Eastern emperor Arcadius has refused to condemn Judaism, believing that it is a legitimate religion, and issues decrees pointing out that no law prohibits the Jewish faith, and that Jewish assemblies are not to be suppressed nor synagogues despoiled or destroyed by zealous Christians.
One John—later called Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth, after his eloquent preaching style, larded with virulent anti-Jewish sentiments—born to Christian parents and educated in rhetoric, and later in theology by Diodore of Tarsus, follows a call to the monastic life.
Practicing, at home, an asceticism so rigorous as to damage his health, he retreats to a mountainous area.
Eventually returning to Antioch, he had been ordained a deacon in 381 at about age 35.
In 386, John had received ordination as a priest from his bishop, Flavian, who had appointed him to preach.
A fierce opponent of Judaism who disseminates his views through violent writings and preaching, Chrysostom considers the killing of Jews a meritorious act.
The ascetic priest is consecrated as patriarch of Constantinople in 398.
Together with Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom is credited with the formulation of anti-Jewish doctrines in the Eastern Church.
He writes several homilies on Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Matthew, John, Romans, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.
Chrysostom sermonizes “the Jews sacrifice their children to Satan.
They are worse than wild beasts…lower than the vilest animals… …Their religion is a sickness…God always hated the Jews.
It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.” The synagogue, he tells his congregations, is “worse than a brothel”; it is “a criminal assembly of Jews…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils.” The Jews “know only one thing, to satisfy their stomachs, to get drunk, to kill and beat each other up like stage villains and coachmen.” Chrysostom admonishes Christians never to associate with these “lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious robbers…this nation of assassins and hangmen!” (Parenti, Michael, History as Mystery (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1999, pp.
105-106)
