Ascending to the see of Constantinople in the late fourth-century, John Chrysostom stands out among his fellow Nicene bishops for his sense of pastoral responsibility for the Gothic community within his jurisdiction. According to Theodoret, Chrysostom designated a church in the imperial city for the Goths, furnished it with presumably Nicene Gothic priests, deacons, and readers, and preached there occasionally with the assistance of a translator. This depiction of orthodox activity, however, has been problematized by contemporary references, especially by Synesius of Crete, which seem to indicate that the parish was actually utilized by the Arian faction of the Gothic community. These opposing representations serve to illustrate the significance of the Gothic parish as a contested space in Constantinople.
How does Chrysostom justify allocating sacred space for the barbarian Goths to his own Greek community? Moreover, how does a bishop control multiple parishes in a city, especially the ones in which parishioners speak a foreign language and he is rarely present? The aim of this paper, therefore, is twofold. First, in order to ascertain his justification for the Goths’ allotment of sacred space, I will examine the argument developed in Chrysostom’s Homilia habita postquam presbyter Gothus (PG 63.499–510). Second, building upon the recent work on Chrysostom’s use of spatial rhetoric to assert his authority over contested spaces in Antioch (Shepardson) as well as Constantinople (Andrade), I will demonstrate how his pastoral strategies to control sacred space and its occupants might be able to help untangle the competing portrayals of the Gothic parish.
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