Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and his Congregation in Antioch (review)

Christianity and Communication in Late Antiquity is a study of John Chrysostom’s sermons to his congregation in Antioch. It began as a Princeton Ph.D. thesis written under the supervision of Peter Brown, and its basic purpose is “to learn about the Christianization of late antique society” (3). As Maxwell makes clear in the Introduction, she has good reasons for both her subject matter and her approach. Sermons are fertile source material, for they “can provide information about the process of Christianization, the variety of religious beliefs and practices coexisting at one time, and about the ways in which laypeople interacted with church authorities” (1). Her particular focus is also an excellent choice, for Chrysostom was the outstanding preacher of his time and gave most of his sermons in Antioch, one of the best-documented cities of late antiquity.

Maxwell has a good understanding of how to use these sermons as historical sources. In the Introduction, she addresses their content, their delivery within the liturgy, and their dating and chronology. Her discussion of the relationship of the spoken to the written versions of the sermons, however, could have probed the question of rhetorical embellishment more deeply. For example, given the importance in this study of the interactions between Chrysostom and his congregation, it would be helpful to know whether or not the reported exchanges between them are likely to be fictional.

In the first chapter, “Philosophical preaching in the Roman world,” Maxwell shows that both the expectations of the Christian congregations and the sermons delivered by the preachers were formed by the public rhetoric of the Second Sophistic. Thus Christian preachers like Chrysostom were the heirs of the philosophers, especially the Cynics, and, like them, had to choose between public and private lives. She devotes several pages to the fundamentally important question of whether or not the common people who spoke Koine understood and appreciated the Attic Greek declaimed by the orators, and concludes that they did. This lays the groundwork for a similar answer to the same question about Chrysostom’s congregation later in the book. Finally, a case study of the rhetor and bishop, Amphilochius of Iconium, who was both Li-banius’ pupil and Gregory of Nazianzus’ cousin, captures and deftly illustrates the main points of the chapter.

The second chapter is about the “culture of public speaking” (42) at Antioch where the same people who heard Chrysostom’s sermons frequently and enthusiastically listened to declamations, panegyrics, forensic speeches, and especially theatrical performances. Thus Maxwell draws attention to the similarity between the performances by actors and by preachers, for, despite his disapproval of the theatre, Chrysostom was clearly influenced by it. She also emphasizes that the common people were not passive spectators in the law courts, theatres or churches, and could influence government policy or even the choice of bishops with demonstrations and acclamations.

Chapter 3 is a social and economic study of Chrysostom’s congregation. In the debate about whether Chrysostom preached to an élite or a diverse audience, Maxwell uses references in the sermons to argue convincingly that it was diverse. Thus she finds evidence for the rich, the middling classes, artisans and workers, slaves and women. There were also the poor, and Maxwell is careful to show how Chrysostom adjusted his definition of “poor“ to fit the particular sermon. However, as Maxwell shows, the Syriac-speaking farmers seldom joined the congregation, and this fact raises questions about Chrysostom’s attitude towards the urban/rural and Greek/Syriac cultural and economic divides of late Roman Antioch which might have been worth pursuing. Were these divides less important to Chrysostom than the distinctions of wealth and class which he strove to overcome?

In chapter 4, Maxwell progresses from the demographics of Chrysostom’s congregation to his teaching of them. Here she finds continuity with the psychagogy or spiritual...