The Church Fathers · 404–407
Letters to Olympias
John Chrysostom · c. 347 – 407
What it is
Seventeen letters written in exile to the deaconess who had supported him, and who was being prosecuted for it. He is walking under guard through Armenia in winter, ill and losing his teeth, and spends the letters consoling her — nothing is truly dreadful but sin.
Why it lasted
The most personal writing of the greatest preacher of the ancient church, and evidence of a friendship between a bishop and a woman conducted as between equals. He died on the road two months after the last of them.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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