Relics and Rehabilitation

The posthumous vindication of St. John Chrysostom: the Johannite schism that refused to accept his deposition; the restoration of his name to the diptychs under Atticus; the imperial translation of his relics to Constantinople in 438, when (per Theodoret) Theodosius II did public penance for what his parents had done; the looting of the relics to Rome in 1204 and their partial return by Pope John Paul II to Patriarch Bartholomew in November 2004; and the feasts that commemorate him, including the calendar note that displaced his September 14 repose.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

A Death That Did Not Settle the Matter

John Chrysostom died on September 14, 407, exhausted by a forced march in exile, near Comana in Pontus, with the words tradition assigns him — “Glory to God for all things” (Doxa to Theō pantōn heneken) — on his lips (Palladius, Dialogue 11; Kelly, Golden Mouth, ch. 23). He died a condemned man. The Synod of the Oak (403), engineered by Theophilus of Alexandria and abetted by the court of the empress Eudoxia, had deposed him on a sheaf of largely trumped-up charges; a brief recall had been followed by a second, definitive exile in 404 (see Synod of the Oak and Exile). His enemies expected the matter closed.

It was not. A large body of the faithful in Constantinople — and, crucially, the whole of the Latin West under Pope Innocent I, together with the great Eastern sees that had refused to ratify the deposition — held John to have been the victim of an injustice. These loyalists, who would not enter communion with John’s successors Arsacius and Atticus so long as John’s name was withheld, became known as the Johannites (Iōannitai). They held their assemblies apart, in the suburbs, and the schism they constituted was the first great problem the post-Chrysostom Church of Constantinople had to solve (Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.25; Van Nuffelen, “Palladius and the Johannite Schism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History).

The Name Restored to the Diptychs

The diptychs — the liturgical lists of bishops and faithful, living and departed, commemorated by name at the Eucharist — were the precise instrument of the quarrel. To omit a bishop’s name from the diptychs was to declare him outside the Church’s communion; to inscribe it was to declare him a lawful and orthodox shepherd. The Johannites’ single demand was that John’s name be entered among the orthodox archbishops of Constantinople.

The pressure was sustained and came from every side. Pope Innocent I had broken communion with the principal Eastern sees over the affair, making John’s name a precondition of restored unity, and the most respected figures of the East — the historian Theodoret would later say John had been condemned “unjustly” — pressed the same point. The decisive concession came under the archbishop Atticus of Constantinople (406–425), who, “compelled by the unanimous opinion of the West and of the best and holiest men of the East,” inserted John’s name into the diptychs of his church around 412–417 (Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.25; Atticus’ own letter to Cyril of Alexandria, reported in the sources). Cyril of Alexandria, Theophilus’ nephew and successor, resisted longest — to inscribe John was, in effect, to confess that his own uncle had perpetrated an injustice — but he too at length yielded and entered the name. With the diptychs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome now agreeing, the formal rupture was healed, though the reconciliation of the populace would be completed only by the events of 438.

The Translation of the Relics (438)

Thirty years after his death, the archbishop Proclus of Constantinople (434–446) — who had been John’s own disciple — preached a celebrated Laudatio in praise of his predecessor in the Great Church, and so kindled the devotion of clergy, people, and emperor that all desired the body of the exiled saint to be brought home (Proclus, Laudatio S. Ioannis Chrysostomi [CPG 5819]; Kelly, Golden Mouth, ch. 24). In 438 the relics were taken up from Comana and conveyed to the capital.

The earliest narrative account is that of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, writing within a decade or so of the event (his Ecclesiastical History was composed c. 444–450). In Book 5, chapter 36 — titled in the manuscripts “Of the Removal of the Remains of John” — Theodoret describes a great sea-borne procession: a multitude of the faithful crossing the water in ferries, so that the mouth of the Bosphorus toward the Propontis was covered over with lamps and torches. The emperor Theodosius II, he relates, came out to meet the coffin, laid his face against it, and prayed to the saint on behalf of his parents — the emperor Arcadius and the empress Eudoxia, the very court that had driven John into exile — asking forgiveness for the wrong they had ignorantly done him (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.36; trans. NPNF II/3). Theodoret thus frames the translation explicitly as a dynastic act of penance: the son of John’s persecutors publicly interceding for his parents’ pardon over the bones of their victim. The figure who had inherited, as Theodoret puts it, his grandfather’s name and his piety together made the homecoming of the relics into a confession that the Church had been wronged through the imperial house.

The relics were enshrined in the Church of the Holy Apostles, the burial church of the emperors, on January 27, 438 (some sources give the 28th). The Synaxaria add to Theodoret’s sober account a pious detail that the strictly historical sources do not: that the coffin at first could not be lifted, and grew movable only after Theodosius wrote a letter of contrition to John and laid it upon the bier (account in the Synaxarion; OCA, “Translation of the relics of Saint John Chrysostom,” January 27). The methodology of this collection (METHODOLOGY.md §5) directs that such hagiographical motifs be reported as what the tradition transmits, pinned to their attestation, rather than asserted as documented fact; what the early sources securely attest is the imperial translation, the torch-lit procession, and Theodosius’ penitential prayer for his parents. With the body of the saint now venerated in the imperial church, the Johannite schism dissolved: there was nothing left to refuse.

1204: The Relics to Rome

The relics rested in Constantinople for some seven and a half centuries. In 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade sacked the city, and among the sacred objects carried west were the relics of Chrysostom (together with those of St. Gregory the Theologian). They were taken to Rome, where over time they came to be enshrined in St. Peter’s Basilica — by the modern era, in the Choir Chapel of the basilica (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Return of the Relics”; John Chrysostom, Wikipedia, on the 1204 looting). Their presence in Rome was thus a direct fruit of the catastrophe of 1204 — the same event that hardened the estrangement of East and West.

November 2004: The Return

In 2004, the eight-hundredth anniversary of the sack, the question of the relics became an instrument of reconciliation. During the patronal feast of the Roman Church that June, Pope John Paul II had again expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade in the presence of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who observed that the return of the relics would be a fitting restoration. On November 27, 2004, after a service and ceremonial procession at St. Peter’s, John Paul II formally consigned the relics of both Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian to Patriarch Bartholomew, who personally accompanied them back to Constantinople (Letter of John Paul II to the Ecumenical Patriarch and words of Bartholomew I, November 27, 2004, vatican.va; GOARCH, “Return of the Relics”). In his letter the Pope described the act as the relics’ return to “the Church of Constantinople,” and at the Phanar the relics were received in a Service of Thanksgiving in the presence of representatives of the Orthodox Churches and a Vatican delegation led by Cardinal Walter Kasper.

The Vatican retained a portion; the larger share now reposes in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George at the Phanar in Istanbul (GOARCH, “Return of the Relics”). The 2004 return is a documented modern event, and is reported as such — distinct from the older hagiographical layers of the relics’ story.

The Feasts

The Orthodox calendar commemorates Chrysostom on several days, and the pattern itself records his history:

November 13 is his principal feast in the Byzantine calendar, the Commemoration of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople. The day is not the anniversary of his death; according to the scholar Brian Croke, November 13 is the date on which the news of his death reached Constantinople (Croke, cited in John Chrysostom, Wikipedia; OCA, “Saint John Chrysostom,” November 13).
January 27 is the Translation of the Relics — the 438 homecoming described above (OCA, January 27).
January 30 is the Synaxis of the Three Holy Hierarchs, which he shares with Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian — the feast born of an eleventh-century dispute, treated in Golden Mouth Legacy and, in parallel, in the Basil collection (three-hierarchs.md).

The Calendar Note: September 14 and the Exaltation

Chrysostom in fact reposed on September 14, 407 — but in the Orthodox calendar that day is the great feast of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, one of the Twelve Great Feasts. Because the Exaltation grew in prominence and could not be displaced, the commemoration of Chrysostom was transferred from September 14 to November 13 — a shift the sources place by about the tenth century (John Chrysostom, OrthodoxWiki and Wikipedia, on the transfer “as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross became more prominent”). The November 13 date thus carries a double aptness: it both keeps his memory clear of the Cross’s feast and coincides, on Croke’s reading, with the day Constantinople first learned that its exiled shepherd was dead. The displacement is a small but exact illustration of how the fixed festal cycle orders the calendar: even so great a hierarch yields his death-day to the Cross.

References

Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Ecclesiastical History 5.36 (“Of the Removal of the Remains of John”). Trans. NPNF, series II, vol. 3, ed. Schaff and Wace. ccel.org. (Composed c. 444–450; the torch-lit sea procession; Theodosius II’s prayer of penance for his parents Arcadius and Eudoxia.)
Socrates Scholasticus. Ecclesiastical History 7.25, 7.45. Trans. NPNF, series II, vol. 2. (The Johannite schism; Atticus’ restoration of John’s name to the diptychs c. 412–417; Cyril’s eventual concession.)
Palladius of Helenopolis. Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom. Trans. Robert T. Meyer, Ancient Christian Writers 45. New York: Newman Press, 1985. (The death near Comana, 407.)
Van Nuffelen, Peter. “Palladius and the Johannite Schism.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge University Press). (On the schism and its sources.)
Kelly, J. N. D. Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom — Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995, chs. 23–24. (Death, the Johannite schism, Proclus’ Laudatio, and the 438 translation.)
Proclus of Constantinople. Laudatio Sancti Ioannis Chrysostomi [CPG 5819]. (The encomium that prompted the desire for the translation.)
Orthodox Church in America. “Translation of the relics of Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople” (January 27); “Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople” (November 13). oca.org. (The enshrinement in the Church of the Holy Apostles; the Synaxarion account of the lightened coffin; the feast days.)
John Paul II. Letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on the return of the relics, and the words of thanksgiving of Bartholomew I (November 27, 2004). vatican.va.
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. “Return of the Relics” (of Sts. Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom). goarch.org. (The 1204 looting; the 2004 return; the relics now at the Cathedral of St. George, Phanar.)
“John Chrysostom.” OrthodoxWiki; Wikipedia (used to locate sources; the transfer of the feast from September 14 to November 13 by the 10th century; Croke on the November 13 date; the 1204 looting and 2004 return — cross-checked against oca.org, vatican.va, and goarch.org).