Dialogus de vita Joannis Chrysostomi
honor, but he who is called by God. Thus 5 also Aaron, he says, did not glorify himself to become high priest. For although there were six hundred
the flight of concord, most of us who are active and eager for it have become fugitives from the country, being unable to live safely and without trou
he met with us, he did not share in words, nor in prayer, nor in communion but disembarking from the ship and running past the doors of the church, h
to share in the suffering and to do everything, so as to stop these evils. For he put a stop to none of their lawlessness here, but even after this he
and lamentations and fountains of tears in the marketplaces and the houses and in the desolate places and the whole part of the city was filled with
you are exhorted to contribute zeal from yourselves. For thus you will gratify not only us, 16 but also the community of the churches, and you will re
had fled on account of the threat contained in the imperial decree, that If anyone is not in communion with Theophilus and Arsakius and Porphyry, let
of Bishop John of the Constantinopolitans and, as it seems, it has not been accomplished. Therefore, I wrote again through the bishops and presbyters
savagery. This also the Savior God did, illuminating them with various revelations, so that also to Paul, the deacon of Saint Emilius, a most gentle
He who speaks a lie is not of God, and again from David, Because the mouth of those who speak unjust things was stopped. For he who lies truly wro
by his own choice, he was trained in the discourses for the ministry of the divine oracles. From there, being in the eighteenth year of his physical a
of those who have believed in him will be bound. {THE DEACON} But where did they recognize the presence of the Savior? {THE BISHOP} When they cried ou
of the rich, cutting away the abscesses of the soul, teaching them humility, to be of a humble mind towards other people, obeying the apostolic word,
she gives one thousand gold pieces, having made him swear by the table of the Savior that he would buy clothes and clothe the poorer women of the Alex
with his own hands on his neck, and after inflicting blows on his jaws, with clenched fingers he bloodied his nostrils, shouting 38 with a loud voice:
by an excess of conceit. But those men, driven by great necessity because they were changing places from place to place, arrive at the camp, where Bis
of the church, Dioscorus the bishop, who had grown old in the church but to the bishop John he writes: I think you are not ignorant of the decree of
of John for unlawful offenses, he took advantage of their fickleness and persuades them to submit bills of accusation against John, promising them to
Elijah was taken up did not Elisha prophesy? Paul was beheaded did he not leave behind Timothy, Titus, Apollos and ten thousand others? After these
these of the council but if as accusers, set them up for the trial, so that I may know how I should contend, whether as against adversaries or as jud
(for he is impetuous by nature, and rash and bold and exceedingly contentious—for there is nothing that appears to him by sight, <towards> which he do
brother Acacius and Antiochus whom they put forward as canons of the orthodox, because We are of the faith of those who set them forth, and our doub
reading the oracles, and others baptizing the catechumens, as was fitting because of Easter. These very things the corruptors of minds and deceivers o
a proof of the diligence of teachers, unceasingly setting right the unconquerable quality of their resolve. Theodore said: {THE DEACON} You have spoke
near him to the west), but in the western part, where the gate of the church is, the mule-team, on which he was accustomed to sit, having ordered it t
of a hierophant, a man more silent than a fish and more idle than a frog (for there are times when even action speaks, especially when the good is don
terrifying, just as bogeymen do children? Alas! Those who are clothed in worldly powers and ecclesiastical wealth with authority, with command even of
on the one hand, that he ate alone but I did not wish you, most harmonious Theodore, to ask about the things of gluttonous infants. For being a man,
he says, urging us to imitation Do not forget hospitality, he says, for by this some have entertained angels unawares. But the host must have the
fell from blessing? was it not when he served his belly, deceived by the food? When did Saul fall from the kingdom? was it not when he ate the best of
to eat bread and to put on a garment, all that you give me, I will tithe a tenth of it to you -he did not say, I will consume it at tables. That sp
to give glory to God <in> persecutions. in the refutations of error, is there any mention of a table? But again to Titus, the bishop of Crete, let us
they were seeking luxury. It was absurd to squander the food of the sick or the poor on the intemperance of the healthy. And what sort of law is this,
from seeing evil. For many of the so-called bishops, wishing to cut off the reasonable hatred directed at them on account of their own ways and their
First, that having melted down treasures he fashioned a silver object in the name of his son second, that having taken marbles from the entrance of t
love of money is a source of evils. For he who took bribes against the innocent and thought to sell the distribution of the Holy Spirit for silver,
Antoninus dies, with whom Eusebius had the lawsuit. Again a decree comes from Asia, this one from the clergy of the church of the Ephesians, and this
to buy the priesthood. They say that the ravager and falsely-named patriarch of the Jews changes the rulers of the synagogue every year, or even more
of those who deposed him and concluded the trial. <CHAPTER 19> {THE DEACON.} Forgive me, father, such things surpass drunkenness and madness and sport
ambidextrous (for even his so-called left hand was better than the right hand of others) who at first, having served in letters, was found blameles
slandering their life, waiting to have help from God. To these things Theodore, being astonished, said: {Ο ∆ΙΑΚ.} I see the facts as contrary to the n
Or is it proper at all to cast out any disciple, much less a monk? 100 {THE DEACON} Because they provoked him or spoke ill of him. {THE BISHOP} And ou
having led them back from vice to virtue, it will be clear that their persecutor deserves not to be persecuted, but to be pitied, as one who always ab
having provoked the physician and enchanter of souls and removed his interpreter from the workshop of salvation, 105 they were handed over to the phys
imitating him who, having found the one crushed by robbers, half-dead, on the way down to Jericho, placed him on his own beast of burden, having broug
did he give? And when Optimus died in Constantinople, he closed his eyes with his own hands. In addition to these things, he also refreshed in no smal
desiring to chasten the herd of men for their various desires towards the more austere part of life, he became his own judge and lawgiver, being stren
toward the north, and each man's axe in his hand and one man in the midst of them, clothed in a full-length robe, and a sapphire belt on his loins a
in many ways Who will boast that he has a pure heart? Or who will boldly claim to be pure from sin? but yet the blessed John did not know how to us
happen to us anonymously and beneficially? sifting the reasons, not obeying him who said: Eat whatever is sold in the meat-market, asking no question
two? {THE BISHOP} Especially if it is an unprofitable and charlatan crowd such as the one who said to Jesus: Teacher, I will follow you wherever you
an intemperate old man, and an old man who loves learning above an unlearned younger man, and a poor layman above an educated lover of money, and a vi
enjoying his disease nor raging with the same desires. For this is a fitting way of life for a teacher, not to linger with the crowds, but in quiet an
having subjected his body to shameful tortures by the cruelty of judges, to the point of knocking out his teeth, as the story goes, 127 they confined
knocking, they made the two-day journey into one, arriving late in the evening and departing in the dark of dawn, so that the stomach could not even k
and that these things are done and are prolonged and are strong, and that the good are afflicted and plundered, brings me to shudder at his approachin
Why shall I not be angry? looking upon me, marvel, and lay your hand upon your jaw. For if I remember, I am troubled, and pains take hold of my flesh.
when reviled, we bless when persecuted, we endure when slandered, we entreat we have become as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all thi
sleepless or troubled in sleep, he suspects plots even from his own family, not trusting even himself, distrusting everyone as liars. Being such a per
each other, for which it was also fitting, having learned something, did you not decide to be quiet and remain still by yourselves even for the future
to his father and to his mother, I have not seen you, and his brothers he did not acknowledge he guarded your oracles, and kept your covenant. He d
foot-soldiers' machinations for the hindering of those who travel for the truth). How then do they dare to say: By God's economy John has been cast o
to buy the priesthood. They say that the ravager and falsely-named patriarch of the Jews changes the rulers of the synagogue every year, or even more than once a year, for the collection of money, and likewise also his emulator, the patriarch of the Egyptians, so that the prophecy might be fulfilled: "Her priests answered for gifts, and her prophets 91 divined for money." Of all these things there are both records and the ones who judged. And the examination did not happen in one day, as Theophilus lied, but for two years. And those who were deposed were content, being freed from the coming judgment, so that one of them became a public defender of affairs; and in their places others, ever-children, were brought in, adorned in life and word. And the noble and contentious ones, after the exile of John, having taken what they took (for evil has no name, just as it has no substance), thrust back into the churches those who had been cast out four years before, and they drove out those who had been lawfully enthroned, to the scattering of the sheep of Christ. But the most ridiculous thing of all, or rather, worthy of lamentation, if you should hear it, most learned Theodore, "both your ears," according to the prophet, "will tingle," and you will weep for, being a lover of God, the maddened bishops, who with a darkened hand ravage the gifts of Christ. For the ordinations which those around Peter and John performed with fasting and prayer and testing of the clergy and fear, they on the contrary, with drunkenness and intoxication and wretched gifts, the abortions of men, who are worthy neither of irrational swine nor dogs, according to Job who prophesied about them from the person of the Savior: "Whom I did not consider worthy of the dogs of my flocks, who lived under brushwood." So then, those with mimes and Jews are entrusted with the secrets of the priesthood by the wise, as if they were friends of the Savior; because of whom the orthodox people flee the houses of prayer. For this new and most frivolous act of audacity has certainly reached even you of the church in Ephesus; for how could it not? -since it is by the sea and easily conveys rumors. For in the place— or rather into the place 92 of John who wrote the Gospel, who faithfully reclined on the breast of wisdom, about whom it is written: "Whom Jesus loved"; whom Timothy, the disciple of Paul, to whom the two Epistles of the apostle are addressed, succeeds— an "abomination of desolation" <is brought in>. For having ordained the eunuch of Victor the tribune, they enthroned him, and him who was enthroned by seventy bishops they are destroying in prison to this very day, a man who lived as a monk in the desert, trained in the encyclical studies, and who became versed in the divine Scriptures, and served as a deacon for three years. And would that the ordained eunuch had been trained in a venerable life, and the evil would have been half-evil; but now, an intestine of the earth, a slave to his belly, woman-crazy, reckless, a drunkard, a fornicator, bought with money, servile, a lover of money, condemned to iron from his very birth, unmanly, unwomanly, lust-crazed; (as I have often heard) having carried theatrical girls on his shoulders in satyric symposia, with his head crowned with ivy and a mixing bowl grasped in his hand, he served wine in the guise of the mythical Dionysus. And he did all these things not before his initiation into Christ, but after his enlightenment; who intimates through these things that he does not even believe in the resurrection. For having undermined the foundation of the resurrection, how can he believe in it? But he who does not believe in the resurrection, how can he become a preacher of the resurrection, according to him who said: "And how shall they preach, unless they believe?" He is made temperate unrewarded by iron, but he rages fruitlessly because of his own baseness. These are the things that have happened in Asia, about which you asked, on account of Theophilus having written that John 93 had deposed sixteen bishops. Therefore know in truth that they are six. Of these there are also the records preserved among us with the signature of the twenty-two bishops who heard the beginning and of the seventy who
ἀγοράζειν τὴν ἱερωσύνην. φασὶ δὲ τὸν λυμεῶνα καὶ ψευδώνυμον πατριάρχην τῶν Ἰουδαίων κατ' ἔτος ἀμείβειν, ἢ καὶ παρ' ἔτος, τοὺς
ἀρχισυναγώγους ἐπὶ συλλογῇ τοῦ ἀργυρίου, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὸν ζηλωτὴν τούτου τῶν Αἰγυπτίων πατριάρχην, ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ προφητικόν·
"Οἱ ἱερεῖς αὐτῆς μετὰ δώρων ἀπεκρίνοντο, καὶ οἱ προφῆται αὐτῆς 91 μετὰ ἀργυρίου ἐμαντεύοντο." τούτων πάντων ἐστὶ καὶ ὑπομνή
ματα καὶ οἱ κρίναντες. καὶ οὐκ εἰς μίαν ἡμέραν γεγένηται, ὡς ἐψεύσατο ὁ Θεόφιλος, ἡ ἐξέτασις, ἀλλ' ἐπὶ δύο ἔτη. καὶ ἔστερξαν
οἱ καθαιρεθέντες, τῆς μελλούσης κρίσεως ἐλευθερωθέντες, ὡς τὸν ἕνα ἐξ αὐτῶν ἔκδικον δημοσίων γενέσθαι πραγμάτων· καὶ εἰς τοὺς
τόπους αὐτῶν ἕτεροι ἀείπαιδες ἀντεισήχθησαν, βίῳ καὶ λόγῳ κεκοσμημένοι. καὶ οἱ γεννάδες καὶ φιλόνεικοι μετὰ τὴν Ἰωάννου ἐξορίαν
λαβόντες ὃ ἔλαβον (οὐ γὰρ ἔχει ὄνομα ἡ κακία, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ οὐσίαν), τοὺς μὲν πρὸ τετραετίας ῥιφέντας πάλιν εἰσέφρησαν εἰς τὰς
ἐκκλησίας, τοὺς δὲ ἐνθέσμως ἐνθρο νισθέντας ἐξέωσαν ἐπὶ σκορπισμῷ τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ προβάτων. τὸ μέντοι γελοιωδέστατον πάντων,
μᾶλλον δὲ θρήνου ἄξιον, ἐὰν ἀκούσῃς, Θεόδωρε φιλομαθέστατε, "Ἠχήσει μέν σου," κατὰ τὸν προφήτην, "ἀμφότερα τὰ ὦτα," ἀποκλαύσεις
δέ, φιλόθεος ὤν, τοὺς μαινομένους τῶν ἐπισκόπων, ἐσκοτισμένῃ χειρὶ λυμαι νομένους τὰς δωρεὰς τοῦ Χριστοῦ. ἃς γὰρ μετὰ νηστείας
καὶ δεήσεως καὶ δοκιμασίας κλήρου καὶ φόβου οἱ περὶ Πέτρον καὶ Ἰωάννην ἐποίουν χειροτονίας, αὐτοὶ τὸ ἐναντίον μετὰ κραιπάλης
καὶ μέθης καὶ δώρων οἰκτρῶν τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐκτρώματα, ἃ μήτε χοίρων ἀλόγων ἢ κυνῶν ἄξια, κατὰ τὸν προφητεύσαντα περὶ αὐτῶν
Ἰὼβ ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ Σωτῆρος· "Οὓς οὐχ ἡγη σάμην ἀξίους κυνῶν τῶν ἐμῶν νομάδων, οἱ ὑπὸ φρύγανα διῃ τῶντο." οἱ τοίνυν μετὰ μιμάδων
καὶ Ἰουδαίων, ὡς φίλοι τοῦ Σωτῆρος, παρὰ τῶν σοφῶν τὰ ἀπόῤῥητα τῆς ἱερωσύνης κατα πιστεύονται· δι' οὓς καὶ τοὺς εὐκτηρίους
οἴκους φεύγουσιν οἱ λαοὶ τῶν ὀρθοδόξων. ἔφθασεν γὰρ πάντως τὸ καινὸν καὶ κουφω δέστατον τοῦ τολμήματος καὶ μέχρις ὑμῶν τῆς
κατὰ Ἔφεσον ἐκκλησίας· πῶς γὰρ οὔ; -παραθαλασσίας οὔσης καὶ ῥᾳδίως διαπορθμευούσης τὰς φήμας. εἰς τὸν τόπον γάρ- μᾶλλον δὲ
εἰς 92 τὸν Ἰωάννου τοῦ τὸ Εὐαγγέλιον γράψαντος, τοῦ εἰς τὸ τῆς σοφίας στῆθος πιστῶς ἐπαναπεσόντος, περὶ οὗ γέγραπται· "Ον
ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς"· ὃν Τιμόθεος, ὁ Παύλου μαθητής, πρὸς ὃν αἱ δύο φέρονται τοῦ ἀποστόλου Ἐπιστολαί, διαδέχεται- "βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως"
<ἀντεισάγεται>. χειροτονήσαντες γὰρ τὸν Βίκτορος τοῦ τριβούνου εὐνοῦχον ἐνεθρόνισαν, καὶ τὸν ὑπὸ ἑβδομήκοντα ἐπισκόπων ἐνθρονισθέντα
ἐν εἱρκτῇ δαπανῶντες μέχρι τῆς δεῦρο, ἄνδρα μονάσαντα ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, ἀπὸ ἐγκυκλίων ἠγμένον μαθημάτων, καὶ τῶν θείων Γραφῶν ἐντὸς
γενόμενον, καὶ διακονήσαντα ἔτη τρία. καὶ εἴθε ὁ χειροτονηθεὶς εὐνοῦχος διὰ βίου σεμνοῦ ἦν ἠγμένος, καὶ ἡμίκακον ἦν τὸ κακόν·
νυνὶ δέ, γῆς ἔντερον, γαστρίδουλον, θηλυμανές, ἰταμόν, μέθυσον, πορνοκόπον, ἀργυρώνητον, ἀνελεύθερον, φιλάργυρον, πρὸς αὐτῇ
τῇ γενέσει σιδηροκατάδικον, ἄνανδρον, ἄθηλυ, ἐπιμανές· (καθὼς ἤκουσα πολλάκις) τὰ θεατρικὰ κοράσια ἐπ' ὤμων βαστάσαντα ἐν
σατυρικοῖς συμποσίοις, κισσῷ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐστεμμένον καὶ κρατῆρα ἐν τῇ χειρὶ ἐνημμένον οἰνοχοηκέναι ἐν προσχήματι τοῦ μυθικοῦ
∆ιονύσου. ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἔπραξεν οὐ πρὸ τῆς εἰς Χριστὸν μυσταγωγίας, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τὸ φώτισμα· ὃς αἰνίσ σεται διὰ τούτων μηδὲ
τῇ ἀναστάσει πιστεύειν. τῆς γὰρ ἀναστάσεως τὸν θεμέλιον σαθρώσας, πῶς οὗτος ἐπὶ ταύτῃ πιστεύει; ὁ δὲ μὴ πιστεύων τῇ ἀναστάσει,
πῶς κήρυξ γένηται τῆς ἀναστάσεως, κατὰ τὸν εἰπόντα· "Πῶς δὲ κηρύξωσιν, ἐὰν μὴ πιστεύσωσιν;" οὗτος σωφρονεῖ μὲν ἄμισθα διὰ
σιδήρου, μαίνεται δὲ ἄκαρπα δι' οἰκείαν αἰσχρότητα. ταῦτα δέ ἐστι τὰ κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν γεγενημένα, περὶ ὧν ἐπηρώτησας, διὰ τὸν
γράψαντα Θεόφιλον δέκα ἓξ ἐπισκόπους καθῃρηκέναι τὸν 93 Ἰωάννην. ἔσο οὖν εἰδὼς ἐπὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, ὅτι ἕξ εἰσι. τούτων ἐστὶ
καὶ τὰ ὑπομνήματα σωζόμενα παρ' ἡμῖν μετὰ ὑπογραφῆς τῶν εἴκοσι δύο ἐπισκόπων τῶν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀκουσάντων καὶ τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα
τῶν
