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These two letters, which are the earliest of Chrysostom's extant
works, are addressed to a friend who had been a member of the little
ascetic brotherhood which Chrysostom and Basil formed, soon after
they had abandoned secular life, as described in the first book of the
Treatise on the Priesthood. Theodore, like Maximus, afterwards
Bishop of Isaurian Seleucia, who was another member of the same
fraternity, had been a fellow student with Chrysostom and Basil in
the school of Libanius, but was a few years younger than either of
them. The strain upon his powers of religious devotion had proved too
much for him; he had withdrawn from the ascetic brotherhood, and
relapsed for a season into worldly habits, being fascinated by the
beauty of a young lady named Hermione, whom he was anxious to marry.
His fall was regarded with almost as much sorrow and dismay by his
austere friends as if he had plunged into deadly vice. Prayers were
continually offered, and great efforts made for his restoration,
amongst which must be reckoned the two letters which are here
translated. They are the productions of a youthful enthusiast, and as
such allowances must be made for them; but they abound in passages of
great beauty and power, especially upon the infinite love and
forbearance of God, as encouraging to repentance and withholding from
despair and recklessness into which Theodore seems to have been
inclined to sink. The appeal of Chrysostom, combined with the
efforts of his other friends, was not in vain. Theodore once more
renounced the world and his matrimonial intentions, and retired into
the seclusion of the fraternity. In A.D. 383, when he was
about thirty-three years of age, he was ordained priest, and in
392 he became Bishop of Mopsuestia, where he died in A.D.
428 at the age of seventy-eight. Chrysostom seems to have retained
his affection to him to the last, and during his own exile at
Cucusus, A.D. 404-7, wrote a letter to him which is full of
expressions of fervent admiration and regard. He was a most voluminous
writer, and may be regarded as the ablest representative of the school
of Biblical interpretation founded by Diodorus of Tarsus, under whom
he had studied, together with Chrysostom and Basil. A fierce
controversy raged during the fifth and sixth centuries respecting the
orthodoxy of some of his writings which some accused of preparing the
way for Nestorianism. When this had died down his name was
comparatively forgotten, and it is only in modern times that his great
merits as a commentator, who boldly applied the historical and
grammatical methods of examination to the books of Holy Scripture,
have been fully recognized.
Tillemont was of opinion that of the two letters of Chrysostom the
second only was addressed to Theodore, who was afterwards Bishop of
Mopsuestia. Montfaucon, however, Dupin, and Savile, maintain
that both were addressed to him, and their view is confirmed by the
fact that Leontius of Byzantium (in Nest. et. Eutych. lib.
iii. c. 7) and Isidore of Seville (de Script. Eccl. c.
6.) mention two letters of Chrysostom to Theodore of Mopsuestia.
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