a widow a second time” by leaving home as part of the dramatic framing of his reluctance to be ordained (Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio I.5; trans. NPNF I/9).

The famous remark often attached to Anthusa — the pagan’s astonished exclamation, “Bless me! what women these Christians have!” — is a genuine Chrysostom report, but its source-chain is frequently garbled and worth stating precisely. Chrysostom relates it not in De Sacerdotio but in his treatise To a Young Widow (Ad viduam juniorem 2), where he says that “the head of the rhetoricians” — universally understood to be Libanius, his own teacher — on learning of his mother’s long widowhood, exclaimed to those present, “Bless me, what women there are among the Christians!” (Chrysostom, Ad viduam juniorem 2; trans. NPNF I/9; cf. Kelly, Golden Mouth, 5). The two facts are thus distinct: the De Sacerdotio supplies the portrait of Anthusa’s widowhood; the Ad viduam supplies the rhetorician’s exclamation. Conflating them into a single citation is a common error.

Education under Libanius

John received the elite literary and rhetorical education of his class, studying under Libanius (c. 314–c. 393), the most celebrated pagan rhetor of the age and a fierce partisan of the old Hellenic culture against the rising Christian establishment. Under Libanius, John acquired a mastery of Attic Greek, a deep formation in classical rhetoric, and the verbal architecture that would later make him the supreme preacher of the Church — even as he turned those skills to ends his teacher would have lamented (Mayer & Allen, John Chrysostom, 5–6).

The often-repeated story that Libanius, asked on his deathbed who should succeed him as head of his school, answered “John — if the Christians had not stolen him from us,” is reported by the church historian Sozomen (Ecclesiastical History VIII.2). It should be received as an admiring tradition preserved by a sympathetic Christian historian rather than as a documented utterance: Sozomen wrote in the mid-fifth century, decades after both men’s deaths (Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History VIII.2; trans. NPNF II/2; cf. Kelly, Golden Mouth, 6–7). Whatever its exactness, it captures a real fact — that John was Libanius’s most gifted pupil.

Baptism (c. 368)

For a time John pursued the secular career to which his training pointed, frequenting the law courts. But under the influence of his friend Basil (not the Cappadocian) and of the Nicene bishop Meletius of Antioch, he turned decisively toward the Church. He was baptized around 368 — adult baptism after a period of instruction being the ordinary pattern of the age — and was soon made a lector (reader) by Meletius, his first ecclesiastical office (c. 371) (Mayer & Allen, John Chrysostom, 5–6; Kelly, Golden Mouth, 16–17). Meletius, the leader of the Nicene party at Antioch through a turbulent schism, was arguably the single most important early mentor of his ecclesiastical life.

The Asketerion of Diodore

Alongside or just after his baptism, John entered the asketerion — a kind of monastic study-house combining ascetic discipline with rigorous theological and biblical training — headed by Diodore of Tarsus (with Carterius), the leading exegetical teacher of Antioch (Kelly, Golden Mouth, 18–20). Here he studied roughly from the late 360s into the early 370s. A fellow student was Theodore of Mopsuestia, who would become the most systematic theologian of the Antiochene tradition (and, after his death, its most controversial figure, condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council).

The asketerion was the seedbed of John’s lifelong exegetical method. From Diodore he absorbed the Antiochene approach to Scripture: close attention to the literal and historical sense (historia), suspicion of unrestrained allegory, and the disciplined reading-out of a text’s deeper spiritual reference (theōria) from its plain meaning rather than over against it. This formation — not abstract theological speculation but the patient exposition of the biblical text — would define his preaching for the rest of his life (see Antiochene Exegesis).

It is worth noting that the school context of the asketerion was as much pastoral and ascetic as academic. The same years that gave John his exegetical method also kindled in him the desire for a more radical withdrawal — the mountain asceticism that would follow (see The Ascetic Years).

References

Kelly, J. N. D. Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom — Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Mayer, Wendy, and Pauline Allen. John Chrysostom. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2000.
Chrysostom, John. On the Priesthood (De Sacerdotio). Trans. NPNF I/9.
Chrysostom, John. To a Young Widow (Ad viduam juniorem). Trans. NPNF I/9.
Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History. Trans. NPNF II/2.
Quasten, Johannes. Patrology, vol. 3. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960.