St. Cyril of Alexandria

• St. Cyril’s name is forever connected with the second great Christological controversy, which led to the Council of Ephesus (431) and the condemnation of Nestorius.
• St. Cyril was born, in Alexandria, between 375 and 380, and received his classical and theological training besides the instruction he had received from his uncle, Pope Theophilus.
• He studied the works of Origen, St. Athanasius and Didymus the Blind, and read the works of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Also he studied the Hebrew and Syriac languages, but he wrote almost all his works in Greek, and perhaps little in Coptic.
• His uncle sent, him to St. Macarius’ Monastery, where he became a disciple of St. Serapion for 5 years.
• His uncle appointed him deacon, then a priest. He accompanied him in the Synod of the Oak, where St. John Chrysostom was condemned in 403.
• He succeeded Pope Theophilus in October 412.
• He fulfilled his uncle’s advice by admitting the name of St. John Chrysostom to the diptychs.
• Stormy relations were established between him and Orestes, the prefect of Alexandria for his relentless fight against the last remnants of paganism. “The first outbreak of violence came when a great devotee of [St] Cyril…was caught eavesdropping on the occasion when the prefect was issuing regulations for the Jewish theatricals on the Sabbath. Orestes…arrested his [St. Cyril’s] supposed spy, and there and then publicly tortured him.”
• St. Cyril’s struggle with Alexandria’s Jews dates back to the first years of his episcopate. F. Young says, “[St] Cyril complained to the Jewish leaders, who promptly

plotted against the Christians. At night they raised an outcry that a certain Church was on fire, and then slaughtered all the Christians who turned out to save it. [St] Cyril promptly led a great army of Christians to the synagogues and drove all Jews out of the city.”

• St. Cyril is a common father for the universal Church and his Cyrillian formula one incarnate nature of God the Word – mi,a fu,sij tou/ qeou/ logou/ sesarkwme,nh (mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkomene) is the cornerstone in all ecumenical dialogues on Christology.
• The Greek Church regards him as the ultimate authority in all Christological questions. He was called the ‘Seal of the Fathers' by Anastasius Sinaita in the 7th century, and given the title ‘Doctor ecclesiae’ in 1882.
• A doxology taken from the Greek Orthodox Church – “Hail Translucent star, defending warrior to the Holy Virgin who shouted out above all the hierarchs at Ephesus that she was the Mother of God… Rejoice most blessed Cyril, spring of theology and river of the knowledge of God. Never cease to intercede with Christ on our behalf” 46 – exemplifies the high esteem held by churches other than the Alexandrian Church.
• The Syrian Orthodox Church also venerates St. Cyril in her liturgy in the Commemoration of the Ascetic Fathers and Teachers (Malphone): particularly Mar Qoryllos (Cyril) the Great, the high tower who is in steadfastness and with all sincerity proved that the Word of God became man, our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate.
• St. Cyril’s feast day in the Coptic Orthodox Church is celebrated on 3 Apip (10 July), and in the Greek Orthodox Church on June 9 and again on January 19. St. Cyril and Nestorianism
• Nestorius publicly drew a plain distinction between the

man Jesus, born of Mary, and the Son of God who dwelt in Him. There were two distinct persons in Christ, the Son of Mary and the Son of God, who were united not hypostatically but only morally. Christ should be called not God but “God-bearer (Theophoron).” Subsequently, Mary was not the mother of God, but of the man Jesus in whom the Godhead dwelt.

• Nestorius and his followers criticized the wise men for their kneeling to the Child Jesus, and preached that the divinity was separated from the humanity at the moment of Crucifixion.
• St. Cyril sent letters to Nestorius in which he explains the nature of Christ, as the Incarnate Son of God, one Person, and declared St. Mary’s right to be called “Theotokos.”Nestorius said, “that which was formed in the womb of Mary is not God Himself…but because God dwells in Him whom He has assumed, therefore also He who is assumed is called God because of Him who assumes Him. It is not God who has suffered, but God was conjoined with the crucified flesh…We will therefore call the holy virgin Qeodo,coj [the vessel of God] but not Qeoto,koj [God bearer].” 48
• Afterwards a local council was held in Alexandria, and a synodical letter was sent to Nestorius, clarifying the same doctrines mentioned in St. Cyril’s letters, and concluding with “The Twelve Articles or Anathemas.”
• In early 430 he addressed a second dogmatic epistle to Nestorius in which he elucidated the mystery of the Incarnation on the basis of tradition and the inalterable faith of the Church. This epistle was subsequently approved at the Council of Ephesus.
• Finally, St. Cyril released his Five Tomes Against Nestorius, which he composed in the spring of 430.

and the Alexandrian theology was temporarily stopped to reappear in an extreme degree in the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Reunion of 433

• The emperor himself exerted his influence to re-establish peace between St. Cyril and John of Antioch, for each represented a different theological point of view. John sent Paul of Emesa to Alexandria with credentials for St. Cyril, and a profession of faith that was to serve as the basis of an agreement. St. Cyril accepted it and sent back to Antioch his famous letter “Laetentur caeli,” i.e. the “Formulary of Reunion of 433.”
• The problem was externally solved, but the “Reunion” itself was being taken in a different way by the Alexandrian and the Antiochian sides.

• Ten of the thirty books of St. Cyril survive.
• He came into conflict with the Novatians who refused the repentance of those who denied their faith through persecution.
• His literature was devoted to exegesis and polemics against the Arians until 428, and then was almost completely taken up by his refutation of the Nestorian heresy. 1. Commentaries on the Old Testament
• Before his episcopate he wrote 17 books titled: “The Adoration and Worship of God in Spirit and in Truth” (De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate). It is written in the form of a dialogue between St. Cyril and Palladius, an allegorical and typological exegesis of specifically chosen passages of the Pentateuch which do not follow the order of the Old Testament text.
• Glaphyra (Selections): 13 Books contain expositions of select Pentateuch passages. Seven books are devoted to Genesis, three to Exodus, and one book each to Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
• Commentary on Isaiah.
• Commentary on the Minor Prophets. 2. Commentaries on the New Testament
• Commentary on the Gospel of St. John: This Commentary, the longest of St. Cyril’s biblical commentaries, is the most important source for the Christology of St. Cyril’s biblical exegesis. This commentary has more of a dogmatico- polemical tendency. St. Cyril’s Christology is more developed in this commentary than in his Old Testament commentaries.
• Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke: It is of a different nature, being in reality a series of homilies on the text with practical rather than dogmatic purposes.
• Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew.
• The Catenae contain in addition a number of fragments of St.

Cyril’s lost commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans, on First and Second Corinthians and on the Epistle to the Hebrews. 3. Dogmatic Writings Against the Arians

• Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate: A Trinitarian summa comprising the Arian objections, their refutation and the lasting results of the controversies of the 4th century. St. Cyril, relying particularly on St. Athanasius, plainly and succinctly summarizes the entire anti Arian polemic.
• De Sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate (On the Holy and Consubstantial i.e. Co-essential Trinity). 4. Dogmatic Writings Against the Nestorians
• Adversus Nestorii blasphemias: The first of the anti-Nestorian treatises is the Five Tomes against Nestorius composed in the spring of 430.
• De recta fide (On the True Faith): Written shortly after the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy.
• The Twelve Anathemas or “Chapters” against Nestorius: Were written in the same year 430. St. Cyril found it necessary to defend them in three apologies. In the first two he refutes two attacks which accused him of Apollinarianism and Monophysitism, one by Andrew of Samosata, the other by Theodoret of Cyrus. Thus St. Cyril’s first apology Against the Oriental Bishops answers the charges of Andrew, who represented the Syrian bishops, and the second, the Letter to Euoptius, those of Theodoret. The third defense of the anathema is found in the brief commentary written while St. Cyril was in prison at Ephesus in August or September 431.
• Apologeticus aimperatorem: This is an apology to the Emperor Theodosius II immediately after St. Cyril’s release and his return to Alexandria. He justifies therein his actions, both before and during the Council of Ephesus.
• Scholia de incarnation Unigeniti (The Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten): Composed after 431, gives

first an explanation of the names of Christ, Emmanuel and Jesus, and then defines the hypostatic union as opposed to a mixture or external association only.

• Adversus nolentes confilterie sanctam Virginem esse Deiparam (Against Those That Do Not Acknowledge Mary to Be the Mother of God): It was composed after the Council of Ephesus.
• Contra Diodorum et Theodorum: This tractate was written against Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, the teachers of Nestorius. It consists of three books. Numerous fragments are extant in Greek and Syriac. It was most probably composed about 438.
• Quod unus Sit Christus: This dialogue on the unity of person in Christ is a thorough refutation of the false doctrine that the Word or Logos of God did not become flesh but was united only to a man, with the result that there is the true and natural Son of God and ‘another one,’ an adopted son of God, who does not share the dignity and honor of the first. 5. Apology Against the Books of the Impious Julian Dedicated to Theodosius II
• After more than twenty-five years of his episcopal career (ca. between 433 and 441), St. Cyril found it necessary to write a large apologetic book: For the Holy Religion of the Christians Against the Books of the Impious Julian. Dedicated to Theodosius II, it refutes Julian the Apostate’s three books Against the Galilaeans of the year 363. 6. Letters
• St. Cyril’s large correspondence is extremely important for the history of the relationship between the Church and the Empire. 7. Paschal Letters
• St. Cyril continued the custom of the popes of Alexandria of sending every year to all the churches of Egypt an announcement in the form of a pastoral epistle on the date of the Feast of the Resurrection and theprecedingfast.

in life and virtuous ways render a man free indeed and noble. Joseph was sold for a bond-slave, but even so was he free, all radiant in the nobility of soul: Esau was born of a free father and was really free, but by the baseness of his ways he showed a slave-befitting mind. 51

• At his Acclamation at the Council of Ephesus after the reading of St. Cyril’s writings against Nestorius, Bishop Hermogenes of Rhinocourouros said: It is one and the same Holy Spirit, which the Fathers at Nicaea had within them as they defined the faith, which was in the soul and voice of our most holy and venerable Father the Archbishop Cyril when he dictated this for the correction of the errors that the reverend Nestorius introduced to the church.