Emotions are integral to social life and social relations. When it comes to understanding the variety of the hitherto unacknowledged ways in which they informed, motivated and organised individual and collective behaviours within and across a wide range of social situations in the day-to-day living in Late Antiquity, few sources are as important as homilies. Through an examination of salient themes in the homilies of John Chrysostom, the aim of the lecture is to show how he articulated appropriate emotional norms drawn from the classical literature and the Bible in order to regulate the everyday emotional life of his community. 

Ioannis Papadogiannakis is Senior Lecturer in the departments of Classics and Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London and specialises in Late Antique and Byzantine intellectual and religious history. He is a member of the organizing committee of the Oxford Patristic Conference (2006- ) and serves on the Editorial Board of Studia Patristica. His publications have appeared in Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, Mohr Siebeck, Peeters. He has recently coedited (with I. Polinskaya, and A. James) Religion and War: From Antiquity to Early Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2024) and is writing a book on the role of emotions in social and cultural life and practice in late antiquity. He is the recipient of the Tsiter-Kontopoulou Award from the University of Vienna for excellence in research and a highly international profile in the fields of Byzantine Studies, History of Ideas and Cultural History. His research has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study (2024-25), The European Research Council (2011-2017), The Leverhulme Foundation (2016-18), and Seeger Center of Hellenic Studies (1998-2004).

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Image: Portrait of Saint John Chrysostom of Antioch (Hagios Ioannis Chrysostomos). An early Byzantine mosaic from the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The mosaic is approximately 1,000 years old. Copyright Details.