St. John Chrysostom

(347 - 407)

The son of a military officer, St. John Chrysostom studied with a pagan rhetorician before becoming a hermitic monk. Subsequent to his successful twelve-year career as a preacher, where he earned his Greek surname, meaning “golden-mouthed,” he was appointed against his will archdeacon of Constantinople in 398. His castigations of the wealthy in part resulted in his banishment to a small hamlet in Armenia in 404. He died three years later.