Raising an Athlete for Christ: Saint John Chrysostom and Education in Byzantium

Abstract

This article examines the homily titled Address on Vainglory, and the Right Way for Parents to Bring up their Children, concentrating upon the educational vision it expresses.  The text is attributed to John Chrysostom, Christian saint and fourth century Patriarch of Constantinople.  Uncertainty regarding the manuscript’s authenticity led to the exclusion of “Address on Vainglory” from most collections of John Chrysostom’s writings, which had seminal influence in a context when the church was united, and the homily has consequently received very limited attention.  Chrysostom earned the epithet "The Golden Mouthed” primarily by virtue of his training in rhetoric and his ability to translate the classical sources that he read into his own, Christian, context.  He argues that education must not only cultivate all the faculties of the student’s mind, but also prepare the child to live and act ethically in the world.  Chrysostom reconfigures this argument using the striking imagery of an Athlete for Christ, who cultivated not only the faculties of his mind, but also exercised those of the soul.