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Résumé :

Chrysostom’s sermon, in citing the end of the council, probably alludes to Alaric’s attack on Athens in 396, as there is material evidence of destruction in the area of the Areopagus. (voir Conclusion, p. 445-446) « This article has proposed that a sermon partly unedited, the Laudatio Apostolorum, is an authentic work of John Chrysostom and was delivered during his tenure as bishop of Constantinople between 397 and 403, probably during the early years. There is stylistic, lexical, and contextual evidence to support this view. The part of this sermon most interesting to historians is a short polemical section which intends to demonstrate that the power of the apostles is evident because of the triumph of Christianity over paganism and over the pagan philosophers who had doubted the truth of Christianity. In so doing, the sermon alludes to the destruction of pagan altars, the end of tyrants (the emperor Julian), and to the violent end of Apollo’s oracle in Daphne near Antioch in 362, and possibly also of the one in Delphi in the early 390s. The sermon also mentions the destruction of the Areopagus. Given that the other allusions are to events of the sermon’s own day and age, the destruction of the Areopagus was probably real as well. There is epigraphic and literary evidence that the council of the Areopagus continued to function until around the mid 390s when its members prepared for Alaric’s upcoming invasion, but not after 396. The year of 396 was marked by Alaric’s invasion of Athens, and there is archaeological and literary evidence for destruction, on the instigation of paramilitary monks, in the area where the assembly place of the council has to be located. The entire area was redeveloped, and a cornerstone from the entrance to the Areopagus found its way to a modern house in that area. The Laudatio Apostolorum therefore seems to be aware of, and sympathetic to, the end of this prestigious symbol of the power that Christianity had gained over pagan philosophy since the days of the apostles.