Diagnosing Heresy: Ps.-Martyrius’s Funerary Speech for John Chrysostom

John Chrysostom died ignominiously as an exiled and condemned heretic. Yet, early biographers worked to reverse his reputation and transformed John into a symbol of Christian orthodoxy. In this essay, I examine how one such biographer, Ps.-Martyrius, managed this task through the language of proper diagnosis. In his Funerary Speech for John Chrysostom, Ps.-Martyrius differentiates the symptoms of the disease of heresy from the symptoms of righteous suffering. To make his case, Ps.-Martyrius compares John’s symptoms, through reference to the lesioned bodies of the Constantinopolitan leper community, to the fecund and cursed body of the Empress Eudoxia. Ps.-Martyrius’s diagnosis concludes that John’s suffering through conspicuous exile conveyed honor and orthodoxy, while Eudoxia’s embedded and hidden maladies reflected her culpability as the bearer of lies.