Книга: Chrysostom John «The Pedagogical Value of the Virtue of Faith As Developed in the Religious Novitiate»

(345–407)

   Early Church Father. Born into a pagan family in Antioch, Chrysostom was baptized in 373, ordained in 384, and rose to become archbishop of Constantinople. A persuasive preacher, beloved of the masses, he was dubbed Chrysostomos, ‘golden-mouthed’, by the historians of the Church. In a series of eight sermons delivered between 386 and 387, his first two years as a preacher in Antioch, John Chrysostom raged against the Jews with a lack of restraint singular even at that time and place. He accused them of spreading their false mission in competition with Christianity; the synagogue was ‘a brothel, home of vice, refuge of the devil, citadel of Satan’; avariciousness was at the root of the Jewish character; the Jews had murdered Jesus; God hates them and has always done so.

   In these sermons, which were taken down verbatim and distributed widely, John Chrysostom provided fuel for centuries of clerical calumny of the Jews.