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St Photius the Great, tr. Freese, 1920; selections
86. Codex 86: Chrysostom, Letters
Read the Letters written by the holy Father St. John Chrysostom to different people after his unjust and inhuman banishment. The most useful of them are the seventeen addressed to the pious deaconess Olympias,1 and those to Innocent,2 pope of Rome, in which he relates all that had happened to him, as far as he was able to do so in the form of letters. These letters are characteristic of the man. The style is brilliant, clear, persuasive, somewhat florid, and agreeable. The letters to Olympias, however, seem to have been written with greater care; the importance of the matters discussed, to which the epistolary style is not adapted, necessitates a corresponding dignity of composition.
Notes
- O. the younger (c. 368-before 420), deaconess of Constantinople. After Chrysostom’s final expulsion, she seems to have left the city, and to have led a wandering life, being subjected to much persecution on account of her friendship with him.
- Innocent I, bishop of Rome (402-417).