Joannes Chrysostomus (d. 407 AD), Saint.

Median folio (340 x 223mm.), 279 leaves (of 280, without initial blank), 33 lines, Roman letter, on [t]5r a sentence omitted from the text has been printed in the lower margin, 5-line initial C on [b]6r in gold with white vine stem decoration on a red, blue and green ground, [b]7v with a 7-line gold initial Q with white vine stem decoration on a red, blue, green and gold ground extending into upper and outer borders, 2- to 3-line initials supplied in blue, early nineteenth-century brown morocco gilt, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, last leaf torn and stained at edges, extremities very slightly rubbed, upper hinge weak

Sir John Hayford Thorold and Syston Park, bookplates, sale in these rooms, 16 December 1884, lot 1040, £3-10s., Ridler; J.W. Pease, bookplate

H 5036; BMC iv 36; Bodleian XVc. J-128; Goff J286

first edition, and a handsome copy. The work is dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici.

St John Chrysostom, called "golden mouthed" because of his oratorical skills, is, with SS Basil, Gregory Nazianzenus and Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Fathers of the Church who wrote in Greek. A native of Antioch, and a pupil of the rhetorician Libanius there, he began his literary career during his time as an anchorite in the mountains near Antioch. In AD 398 he was consecrated in the see of Constantinople, but was banished in 403 for his attacks on church abuses.

Although his gospel homilies were not published in Greek until the great edition printed in Verona in the late 1520s, those on SS Matthew and John, and many others of his works, circulated in Latin both in manuscript and from the early 1470s in print: a manuscript of this translation dated 1462, once in the Phillipps library, belonged to John Meade Faulkner, and is now at Bryn Mawr College. Accolti (1416-1488?) also translated the Letters of Phalaris, although he is chiefly known as a jurist.