Cyril of Alexandria

Saint Cyril of Alexandria
St Cyril I, the 24th Pope of Alexandria
The Pillar of Faith; Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church
Born	c. 378
Died	c. 444
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church Oriental Orthodox Church Anglicanism Lutheranism
Feast	January 18 and June 9 (Eastern Orthodox Churches) June 27 (Roman Catholic Church and Lutheran Church) February 9 (on some local calendars and among Traditional Roman Catholics)
Attributes	Vested as a Bishop with phelonion and omophorion, and usually with his head covered in the manner of Egyptian monastics (sometimes the head covering has a polystavrion pattern), he usually is depicted holding a Gospel Book or a scroll, with his right hand raised in blessing.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378 - 444) was the Pope of Alexandria when the city was at its height of influence and power within the Roman Empire. Cyril wrote extensively and was a leading protagonist in the Christological controversies of the later 4th, and 5th centuries. He was a central figure in the First Council of Ephesus in 431, which led to the deposition of Nestorius as Archbishop of Constantinople. Cyril is counted among the Church Fathers and the Doctors of the Church, and his reputation within the Christian world has resulted in his titles Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers, but Theodosius II, the Roman Emperor, condemned him for behaving like a proud pharaoh, and the Nestorian bishops at the Council of Ephesus declared him a heretic, labelling him as a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church.

The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates his feast day on June 9 and also, together with Pope Athanasius I of Alexandria, on January 18. The Roman Catholic Church did not commemorate him in the Tridentine Calendar; it added his feast only in 1882, assigning to it the date of February 9, the date on which it is still observed by those who use calendars prior to that of the 1969 revision, which assigned to it the date of June 27, considered to be the day of the saint's death. The same date has been chosen for the Lutheran calendar.

Early life

Cyril was born about 378 in the small town of Theodosios, Egypt, near modern day El-Mahalla El-Kubra. A few years after his birth, his mother's brother (or uncle) Theophilus rose to the powerful position of Patriarch of Alexandria. His mother remained close to her brother and under his guidance, St. Cyril was well educated. His education showed through his knowledge, in his writings, of Christian writers of his day, including Eusebius, Origen, Didymus, and writers of the Alexandrian church. He received the formal education standard for his day: he studied grammar from age twelve to fourteen (390-392), rhetoric and humanities from fifteen to twenty (393-397) and finally theology and biblical studies (398-402).

Pope of Alexandria

Theophilus died on October 15, 412, and Cyril was made Pope on 18 October 412, against the party favouring Archdeacon Timothy.

Thus, Cyril followed his uncle in a position that had become powerful and influential, rivaling that of the city prefect in a time of turmoil and (frequently violent) conflict between the cosmopolitan city's pagan, Jewish, and Christian inhabitants.

He began to exert his authority by causing the churches of the Novatians to be closed and their sacred vessels to be seized.

Next he moved against the Jews and demanded that they be removed from the city. As Edward Gibbon puts it:

Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, [Cyril], at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and the episcopal warrior, after rewarding his troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the [Jews]

.

Orestes, prefect of the city, saw no sense in the attacks and the commotion they caused, so he complained to Theodosius, but was overruled by Pulcheria, the rabidly Christian regent. According to some historians, all Jews were expelled from Alexandria, while others consider this an exaggeration and that only a portion of the local Jewish population was expelled

Some of the tensions between Jews and Christians was prompted by a slaughter of Christians at the hands of Alexandrian Jews who, after instigating the death of monk Hierax, lured Christians in the streets at night claiming that the church was on fire.

During his conflict with Orestes, Cyril was also involved in the murder of the female mathematician, astronomer, physicist and head of the library of Alexandria, Hypatia, who was a frequent guest of Orestes and whose fields of study were considered heresy by Cyril.

Newer studies show Hypatia's death as the result of a struggle between two Christian factions, the moderate Orestes, supported by Hypatia, and the more rigid Cyril. According to lexicographer William Smith,

She was accused of too much familiarity with Orestes, prefect of Alexandria, and the charge spread among the clergy, who took up the notion that she interrupted the friendship of Orestes with their archbishop, Cyril.

Others contend that neither the riots nor the murder of Hypatia can rightly be attributed to Cyril. In the case of the riots, he had intended only to lead a delegation to the Jews, but he lost control of the situation; and in the murder of Hypatia, a group of his followers acted on their own initiative without consulting him. As John Anthony McGuckin puts it,

At this time Cyril is revealed as at the head of dangerously volatile forces: at their head, but not always in command of them.

Another major conflict was that between the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools of ecclesiastical reflection, piety, and discourse. The conflict came to a head in 428 after Nestorius, who originated in Antioch, was made Archbishop of Constantinople.

Nestorius intervened in an argument about the proper rendition of Mary’s position in relation to Christ by renouncing both the terms "mother of man" and "mother of God" as improper, suggesting "mother of Christ" instead. This however only stoked the fires. Finally, Emperor Theodosius II convoked a council in Ephesus to solve the dispute. Ephesus was friendly to Cyril and after months of maneuvering the Council of Ephesus in 431 ended with Nestorius being deposed and exiled.

Cyril died about 444, but the controversies were to continue for decades, from the "Robber Synod" of Ephesus (449) to the Council of Chalcedon (451) and beyond.

Theology

Cyril regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to be so mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of the God-man into the rest of the race, to reconstitute human nature into a graced and deified condition of the saints, one that promised immortality and transfiguration to believers. Nestorius, on the other hand, saw the incarnation as primarily a moral and ethical example to the faithful, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Cyril's constant stress was on the simple idea that it was God who walked the streets of Nazareth (hence Mary was Theotokos (Mother of God)), and God who had appeared in a transfigured humanity. Nestorius spoke of the distinct 'Jesus the man' and 'the divine Logos' in ways that Cyril thought were too dichotomous, widening the ontological gap between man and God in a way that would annihilate the person of Christ.

Mariology

Cyril of Alexandria became noted in Church history, because of his spirited fight for the title “Theotokos” during the Council of Ephesus (431). His writings include the homily given in Ephesus and several other sermons. . Some of his alleged homilies are in dispute as to his authorship. In several writings, Cyril focuses on the love of Jesus to his mother. On the Cross, he overcomes his pain and thinks of his mother. At the wedding in Cana, he bows to her wishes. The overwhelming merit of Cyril of Alexandria is the cementation of the centre of dogmatic mariology for all times. Cyril is credited with creating a basis for all other mariological developments through his teaching of the blessed Virgin Mary, as the Mother of God.

Legacy

Cyril was a scholarly archbishop and a prolific writer. In the early years of his active life in the Church he wrote several exegeses. Among these were: Commentaries on the Old Testament, Thesaurus, Discourse Against Arians, Commentary on St. John's Gospel, and Dialogues on the Trinity. In 429 as the Christological controversies increased, his output of writings was that which his opponents could not match. His writings and his theology have remained central to tradition of the Fathers and to all Orthodox to this day.

In modern literature

Cyril plays a controversial role in the Arabic novel Azazeel (also transliterated as Azazil) by the Egyptian scholar Youssef Ziedan. The novel, which won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and will be published in English under the title Beelzebub, is set in 5th-century Egypt and Syria and deals with the early history of Christianity. The book has generated controversy for depicting religious fanaticism and mob violence among early Christians in Roman Egypt. The narrator, Hypa, witnesses the lynching of Hypatia and finds himself involved in the schism of 431, when Cyril deposed Nestorius. Cyril is portrayed as a fanatic who kills Jews and others who have not converted to Christianity from the traditional religions of antiquity.

See also

• Roman Catholic calendar of saints

Sources

• McGuckin, John A. St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004. ISBN 0-88141-259-7
• Wessel, Susan. Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy:The Making of a Saint and a Heretic. Oxford 2004. ISBN 0-19926-846-0

External links

• "The Life and Writings of Cyril of Alexandria" as it relates to the Christological Controversy
• Early Church Fathers Includes text written by Cyril of Alexandria
• Multilanguage Opera Omnia (Greek Edition by Migne Patrologia Graeca)
• St Cyril the Archbishop of Alexandria Eastern Orthodox icon and synaxarion

Works

• Becoming Temples of God (in Greek original and English
• Second Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius
• Third Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius (containing the twelve anathemas)
• Formula of Reunion: In Brief (A summation of the reunion between Cyril and John of Antioch)
• The 'Formula of Reunion' between Cyril and John of Antioch
• Five tomes against Nestorius (Adversus Nestorii blasphemias)
• That Christ is One (Quod unus sit Christus)
• Scholia on the incarnation of the Only-Begotten (Scholia de incarnatione Unigeniti)
• Against Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia (fragments)
• Against the synousiasts (fragments)
• Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
• Commentary on the Gospel of John
• Against Julian the Apostate