John Chrysostom and the preachability of the word

Abstract

What rushes to mind when we think of Chrysostom preaching is Eutropius, the powerful Byzantine minister fallen into disgrace and clinging to the columns of the altar in Hagia Sophia where he had found refuge; overturned statues in Antioch while the preacher excoriates the excesses of the crowds and invokes the humanity (philanthropia) of the emperor, in what Frans van de Paverd calls “one of the most moving products of Chrysostom’s oratorical skills”; a tongue-tied empress listening to herself (if Socrates and Sozomenus are to be believed) being compared to Herodias dancing and asking for John the Baptist’s head. Chrysostom’s exegetical homilies are however much less likely to fire our fantasy.