Poverty and Society in the World of John Chrysostom

Abstract

Like those of Basil and the two Gregories, the writings of John Chrysostom provide useful data about poverty that is difficult to recover from the archaeological record. In this article, images of the poor and information about poverty in his writings are grouped into five categories: basic information, voluntary poverty (asceticism), the sight and sound of poverty in the urban setting, individual social response, and self-consciousness about poverty. In a sixth section, the status of the data and how they relate to the models put forward by Patlagean and Brown are considered.