Secdocument 798

The Reception of John Chrysostom in
Early Modern Europe: Translating and

Reading a Greek Church Father from
1417 to 1624 Kennerley
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Sam Kennerley
The Reception of John Chrysostom in Early Modern Europe
Arbeiten zur
Kirchengeschichte
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Karl Holl † and Hans Lietzmann †
Edited by
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and Christopher Ocker
Volume 157
Sam Kennerley
The Reception of John
Chrysostom in Early
Modern Europe
Translating and Reading a Greek Church Father

from 1417 to 1624
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To my teachers
Tim Greenwood
Emily Michelson
Vicky Janssens
Scott Mandelbrote
Roberto Carfagni
Pedro Emilio Rivera Díaz
Magistris Academiae Vivarii Novi
Contents
Abbreviations XI
Part 1: Introduction
1 Introduction 3
Part 2: From late antiquity to the Italian Renaissance
1 The transmission and translation of Chrysostom during late

antiquity the Middle Ages 11
1.1 A potted biography of John Chrysostom 11
1.2 From the fourth to the sixth century: The earliest period
of reception 12
1.3 From the sixth to the ninth century: The oldest manuscripts
of Chrysostom 21
1.4 From the ninth to the eleventh century: The reception
of Chrysostom in Byzantium during the ‘Macedonian
Renaissance’ 26
1.5 From the twelfth to the fifteenth century: The ‘twelfth-century
Renaissance’ and after 29
1.6 Conclusion: The state of affairs up to 1417 34
2 Ambrogio Traversari: Translating Chrysostom in early Renaissance

Florence 36
2.1 Ambrogio Traversari’s translations of Chrysostom 36
2.2 Traversari and contemporary Byzantine scholarship 44
3 John Chrysostom in late Byzantine and post-Byzantine patristic

scholarship 47
3.1 Chrysostom in Byzantine patristic scholarship at Council
of Ferrara-Florence 47
3.2 Chrysostom and the consensus of the Fathers in the Greek
world after the Council of Ferrara-Florence 54
VIII Contents
4 Translations of John Chrysostom in Renaissance Rome from Nicholas V

(1447–1455) to Sixtus IV (1471–1484) 62
4.1 The foundation of the Vatican Library, and its collection
of Greek manuscripts of Chrysostom 62
4.2 Two Greek translators of John Chrysostom: George
of Trebizond and Theodore Gaza 65
4.3 Translations of Chrysostom by Latin scholars, 1450–1484.
1: Pietro Balbi 76
2: Francesco Griffolini 82
3: Tortelli, Lippi, Brenta, Persona, Valentini, Lando, and
Selling 93
4.6 Reading Chrysostom in the Italian Renaissance: The example
of Jean Jouffroy 96
5 The first printed editions of John Chrysostom, c.1466–1504 105

5.1 Incunabula editions of Chrysostom 105
5.2 The first Opera omnia: 1503 (Venice) and 1504 (Basel) 111
Part 3: The politics of patristic scholarship in Reformation

Basel: Erasmus, his friends, and their enemies
1 New texts, new questions, and a new interpretation of Paul 121
2 The politics of patristic scholarship in Reformation Basel 131
3 Erasmus in exile: The 1530 and 1536 Opera omnia 151
4 Erasmus’s Life of John Chrysostom 163

4.1 Chrysostomus alter Paulus 163
4.2 The study of spuria 175
Contents IX
Part 4: Patristic scholarship in an age

of confessionalisation
1 Confessionalisation and scholarship: Setting the scene 185
2 Testing and ignoring confessionalisation in Brescia, Basel,

and Paris: 1536–1547 188
2.1 Experiments in confessionalisation in editions printed
between 1536 and 1539 188
2.2 A confessional or commercial rivalry? The Opera omnia of
Paris (1543) and Basel (1547) 193
3 An Italian interlude: 1548–1554 202
4 A rivalry renewed: The Opera omnia of 1556 (Paris), 1558 (Basel),

and 1570 (Paris) 214
5 Censoring and translating Chrysostom in Italy, the Low Countries,

and France, 1571–1585 228
5.1 The place of the Church Fathers in the Roman index between
the death of Marcello Cervini (1555) and the establishment of
the Congregation of the Index (1571) 228
5.2 Suppressing and supporting scholarship in Bologna and
Antwerp 235
5.3 Plans for a Roman Opera omnia of Chrysostom 240
5.4 Jacques de Billy and the 1581 Paris Opera omnia 245
5.5 Assessing the impact of confessionalisation and censorship
on patristics between 1571 and 1585 249
6 Education, collaboration, and confession: 1585–1624 252

6.1 Education and confession: Printing Chrysostom for the
classroom 252
6.2 Collaboration and confession. 1: Jérôme Commelin and his
successors 259
6.3 Collaboration and confession. 2: Henry Savile’s early plans
for a Greek edition of Chrysostom, and the response of
Fronton du Duc 266
X Contents
6.4 Collaboration and confession. 3: Henry Savile completes his

edition, with help from Fronton du Duc 272
6.5 Conclusion 278
Part 5: General conclusion
General conclusion 283

1 Expansion, change, or development? 283
2 Why the early modern reception of Chrysostom still matters.
1: The ongoing significance of early modern editions to the
Greek text of Chrysostom 285
2: Latin is Chrysostom’s second language 286
3: Losses since the early modern period 288
4: No one edition can answer every question 289
Bibliography 291
Images 317
Indices 319
Abbreviations
Allen, Opus epistolarum Erasmus, Desiderius. Opus epistolarum, edited by Percy S. Allen,
Helen M. Allen, and Heathcote W. Garrod. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1906–1958. Citation by the number of the letter in this
edition.
Barb.lat. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb.lat.
BnF Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France
BuA Staehelin, Ernst, ed. Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads.
Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1927–1934.
CC Florence: Archivio di Stato, Carte Cerviniane
CCG Codices Chrysostomici graeci (Paris: Les Éditions du CERF, 1968-)
Contemporaries Bietenholz, Peter G. and Thomas D. Deutscher, eds.
Contemporaries of Erasmus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1985–1987.
CT Concilium Tridentium. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum,
Tractatuum noua collectio. Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder,
1901–2001.
CWE Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1974-)
D&S Concilium Florentinum, documenta et scriptores. Rome:
Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1940–1977.
ILI Bujanda, José M. et al. Index des livres interdits. Sherbrooke:
Centre d’études de la Renaissance, 1984–2002.
Monac.gr. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.graec.
PG Patrologia graeca (Paris: Migne, 1857–1866)
PL Patrologia latina (Paris: Migne, 1841–1865)
Pal.gr. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal.gr.
Reg.lat. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg.lat.
SC Sources chrétiennes
Urb.gr. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.gr.
Urb.lat. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.lat.
USTC Universal Short Title Catalogue, accessible online at
https://www.ustc.ac.uk/
Vat.gr. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.gr.
Vat.lat. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.lat.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110708905-203
Part 1: Introduction
1 Introduction
The following book explores when, how, why, and by whom one of the most
influential Fathers of the Greek Church was translated and read at a particu-
larly significant moment in the reception of his works. It has been written with
two audiences in mind. On one hand, this book is addressed to researchers of
the history and literature of late antiquity, such as editors of patristic texts and
their readers. On the other, it is directed at historians of the early modern pe-
riod, in particular historians of translation, ideas, and scholarship. The inter-
ests of these audiences often overlap, but their historiography and research
questions are different enough to warrant treating them separately in this
Introduction.
To the first, this book aims to provide an overall account of the textual
transmission of works by or attributed to Chrysostom during the early modern
period. I am not the first person to attempt this mammoth task. This book
would have been infinitely poorer without the work of scholars from Dom
Morin to Wendy Mayer, who have examined specific aspects of the reception of
Chrysostom using early modern sources. However, the go-to study for a general
account of the transmission of Chrysostom’s works is still Baur’s S. Jean Chrys-
ostome et ses oeuvres dans la histoire littéraire, which was first published in
1907.1 That a work printed over one hundred years ago is still in regular use is
testament to its quality. In particular, Baur’s survey of vernacular translations
will remain useful, as it covers a theme that will not be treated here. The follow-
ing book will focus on Greek and Latin, as that is one area in which Baur’s re-
search can be greatly expanded and updated. His history of editions in Greek
and Latin printed during the entire period covered by this book amounts to just
six pages, for example.2 Reference works that are now fundamental to patristic
studies, such as the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, also appeared long after Baur’s
book, as did the studies of specific aspects of the reception of Chrysostom that
were noted above.
As a result, it is hoped that scholars of late antiquity will particularly bene-
fit from the bibliographical information contained in this book. Such readers
may find here manuscripts and editions of Chrysostom that they were previ-
ously unaware of, or whose history required elucidation. This may be especially
true for Latin translations of Chrysostom that can only be found in manuscript,
 Chrysostomus Baur, S. Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres dans l’histoire littéraire (Louvain: Bu-
reaux du Recueil, 1907).
 Baur, Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres, 82–8.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110708905-001
4 1 Introduction
some of which, such as those of Ambrogio Traversari, might be of interest to

modern critics due to their use of now-lost Greek manuscripts. The same audi-
ence may also wish to pay special attention to Part 3 and the Conclusion of this
book, as they trace the development of the early modern editions that provide
much of the Latin and Greek text of Chrysostom that we read today.
To facilitate the use of this book as a reference volume, I have keyed in the
works of Chrysostom to the Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG), and editions to the
online database the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC). Paolo Sachet is creating
a online database dedicated to the reception of the Church Fathers (“AGAPE”)
which will collect and describe patristic editions printed between 1450 and 1600,
but I have not otherwise referred to this resource as it had yet to be launched
when I completed work on this book. No equivalent database exists for manu-
scripts of the Church Fathers, whose shelfmarks I have however cited in full, or
shortened in the manner described in the ‘Abbreviations’ page above. By referring
to the indices of this book, a reader interested in a particular text should therefore
be able to gain a sense of its transmission between the fifteenth and the seven-
teenth century, or at the very least to find the early modern manuscripts and edi-
tions that would allow them to acquire that sense themselves.
The bibliographical side of this book answers the questions ‘when’ and ‘by
whom’. But researchers of the history and literature of late antiquity may also
be interested in ‘how’ and ‘why’ certain texts of Chrysostom were translated
and read between 1417 and 1624, topics that I expect to be of most significance
to historians of the early modern period as well. Explaining how I have ad-
dressed these questions requires a closer study of the contents of this book.
The first Chapter of Part 2 of this book offers a rapid overview of the transmis-
sion of Chrysostom’s works in Latin and Greek during late antiquity and the Mid-
dle Ages, before our analysis moves on to the translation and reading of this
Church Father from the fifteenth to the early sixteenth century. Chapter 2 studies
the first translator of Chrysostom into Latin during the fifteenth-century, Ambrogio
Traversari, tracing his translations of Chrysostom back to his monastic vocation
and papal legislation about the Jews. An attempt to identify Traversari’s Greek ex-
emplar for his version of many of Chrysostom’s homilies of Paul is followed by a
study of his knowledge of patristic scholarship in the Byzantine Empire, not least
during his attendance at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, where Greek and Latin
prelates met to discuss a union of the Churches between June 1438 and July 1439.
The debates at this council take centre stage for the third chapter of Part 2, which
finds that they show a meaningful exchange of patristic scholarship between
Greeks and Latins, in particular over patristic consensus, and Chrysostom’s status
as the authoritative interpreter of Paul. This third chapter concludes by exploring
how pro-unionist writers such as Mammas, Plousiadenos, and Bessarion sought to
1 Introduction 5
convince their Byzantine readers that Rome, not Constantinople, was the true heir
to the Church of Greek Fathers like Chrysostom.
Greek interpreters retain their prominence in the fourth chapter of Part 2,
which follows the collection and translation of Greek manuscripts of Chrysos-
tom in Rome from the reign of Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) to that of Pope Six-
tus IV (1471–1484). Key here are two Byzantine scholars, George of Trebizond
and Theodore Gaza, who are now best known for their acrimonious dispute
about the correct manner to translate Aristotle into Latin. By contrast, this
chapter shows that they largely agreed on the translation of Chrysostom, an ap-
parent contradiction that highlights the importance of theories of rhetoric to
the practice of Latin translation during the early modern period. This study of
Renaissance practices of translation continues into an analysis of the work of
Latin scholars like Pietro Balbi and Francesco Griffolini. Following their trans-
lations through different stages of development, it argues that these translators
progressively ‘polished’ away any trace of their Greek exemplars to produce
ever more Latinate pieces of oratory. The rhetorical and moral interest in Chrys-
ostom implied by these translations is then shown to be consistent with how he
was read by the Burgundian cardinal and bibliophile Jean Jouffroy.
Most of the research for these chapters was conducted on manuscripts,
some of which have yet to feature in any account of the reception of Chrysos-
tom. However, the fifth chapter of Part 2 adds printed books to the mix. It fol-
lows how new translations of Chrysostom travelled from the scriptoria of Rome
to the presses of the Rhineland, but observes that early buyers of printed books
apparently preferred to read the penitential and exegetical works that had been
popular during late antiquity and Middle Ages. Next, this chapter shows that
the printing of translations of Chrysostom was anything but a straightforward
reproduction of manuscript exemplars. It highlights examples of deliberate edi-
torial intervention in early editions of Chrysostom, especially in the first col-
lected works of this Church Father printed in 1503 and 1504.
Part 2 of this book studies editors and translators who are no longer house-
hold names. By contrast, Part 3 concentrates on a much better-known figure,
Desiderius Erasmus, as well as on his friends and enemies. Chapter 1 outlines
the history and motivations of Erasmus’s early work on Chrysostom. It argues
that Erasmus’s collection of Greek manuscripts of Chrysostom led him to en-
gage with this Church Father’s analysis of Paul, and ultimately to elevate Chrys-
ostom above Augustine as an interpreter of the Apostle on key theological
issues of the Reformation. The impact of the Reformation on early modern pa-
tristics is further pursued in Chapter 2, which explores how Erasmus collabo-
rated with other Catholic editors of Chrysostom in order to undermine the leader of
the Protestant Reformation in Basel, Johannes Oecolampadius. Erasmus emerges
6 1 Introduction
from this chapter as less irenic than he has often been portrayed, a revision of his
legacy that is achieved by analysis of the deliberate revisions that he made to his
correspondence.
Further re-reading of Erasmus’s correspondence is proposed in Chapter 3,
which studies the Opera omnia of Chrysostom printed at Basel in 1530. Erasmus’s
letters suggest that he was in overall command of this edition, and that he per-
mitted Oecolampadius to participate in it out of a lack of other options. But an
alternative approach to this material suggests that Oecolampadius was the lead-
ing figure in the creation of the 1530 Opera omnia, and that he produced an
overtly Protestant edition of Chrysostom that Erasmus and his friends attempted
to supplant with a Catholic alternative six years later. Chapter 4 evaluates Eras-
mus’s main contribution to this 1536 edition, his Life of John Chrysostom. It con-
cludes that while recent historiography is correct to challenge whether Erasmus’s
biographies of the Latin Fathers were as revolutionary as has often been claimed,
the sources and content of his Life of Chrysostom mark a genuine departure from
late antique and medieval accounts of this Church Father.
A reader of these chapters will come away with an Erasmus who was more
closely involved in confessional polemic against Protestantism than has so far
been believed. The interaction between religious confession and patristic schol-
arship raised by these chapters is further explored in Part 4 of this book. After a
short first chapter reviewing recent historiography on this topic, Chapter 2 ar-
gues that editions of Chrysostom printed between 1536 and 1547 invert or chal-
lenge confessional explanations of early modern patristic scholarship. We find
Benedictine monks using Chrysostom to question scholastic theology, and Prot-
estant theologians faithfully translating patristic homilies in favour of the inter-
cession of the saints. Indeed, while this chapter shows that editors in Catholic
Paris and Protestant Basel constantly sought to outdo one another, it finds that
this competition, and the alterations to the text of Chrysostom that it encour-
aged, can be best explained by a commercial rather than religious rivalry be-
tween these cities. A rather different impression is gained from translations of
Chrysostom planned or printed in Italy between 1548 and 1554, which are stud-
ied in Chapter 3. This chapter shows that these and other translations of the
Church Fathers were supported by Cardinal Marcello Cervini, and that Cervini
bankrolled such works in order to use them in refutations of Protestant doctrine
at the Council of Trent. The history of these translations therefore suggests that
confessionalisation could be a productive as well as a repressive force in early
modern scholarship.
Crossing back over the Alps, Chapter 4 returns to the rivalry between the
presses of Paris and Basel, studying Opera omnia of Chrysostom printed there be-
tween 1554 and 1570. This chapter shows that the royal library at Fontainebleau
1 Introduction 7
began to be exploited by French editors of Chrysostom in the 1550s, resulting in

significant alterations to the received text of Chrysostom in the 1554 Opera omnia
printed in Paris. The thorough editing evident in the 1554 Opera omnia is then
contrasted with others printed in Basel and in Paris in 1558 and 1570, whose
modest revision of the text of Chrysostom is traced in the first instance to a de-
cline in editorial standards at the Froben press, and in the second to the outbreak
of religious warfare in France. Chapter 5 refines the conclusions of Chapter 3,
highlighting a wealth of translations and editions of Chrysostom that were
planned under the supervision of the Congregation of the Index between 1571
and 1585, and arguing that their difficult transmission history indicates that
confessionalisation could suppress as well as stimulate scholarship on the
Church Fathers.
The final main chapter of this book extends the study of confession and pa-
tristic scholarship down to 1624. It argues that religious confession informed
editions of Chrysostom printed for use in schools, but proposes at the same
time that this fact should not obscure other interpretations offered by these
sources. It then explores the landmark editions of Chrysostom edited by Jérôme
Commelin in Heidelberg, Henry Savile in Eton, and Fronton du Duc in Paris,
contrasting the evidence of religious confession in these editions with the inter-
confessional collaboration on which they depended for their existence. A short
Conclusion connects early modern and modern editions of Chrysostom, demon-
strating the lasting impact of Renaissance and Reformation scholarship on
studies of this Church Father today.
Completing this account of a two-hundred year long period in the reception
of one of the most widely-read and commonly-translated authors in the Greek
language has taken enough time for me to acquire numerous debts. This book
began life as an AHRC-funded PhD thesis written at the University of Cambridge
under the supervision of Scott Mandelbrote, to whom I owe more than he proba-
bly knows. Very little of that thesis remains in the following book, except for in
the chapters about Erasmus. I reviewed those chapters and wrote most of Part 2
as a Research Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge (2017–2020), and wrote Part 4,
the first chapter of Part 2, and the Conclusion as Hannah Seeger Davis Research
Fellow at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton (2020–2022). I
added the finishing touches while in receipt of a Carl Friedrich von Siemens Re-
search Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität in Munich. I gladly express my thanks to these bodies
and institutions for making my research possible.
Of course, I have also acquired many debts to friends and colleagues in the
meantime. A special thanks go to Andreas Ammann, Pierre Augustin, Guil-
laume Bady, Scott Mandelbrote, and Jean-Louis Quantin, who all kindly read
8 1 Introduction
draft chapters of this book. In dedicating this study to my teachers, I hope that
it will go some way to justifying the time that they spent on me, even though I
am sure that it will contain many mistakes for which I alone am to blame. I can
only beg the reader’s indulgence for such errors, quoting with Fronton du Duc:
μήδεν ἁμαρτεῖν ἐστί θεῶν καὶ πάντα κατορθοῦν.
Part 2: From late antiquity to the Italian
Renaissance
1 The transmission and translation
of Chrysostom during late antiquity
the Middle Ages
1.1 A potted biography of John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom was born around 350AD in Antioch, a city in the Greek-
speaking east of the Roman Empire. Very little remains of this site, which is lo-
cated close to the modern town of Antakya in south-east Turkey. But when
John was born, Antioch was an old, large and prosperous settlement with con-
siderable religious diversity, where Jews and pagans rubbed shoulders with
Christians loyal to one of the city’s competing bishops. John’s mother, Anthusa,
was a Christian, while his father Secundus served on the staff of the Roman mil-
itary commander for the east, the magister militum per Orientem. As was com-
mon for someone of his social standing, John received an education designed
to equip him for a future in the civil service or the law courts. However, shortly
after completing his education, John was baptised by Meletius, the pro-Nicene
bishop of Antioch, through this rite marking his intention to pursue a career in
the Church. John served on Meletius’s staff and was appointed lector among his
clergy, at the same time attending a school of asceticism run by Diodore of Tar-
sus. John then left Antioch to pursue further ascetic studies under the tutelage
of an aged Syrian hermit, in the process learning the Old and New Testament
by heart. Having returned to Antioch, John progressed through the clerical or-
ders. He was appointed deacon, and was then ordained a priest in 386 by Mele-
tius’s successor, Flavian. He spent the next 11 years preaching and writing in
Antioch. The eloquence of his homilies and tracts would earn John the nick-
name of ‘Chrysostom’, or ‘the golden mouth’, a title attested in Greek as early
as the fifth century, and in Latin in the mid-sixth century.1
John’s life changed in the winter of 397. On 26 September of that year, Patri-
arch Nectarius of Constantinople died, and John was appointed as his successor
in somewhat mysterious circumstances. John was thereafter embroiled in the
arduous demands faced by the bishop of a city that was not only the capital of
the Eastern Roman Empire, but that had become the second see after Rome in
 Wendy Mayer, “John Chrysostom,” The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics, ed. Ken
Parry (Oxford: Wiley, 2015), 141; Guillaume Bady, “En quête des premières attestations du sur-
nom ‘Chrysostome’,” in Studia Patristica, vol. 114, ed. Markus Vinzent, Guillaume Bady, and
Catherine Broc-Schmezer (Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 143–59.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110708905-002
12 1 Late antiquity and the Middle Ages
381. He spent his early years in Constantinople preaching, combatting heresies

such as Arianism, quelling civil disturbances, and negotiating the release of
high-ranking officials who had been taken prisoner by the Goths. However,
matters turned for the worse in 402. In that year, while John was away to ad-
minister ecclesiastical discipline in Asia Minor, his replacement Severian of Ga-
bala seized the opportunity to win over sections of the metropolitan nobility
and clergy who were unhappy with his rule. This internal crisis was com-
pounded by John’s indecisiveness over a group of Egyptian monks who had
fled to Constantinople after the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, had ac-
cused them of following the heresies of Origen. In 403, John was therefore
called before a synod packed with hostile bishops, accused of a medley of
charges like violence, financial irregularity, and moral corruption. He refused
to attend and was deposed, but rioting in Constantinople persuaded the impe-
rial authorities to order his recall. His return was however short-lived. An out-
break of violence between his supporters and imperial troops prompted the
authorities to send John into exile for a second time on 20 June 404. Placed
under military escort, John was dispatched to the furthest reaches of the em-
pire, dying in 407 while on a journey to the small town of Pityus on the eastern
shore of the Black Sea.2
1.2 From the fourth to the sixth century: The earliest period
of reception
Over 800 sermons, 200 letters, and a handful of tracts survive that are currently
attributed to Chrysostom. This mountain of literature is just a fraction of what
he likely preached or wrote, but the gap left by these losses has been filled by a
vast number of works that for centuries falsely circulated under his name.3
John Chrysostom is indeed the best-attested of any Greek author. His authentic
works alone can be found in about one in every eight Greek manuscripts that
are extant today.4
 Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, John Chrysostom (London: Routledge, 2000), 3–11; summa-
rising and correcting John N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The story of John Chrysostom – ascetic,
preacher, bishop (London: Duckworth, 1995).
 Mayer, “John Chrysostom,” 141–4.
 Guillaume Bady, “Les manuscrits grecs des œuvres de Jean Chrysostome d’après la base de
données Pinakes et les Codices chrysostomici graeci VII : Codicum Parisinorum pars prior,” Eru-
ditio Antiqua 4 (2012): 67.
1.2 From the fourth to the sixth century: The earliest period of reception 13
As we will see later, such prominence is often achieved by authors who

controlled the content and distribution of their works.5 A predictable lack of
manuscripts surviving from Chrysostom’s pen makes it more difficult to be cer-
tain about the shape of his works during his lifetime, or about his control over
the dissemination of them. However, Chrysostom may have had the opportu-
nity to manage the transmission of at least some of his writings. For example, it
is possible that his letters have come down to us from a private archive of corre-
spondence, such as scholars and public figures of his time typically kept.6 We
might also imagine that John ensured that the longer tracts that he probably
wrote for private reading were copied down, and made available for others to
transcribe. The earliest evidence for the reception of Chrysostom indeed comes
from a reader of just such a tract. In 392, Jerome noted in his De viris illustribus
that he had read Chrysostom’s De sacerodotio. Since De sacerdotio had been
written around 388–390, it appears that Jerome had access to a manuscript of
this work in Bethlehem just a few years after its composition in Antioch.7
If Chrysostom’s letters and tracts may have been curated by their author,
the opposite conclusion can be reached about his homilies on Scripture. For
long it was assumed that Chrysostom delivered these homilies in the polished
form and order in which they are found in most manuscripts and printed edi-
tions. However, since the middle of the last century it has become clear that
these homilies are known to us through notes jotted down by tachygraphers
while Chrysostom was preaching. For example, Greek copies of Chrysostom’s
Commentary on Isaiah stop abruptly at Isaiah 8:10. Just two manuscripts ex-
plain the reason for this sudden stop. In them, a note states that “until now this
introduction by the most holy archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom,
is found in Greek letters; after this point, it is in signs.” As Jean Dumortier has
argued, that the text of Chrysostom’s Commentary on Isaiah is incomplete in
Greek is therefore due to an early scribe who was unable to decipher the tachy-
graphic signs that preserved the rest of the commentary in their exemplar. All
later Greek manuscripts derive from this defective copy. By contrast, an Arme-
nian scribe or translator of the fifth century was able to understand this short-
hand, with the result that the rest of the commentary lacking in Greek is
preserved in Armenian instead.8
 Part 3.2 and Part 3.3.

 Wendy Mayer, “The ins and outs of the Chrysostom letter-collection: new ways of looking at
a limited corpus,” in Collecting Early Christian Letters. From the Apostle Paul to Late Antiquity,
ed. Bronwen Neil and Pauline Allen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 143–5.
 SC, 272:12–13.
 SC, 304:11–14.
Scribes also shaped the reception of Chrysostom’s works in other ways.

Manuscripts and printed editions present Chrysostom’s homilies in series, giving
the impression that he preached them in immediate succession. Yet these series
are often artificial, the result of scribes bringing together homilies on the same
theme that were preached in completely different times and places. Pauline
Allen and Wendy Mayer have for instance shown that John preached some of the
Homilies on Colossians at Antioch, and others about a decade later at Constanti-
nople.9 As well as rationalising the structure of Chrysostom’s homilies, later
scribes and scholars sometimes changed their content, polishing them into a
more literary style. Many works by Chrysostom therefore exist in one ‘rough’ ver-
sion and at least one revised or ‘smooth’ recension, as can be seen, for example,
in manuscripts of De uirginitate (CPG 4313), Quod Christus sit Deus (CPG 4326), De
sancto Babyla (CPG 4347), De SS. Iuventino et Maximo (CPG 4349), De S. Pelagia
(CPG 4350), Sermo cum iret in exilium (CPG 4397), Homilia in Sanctum Pascha
(CPG 4408), Sermones 1–8 in Genesim (CPG 4410), De Davide et Saule (CPG 4412),
In illud: Vidi Dominum (CPG 4417), In Iohannem homiliae 1–88 (CPG 4425), In
Acta Apostolorum (CPG 4426), the homilies on Romans (CPG 4427), I-II Corinthi-
ans (CPG 4428–4429), Galatians (CPG 4430), Ephesians (CPG 4431), Philippians
(CPG 4432), Colossians (CPG 4433), I-II Thessalonians (CPG 4434–4435), I-II Tim-
othy (CPG 4436–4437), Titus (CPG 4438), and Philemon (CPG 4439), as well as De
resurrectione (CPG 4341), and Ad illuminandos catechesis 3 (CPG 4467).10 Indeed,
 Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, “Chrysostom and the Preaching of Homilies in Series: A
New Approach to the Twelve Homilies In epistulam ad Colossenses (CPG 4433),” Orientalia
Christiana Periodica 60 (1994): 29–38.
 In order: SC, 125:77–81; Anthony Glaise, “Le Quod Christus sit Deus attribué à Jean Chrysos-
tom (CPG 4326): edition, traduction et commentaire” (PhD diss., University of Tours, 2020),
284–91; SC, 362:63–4; SC, 595:91–3; Sever J. Voicu, “L’immagine di Crisostomo negli spuri,” in
Chrysostomosbilder in 1600 Jahren. Facetten der Wirkungsgeschichte eines Kirchenvaters, ed.
Martin Wallraff and Rudolf Brändle (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 64; Wendy Mayer,
“Media Manipulation as a Tool in Religious Conflict: Controlling the Narrative Surrounding
the Deposition of John Chrysostom,” in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of
Islam, ed. Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 154; SC,
561:231–5; SC, 433:84–113; De Davide et Saule homiliae tres, ed. Francesca Prometea Barone
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), l; SC, 277:31–3; Paul W. Harkins, “The Text Tradition of Chrysos-
tom’s Commentary on John,” in Studia Patristica. Vol. VII, ed. Frank L. Cross (Berlin: Akade-
mie-Verlag, 1966), 210–20; Francis T. Gignac, “Evidence for Deliberate Scribal Revision in
Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles,” in Nova & Vetera. Patristic Studies in Honor
of Thomas Patrick Halton, ed. John Petruccione (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1998), 209–25; Maria Konstantinidou, “The Double Tradition of John Chrysos-
tom’s Exegetical Works: Revisions Revisited,” in Studia Patristica, vol. 114, ed. Markus Vinzent,
Guillaume Bady, and Catherine Broc-Schmezer (Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 16–22; Interpretatio
the polishing of Chrysostom’s homilies into ‘smooth’ versions was sufficiently

common that even this long list is not exhaustive.
Such re-arrangement of Chrysostom’s works into series and the polishing
of their content justify Luciano Canfora’s provocative argument that the scribe
is also an author.11 Indeed, his contention can be extended through one final
trend observable in the first two centuries of Chrysostom’s reception in Greek.
The deposition of Chrysostom and his death in exile created a schism between
‘Johannites’ and ‘anti-Johannites’ that was not healed until the transport of his
relics to Constantinople in 438. During the thirty-year interval between John’s
death and rehabilitation, both sides disseminated texts that sought to either
sanctify or tarnish his reputation. Much of this material was spurious, with
both sides writing and circulating texts under John’s name in order to advance
their case in the conflict.12 Many of these spurious texts were soon regarded as
authentic. Isidore of Pelousion (370->433) for example accepted as authentic a
forged letter from John to Libanios, which was meant to solidify Chrysostom’s
reputation for eloquence by having this famous orator praise a composition by
Chrysostom that he had allegedly read.13
The widespread availability of Chrysostom’s works, their arrangement
into artificial series, and the prevalence of spuria are all trends observable in
the earliest reception of Chrysostom in Latin as well as in Greek. To the first,
we have already seen that Jerome probably knew Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio
within a few years of its composition. That Jerome cited this work under the
omnium epistolarum Paulinarum per homilias facta, ed. Frederick Field (Oxford: J. Wright,
1855), 5:ix-xiii; Blake Goodall, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom on the Letters of St Paul to
Titus and Philemon. Prolegomena to an Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979),
56–61; SC, 595:83–4; SC, 50bis:106.
 Luciano Canfora, Il copista come autore (Palermo: Sellerio, 2002); for an earlier comment
in this regard about editors of Chrysostom as authors, see too Guillaume Bady, “La tradition
des oeuvres de Jean Chrysostome, entre transmission et transformation,” Revue des études by-
zantines 68 (2010): 161.
 Sever J. Voicu, “‘Furono chiamati Giovanniti’: un’ipotesi sulla nascita del corpus pseudoc-
risostomico,” in Philomathestatos. Studies in Greek and Byzantine Texts Presented to Jacques
Noret for his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Bart Janssens, Bram Roosen, and Peter van Deun (Leuven:
Peeters, 2004), 701–11; Sever J. Voicu, “La volontà e il caso: la tipologia dei primi spuri di Cri-
sostomo,” in Giovanni Crisostomo: Oriente e Occidente tra IV e V secolo (Rome: Institutum Pat-
risticum Augustinianum, 2005), 1:101–18; Mayer, “Media Manipulation as a Tool in Religious
Conflict”.
 Mark Patrick Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period
(9th-13th centuries): A Study of the Catechetical Homily on Pascha (CPG 4605)” (PhD diss., Uni-
versity of Edinburgh, 2020), 118.
title Περὶ ἱερωσύνης suggests that he had read it in Greek.14 His knowledge of a
homily of Chrysostom on Galatians that he revealed in a 404 letter to Augustine
probably came from his exposure to this text in the same language.15 But while
Jerome appears to have known these texts in Greek, it is possible that Chrysos-
tom was translated into Latin during his lifetime. A Latin citation of an unidenti-
fied work attributed to Chrysostom can be found in Pelagius’s De natura. Yves-
Marie Duval has dated De natura to between 406 and 410, and has argued that it
was likely written towards the earlier rather than the later end of this range. This
unidentified work may then have been translated into Latin during the last two
years of John’s life.16
It is fitting that Pelagius was perhaps the first author to cite a Latin transla-
tion of Chrysostom, as much of what we know about his earliest reception in
Latin is preserved by the followers and opponents of this British theologian. In
418, a group of Pelagian bishops cited a passage from Chrysostom’s Ad illuminan-
dos catechesis 3 (CPG 4467) in their Libellus fidei.17 One of their number, Julian of
Aeclanum, then cited the same homily in his Ad Turbantium against Augustine.18
For his part, Augustine replied by drawing on this homily twice in his rebuttal to
Julian, the Contra Iulianum.19 Subsequent research has shown that Augustine
likely read Ad illuminandos catechesis 3 from a particular source, namely the
“collection of 38 homilies” that was discovered by Dom Wilmart.20 This collection
of texts by Chrysostom and other Greek as well as Latin authors was probably
 Sever J. Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni latine di Crisostomo,” in Cristianesimo Latino e cultura
Greca sino al sec. IV (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1993), 397–8.
 Mayer, “John Chrysostom,” 145.
 Yves-Marie Duval, “La date du ‘De natura’ de Pélage. Les premières étapes de la contro-
verse sur la nature de la grâce,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 36 (1990): 257–83.
 PL, 48:525.
 Julian of Aeclanum, Expositio libri Iob; Tractatus prophetarum Osee, Iohel et Amos, ed.
Lucas de Coninck (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), 4:311–12. For a chronology of this exchange, see
Michaela Zelzer, “Giovanni Crisostomo nella controversia tra Giuliano d’Eclano e Agostino,” in
Giovanni Crisostomo. Oriente e Occidente tra IV e V secolo, 928.
 Andreas E. J. Grote, “Ego ipsa uerba graeca quae a Ioanne dicta sunt ponam (c. Iul. 1.22):
Augustinus und die Überlieferung der Taufkatechese Ad neophytos des Johannes Chrysosto-
mus,” in Spiritus et Littera. Beiträge zur Augustinus-Forschung zum 80. Geburtstag von Corne-
lius Petrus Mayer OSA, ed. Guntram Förster et al. (Würzburg: Augustinus bei Echter, 2009),
183–98.
 André Wilmart, “La collection des 38 homélies latines de Saint Jean Chrysostome,” Journal
of Theological Studies 19 (1918): 305–27; Wolfgang Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien des
Chrysostomus Latinus (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988).
assembled under Chrysostom’s name in North Africa between 410 and 421.21 How
Julian and his colleagues also knew Ad illuminandos catechesis 3 has predictably
received less attention, but it should be noted that Augustine’s citations differ in
one important respect from those of his Pelagian adversaries. In addition to the
version cited by Julian and the other Pelagian bishops, Augustine knew another
translation of this homily. Jean-Paul Bouhot has argued that this is because two
different recensions of the “collection of 38 homilies” were already circulating
during Augustine’s lifetime, as the alternative translation of Ad illuminandos cat-
echesis 3 that he cited can be found in some manuscripts of this collection, such
as BnF, Arsenal 175.22
Augustine’s use of the “collection of 38 homilies” has dominated studies
about the Latin reception of Chrysostom in the fifth century. This collection was
indeed an important source for the bishop of Hippo and his contemporaries, to
which Augustine owed his knowledge of other texts attributed to Chrysostom,
namely De cruce dominica (CPG 4525) and De Lazaro resuscitato (CPL 541).23 How-
ever, Augustine also knew other works by Chrysostom that never seem to have
been part of the “collection of 38 homilies”. In his Contra Iulianum, Augustine
furnished long citations from the third letter to Olympias (CPG 4405.3), the third
of the Sermones in Genesim (CPG 4410.3), and the tenth homily In Epistulam ad
Romanos (CPG 4427.10).24 Even if it is now widely accepted that Augustine had
improved his Greek by the time that he wrote Contra Iulianum, his acquaintance
with this language appears to have been mediated by Latin translations even
then. Augustine could judge a translation and present a literal version of his own
if he wanted to. Nonetheless, such knowledge did not equate to an independent
command of Greek, such as Augustine would have required to chase down and
translate citations that were relevant to his argument.25 It therefore seems likely
 Jean-Paul Bouhot, “La collection homilétique pseudo-chrysostomienne découverte par

Dom Morin,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 16 (1970): 145.
 Jean-Paul Bouhot, “Version inédite du sermon ‘Ad neophytos’ de S. Jean Chrysostome, uti-
lisée par S. Augustin,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 17 (1971): 27–41.
 Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni,” 401–5.
 PL, 44:656–60; Berthold Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschrif-
ten,” in idem, Kleine patristische Schriften, ed. Günther Glockmann (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1967), 431; Rudolf Brändle, “La ricezione di Giovanni Crisostomo nell’opera di Agostino,” in
Giovanni Crisostomo. Oriente e Occidente tra IV e V secolo, 885–95; Zelzer, “Giovanni Crisos-
tomo nella controversia tra Giuliano d’Eclano e Agostino,” 929.
 Giuseppe Caruso, “Ex orientis partibus. Agostino e le fonti greche nel Contra Iulianum,”
in Transmission et reception des Pères grecs dans l’Occident, de l’Antiquité tardive à la Renais-
sance. Entre philologie, herméneutique et théologie, ed. Emmanuela Prinzivalli et al. (Paris:
Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2016), 106–7.
that passages of the third letter to Olympias, the third Sermo in Genesim, and the
tenth homily on Romans that Augustine cited in Contra Iulianum were either
translated for him to help him refute Julian, or were extracted by him from old
Latin translations of these works that have since been lost.26
After finishing Contra Iulianum, Augustine drafted another work against the
same adversary, which is known as the Opus imperfectum. While expanding his
arguments against Julian in many places, Augustine cited no new texts of Chrys-
ostom in this work. Instead, he simply recycled the same passages that he had
quoted in his earlier tract. Augustine was not then the most diligent reader of
Chrysostom, and his citations as such probably underestimate the number of
texts either by or attributed to Chrysostom that were available to Latin readers in
the early fifth century.27 This contention is confirmed by the fact that Augustine
never mentioned two translations that were made at this time by another of his
Pelagian opponents, Anianus of Celeda. Anianus translated at least the first
twenty-five Homilies on Matthew (CPG 4424) around 419/20. He may have trans-
lated the remaining 65 homilies of this series, but extant manuscripts only pre-
serve this smaller number.28 Anianus’s other translation was of De laudibus Pauli
(CPG 4344), which he completed not before 421.29 We can identify Anianus as the
translator of these works through the prefaces that he wrote to each, in which he
explained that he had translated them in order to expose the faults in Augustine’s
theology of original sin.30 Anianus’s preface to the Homilies on Matthew indeed
attacked Augustine to such an extent that it was partially censored by later scribes,
 Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” 307–9.

 Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” 304–6.
 Herbert Musurillo, “John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Matthew and the Version of Annianus,” in
Kyriakon. Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (Münster:
Aschendorff, 1970), 1:452–60; Rachel Skalitzky, “Annianus of Celeda: His Text of Chrysostom’s
Homilies on Matthew,” Aevum 45 (1971): 208–33; Emilio Bonfiglio, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradi-
tion of Anianus Celedensis’ Translation of John Chrysostom’s Homiliae in Matthaeum [CPG 4424],”
in Studia Patristica. Vol. XLVII, ed. Jane Baun et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 287–93; Michael Gor-
man, “Annianus of Ceneda and the Latin translations of John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Gospel
of Matthew,” Revue bénédictine 122 (2012): 100–24.
 Adolf Primmer, “Die Originalfassung von Anianus’ epistula ad Orontium,” in Antidosis.
Festschrift für Walther Kraus zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Rudolf Hanslik, Albin Lesky, and Hans
Schwabl (Vienna: Böhlaus, 1972), 278–89. Other authors give a date of not before 419/20, for
example Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” 420–1.
 The preface to the Homilies on Matthew should be read in the version edited by Primmer,
“Die Originalfassung,” 279–82; the preface to De laudibus Pauli can be found in PG, 50:471✶-
472✶ and PL, 48:628–30.
creating two recensions of this preface in the manuscript tradition.31 Yet despite
the polemical motivations expressed in his prefaces, Anianus is thought to have
faithfully translated Chrysostom. Sever Voicu has memorably characterised him as
a “professionista onesta [. . .] eretico estremamente discreto”.32
Anianus is the only fifth-century Latin translator of Chrysostom to whom a
name can be attached, a fact that has resulted in the attribution to him of other
late antique translations such as those in the “collection of 38 homilies”. These
attributions are however rash before a thorough comparison between these
pieces and Anianus’s version of the Homilies on Matthew and De laudibus Pauli
has been completed, especially as it is clear that other, mostly anonymous
Latin translators were active in the fifth and sixth centuries.33 For instance, a
late antique translation of the first of the Homilies on the Statues (CPG 4330:1)
can be found in some manuscripts of the “collection of 38 homilies”.34 The
Epistula ad Caesarium (CPG 4530) was likely translated into Latin in the second
half of the fifth century, and the homily De Ioseph et castitate (CPG 4566) must
have been translated prior to its use in a pseudo-Augustine sermon that can be
dated to around 500.35 A highly rhetorical translation of the spurious homily In
Christi natalem diem (CPG 4560) has been dated to the sixth century.36 There is
also evidence of a translation of De eleemosyna (CPG 4618) that predates Cae-
sarius of Arles (d. 547).37 These translations are all anonymous, but we know
 Primmer, “Die Originalfassung”.

 “An honest professional, and an extremely moderate heretic.” Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni,”
399–400. See too Emilio Bonfiglio, “Anianus Celedensis, Translator of Chrysostom’s Homilies on
Matthew: A Pelagian Interpretation?”, in Papers from the First and Second Postgraduate Forums
in Byzantine Studies: Sailing to Byzantium, ed. Savvas Neocleous (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2009), 77–104.
 Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni,” 406–7.
 Guillaume Bady, “De uino modico: une version latine ancienne et un nouveau texte grec de
la première homélie de Jean Chrysostome Sur les statues,” Rursus 10 (2017): 1–67, https://doi.
org/10.4000/rursus.1161.
 Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” 433; Jean-Paul Bou-
hot, “Ancienne version latine du sermon De Ioseph et de castitate d’un pseudo-Jean Chrysos-
tome,” in ΑΝΤΙΔΩΡΟΝ. Hulde aan Dr. Maurits Geerard bij de voltooiing van de Clavis Patrum
Graecorum (Wetteren: Cultura, 1984), 47–56.
 Michel Aubineau and Joseph Lemarié, “Une adaptation latine inédite et une version armé-
nienne, attribuée à Proclus, du Ps.-Chrysostome, In Christi natalem diem (PG 61, 737–738. CPG
4650),” Vetera Christianorum 22 (1985): 35–89.
 Sever J. Voicu, “Latin Translations of Greek Homilies,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era:
Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West, ed. Anthony Dupont et al. (Leiden: Brill,
2018), 305.
that a scholar named Mutianus Scholasticus translated the Homilies on Hebrews

(CPG 4440) for Cassiodorus, probably during the 550s.38 Cassiodorus also men-
tioned that certain “friends” of his had translated the Homilies on Acts (CPG
4426), but no trace of this translation has ever been found.39 Indeed, it is not
only this version of the Homilies on Acts that no longer survives. Citations by
Latin authors before and after Cassiodorus imply that other translations were
made in late antiquity that have since been lost. Valerian of Cimiez, for exam-
ple, quoted the homily De resurrectione D. N. I. C. (CPG 4341) in Latin in the
mid-fifth century, of which no other trace survives.40 Most Latin authors of the
fifth and sixth centuries however seem to have known Chrysostom through the
“collection of 38 homilies”.41
Besides these translations, homilies originally composed in Latin were at-
tributed to Chrysostom during the fifth century. They include the 30 homilies
by a Latin bishop that were discovered by Dom Morin, and the 60 homilies pos-
sibly by a Donatist author that were found by François Leroy.42 Other Latin
texts such as the sermon De Chananea (CPG 4529) attributed by Morin to Lau-
rentius bishop of Novae (near Svishtov in modern Bulgaria), as well as Chroma-
tius of Aquileia’s Tractatus in Matthaeum (CPL 218), probably began to pass
 Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 29; Ca-
mille Gerzaguet, “Du Sud de l’Italie au Nord de l’Angleterre: le parcours du Chrysostome tra-
duit par Mutien à Vivarium,” in La reception des Pères grecs et orientaux en Italie au Moyen
Âge (Ve-XVe siècle), ed. Bernadette Cabouret, Annick Peters-Custot, and Camille Rouxpetel
(Paris: Les Éditions du CERF, 2020), 85–107.
 Cassiodorus, Institutiones, 33.
 Jean-Pierre Weiss, “Valerien de Cimiez: une homélie pascale intitulée De Quadragesima,”
Sacris erudiri 27 (1984): 191–201.
 Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni,” 410; Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, 11.
 Germain Morin, “Étude sur une série de discours d’un évêque [de Naples?] du VIe siècle,”
Revue bénédictine 11 (1894): 385–402; Germain Morin, “Un essai d’autocritique,” Revue bénédic-
tine 12 (1895): 385–96; Jean-Paul Bouhot, “La collection homilétique pseudo-chrysostomienne
découverte par Dom Morin,” 139–46; Domenico Ciarlo, “Ricezione di elementi teologici agosti-
niani nella predicazione tra il V e il VI secolo: I sermoni nello pseudo-Crisostomo latino della
collezione Morin,” in La teologia dal V all’VIII secolo fra sviluppo e crisi (Rome: Institutum Patri-
sticum Augustinianum, 2014), 235–46; François J. Leroy, “Les 22 inédits de la catéchèse dona-
tiste de Vienne. Une edition provisoire,” Recherches augustiniennes 31 (1999): 149–234. François
J. Leroy, “Compléments et retouches à la 3e edition de la Clavis Patrum Latinorum,” Revue d’his-
toire ecclésiastique 99 (2004): 425–34, and Guillaume Bady, “Les traductions latines anciennes
de Jean Chrysostome: Motifs et paradoxes,” in L’antiquite tardive dans les collections médiévales,
ed. Stéphane Gioanni and Benoît Grévin (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008), 307–8 provide
a helpful overview of this material.
1.3 From the sixth to the ninth century 21
under Chrysostom’s name in the fifth or the sixth century.43 The fifth-century
Arian commentary known as the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum (CPL 707)
was also attributed to Chrysostom early in its history.44
The examples discussed above hint at the speed with which works by or at-
tributed to Chrysostom spread throughout the Roman world. Just over a decade
after his death, for example, a Latin translation of Ad illuminandos catechesis 3
was available to Julian of Aeclanum in eastern Anatolia, and to Augustine in
North Africa. Given this vast geographical range, it was perhaps inevitable that
the Latin and Greek traditions began to pull apart. Latin knowledge of Chrysos-
tom’s works in the first hundred years after his death can be summarised in Gen-
nadius of Marseilles’s De viris illustribus, which was written in the late fifth
century. Certain recensions of this text refer to Anianus’s translation of De laudi-
bus Pauli (CPG 4344), and to In Eutropium (CPG 4392). However, they also men-
tion ascetic works like De compunctione cordis (CPG 4308–4309) and Quod nemo
laeditur nisi a semetipso (CPG 4400), all of which were accessible in the “collec-
tion of 38 homilies”.45 A different picture of Chrysostom emerges from a Greek
contemporary of Gennadius, Severus of Antioch (c.465–538). For Severus, Chrysos-
tom was primarily an exegete of Scripture, known to him through texts such as the
homilies on Matthew, John, Romans, and I-II Corinthians (CPG 4424, 4425, 4427,
4428, 4429).46 As we will see, many of the texts cited by Gennadius and Severus
continued to be significant to the reception of Chrysostom in Latin and Greek be-
tween the sixth and the ninth century.
1.3 From the sixth to the ninth century: The oldest

manuscripts of Chrysostom
After a brief period of expansion under Justinian I (527–565), the Roman Empire
contracted over the next three centuries. The scale of its reduction is perhaps
best expressed by the fact that both Chrysostom’s Antioch and Augustine’s North
 Germain Morin, “L’évêque Laurent de ‘Novae’ et ses opuscules théologiques attribués a

tort à un Laurent de Novare,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 26 (1937):
307–17; Raymond Étaix and Joseph Lemarié, “La tradition manuscrite des Tractatus in Math-
eum de saint Chromace d’Aquilée,” Sacris Erudiri 17 (1966): 302–54.
 Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum. Praefatio, ed. Joop van Banning (Turnhout: Brepols,
1988), esp. xxiii-xxvi.
 Gennadius of Marseilles, Sobre los hombres ilustres, ed. Estefanía Sottocorno (Madrid:
Ciudad Nueva, 2021), 152.
 Sever J. Voicu, “Quoting John Chrysostom in the sixth century: Severus of Antioch,” in La
teologia dal V all’VIII secolo fra sviluppo e crisi, 633–43.
Africa were lost to the new Islamic empires in the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, it
appears that Greek readers in this new political and religious order still had
ample access to works by Chrysostom. The florilegium attributed to Maximos the
Confessor (580–662), and that known as the Sacra Parallela, for example, cite an
incredible array of tracts and homilies. There can be little doubt that their authors
partly depended on earlier compilations, but their citation of unusual and now-
lost works also suggests first-hand acquaintance with Chrysostom.47 Translations
of Chrysostom also continued to circulate in the Latin world. Bede (673/4–735) for
instance read Chrysostom first-hand in distant Northumbria, even though it ap-
pears that all he knew was the ubiquitous “collection of 38 homilies”.48
Until now it has been necessary to rely on indirect witnesses such as florilegia
and citations by other authors to explore the reception of Chrysostom.49 Our evi-
dence expands in the sixth to the seventh century, when new sources become
available. These are manuscripts of Chrysostom that have somehow survived a
millennium and more of wars, plagues, and plunder. The oldest Greek manuscript
of Chrysostom is probably Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, Helmst. 75a, a
copy of select Homilies on Matthew (CPG 4424) that is datable to the sixth or sev-
enth century (Image 1). Another manuscript of similar age, Vienna: Österreichi-
sche Nationalbibliothek, jur. gr. 18, is a palimpsest whose lower layer contains the
spurious homily In ramos palmarum (CPG 4602). Four Greek manuscripts of Chrys-
ostom datable to the eighth century and eleven datable to between the eighth and
ninth century are also known to exist. The vast majority of these manuscripts con-
tain texts that are now regarded as spurious, while a minority preserve the earliest
copies of genuine works such as the Homilies on John (CPG 4425; St Petersburg:
Russian National Library, Φ N° 906) and In Epistulam primam ad Corinthios (CPG
4428; Athos: Vatopedi, 18). Thereafter there are too many Greek manuscripts to
discuss even superficially. Over 50 Greek manuscripts of Chrysostom date to the
ninth century, over 350 to the tenth century, and about 850 to the eleventh cen-
tury, coinciding with a period of economic and cultural prosperity in Byzantium
that will be discussed in greater detail below.50
 Sebastian Haidacher, “Chrysostomos-Fragmente im Maximos-Florilegium und in den

Sacra Parallela,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 16 (1907): 168–201. See also Sebastian Haidacher,
“Chrysostomus-Excerpte in der Rede des Johannes Nesteutes über die Buße,” Zeitschrift für ka-
tholische Theologie 26 (1902): 380–5.
 Rosalind Love, “Bede and John Chrysostom,” Journal of Medieval Latin 17 (2007): 72–86.
 For further indirect sources, see Chrysostomus Baur, S. Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres
dans l’histoire littéraire (Louvain: Bureaux du Recueil, 1907), 13–23.
 Information about individual manuscripts was derived from Pinakes (https://pinakes.irht.
cnrs.fr/), on 11 November 2021. For a provisional overview of the general statistics, see Guil-
laume Bady, “Les manuscrits grecs des oeuvres de Jean Chrysostome,” 65–82.
Image 1: A page from what may be the oldest extant Greek manuscript of Chrysostom:
Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 75a Helmst., 62r, containing the Homilies
on Matthew (CPG 4424). Reproduced with the permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek,
Wolfenbüttel.
The oldest Latin manuscripts of Chrysostom survive from around the same
time as their Greek counterparts. The most venerable of them is probably BnF,
lat. 10593, a manuscript containing a Latin version of De paenitentia 5 et de
Iona (CPG 4333.5) that Michel Aubineau dated to the sixth or seventh century
(Image 2).51 Next come London: British Library, Add. 43460, a palimpsest whose
lower layer is a seventh-century copy of Mutianus’s version of the Homilies on
Hebrews (CPG 4440), and St Petersburg: Russian National Library, F. v. I. 4, a
manuscript copied in the same century that includes the Ad Theodorum liber se-
cundus (CPG 4305.2).52 Besides two copies of the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum
(CPL 707; Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6282, and Vienna: Österrrei-
chische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 1007), most other extant Latin manuscripts of
Chrysostom copied before the ninth century contain the Homilies on Hebrews or
Ad Theodorum liber secundus.53 The Homilies on Hebrews can be found in an
eighth-century copy in BnF, lat. 1784, and in an eighth to ninth century copy in
Cologne: Dombibliothek, 41.54 Ad Theodorum survives with other ascetic works
of Chrysostom in Düsseldorf: Landes- und Stadtbibliothek, B. 215 and C. 118, a
now divided manuscript that was copied in northern England around the middle
of the eighth century, and in Rome: Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emmanuele,
Sessor. 94, a slightly later manuscript that may have been copied in the north
Italian monastery of Nonantola.55 The impression derived from these manu-
scripts that the Homilies on Hebrews and ascetic treatises like Ad Theodorum
were the works best known to Latin readers at this time is borne out in early me-
dieval library catalogues. With few exceptions, the manuscripts of Chrysostom
registered in these catalogues also contained one of these two works.56 For some
this diet would have been supplemented by hearing or reading texts that were
attributed to Chrysostom in early medieval homiliaries, such as those of Agi-
mond, Fleury, Ottobeuren, and Paul the Deacon.57
Finally, it appears that Greek manuscripts of Chrysostom and scholars able
to understand them were also to be found in the Latin west during the early
medieval period. Jean-Paul Bouhot has noted that the old Latin version of De
 Michel Aubineau, “Textes chrysostomiens récupérés dans le codex athonite, Pantocrator

22,” Vetera Christianorum 12 (1975): 320–1.
 E. A. Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–1966), 2:18–19.
 Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, 9:9 and 10:18.
 Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, Supplement:22 and 8:36.
 Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, 8:46 and 4:7.
 Albert Siegmund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateini-
schen Kirche bis zum zwölften Jahrhundert (Munich: Filser, 1949), 91–101.
 Chrysostom, Homélies sur la Résurrection, l’Ascension et la Pentecoste, 96; Wilmart, “La
collection des 38 homélies,” 311; Voicu, “Latin Translations of Greek Homilies,” 312–13.
Image 2: The worn first page of what is thought to be the oldest manuscript containing a Latin
translation of Chrysostom: BnF, lat. 10593, 2r. Reproduced with the permission of the BnF.
sacerdotio (CPG 4316) may not have been translated before the eighth century.58
The same author has also shown that a translation of In SS. Petrum et Heliam
(CPG 4513) must have been made by the ninth century, as it survives in a manu-
script of that date.59
1.4 From the ninth to the eleventh century: The reception

of Chrysostom in Byzantium during the ‘Macedonian
Renaissance’
If the three centuries after Justinian were marked by the contraction of the Byz-
antine Empire, the following two hundred years were a time of economic and
political expansion, and of important changes in the transmission of texts.
Given these developments, this period was formerly known as the ‘Macedonian
Renaissance’ after the dynasty that occupied the throne for much of the ninth
to the eleventh century. Historians are now reluctant to use this term, but it of-
fers a convenient way of grouping together developments in the reception of
Chrysostom in Byzantium between Patriarch Photios I (858–867; 877–886) and
John Mauropous (c.1000->1082) that largely took place under the Macedonian
emperors and empresses.60
One of the most significant shifts in the history of textual transmission took
place during this period. In late antiquity, most books had been written in the
majuscule scripts inherited from the classical world. But from the last third of
the eighth century, and particularly from the ninth century onwards, these ma-
juscule books were transcribed into new copies written in miniscule letters. The
transition from majuscule to miniscule took place simultaneously in Latin,
Greek, and Arabic, with an inevitable impact on the transmission of early au-
thors like Chrysostom. Jean Irigoin has shown how the lack of separation be-
tween letters in majuscule manuscripts and the similarity between different
letter shapes sometimes led scribes to err in transcribing these manuscripts into
the new miniscule style.61
 Bouhot, “Les traductions latines de Jean Chrysostome,” 34.

 Jean-Paul Bouhot, “Adaptations latines de l’homélie de Jean Chrysostome sur Pierre et Élie
(CPG 4513),” Revue bénédictine 112 (2002): 49; Bady, “Les traductions latines,” 314.
 On the term, see John Hanson, “The Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Renaissance,” in A
Companion to Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Chichester: Blackwell, 2010), 338–50.
 Jean Irigoin, Le livre grec des origines à la Renaissance (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de
France, 2001), 83–6.
1.4 From the ninth to the eleventh century 27
However, not all scribal changes to the text of Chrysostom at this time were
accidental. It was noted above that some works by Chrysostom survive in an
unedited ‘rough’ recension, and at least one polished ‘smooth’ version. Many of
these ‘smooth’ recensions seem to have been crafted between the ninth and the
eleventh century. Chrysostom’s De SS. Iuventino et Maximino (CPG 4349), for ex-
ample, appears to have been revised in the tenth century. The result was a new
recension that differed from the earlier text in about 90 places, including some
lengthy additions.62 The editing of Chrysostom’s De sancto Babyla (CPG 4347)
was even more dramatic. It too was revised from around the tenth century, re-
sulting in changes to syntax and vocabulary, the addition of new passages, and
the omission of others.63 In the latter case at least, the aim of this revision was
to update Chrysostom’s oratory to contemporary standards of eloquence. Such
rewriting or ‘metaphrasis’ of late antique hagiography was in fact common-
place in Byzantium between the ninth and the eleventh century, a trend best
known through the revision of saints’ lives in tenth-century Constantinople by
Simeon “the Metaphrast”.64 Yet Byzantine scholars did not only revise Chrys-
ostom’s panegyrics. For instance, the homilies on Titus and Philemon (CPG
4438–4439) appear to have been re-written in the tenth century, changing the
tachygraphic transcripts that had come down from late antiquity into much
more polished orations.65 The changes made to these texts, and to other works
such as the Sermones 1–8 in Genesim (CPG 4410), indicate that Byzantine scholars
of this time revised homiletic as well as hagiographical material.66 This suggests
a possible extension to historiography about metaphrasis, which has mainly fo-
cused on saints’ lives.67 Studies of Byzantine metaphrasis may also be enriched
by exploring the “eclogues”, quotes from different works by Chrysostom on
themes such as anger and humility that were woven into new orations, probably
by the tenth-century scholar Theodore Daphnopates.68
 SC, 595:91–3.
 SC, 362:63–4.
 Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Rewriting,” in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature, ed.
Stratis Papioannou (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 348–64.
 Goodall, The Homilies of Chrysostom on Titus and Philemon, 49–78.
 Laurence Brottier, “Remarques sur trois témoins des sermons Sur la Genèse de Jean Chrys-
ostome (Monacensis gr. 352, Sinaiticus gr. 376, Parisinus gr. 775),” Revue d’histoire des textes
27 (1997): 223–37; Konstantinidou, “The Double Tradition,” 16–18.
 SC, 433:84–113; Stavroula Constantinou, Christian Høgel and Andria Andreou, eds, Meta-
phrasis. A Byzantine Concept of Rewriting and Its Hagiographical Products (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
 Sebastian Haidacher, “Studien über Chrysostomus-Eklogen,” Sitzungsberichte der philoso-
phisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 144:4 (1902): 1–70.
As the text of individual works by Chrysostom changed between the ninth

and the eleventh century, so too did broader interpretations of this Church Fa-
ther. We owe this knowledge to a recent PhD thesis by Mark Huggins.69 Hug-
gins showed that Theodore the Stoudite (759–826) drew on Chrysostom to
reject the iconoclastic policies of successive emperors, for example citing the
Sermo catecheticus in Pascha (CPG 4605) in a homily that may have been deliv-
ered on the very day that Emperor Leo V (813–820) installed the iconoclast pa-
triarch Theodotos I Kassiteras.70 Theodore as such promoted an anti-imperial
image of Chrysostom, which later emperors sought to combat. Leo VI (886–912)
delivered an encomium to Chrysostom that stressed his positive interactions
with the court, even imagining friendly conversations between Chrysostom and
Empress Eudoxia.71 His son Constantine VII (945–959) felt a personal connec-
tion to Chrysostom after regaining his throne on the feast of the translation of
the patriarch’s relics to Constantinople, subsequently creating an octave be-
tween the translation of Gregory Nazianzen’s relics (19 January) and those of
Chrysostom (27 January) to celebrate his triumph.72 Commemorations of Chrys-
ostom were further expanded in the eleventh century. In 1082, John Mauropous
suggested that a feast be established to celebrate the learning of the “Three Hi-
erarchs” – Nazianzen, Basil, and Chrysostom – a suggestion that was accepted
and instituted the following year. Mauropous may have proposed this feast in
order to defuse heated controversies about the significance that Christians
should attribute to pagan wisdom, as implied by his choice of Fathers to cele-
brate. For whereas Nazianzen and Basil argued that ancient literature was still
relevant to the moral as well as literary lives of Christians, Chrysostom fre-
quently doubted its utility to the former. The inclusion of Chrysostom would
therefore have reassured more conservative figures in Constantinople, who
may have been reluctant to rally around a perhaps more obvious, but also more
pro-Hellene triad of Nazianzen, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa.73
 Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-13th
centuries)”.
 Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-13th cen-
turies),” 155–6.
 Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-13th cen-
turies),” 172–3.
 Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-13th cen-
turies),” 181–2.
 Huggins, “The Reception of John Chrysostom in the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-13th cen-
turies),” 192–206.
1.5 From the twelfth to the fifteenth century 29
1.5 From the twelfth to the fifteenth century: The ‘twelfth-

century Renaissance’ and after
Anyone looking to summarise the reception of Chrysostom in Greek between
the ninth and the eleventh centuries is confronted by an embarrassment of
riches. The episodes related above could have been expanded with other exam-
ples, such as the citations of Chrysostom in Photios’s Bibliotheca, or his signifi-
cance to Theophylact of Ochrid’s commentaries on Scripture.74 The opposite is
true for the reception of Chrysostom in Latin during the same centuries. While
many studies have explored the reception of Chrysostom in Latin during late
antiquity, only Baur has attempted a comparable survey for the early medieval
period.75 Access to manuscripts copied between 800 and 1100 is also hampered
by the fact that these years fall in a no-man’s land between the censuses of
Lowe and Kristeller.76 However, sources become more abundant in the twelfth
century. This is due in no small part to the jurist, ambassador, and translator
Burgundio of Pisa (c.1110–1193), whose lifetime spans almost the entire range
of the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’.
Unlike the term ‘Macedonian Renaissance’, the concept of a ‘twelfth-century
Renaissance’ is still widely accepted by historians.77 Partly, this is because an-
cient texts, and the translation of them, were as significant to this Renaissance
as they were to its Italian successor. Scholars such as Cerbanus, Giacomo Veneto,
and Henricus Aristippus translated patristic, philosophical, and even literary
texts from Greek into Latin, to say nothing of the translation of sources from Ara-
bic and Hebrew taking place at the same time.78 Burgundio of Pisa is however
regarded as the most prolific translator of this vibrant period, and not without
reason.79 His translations span legal texts such as the Greek passages of the Di-
gest, philosophical tracts like Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, and a huge
 Photius, Biblioteca, ed. and trans. Nunzio Bianchi et al. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 22019),
1:19, 121, 211–13; 2:1040–1, 1059–62, 1072–88; PG, 123–126.
 Baur, Chrysostome et ses oeuvres, 67–82
 Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill,
1963–1996).
 Peter Dinzelbacher, Structures and Origins of the Twelfth-Century ‘Renaissance’ (Stuttgart:
Anton Hiersemann, 2017), 5–6. For a useful introduction to the historiography of this term and
further reading, see Alex J. Novikoff, ed., The Twelfth-Century Renaissance: A Reader (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2017), xv-xx.
 Paolo Chiesa, “Le traduzioni in latino di testi greci,” in Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo,
volume 3.I, Le culture circostanti: La cultura bizantina, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo (Rome: Salerno
Editrice, 2004), 508–15.
 Chiesa, “Le traduzioni in latino,” 512–13.
number of works from the Galenic corpus. He also translated a wealth of pa-
tristic literature, including two translations of Chrysostom.80 The first of these
were the ninety Homilies on Matthew (CPG 4424), which Burgundio completed
on 29 November 1151.81
If we are to believe Burgundio’s reconstruction of events in the preface to
his version of the Homilies on Matthew, this was not a project in which he was
initially involved. Burgundio informs us that Pope Eugenius III (1145–1153)
knew that Chrysostom had preached a complete commentary on Matthew, but
was unable to find a copy of it in Latin. The pope therefore sought a Greek man-
uscript of these homilies from libraries in Europe. When this search proved
fruitless, he asked the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Aimery (c.1142–c.1196), to en-
sure that the Homilies in Matthew were translated in Chrysostom’s hometown,
which had passed under the control of the Latin Crusaders. But Aimery simply
sent a Greek copy of these homilies to the pope, who commissioned Burgundio
to translate them.82 Burgundio carried out this task using an extremely literal
word-for-word translation style. His version is as such appreciated as an inde-
pendent witness to the text of the Homilies on Matthew, acting as an intermedi-
ary to earlier stage of its transmission than that preserved in most surviving
Greek manuscripts.83
Burgundio’s version of the Homilies on Matthew connected Rome and Anti-
och. By contrast, his other translation of Chrysostom linked Pisa and Constanti-
nople. On 7 November 1168, Burgundio left Pisa as part of an embassy to the
Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180). He took with him his son
Ugolino, who however died on the voyage. Burgundio therefore decided to
translate Chrysostom’s Homilies on John (CPG 4425) to redeem his son’s soul,
and to provide Latin readers with a commentary on this Gospel to supplement
that by Augustine. Burgundio’s plans were initially frustrated when he was un-
able to convince anyone in Constantinople to sell him a copy of these homilies.
He therefore borrowed Greek manuscripts of them instead, loaning the first half
of the series from one monastery in Constantinople, and the second half from
 Peter Classen, Burgundio von Pisa. Richter – Gesandter – Übersetzer (Heidelberg: Carl Win-
ter, 1974), 23–62; Riccardo Saccenti, Un nuovo lessico morale medievale. Il contributo di Burgun-
dio da Pisa (Canterano: Aracne editrice, 2016), 41–53; Anna Maria Urso, “Translating Galen in
the Medieval West: the Greek-Latin Translations,” in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of
Galen, ed. Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Barbara Zipser (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 364–8.
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 71–2.
 Burgundio’s preface to the Homilies on Matthew can be read in Angelo Maria Bandini, Cata-
logus codicum latinorum Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae (Florence: [s.n.], 1777), 4:448–50.
 Mario Flecchia, “La traduzione di Burgundio Pisano delle omelie di S. Giovanni Crisostomo
sopra Matteo,” Aevum 26 (1952): 113–30.
another, before giving each to a different copyist to transcribe.84 Burgundio is

known to have had many Greek manuscripts copied at a scriptorium in Con-
stantinople owned by a certain “Ioannikios”. In some cases, the house-style of
this atelier has allowed the identification of Burgundio’s exemplars where few
other traces of his ownership exist. But the same trick cannot be repeated for
the Homilies on John, as no extant manuscript of these homilies is known to
have been copied at Ioannikios’s scriptorium.85
With these unidentified volumes in hand, Burgundio translated the Homi-
lies on John during the return journey from Constantinople to Pisa, and for two
years thereafter. He finally finished his translation in 1173.86 Burgundio’s trans-
lation followed the same word-for-word method that he had used two decades
earlier in his version of the Homilies on Matthew. As Peter Classen has under-
lined, Burgundio’s use of this literal translation style was a matter of choice.
Earlier translators such as Anastasius Bibliothecarius (d.c.879) had already justi-
fied their use of a freer style, and contemporaries of Burgundio such as Johannes
Saracenus were practicing it.87 Burgundio’s use of the word-for-word style and
lengthy defence of it in his preface to the Homilies on John should therefore be
understood as interventions into a contemporary debate about the merits of dif-
ferent forms of translation, rather than as products of his ignorance of the freer
methods that would become popular in the Italian Renaissance.88
Besides the Homilies on Matthew and the Homilies on John, Burgundio
may also have translated the Homilies on Acts (CPG 4426), as a fourteenth-
century bibliographer noted that these homilies had been “translated into
Latin from Greek around our time”.89 The attribution of this work to Burgun-
dio must however remain speculative, since no other evidence of it survives.
Moreover, it is sometimes claimed that Burgundio translated Chrysostom’s
Homilies on Genesis (CPG 4409).90 This claim is based on a report to that effect
by the chronicler Robert de Torigni (c.1110–1186), but it is likely that Robert
 These events are described in Burgundio’s preface to the Homilies on John, which can be
read in Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 84–102.
 Listed in Paola Degni, “I manoscritti dello ‘scriptorium’ di Gioannicio,” Segno e testo 6
(2008): 179–248.
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 50–2.
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 55–8.
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 58–60.
 “Uidi et ego eius librum super acta apostolorum quasi nostra etate de graeco in latinum
translatum”. Barb.lat.2351, 75r.
 Filippo Liotta, “Burgundione da Pisa,” DBI 15 (1972), https://www.treccani.it/enciclope
dia/burgundione-da-pisa_(Dizionario-Biografico).
confused Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis with the Hexameron by Basil, a

text that Burgundio in fact translated.91
Other translations of Chrysostom were however made during and after the
‘twelfth-century Renaissance’. Another Pisan in Constantinople, Leo Tuscus,
translated the liturgy attributed to Chrysostom between 1177 and 1178. He did so
at the request of Ramón de Moncada, an Aragonese ambassador to Constantino-
ple who wished to understand the contents of the Orthodox liturgy after attend-
ing a service in the Byzantine capital.92 François Dolbeau and Joseph Lemarié
have also identified a literal translation of the spurious homily In Theophaniam
(CPG 4522) that they dated to between 1100 and 1225.93 Finally, the Spiritual Fran-
ciscan Angelo Clareno translated one of the many recensions of Ad Cyriacum
(CPG 4405.001a) around the beginning of the fourteenth century, probably mak-
ing use of manuscripts that were then to be found at Grottaferrata.94
Burgundio, Leo Tuscus and Clareno naturally attract attention, as they are
the first Latin translators of Chrysostom whose names we know since Mutianus
six hundred years earlier. The ability to date and locate their translations may
however exaggerate their importance, as Leo and Clareno’s translations never
seem to have reached a broad audience in manuscript. On the other hand, Bur-
gundio’s translations were copied widely enough to be known to later bibliogra-
phers. Giovanni Colonna (c.1298–c.1343) for instance referred to them in his De
uiris illustribus.95 Colonna also knew the Opus imperfectum (CPL 707), De sacerdo-
tio (CPG 4316), De laudibus Pauli (CPG 4344), and the medieval translation of the
Homilies on Acts (CPG 4426) that was mentioned above. He also knew a “librum
contra Iudeos”, a mysterious entry, as Chrysostom’s homilies Against the Jews
(CPG 4327) are not known to have been translated into Latin before the fifteenth
century. Besides these texts, Colonna also cited De compunctione cordis (CPG
4308–4309), Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso (CPG 4400), and Ad Theodorum
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 35–6.

 André Jacob, “La traduction de la Liturgie de saint Jean Chrysostome par Léon Toscan. Édi-
tion critique,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 32 (1966): 111–62.
 François Dolbeau and Joseph Lemarié, “Une traduction latine inconnue d’un sermon
pseudo-chrysostomien sur le baptême du Christ (CPG 4522),” Revue bénédictine 113 (2003):
217–34.
 Armelle Le Huërou, “Angelo Clareno traducteur de Jean Chrysostome,” Aevum 95 (2021):
477–98. Gian Luigi Potestà, Angelo Clareno: dai poveri eremiti ai Fraticelli (Rome: Istituto stor-
ico per il Medio Evo, 1990), 322–3 argues that Clareno also translated De laudibus Pauli (CPG
4344), as this text appears in Urb.lat.521, a manuscript that contains Clareno’s works. How-
ever, the text in Urb.lat.521 is simply a series of extracts from Anianus’s translation of De laudi-
bus Pauli.
 Barb.lat.2351, 74v-75r.
(CPG 4305).96 As in the early medieval period, these ascetic tracts were probably
the works of Chrysostom best known to Latin readers between the twelfth and
the fifteenth century. Classen for example knew 12 manuscripts of Burgundio’s
version of the Homilies on John, and Flecchia eight copies of his translation of the
Homilies on Matthew.97 Kristeller’s Iter Italicum however lists at least 35 copies of
De compunctione cordis datable to between 1100 and 1400.98
Nonetheless, the number of manuscripts of any Latin work by Chrysostom
copied between 1100 and 1400 pales into comparison with those copied in
Greek. A provisional survey conducted by Guillaume Bady has estimated that
around 1450 Greek manuscripts of Chrysostom copied within this period still
survive.99 In addition to quantity, differences between the Latin and Greek tra-
ditions of Chrysostom are observable in the works chosen for copying between
1100 and 1400. If Latin readers appear to have primarily known Chrysostom
through ascetic tracts like De compunctione cordis, Greek readers may have
been most familiar with the Homilies on Matthew (134 copies) and the Homilies
on John (111 copies).100 The significance of these commentaries on the Gospel
for Greek readers is confirmed by indirect sources. Up to 90% of the homilies
written by Patriarch Neilos Kerameus (1380–1388) are composed of extracts
from these two series, for example.101 Works that had yet to be translated into
Latin also circulated widely in Greek. 40 manuscripts containing De incompre-
hensibili Dei natura (CPG 4318) are thought to have been copied between 1100
 Barb.lat.2351, 74v-75r.
 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 79–81; Flecchia, “La traduzione,” 119–21.
 Assisi: Biblioteca del Convento di S. Francesco, 369; Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, B VIII
31; Vat.lat.514 and Vat.Capitolare C 104; Berlin: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Theol. lat.
fol. 484; Bloomington, IN: Lilly Library, Poole 114; Brussels: Bibliothèque royale, 4337–4340,
4764–4766, II 1114; Chicago: Newberry Library, Ernst F. Detterer 6; Darmstadt: Hessische Uni-
versitäts- und Landesbibliothek, 750; Ghent: Centrale Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, 294;
Heidelberg: Universitätsbibliothek, Salem 9, 22; Heiligenkreuz: Stiftsbibliothek, 174; Leipzig:
Universitätsbibliothek, 351; London: Lambeth Palace Library, 442; Luxembourg: Bibliothèque
nationale, 67 and 101–102; Madrid: Biblioteca de la Universidad Central, 47; Milan: Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, C 34; Naples: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, VI A A 16 and VI C 28; New York:
Columbia University Library, X 878/L 43; Olomouc: Statni Archiv, CO 128; Padua: Biblioteca
Universitaria, 1063; BnF, lat. 12142, 14849, 16327, 17415; Toronto: Bergendal Collection, 36;
Venice: Biblioteca Marciana, 2290 (Marc. lat. II 99); Vercelli: Archivio Capitolare, Cod. CXXXI;
Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Medieval and Renaissance ms. 76; Würzburg: Universi-
tätsbibliothek, M.p.th f.117 and M.p.th.q 45.
 Bady, “Les manuscrits grecs des oeuvres de Jean Chrysostome,” 68.
 Figures from Pinakes (https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/), on 10 November 2021.
 Herman Hennephof, Das Homiliar des Patriarchen Neilos und die chrysostomiche Tradition
(Leiden: Brill, 1963), 61 n.2.
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The Spittle Houses.
Among the properties which fell to the portion of Katherine
Legh, after the dissolution of the Hospital were “all those messuages,
houses and buyldinges, landes and tenements callyd the Spyttell
howses, with all the orchards and gardens thereunto adjoyning.” The
only property situated within the Precinct that can be traced as
belonging to Katherine, consists of (i.) four houses and gardens,
immediately to the east of the churchyard[613] and, between these and
what is now Shaftesbury Avenue, (ii.) a house, garden and orchard.
[614]
The westernmost house of (i.) was probably The Angel, which is
definitely mentioned as having been transferred to Katherine, but
the remaining houses, etc., almost certainly were the Spittle houses,
with their orchards and gardens. They are shown distinctly on Agas’s
Map (Plate 1).
Pasture Ground.
The whole of the remainder of the Precinct to the south of the
Hospital was, in the days of Elizabeth, pasture ground, and is
probably to be identified with the close lying within the Precinct,
commonly called the Pale Close, which is stated[615] to have formed
part of the property transferred to Lord Lisle. The first specific
mention of the ground occurs in 1564, when the jurors holding the
Inquisitionem Post Mortem on Francis Downes found[616] that he was
seized, inter alia, of and in four messuages and four acres of pasture
in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Downes, it is stated,
purchased the property from Thomas Carew, son and heir of Sir
Wymonde Carew, to whom it had been sold by Lord Lisle.
The four acres subsequently passed to John Graunge, in 1566,
whose son sold them in 1611 to Robert Lloyd (otherwise called Floyd
or Flood). On the latter’s death in 1617, he was found to be seized of
and in a house with a garden on the east side, a barn and garden on
the south of the house, and a stable and two closes of pasture,
containing four acres, adjoining the barn and garden.[617] The next
reference to the ground is in 1622, when it is referred to[618] as “two
closes, formerly pasture, late converted into gardens and
purchased ... by Abraham Speckard and Dorothy his wife.” It next
passed to Sir Richard Stydolph, for Charles Tryon, his grandson,
refers in his will,[619] signed 2nd November, 1705, to “a piece or
parcell of ground containing about four acres lying in the parish of
St. Giles-in-the-Fields ... near the church ... on which said ground are
now standing ... severall houses and other buildings held by severall
leases thereof granted by Sir Richard Stydolphe ... all or most
whereof will in few years expire.” With this fact is undoubtedly to be
connected the licence granted in July, 1671, to Sir Richard Stydolph
to continue building at the back of St. Giles’s church. The licence[620]
sets forth that Stydolph had let ground “on the backside of St. Giles’
Church in the way to Pickadilly to severall poore men who build
hansome and uniforme houses, some whereof were quite covered
and the fundacions of the rest laid,” before the proclamation
prohibiting building on new foundations had been issued. In due
course, “Christopher Wren, Esq.,” viewed the place and made a
report, approving generally of the scheme and suggesting that it
might “tend in some measure to cure the noisomnesse of that part,”
provided that the building was carried out in accordance with a
settled design. On this condition the necessary permission was given,
and it was provided that two copies of the “designe, mapp or charte”
should be made, neither of which, unfortunately, is available at the
present day. Stidwell Street preserved for some time, in garbled
form, the name of the owner of these lands.
The Manor and Possessions of St. Giles’
Hospital.
Up to within a few years of its dissolution, the Hospital of St. Giles, or
rather that of Burton Lazars, in whose custody it was, owned the greater
portion of the present Parish of St. Giles, together with large estates in other
parishes.
On 2nd June, 1536, however, Henry VIII. effected an exchange[621]
with the Master of Burton Lazars, whereby the latter received certain
property in Leicestershire and transferred to the King the undermentioned:
—
Manors of Feltham and Heston.
Messuages, etc., in Feltham and Heston.
2 acres of meadow in the Fields of St. Martins.
25 acres of pasture lying in the village of St. Giles.[622]
5 acres of pasture near Colman’s Hedge.[622]
5 acres of pasture in Colmanhedge Field.[622]
A close called Conduit Close, of five acres.
A close called Marshland.
A messuage called The White Hart, and 18 acres of pasture thereto
belonging.
A messuage called The Rose, and a pasture thereto belonging.
A messuage called The Vine.
Reserved were the church and rectory of Feltham, and all
glebes, tithes, etc., belonging thereto.
Of the lands and houses above-mentioned, only the last four
were in the parish of St. Giles, and three of them have already been
dealt with. The Vine was on the north side of High Holborn, and its
site, with that of the close behind, is now marked by Grape Street,
formerly Vine Street.
Dudley.
Very shortly afterwards, Sir Thomas Legh, the notorious
visitor of the monasteries, made a determined effort to gain
possession of the Hospital of Burton Lazars,[623] and obtained from Thomas
Radclyff, then master, the next advowson of the Hospital for his life. This
was confirmed in March, 1536–7, by Letters Patent.[624] In 1539 the
Hospital was dissolved, and its possessions reverted to the Crown. Legh,
however, for several years continued to hold the property, and enjoy the
profits, spiritual and temporal, until on 6th May, 1544, the King granted to
Sir John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, the Hospital with all its possessions in
Leicestershire, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and elsewhere. Very naturally, this
resulted in “contencion, varyence and stryfe” being “reysed, stirred and
dependyng betweene the said Viscount Lisle ... and the said Sir Thomas
Legh ... of for and aboute the right, tytle, interest, occupation and
possession of the seyd late Hospytall,” and the Lord Chancellor, Lord
Wriothesley, was appointed arbitrator to settle the matter.
In the course of the same year (1544) Wriothesley gave his award,
dividing the property between the two claimants, but as the arrangement
was never completed it is not necessary to give details here.[625]
It appears that when the award in question was being obtained, Lord
Lisle was absent from the country, “beinge occupied in the parties beyond
the see in and aboute the Kynges Majesties affaires concernynge his
warres,” and on his return refused to carry out the decree, claiming that “the
veray trewe and hoole tytle of the seyde Viscounte of and in the premysses”
had not been disclosed. On 24th November, 1545, Sir Thomas Legh died,
[626] leaving as his sole heir a daughter, Katherine, aged five years. His
widow, Joan, pressed for the execution of the award, and eventually on 8th
March, 1545–6, a further decree[627] was made modifying the former. In
accordance therewith an indenture[628] was on 24th March drawn up
between Lord Lisle and Dame Joan Legh, providing for the transfer to the
latter during her life, with remainder to Katherine, of the undermentioned
property.
“All those messuages, houses, and buyldinges, landes and tenements
callyd the Spyttell howses, with all the orchards, gardens thereunto
adjoyning.”
A close called St. Giles’ Wood.[629]
The Chequer.[630]
4 cottages in the occupation of John Baron.
11 cottages in the occupation of William Wilkinson.
The Maidenhead,[703] with a garden.
The Bear and 2 cottages adjoining.
Bear Close and Aldwych Close.
The George.[703]
A “mese” in the occupation of John Smith.
The Angel.
6 cottages in the occupation of William Hosyer.
The King’s Head.[703]
2 cottages near The Greyhound.
Rents from The Crown and a brewhouse.
The tithe of two fields[631] in Bloomsbury.
13 cottages in St. Andrew’s, Holborn.
The Round Rents[632] and other tenements and cottages in St.
Andrew’s, Holborn.
Lands in Essex, Sussex, Northampton, York, Northumberland and
Norfolk.
Rents from a large number of properties in the City of London, St.
Clement Danes, etc.
In Lord Lisle’s hands remained:—
“The capitall house of the seyd late Hospitall of Seynte Gyles in the
feldes and all the stables, barnes, orchards and gardeyns thereunto
adjoyninge.”
Two “meses” parcels of the same site, with orchards and gardens,
etc., late in the tenure of Dr. Borde and Master Densyll.
A close of 16 acres lying before the Great Gate, in the occupation of
Master Magnus.
A close lying within the precinct, commonly called the Pale Close.
A close of 20 acres called The Newlands.[633]
A piece of ground called The Lane.[633]
Certain lands in Norfolk.
Lisle retained the property only for a few months, selling it in the
same year[634] (1546) to John Wymond Carew, (afterwards Sir Wymond).
Sir Wymond died on 23rd August, 1549, when he was found[635] to be seized
of “and in the capital mansion of the Hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and
of and in certain parcels of land with appurtenances in the parish of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields ... in his demesne as of fee.”
In December, 1561, his widow, Dame Martha Carew, gave up, in
return for an annuity, to his son Thomas “all those lands, tenements, rents,
hereditaments, etc., lieing and being in St. Gyles and Maribone, nere
London, late belonging to Burton Lazar, which she holds by way of
jointure”;[636] and Thomas sold them to Francis Downes. On the latter’s
death in 1564 they were particularised[637] as four messuages, and four
acres of pasture in St. Giles, and 20 acres of pasture in St. Marylebone.
Although the manor of St. Giles is not mentioned, it
must have been included in the portion assigned to Katherine
Legh, for it is found afterwards in her possession. Sir
Thomas’s widow died on 5th January, 1555–6[638] (having
previously remarried[639]), leaving Katherine in her sixteenth
year. Such a desirable prize was not likely to remain long in
the matrimonial market, and a husband was soon found in
Blount.
the person of Sir James Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Blount’s life
seems to have been one of continual financial worry, and his
mortgages and recognisances figure very prominently in the Close Rolls of
the period.[640]
The date of his marriage with Katherine Legh is not known precisely,
but it was certainly within 13 months of the death of her mother.[641] By
degrees the greater portion of Lady Katherine’s inheritance was converted
into ready money, and among other transactions, the manor of St. Giles was
on 18th July, 1565, mortgaged to Robert Browne, citizen and goldsmith of
London, and Thomas his son.[642] The mortgage was never redeemed,[643]
and on 20th June, 1579, Thomas Browne parted with the manor to Thos.
Harris, who in turn sold it on 12th February, 1582–3, to John Blomeson.
Blomeson retained it for nine years, and on 3rd May, 1592, sold it to “Walter
Cope, of the Strand, Esq.,”[644] afterwards Sir Walter Cope.[645] On his death
in 1614, the manor came into the possession of his daughter and sole
heiress, Isabella, who married Sir Henry Rich, and on 2nd April, 1616, it was
sold to Philip Gifford and Thos. Risley, in trust for Henry, third Earl of
Southampton.[646]
On the death of the fourth earl in 1668, it became the
property of his daughter, Lady Rachel Russell, from whom it
descended to the Dukes of Bedford, who now hold it.
Russell.
LIV.—THE CHURCH OF ST. GILES-IN-THE-
FIELDS.
First Church.
In a book,[647] now in the possession of the Holborn
Metropolitan Borough Council, containing a number of extracts
apparently copied from an earlier volume, is the copy of a document
dated 26th January, 1630–31, in which it is stated that Queen Maud,
about the year 1110, here built a church “pulchram satis et
magnificam,” and called it by the name of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. It is
possible that the statement is merely based on the fact of the
foundation of the hospital, including the church, at about that date.
Although there is no record of any presentation to the living
before the Hospital was suppressed in 1539, the fact that the parish
of St. Giles was in existence at least as early as 1222[648] necessitates
the assumption that the church was partially used for parochial
purposes. After the suppression of the Hospital the whole fabric
became parochial.
The earliest institution that has been found to[649] this church
is dated 20th April, 1547, and was at the presentation of Sir Wymond
Carew. On the next occasion (1571) the privilege was exercised by
Queen Elizabeth, and since that time the patronage has always been
in the hands of the Crown.
Very little information remains as to the architectural
character of the church (whether the original structure or not) at the
time of the dissolution.[650]
Besides the high altar there must have been an altar to the
patron saint, St. Giles. There is also evidence of the existence of a
chapel of St. Michael, for in the 46th year of Henry III. Robert of
Portpool bequeathed certain rents to provide for the maintenance of
a chaplain “to celebrate perpetually divine service in the chapel of St.
Michael, within the hospital church of S. Giles.”[651]
According to an order of the Vestry of 8th August, 1623, there
then existed a nave and a chancel, both with pillars, clerestory walls
over, and aisles on either side.
The Vestry minutes of 21st April, 1617, record the erection of a
steeple with a peal of bells, but from the fact that “casting the bells” is
mentioned as well as the buying of new bells, and from the reference
to it in the following year (9th September, 1618) as “the new steeple,”
it seems probable that something of the kind had existed before.
Parton[652] says that there was in early times a small round bell tower,
with a conical top, at the western end of the church, but his authority
for the statement is very doubtful.
The size of the church, measured within the walls, was 153 feet
by 65 feet.[653]
Second Church.
The church was, in the early years of the 17th century, in
danger of falling, as indeed some of it did, causing a void at the upper
end of the chancel “which was stored with Lumber, as the Boards of
Coffins and Deadmen’s Bones.” A screen was erected at the expense
of Lady Dudley “to hide it from the beholders’ eyes, which could not
but be troubled at it.”[654] A further collapse caused the parishioners
to decide to erect a new church. This was begun in 1623 and finished
in 1631. The cost of building amounted to £2,068, all of which, with
the exception of £252 borrowed, was obtained from voluntary
offerings. The largest contributor was Lady Dudley, who gave £250,
and, in addition, paid for the paving of the church and chancel. A
small sketch of the church is given by Hollar in his plan of 1658
(Plate 3), and a lithograph (here reproduced) by G. Scharf is in
Parton’s Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
Hatton[655] gives the length as 123 feet and the breadth 57 feet.
The church and steeple appear to have been built of rubbed brick[656],
surmounted with battlements, and coped with stone.[656] A western
gallery was erected in 1671, and others to the north and south in
1676–7.
The chancel had a large east window, and one on either side.
The nave had a window over the chancel arch, and a large one at the
west end.
There were north and south aisles, which must have been of
considerable height to admit of the galleries which were
subsequently added. They appear to have been of three bays,[657] with
two windows in each. All the windows, except the westernmost one
in the north aisle, were glazed with coloured and painted glass. There
were three doors to the church, one beneath the west window and
others under the third window from the east of the north aisle and
the westernmost window of the south aisle.
No window is mentioned by Strype at the west end of the
north aisle, so that it is probable that the tower was attached to the
church in this situation. This had battlements and was provided with
a vane.
The interior was well furnished and provided with numerous
ornaments, many of which were the gift of Lady Dudley.[658] Chief
among the latter must be mentioned an elaborate screen of carved
oak placed where one had formerly stood in the old church. This, as
stated in a petition to Parliament in 1640,[659] was “in the figure of a
beautifull gate, in which is carved two large pillars, and three large
statues: on the one side is Paul, with his sword; on the other
Barnabas, with his book; and over them Peter with his keyes. They
are all set above with winged cherubims, and beneath supported by
lions.”
The church had a pair of organs with case richly gilded, and
the organ loft was painted with a representation of the Twelve
Apostles.
Very costly and handsome rails were provided to guard the
altar. This balustrade extended the full width of the chancel, and
stood 7 or 8 feet east of the screen at the top of three steps.
The altar stood close up to the east wall, with a desk raised
upon it in various degrees of advancement.
The upper end of the church was paved with marble, and six
bells were provided in the steeple.
In 1640 the reformers were very bitterly incensed against the
rector with regard to the fittings in the church, and a petition was
presented to Parliament enumerating the various articles which were
considered superstitious and idolatrous. The result of this action was
that most of the ornaments were sold in 1643, while Lady Dudley was
still alive.
After the Restoration the church was repaired and decorated,
and a striking clock and dials added to the tower.
In 1716 the church had a very valuable addition made to its
plate in the form of an engraved gold communion cup, weighing 45
ozs., which had been purchased pursuant to the will of Thomas
Woodville, a parishioner who died at sea. This valuable chalice,
together with the rest of the sacramental and other plate, was stolen
from the vestry room in 1804.
The church was obviously not well constructed, for by 1715 it
was reported to be in a ruinous condition. Under a moderate
computation it appeared that it would cost £3,000 to put it in order.
The ground outside being above the floor of the church, caused the
air to be damp and unwholesome, and proved inconvenient in other
ways. In these circumstances it was thought better to recommend a
complete reconstruction of the church.
The parishioners accordingly petitioned that the church
should be included in the 50 new churches to be built in the cities of
London and Westminster and the suburbs, and the necessary
authority for this was eventually obtained in 1718.[660] Nothing,
however, was done until 1729, when an arrangement was come to
whereby the Parish of St. Giles agreed to make provision for the
stipend of the rector of the new parish of St. George, Bloomsbury, on
condition that the Commissioners acting under the Act of Queen
Anne should pay a sum not exceeding £8,000 for the rebuilding of
St. Giles Church. The arrangement was sanctioned by an Act of
Parliament of the same year.[661] By 1731, Henry Flitcroft had
prepared plans and entered into an agreement to begin pulling down
by 31st August of that year, and to have the new church completely
finished on or before 25th December, 1733. For this work the
architect was to receive £7,030, but in fact the contract was exceeded
by over £1,000, Flitcroft’s receipt being for £8,436 19s. 6d.[662]
Third Church.
The interior dimensions of the church are as follows: length
from the west wall to the east wall of the chancel, 102 feet; length
from the west wall of the nave to the east wall of the nave, 74 feet;
depth of the chancel, 8 feet; width of the nave and aisles, 57 feet 6
inches.
The plan is a nave of five bays with side aisles (Plate 43), over
which are galleries, these being connected by a western one in the
last bay of the nave. A shallow sanctuary is placed at the eastern end,
and at the west is the steeple and a vestibule containing the
entrances and the staircases to the galleries and tower.
The general treatment of the exterior of the church (Plates 45
and 47) is plain in character, but of pleasing effect. The walling is
faced with Portland stone rusticated (chamfered at the joints) to a
projecting band marking the gallery level. Above, the walling is of
plain ashlaring with rusticated quoins. The gallery windows have
semi-circular heads with keystones, moulded architraves and plain
impost blocks. The whole is surmounted by a bold modillion cornice,
with blocking course above.
Emphasis is given to the sanctuary by a pediment and by a
large semi-circular-headed window with panels on either side
forming a decorative composition.
The western end has a similar pediment with the tower rising
above. The central entrance doorway lacks emphasis and the
importance which its position seems to require, and is almost the
same in design as those to the vestibules facing north and south,
which are relatively unimportant. On the main frieze below the
cornice is the inscription—H. Flitcroft, Architectus.
Rising immediately behind the western pediment is the
steeple of about 150 feet in height.
Flitcroft’s able design was evidently influenced by that of
Gibbs for the neighbouring church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, but it
lacks the vigorous character of that noble structure. The banding to
the obelisk above the belfry tends to make this feature appear
somewhat overheavy in comparison with the graceful lantern
beneath. The change from square to octagon at the clock face level is
cleverly managed, and will bear comparison with the same feature at
St. Martin’s Church.
The following extract from A Critical Review of the Public
Buildings, Statues and Ornaments in and About London and
Westminster made by Ralph in 1734, is of interest, as it gives an
opinion upon the architecture of this church shortly after its
erection:—
“The new church of St. Giles’s is one of the most simple and elegant
of the modern structures: it is rais’d at very little expence, has very few
ornaments, and little beside the propriety of its parts, and the harmony of
the whole, to excite attention, and challenge applause: yet still it pleases,
and justly too; the east end is both plain and majestick, and there is nothing
in the west to object to but the smallness of the doors, and the poverty of
appearance that must necessarily follow. The steeple is light, airy and
genteel, argues a good deal of genius in the architect, and looks very well
both in comparison with the body of the church, and when ’tis consider’d as
a building by itself, in a distant prospect.”
Ralph disliked the position of the church, and would have
altered its direction, making what is the east end the main front, and
placing it in such a manner as to have ended the vista of Broad
Street.
The interior (Plate 49) is much finer than the exterior would
suggest, and is an excellent example of a well thought-out design.
Square panelled piers rising to the underside of the galleries support
Ionic columns with block entablatures, all of Portland stone (Plate
46). These carry the roof and ceiling. The ceiling of the nave is
barrel-vaulted in form, panelled and divided into bays by mouldings.
The ceilings of the aisle-galleries (Plates 44 and 51) take the form of a
species of groined vaults intersecting the barrel ceiling of the nave.
The whole is covered by a roof of one span.
The treatment of the galleries is more than usually
satisfactory, for the fronts, instead of being housed into the columns
—giving the suggestion of a necessary after addition—rest
comfortably upon the piers supporting the columns, and, if taken
away, would mar the proportion of the columns to their pedestals.
The shallow sanctuary is almost the full width of the nave. It is
ceiled with an ornamental panelled barrel vault following that of the
nave, and the eastern wall is filled by an architectural composition
harmonising with the general treatment of the nave.
On the frieze of the altar piece (Plate 51) is carved a cherub’s
head, and above is a scrolled pediment having in the centre a pelican
feeding her young in the nest.
The lower panels on either side of the altar and of the
sanctuary, are four in number, and enclosed in carved wood frames.
Two contain pictures; that of Moses to the left (Plate 52) and of
Aaron to the right of the altar.
The pulpit is of carved oak with inlay panels. The ironwork to
the choir balustrade is of wrought work, and the old iron bound chest
in the north-west vestibule is of interest.
The organ (Plate 50) is of considerable interest, and Mr.
George E. Dunn, the organist, has been good enough to supply the
following information. The instrument was built by the celebrated
Bernard Schmidt (known as Father Smith) for the second church in
1671, when he was 41 years old. He was known chiefly for the
perfection of his diapason stops—the true organ tone—and those in
this organ are among his best specimens. When the church was
rebuilt by Flitcroft he evidently did not desire to interfere with the
organ, and adopted the unusual expedient of erecting the tower of
the new church partially round the organ; consequently the back and
part of two sides are covered by the walling of the tower. Father
Smith’s original specification remained until 1856, when many of the
stops had become decayed after 180 years’ use. Dr. G. C. Verrinder,
the organist at that time, had it restored and enlarged by Messrs.
Gray and Davidson, and further repairs and alterations were made in
1884 by the same firm, under the instructions of the late Dr. W.
Little, the organist at that date. In 1889–1900 further alterations
were made by Messrs. Henry Jones and Sons, in collaboration with
the present organist. But through all the decay and changes the
organ has undergone Father Smith’s original diapasons in the front
organ remain and are still perfect. The blowing is done by hand, but
the well-balanced lever renders this comparatively easy, while,
despite the retention of the old tracker action, the instrument is quite
free from the “rattling” so often found in these old actions. In front
are carved the royal arms of George I.
All the glass to the windows, except a small panel (Plate 52) in
the west window of the south vestibule, is modern. This fragment,
which is probably from the earlier church, represents St. Giles’s tame
hind struck by the arrow.
The majority of the monuments in the church belong to the
19th century. Those of earlier date are as follows:—
On the north-east wall of the nave is a tablet of white marble,
on a black marble slab, with the following inscription:
H. S. E.
GULIELMUS WATSON EQUES
SOCIETATIS REGALIS APUD LONDINUM,
ET COLLEGII REGALIS MEDICORUM SOCIUS,
REGALI ETIAM ACADEMIÆ MADRITENSI ADSCRIPTUS,
IN UNIVERSITATIBUS HALÆ ET VIRTEMBERGIÆ
MEDICINÆ DOCTOR
HONORIS ERGO ELECTUS
VIR SUI TEMPORIS
SCIENTIÆ INDAGATOR STUDIOSISSIMUS:
ARTIS MEDICÆ ET BOTANICÆ, NECNON PHILOSOPHIÆ
NATURALIS,
PRÆCIPUE QUOD AD VIM ELECTRICAM ATTINET
INTER PRIMOS PERITUS.
OBIIT DIE MAII 10. A.D. 1787. ÆTAT. SUÆ 72.
HOC MARMOR NEC SUPERBUM,
NEC QUIDQUAM HABENS ORNATUS:
PRAETER IPSUM EJUS NOMEN,
FILIO PIENTISSIMO LEGANTE,
TESTAMENTI CURATORES
PONI JUSSERUNT.
Above, surmounted by a crest, is placed a coat of arms:
(Argent) on a chevron engrailed (Azure) between three martlets
(Sable) as many crescents (of the first).
On the wall of the north aisle is a white marble tablet to the
memory of John Barnfather, who died on 17th September, 1793, in
the 75th year of his age. A tribute is paid to his strictness and
impartiality in the execution of his duties as a justice of the peace,
and to his “mildness of Temper and benignity of mind” in private life.
The tablet is surmounted by a mourning female figure, and fixed on
an oval slab of black marble.
A little to the west along the aisle is a tablet of black marble,
with white marble cornice and base, bearing an inscription to the
memory of other members of the same family, viz., Robert
Barnfather, who died on 23rd October, 1741, aged 54, and his wife
Mary, who died on 6th December, 1754, aged 67. A long account of
the latter’s many good qualities is contributed by “their most
Affectionate Son.”
Still further westward is a tablet with the following
inscription:—
NEAR UNTO THIS PLACE LYETH THE BODY OF
ANDREW MARVELL ESQUIRE, A MAN SO ENDOWED BY
NATURE
SO IMPROVED BY EDUCATION, STUDY & TRAVELL, SO
CONSUMMATED
BY PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE: THAT JOINING THE MOST
PECULIAR GRACES
OF WIT & LEARNING WITH A SINGULAR PENETRATION &
STRENGTH OF
JUDGMENT, & EXERCISING ALL THESE IN THE WHOLE
COURSE OF HIS LIFE
WITH AN UNALTERABLE STEADINESS IN THE WAYS OF
VIRTUE, HE BECAME
THE ORNAMENT & EXAMPLE OF HIS AGE; BELOVED BY GOOD
MEN, FEAR’D
BY BAD, ADMIR’D BY ALL, THO IMITATED ALASS! BY FEW, &
SCARCE FULLY
PARALLELLED BY ANY. BUT A TOMB STONE CAN NEITHER
CONTAIN HIS CHARACTER,
NOR IS MARBLE NECESSARY TO TRANSMIT IT TO POSTERITY,
IT WILL BE ALWAYS
LEGIBLE IN HIS INIMITABLE WRITINGS. HE SERVED THE
TOWN OF KINGSTON
UPON HULL, ABOVE 20 YEARS SUCCESSIVELY IN
PARLIAMENT, & THAT WITH SUCH
WISDOM, DEXTERITY, INTEGRITY & COURAGE AS BECOMES A
TRUE PATRIOT
HE DYED THE 16. AUGUST 1678 IN THE 58TH. YEAR OF HIS AGE.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF ANDREW MARVELL ESQR. AS A
STRENUOUS ASSERTER OF
THE CONSTITUTIONS, LAWS & LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND,
AND OUT OF FAMILY AFFECTION & ADMIRATION OF
THE UNCORRUPT PROBITY OF HIS LIFE & MANNERS
ROBERT NETTLETON OF LONDON MERCHANT HIS GRAND
NEPHEW
HATH CAUSED THIS SMALL MEMORIAL OF HIM
TO BE ERECTED IN THE YEAR 1764.
Further is a tablet of white marble, in the form of an
ornamental cartouche, recording the death of John Hawford and
Elizabeth his wife, and their two sons John and William. All four
deaths occurred between December, 1712, and July, 1715.
Next is a tablet to the memory of Thomas Edwards, who died
on 9th July, 1781, in the 71st year of his age. The tablet is of white
marble, surmounted by a black cinerary urn, on an oval slab of
painted marble. The inscription records his various bequests for the
use of the poor of the parish, and explains that the monument was
erected by his widow not only as a tribute of gratitude and affection,
but with a view to inciting others “whom God has blessed with
Abilities and Success” to follow his example. Her own death, on 23rd
November, 1818, is also mentioned.
Still in the north aisle, but near the entrance, is a tomb
bearing a white marble recumbent effigy of Lady Frances Kniveton,
resting on a black marble slab above a stone base. This is one of the
two memorials preserved from the second church. The inscription,
contained on a white marble tablet, reads as follows:—
In Memory of the Right Honble. Lady Frances Kniveton,
(Wife of Sr. Gilbert Kniveton,/of Bradley, in the County of Derby
Bart.) lyeth buried in the Chancel of this Church./She was one of the
5 Daughters & Co-heirs of the Rt. Honble. Sr. Robert Dudley Kt. Duke
of the/Empire; by the Lady Alice his Wife & Dutchess. which
Robert. was Son of the Rt. Honble./Robert Dudley, late Earle of
Leicester. & his Dutchess was Daughter of Sr. Tho: Leigh,/and Aunt

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The Reception of John Chrysostom in

Early Modern Europe: Translating and

Translating and Reading a Greek Church Father

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022946561

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Part 2: From late antiquity to the Italian Renaissance

1 The transmission and translation of Chrysostom during late

2 Ambrogio Traversari: Translating Chrysostom in early Renaissance

3 John Chrysostom in late Byzantine and post-Byzantine patristic

4 Translations of John Chrysostom in Renaissance Rome from Nicholas V

5 The first printed editions of John Chrysostom, c.1466–1504 105

Part 3: The politics of patristic scholarship in Reformation

1 New texts, new questions, and a new interpretation of Paul 121

2 The politics of patristic scholarship in Reformation Basel 131

3 Erasmus in exile: The 1530 and 1536 Opera omnia 151

4 Erasmus’s Life of John Chrysostom 163

Part 4: Patristic scholarship in an age

1 Confessionalisation and scholarship: Setting the scene 185

2 Testing and ignoring confessionalisation in Brescia, Basel,

3 An Italian interlude: 1548–1554 202

4 A rivalry renewed: The Opera omnia of 1556 (Paris), 1558 (Basel),

5 Censoring and translating Chrysostom in Italy, the Low Countries,

6 Education, collaboration, and confession: 1585–1624 252

6.4 Collaboration and confession. 3: Henry Savile completes his

Part 5: General conclusion

General conclusion 283

some of which, such as those of Ambrogio Traversari, might be of interest to

began to be exploited by French editors of Chrysostom in the 1550s, resulting in

1.1 A potted biography of John Chrysostom

381. He spent his early years in Constantinople preaching, combatting heresies

As we will see later, such prominence is often achieved by authors who

 Part 3.2 and Part 3.3.

Scribes also shaped the reception of Chrysostom’s works in other ways.

the polishing of Chrysostom’s homilies into ‘smooth’ versions was sufficiently

 Jean-Paul Bouhot, “La collection homilétique pseudo-chrysostomienne découverte par

 Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” 307–9.

 Primmer, “Die Originalfassung”.

that a scholar named Mutianus Scholasticus translated the Homilies on Hebrews

1.3 From the sixth to the ninth century: The oldest

 Germain Morin, “L’évêque Laurent de ‘Novae’ et ses opuscules théologiques attribués a

 Sebastian Haidacher, “Chrysostomos-Fragmente im Maximos-Florilegium und in den

 Michel Aubineau, “Textes chrysostomiens récupérés dans le codex athonite, Pantocrator

1.4 From the ninth to the eleventh century: The reception

 Bouhot, “Les traductions latines de Jean Chrysostome,” 34.

As the text of individual works by Chrysostom changed between the ninth

1.5 From the twelfth to the fifteenth century: The ‘twelfth-

another, before giving each to a different copyist to transcribe.84 Burgundio is

confused Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis with the Hexameron by Basil, a

 Classen, Burgundio von Pisa, 35–6.

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