Saint Cyril of Alexandria

“ CYRIL (376–444) , bishop of Alexandria, a more distinguished father of the church than his namesake of Jerusalem, was born in 376, and died in 444. Becoming patriarch of Alexandria about 412, he soon made himself known by the violence of his zeal against Jews, pagans and heretics or supposed heretics alike. He had hardly entered upon his office when he closed all the churches of the Novatians and seized their ecclesiastical effects. He assailed the Jewish synagogues with an armed force, drove the Jews in thousands from the city, and exposed their houses and property to pillage. ”

“ But Cyril’s violence was not merely confined to those who might be considered enemies of the church. He inherited from Theophilus, his uncle and predecessor in the see of Alexandria, a strong aversion to John Chrysostom, the noble bishop of Constantinople, and even after his death opposed for a time all attempts to remove the unjust sentence of condemnation which had been passed upon him. Afterwards he so far yielded to remonstrances as to allow the name of Chrysostom to appear in the list of distinguished martyrs and bishops mentioned in the prayers of his church. ”

“ The age of Cyril of Alexandria marks an important turning point in the development of worship. It was natural that Cyril’s prevailing doctrine of the intimate connection of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ should have embodied itself in the services of the church. But this doctrine was yet at least one-sided theory which did not wholly exclude its perversion into error. In the dogma, indeed, thanks to the exertions of Leo and Theodoret, the still extant Monophysite error had no place given it. ”

“ Cyril of Alexandria, St., born at Alexandria, and bishop there; an ecclesiastic of a violent, militant order; persecuted the Novatians, expelled the Jews from Alexandria, quarrelled with the governor, excited a fanaticism which led to the seizure and shameful murder of Hypatia ”

“ The latter, although in his recent council he had bound himself to demand a recantation of the Cyrilline articles, now declared that Cyril had fully cleared himself from all heretical opinions. After a conference with Acacius of Berrhoea, John sent to Alexandria, Paul bp. of Emesa, a man of experience whom they both could trust, to confer with Cyril (see Cyril's letters to Acacius and Donatus, Ep. pp. 111, 156) . When Paul reached Alexandria, Cyril was laid up with illness (Mansi, v. 987) , but, when able, received him, as Paul himself said, kindly and pacifically (Mansi, v. 188) . ”

“ The Patriarch Cyril and his Mobs.
"His voice [that of Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, A. D. 412-444] inflamed or appeased the passions of the multitude: his commands were blindly obeyed by his numerous and fanatic parabolani, familiarized in their daily office with scenes of death; and the præfects of Egypt were awed or provoked by the temporal power of these Christian pontiffs. Ardent in the prosecution of heresy, Cyril auspiciously opened his reign by oppressing the Novatians, the most innocent and harmless of the sectaries. ... ”

“ Cyril (412–444) whose noble defence of the Divinity of Christ has rendered his memory precious in the Church, the Patriarchate of Alexandria reached its most flourishing epoch. Over 100 bishops, among them ten metropolitans, acknowledged his authority; he tells us himself that the city was renowned for the number of its churches, monasteries, priests, and religious (P. G., LXX, 972) . At this time, too, the patriarch possessed considerable civil power, and may be said to have reached the zenith of his reputation. ”

“ But he was the Melchite patriarch, the representative of the alien Greek communion with its few adherents in Alexandria and its neighbourhood. Still it is a fact of significance in regard to Christianity in Egypt, that although not a member of the national Church, Cyril introduced the new learning into that country. He appeared as a vigorous opponent of Rome, and many who had no notion of what Protestantism was saying and doing in the West were ready to welcome a man who shared the general aversion to union with the papacy that was felt by the Greek Church in Egypt. ”

“ But—why is Cyril, and not Hypatia, master of the masses of Alexandria this day? Why but because he and his have fought, and suffered, and died too, many a hundred of them, for their god, omnipotent as they believe him to be? Why are the old gods forgotten ”

“ But we must remember that no man, not the greatest of saints, is without imperfection of character, and that the greatest of saints are they who, having serious natural defects, have mastered them by their faith and self-control. S. Cyril began his patriarchate under disadvantageous circumstances. He was the nephew of Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, Chrysostom's worst enemy, a man devoid of principle, wholly given up to pride of station; on October 15th, 412, he closed his episcopate of twenty-seven years ”

“ This is that the official with the barbarous name in the Arab chronicles is no one else than the well-known Cyrus, the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria. So astounding a conception is enough to take away our breath when it comes upon us for the first time. ”

“ Basiliskus was martyred in 312.↑ Atticus (Bp. of Constantinople 405–426) was forced by fear alike of the mob and the Emperor to consent to the restitution. His letters to Peter and Ædesius, deacon of Cyril of Alexandria, and Cyril’s reply, (Niceph. xiv. 26–27) are interesting. Cyril “would as soon put the name of Judas on the rolls as that of Chrysostom.” Dict. Christ. Biog. ”

“ But we find no reference to them earlier than a conference at Constantinople in the reign of Justinian during the course of the Monophysite dispute (a.d. 532) , when they were brought forward in favour of the heretical position. They cannot be much older than this period. If Cyril of Alexandria had known of them, surely he would have made use of the excellent weapons he could have found among them, exactly suited to his purpose. ”

“ Cyril's "hold upon the audiences of the giddy city [Alexandria] was, however, much weakened by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, but also by her comments on the writings of Apollonius and other geometers. Each day, before her academy, stood a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria.... Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry. They cannot exist together. So Cyril felt, and on that feeling he acted. ”

“ So well did he profit by the teaching he received in this quarter that, in 630 or 631, Cyrus was appointed to the vacant patriarchate of Alexandria, and in 633 succeeded in reconciling the Severians of his province on the basis of μία θεανδρικὴ ἐνέργεια (one divine-human energy) , He was, however, opposed by Sophronius, a monk from Palestine, who, after vainly appealing to Cyrus, actually went to Constantinople to remonstrate with Sergius himself. ”

“ The death of Theophilus expanded and realized the hopes of his nephew. The clergy of Alexandria was divided; the soldiers and their general supported the claims of the archdeacon; but a resistless multitude, with voices and with hands, asserted the cause of their favorite; and after a period of thirty-nine years, Cyril was seated on the throne of Athanasius. ”

“ R. L. Ottley’s Doctrine of the Incarnation, ii. 80 ff.; A. Largent’s Études d’hist. ecclés.; St Cyrille d’Alexandrie et le concile d’Éphèse (Paris, 1892) . See also Charles Kingsley’s romance Hypatia. ”

“ Christ has commanded pastors to be watchful: this concerns us also, and especially must we watch over the purity of the faith, since certain bishops, who do not deserve this name, have lately sought to spoil our confession of belief by new invented expressions. Everyone knows them, since they have come forward openly to injure the Church: such are Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius of Constantinople, and his followers, Pyrrhus and Paulus. Cyrus eighteen years ago taught in Alexandria One Operation in Christ, and published from the pulpit nine heads of doctrine. ”

“ Cyril’s wild black army filled the streets, “human only in their faces,” and anxious to perform some crowning piety before they retired to their monasteries. In this mood they encountered Hypatia who was driving from a lecture (probably along the course of the present Rue Nebi Daniel) , dragged her from the carriage to the Caesareum, and there tore her to pieces with tiles. She is not a great figure. But with her the Greece that is a spirit expired—the Greece that tried to discover truth and create beauty and that had created Alexandria. ”

“ Amr, though powerful, had no artillery. His was purely a cavalry force. And there was no great alarm when, from the south east, the force was seen approaching and encamping somewhere beyond the present Nouzha Gardens. Moreover the Patriarch Cyrus was back, and had held a great service in the Caesareum and exhorted the Christians to arms. Indeed it is not easy to see why Alexandria did fall. There was no physical reason for it. One is almost driven to say that she fell because she had no soul. Cyrus, for the second time, betrayed his trust. ”

“ Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, in an epistle read afterwards at the Roman Council of Pope St. Martin, expressed to his spiritual brother and fellow-ministrant, Sergius of Constantinople, his intense delight at the Ecthesis which his great sovereign had drawn up in behalf of the faith, which was ready to be sent to the exarch Isaac at Ravenna, and was to be accepted by his brother Severinus, elected at Rome. I have read it, he said, not once or twice but many times. I admire an exposition brilliant as the sun's light, announcing with unswerving accuracy the true faith ”

“ It swelled up among the populations of Asia, between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, about five hundred years before Christ, and rolled on in undiminished magnitude and glory for many centuries. It bore upon its crest the royal line of Astyages and his successors. Cyrus was, however, the first of the princes whom it held up conspicuously to the admiration of the world and he rode so gracefully and gallantly on the lofty crest that mankind have given him the credit of raising and sustaining the magnificent billow on which he was borne. ”

“ Whereupon on the third day after the death of Theophilus, Cyril came into possession of the episcopate, with greater power than Theophilus had ever exercised. For from that time the bishopric of Alexandria went beyond the limits of its sacerdotal functions, and assumed the administration of secular matters. ”

“ Popular fancy grew weary of Cyrus, as it had already grown weary in turn of all the foreigners it had at first acclaimed—whether Elamite, Kaldâ, or Assyrian—and by a national reaction the self-styled son of Nabonidus enjoyed the benefit of a devotion proportionately as great as the hatred which had been felt twenty years before for his pretended sire. ”

“ The father of Cyrus, so runs the story, was Cambyses, a king of the Persians, and one of the Perseidae, who look to Perseus as the founder of their race. His mother, it is agreed, was Mandane, the daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes. Of Cyrus himself, even now in the songs and stories of the East the record lives that nature made him most fair to look upon, and set in his heart the threefold love of man, of knowledge, and of honour. He would endure all labours, he would undergo all dangers, for the sake of glory. ”

“ I am afraid to drink anything that makes men act in that way."
"Didn't you ever see your father behave so?" asked the king.
"No, never," said Cyrus. "He does not drink merely to be drinking. He drinks to quench his thirst, and that is all."
When Cyrus became a man, he succeeded his father as king of Persia; he also succeeded his grandfather Astyages as king of Media. He was a very wise and powerful ruler, and he made his country the greatest of any that was then known. In history he is commonly called Cyrus the Great. ”

“ But, on the other hand, after the melancholy episcopate of Cyril, we cannot but trace, in the history of Oriental monasticism, not only the causes of the decay of Alexandrian scholarship and influence, but of the ignominious fate of the Byzantine Empire, and of that paltry devotion to images which seemed to invoke the retributions of a “jealous god,” and which favoured the rise of an impostor who found in his “abhorrence of idols” an excuse for making himself the “Scourge of God.” ”

“ I didn't mean to sandwich a sermon to you between my remarks on Cyril, but your disdainful upper lip compelled that testimony. Let us leave you and your virtues alone. Cyril is weak. He's the weak pink type that may fall to women or drink or anything in fact where an opportunity is given him of being influenced by a stronger character than his own. At the moment he's being influenced by you to go to Confession, and say his rosary, and hear Mass, and enjoy all the other treats that our holy religion gives us. ”

“ There is one fact of a more specific character that must not be left out of account when we consider the heroic career of Cyril and his ultimate failure. Whatever views we may hold with regard to the question of an establishment of religion and the right relations of Church and State, we must perceive the anomaly of the Greek situation. For a Christian Church to be officially connected with a Mohammedan government could not but be an unholy alliance. When Cyril accepted the position of patriarch of Constantinople he put himself in a false position. ”