PREFACE
[concerning the sermons on the Acts of the Apostles:] There are fifty homilies on the Acts, and they were delivered over the course of nearly an entire year: for he did not deliver them daily, but every fifth day, or every seventh, or even more tardily. He himself declares that he delivered them to the people when he was in the third year of his archbishopric. As for the time when he delivered the homilies on Genesis, we have not yet been able to determine this; for it is uncertain whether in the twenty-eighth [homily] he intends to refer to those he delivered in the third year of his archbishopric, or to others. It is clear that he composed these also when he was archbishop; twenty-seven, in fact, in the Lent of his second [year of his archbishopric], and the remainder in the fourth year. His discourse, with its accustomed clarity and purity, exhibits splendor and a flowing quality, joined with a richness of meaning and a neat abundance of examples. Yet it is inferior to the Homilies on the Acts, declining toward a more humble diction; and it is separated by as much distance as these works on the Acts are inferior to the Commentaries on the Psalms and the Epistles of the Apostle. These things are stated by Photius, who commits an error regarding the number of the sermons on the Acts, saying there are only forty, when in number they are fifty-five, just as he did not accurately report the number of the Homilies on Genesis; unless, perhaps, errors crept into his copies, which is more easily done when dates are noted by numerical letters. Nor does he proceed more successfully when he says that the Homilies on Genesis were delivered at Constantinople, part of them in the second year of Chrysostom's archbishopric, and part in the fourth. For it is certain that the Homilies on Genesis were delivered at Antioch, while Chrysostom was still a presbyter, as we have proven in the Preface to the Homilies on Genesis. As to what he says about the style, namely that he prefers the diction of the Homilies on the Acts to the discourse of the Homilies on Genesis, I do not know if this would please all those who might wish to compare the style of both works. And it is certain that in both works Chrysostom deviates not a little from his accustomed eloquence. But to which work this blemish should be more properly ascribed, it would not be of great value to examine.
Why the Homilies on the Acts appear to be written in a humbler style than the other works of Chrysostom.
Photius says that the sermons which Chrysostom delivered at Antioch are more ornate and polished than those he pronounced at Constantinople. This must, for the most part, be admitted to be true. Beware, however, of taking this dictum as a rule, and of thinking that judgment must always be rendered from it. For Photius himself, who set this standard, asserted that the Homilies on Genesis—placed among the more unrefined works of Chrysostom—were delivered at Constantinople, which, however, were most certainly delivered at Antioch, as Chrysostom himself indicates. Nevertheless, that which was said above stands: that the sermons on the Acts, which were delivered at Constantinople, are to be counted among the leaner and humbler [works] as regards a great part of them. This is thought to have happened because Chrysostom, having been constituted the bishop of the imperial city and being overwhelmed by the mass of business which the care of such a city brought upon him, did not have the time to decorate and polish his sermons: especially indeed in the years 400 and 401, during which we think these homilies were delivered, as will be said shortly. For then, with Gaina and the Goths filling everything with tumult, Chrysostom, who resisted their attempts with all his might, was less able to devote work to the adorning of his sermons; nor is it a wonder if, with the craftsman hampered by so many and such great burdens, something tumultuous should be detected in this work. Another cause, not without reason, is brought forward for the complexity and, in some places, the broken sequence: namely, that the scribes, who were recording the words of the holy doctor as they were received, would write down different things during those tumultuous and extemporaneously delivered portions of the sermons. From this, undoubtedly, that great variety arose which is observed in the Codices that present these homilies. For as we have noted several times at the bottom of the page, such a diversity of readings occurs in the Manuscripts that, if we had written them all out, we would have produced a new series nearly equal in length to the sermons; and that with no fruit. For those varieties, so frequent, either merely present a different order of words constituting the periods, or provide synonymous expressions. Nor was there any intention to increase the great mass of Chrysostom's works—which no [other] writer has ever provided—with superfluous additions.
One thing remains to be explored: why our John, in almost all the sermons on the Acts, after he has brought forth the verses of the book to be explained and has gifted them with a brief interpretation, proceeds to another and brief explanation of those same verses, having premised this or a similar saying: "But let us repeat what was said above." This is observed in no other of his Commentaries on Holy Scripture. Perhaps Chrysostom himself provided the method for solving this question when he says at the beginning of the first sermon, that the book of the Acts was so unknown to most of the auditors that they did not even know that it existed, nor whether such a precious book appeared among the Biblical [books]. Therefore, that he might inculcate a fuller knowledge of the previously unknown book, he added a second [explanation] after the former; which extemporaneous addition is for the most part intricate and sometimes broken. For this perplexity of style is observed especially in these additions. For the ethics, and those things which follow the additions for the informing of morals, always preserve their dignity, and for the most part at least, truly display the eloquence of Chrysostom.
In what year these Homilies on the Acts were delivered.
With Chrysostom himself as our guide, we establish both the place and the year in which he delivered these sermons. For not once does he indicate that he is a bishop and is preaching while seated on the episcopal throne: and it is undoubted that these sermons must be considered to be the Constantinopolitan ones. Now, he delivered them in the third year of his episcopate, as is testified by that Homily [number] forty-four, col. 312: "Behold, by the grace of God, we have [had] three years now, not indeed exhorting by night and by day, but often doing this after three days, or after seven." Where you observe that "having three years," if you follow the letter, signifies that Chrysostom had already completed three years in the episcopate, when to this forty-