• John, surnamed from his eloquence Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth, was born in Antioch, about the year 344. He was first a lawyer, then a monk, next a popular preacher, and finally metropolitan Bishop of Constantinople. His whole life, from his boyhood in Antioch to his death in banishment on the borders of the Black Sea⁠—his austerities as a monk, his fame as a preacher, his troubles as Bishop of Constantinople, his controversy with Theophilus of Alexandria, his exile by the Emperor Arcadius and the earthquake that followed it, his triumphant return, his second banishment, and his death⁠—is more like a romance than a narrative of facts. “The monuments of that eloquence,” says Gibbon, Decline and Fall , Ch. XXXII , “which was admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have been carefully preserved; and the possession of near one thou sand sermons or homilies has authorized the critics of succeeding times to appreciate the genuine merit of Chrysostom.