Late antiquity (4th–5th century)
Feast: September 13
The preacher so electrifying they called him 'Golden Mouth' — who was exiled twice for telling the empress she was acting like Jezebel.
They nicknamed him Chrysostomos — Golden Mouth — and the name stuck for sixteen centuries. John was a priest in Antioch who preached extemporaneously, without notes, for over an hour, and people took shorthand transcripts because they could not bear to lose a word. When he was made Archbishop of Constantinople in 398 AD, the court expected a chaplain. They got a prophet. He sold the episcopal silver and gave the money to hospitals. He told the rich they were robbing the poor by keeping what they did not need. He compared Empress Eudoxia to Jezebel and Herodias — publicly. She exiled him. The pope brought him back. He compared her again. She exiled him again, this time to the edge of the empire in Armenia. Soldiers force-marched him through heat and rain. He died on the road in 407 AD, his last words reportedly: 'Glory to God for all things.' His homilies on Matthew, John, Romans, and nearly every book of the Bible survive — over seven hundred sermons — and they are still assigned in seminaries. He wrote that the true altar is the poor person in the street, and if you decorate the altar in church while ignoring the altar outside, God is not impressed. The Eastern liturgy most commonly celebrated today bears his name.