John Chrysostom

Topic: John Chrysostom

Overview

This packet matters first as a Savile packet. The strongest evidence here concerns Savile’s monumental Chrysostom edition and the suppressed Admonitio, not later Shakespeare criticism. The later Lear/Coriolanus material is useful, but it should remain clearly secondary to the documented Savile facts.

1. Verified Sourced Facts

A. Savile’s edition and the suppressed Admonitio

• Jean-Louis Quantin writes:

“Henry Savile wrote a critical dissertation on Chrysostom’s biographers for inclusion in the eighth volume of his edition of Chrysostom’s works in Greek.”

• Quantin also writes:

“He preferred therefore to suppress his dissertation altogether”

• Quantin states:

“The suppression of the Admonitio seems to have been a last-minute decision.”

• Quantin further states:

“The international distribution of the entire set, without the Admonitio, began in January 1613.”

• Quantin identifies the bibliographical anomaly precisely: a few copies of volume eight, including copies at the British Library, the Bodleian, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, preserve an additional twelve-page Admonitio, while most copies do not. The table of contents and general catalogue still mention the Admonitio, which is why Quantin treats the suppression as last-minute.

• Quantin reconstructs the Admonitio as the result of roughly a decade of work on Chrysostom's Lives. Savile especially wanted the Greek original of Palladius of Helenopolis's Dialogus de vita Chrysostomi, then known only in Latin translation. He searched for it through amanuenses, correspondents, and library catalogues across Europe, but did not find it.

• Savile's method, as Quantin presents it, was historical-critical rather than merely editorial. He distinguished older and more authoritative witnesses such as Palladius from later biographers who multiplied miraculous stories, and he tried to reconstruct a precise chronology of Chrysostom's life and aftermath.

• Quantin explains that the suppressed dissertation mattered because letters attributed to:
• Arcadius
• Eudoxia

could not be treated as genuine, and because the controversy touched arguments:

• “much used by champions of papal authority”

• The hottest point was the alleged excommunication of Emperor Arcadius and Empress Eudoxia by Pope Innocent I after Chrysostom's death. Quantin shows that Savile attacked the episode by chronology, by comparison of witnesses, and by argument from silence. Because this episode had long been used as evidence for papal authority over emperors, Savile realized the Admonitio would be read confessionally.

• Quantin's conclusion is especially important for source temperature: Savile suppressed the Admonitio to avoid dragging the whole Eton Chrysostom edition into theological controversy and Roman censorship. The strategy failed in part. In 1615, after a report by Cardinal Bellarmine, the Congregation of the Index forbade the Latin notes at the end of volume eight; the prohibition remained until the Index itself was suppressed in 1966.

• Quantin also records a direct John Hales connection inside the Admonitio: a conjecture about two Palladii was included by Savile as a short note by John Hales. This gives the Savile-Hales Chrysostom corridor a more specific documentary point than a generic assistant/editor relationship.

B. Bibliographic identity of the edition

• Quantin identifies the edition as:

“the Eton edition of John Chrysostom”

• The Open Library record identifies the work as:

“S. Ioannis Chrysostomi Opera Graece”

• The same record states:

“Vol. 1-8 each have special t.p. in Greek, dated 1612 and with vignette depicting royal arms.”

• The same record gives:

“STC 14629a”

• The individual volumes of the Savile Chrysostom were not all dated 1612. Volumes were issued across several years: early volumes carry dates of 1610 and 1611; volume 7 is dated 1612; volume 8 (the final volume, in which the suppressed Admonitio was planned to appear) is dated 1613. The Open Library catalog records 1612 as the principal date for the special title pages, but the edition spans 1610–1613.

• The edition was printed by Melchisedec Bradwood. Bradwood is not named in the Open Library catalog record but is documented in bibliographic studies of the Eton press.

• The engraved title page of the edition was the work of Leonard Gaultier, a French engraver. This is a minor bibliographic detail but relevant if the edition's physical form is ever described in the book.

C. Later Shakespeare-critical relevance

• Debora K. Shuger writes:

“the immense popularity of the Greek Fathers during the Renaissance is not without political significance”

• She also writes:

“From the later Middle Ages through the Renaissance, Chrysostom ... was one of the most popular of the Greek Fathers”

• Shuger gives useful scale for Chrysostom's Renaissance availability: she states that at least 17 complete editions of Chrysostom were published between 1500 and 1600, and that before 1642 English printers published 18 Chrysostom items, 11 of them in English translation.

• Shuger explicitly cautions that her argument is not a direct-source claim:

“I do not intend to argue that Shakespeare, in fact, studied the writings of the Church Fathers.”

• Shuger further writes:

“Lear’s prayer for the poor naked wretches (3.4.28-36), the ragged madness of Poor Tom, the bread riot in Coriolanus ‘feel’ radical”

• She adds:

“But Lear’s naked wretches haunt Chrysostom in Antioch”

• And:

“Like the plebeians in the first scene of Coriolanus, Chrysostom blames the hunger of the poor on hoarding patricians rather than the gods”

• Shuger names Henry Savile directly as an editor of both Tacitus and Chrysostom. This reinforces the Savile packet's double lane: Roman political historiography and Greek patristic scholarship.

These later claims are useful as secondary Shakespeare context, not as direct evidence about Neville.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• No discrete Ken Feinstein Twitter/blog layer is isolated in this packet at present.

3. Quoted Source Text

Quantin

• “Henry Savile wrote a critical dissertation on Chrysostom’s biographers”
• “He preferred therefore to suppress his dissertation altogether”
• “The suppression of the Admonitio seems to have been a last-minute decision.”
• “The international distribution of the entire set, without the Admonitio, began in January 1613.”
• “The suppressed Admonitio was the fruit of a decade of research”
• “all writers after him polluted and contaminated the candour and sincerity of history”
• “the truly great and difficult question of the letters exchanged between East and West”
• “running the risk of plunging his entire edition back into the theological controversies”

Bibliographic record

• “S. Ioannis Chrysostomi Opera Graece”
• “Vol. 1-8 each have special t.p. in Greek, dated 1612”
• STC 14629a

Shuger

• “the immense popularity of the Greek Fathers during the Renaissance”
• “I do not intend to argue that Shakespeare, in fact, studied the writings of the Church Fathers.”
• “Lear’s naked wretches haunt Chrysostom in Antioch”
• “Like the plebeians in the first scene of Coriolanus”

4. Citations

• Quantin, Jean-Louis. “Historical Criticism, Confessional Controversy, and Self-Censorship: Henry Savile and the Lives of John Chrysostom.” Local PDF: Quantin_Savile_Chrysostom_2021.pdf.
• Chrysostom, John. S. Ioannis Chrysostomi Opera Graece. Edited by Sir Henry Savile, 8 vols., Eton, 1612-1613. STC 14629a. Open Library record: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL622548W/S._Ioannis_Chrysostomi_Opera_Graece.
• Shuger, Debora K. “Subversive Fathers and Suffering Subjects: Shakespeare and Christianity.” Local PDF: subversive_fathers_and_suffering_subjects_shakespeare_and_christianity.pdf.
• henry_savile.md
• john_hales.md
• play_king_lear.md
• play_coriolanus.md

5. Notes on Access

• Quantin is the core witness for this packet. It is acceptable that the packet depends heavily on that article so long as it says so clearly.
• The main direct result is not “Shakespeare read Chrysostom,” but that Savile produced a major edition whose suppressed Admonitio reveals a specific form of historical criticism and self-censorship.
• Source-hardening result, 2026-04-28: Quantin should be used for four distinct claims, not one vague claim: Savile's editorial monument at Eton; his Europe-wide search for Palladius and other Chrysostom life-witnesses; his historical-critical separation of older witnesses from later miracle-heavy biographers; and his self-censorship when the Innocent/Arcadius/Eudoxia material threatened to become a papal-authority controversy.
• The Admonitio does not prove a direct Shakespeare source. It proves Savile's high-level scholarly method and shows how one of Neville's closest intellectual associates handled chronology, witness-ranking, textual criticism, confessional danger, and publication risk.
• The Shuger material is preserved because it explains why Chrysostom matters later in the Shakespeare packets, but it should remain visibly secondary.
• Source-hardening result, 2026-04-27: the Shuger PDF strengthens the Renaissance-popularity and Shakespeare-critical context for Chrysostom, including concrete publication-scale figures and the Lear/Coriolanus social-justice parallels. Its explicit limitation is equally important: Shuger is not claiming that Shakespeare directly studied patristic texts. Use it as cultural/intellectual context, not as a direct access proof.