Cyril of Alexandria facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Cyril of Alexandria |
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St Cyril of Alexandria, Patriarch, and Confessor
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| Archdiocese | Alexandria |
| See | Alexandria |
| Predecessor | St. Theophilus of Alexandria |
| Successor | Dioscorus the Great "The Champion of Orthodoxy" |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 376
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| Died | 444 (aged 67–68) Alexandria |
| Sainthood | |
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| Venerated in |
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| Title as Saint | The Pillar of Faith; Seal of all the Fathers; Bishop, Confessor, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher of the Faith and also (in the Catholic Church) Doctor of the Church |
| 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. |
| Patronage | Alexandria |
Cyril of Alexandria (Ancient Greek: Κύριλλος Ἀλεξανδρείας; Coptic: Ⲡⲁⲡⲁ Ⲕⲩⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲩ ⲁ̅ also ⲡⲓ̀ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲕⲓⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲥ; c. 376 – 444) was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444. He was enthroned when the city was at the height of its influence and power within the Roman Empire. Cyril wrote extensively and was a major player in the Christological controversies of the late-4th and 5th centuries. He was a central figure in the Council of Ephesus in 431, which led to the deposition of Nestorius as Patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril is counted among the Church Fathers and also as a Doctor of the Church, and his reputation within the Christian world has resulted in his titles Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers. The Nestorian bishops at their synod at the Council of Ephesus declared him a heretic, labelling him as a "monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church."
Cyril is well known for his dispute with Nestorius and his supporter, Patriarch John of Antioch, whom Cyril excluded from the Council of Ephesus for arriving late. He is also known for his expulsion of Novatians and Jews from Alexandria and for inflaming tensions that led to the murder of the Hellenistic philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob. Historians disagree over the extent of his responsibility in this.
Cyril tried to oblige the pious Christian emperor Theodosius II (AD 408–450) to himself by dedicating his Paschal table to him. Cyril's Paschal table was provided with a Metonic basic structure in the form of a 19-year lunar cycle adopted by him around AD 425, which was very different from the first Metonic 19-year lunar cycle invented around AD 260 by Anatolius, but exactly equal to the lunar cycle which had been introduced around AD 412 by Annianus; the Julian equivalent of this Alexandrian cycle adopted by Cyril and nowadays referred to as the 'classical (Alexandrian) 19-year lunar cycle' would emerge a century later in Rome as the basic structure of Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table (AD 525).
The Catholic Church did not commemorate Saint Cyril in the Tridentine Calendar: it added his feast only in 1882, assigning to it the date of 9 February. This date is used by the Western Rite Orthodox Church. Yet the 1969 Catholic Calendar revision moved it to 27 June, considered to be the day of the saint's death, as celebrated by the Coptic Orthodox Church. The same date has been chosen for the Lutheran calendar. The Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches celebrate his feast day on 9 June and also, together with Pope Athanasius I of Alexandria, on 18 January.
Cyril is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 28 June.
Early life
Little is known for certain of Cyril's early life. He was born circa 376, in the town of Didouseya, Egypt, modern-day El-Mahalla El-Kubra. A few years after his birth, his maternal uncle Theophilus rose to the powerful position of Patriarch of Alexandria. His mother remained close to her brother and under his guidance, Cyril was well educated. His writings show his knowledge of Christian writers of his day, including Eusebius, Origen, Didymus the Blind, and writers of the Church of Alexandria. He received the formal Christian 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).
In 403, he accompanied his uncle to attend the "Synod of the Oak" in Constantinople, which deposed John Chrysostom as Archbishop of Constantinople. The prior year, Theophilus had been summoned by the emperor to Constantinople to apologize before a synod, over which Chrysostom would preside, on account of several charges which were brought against him by certain Egyptian monks. Theophilus had them persecuted as Origenists. Placing himself at the head of soldiers and armed servants, Theophilus had marched against the monks, burned their dwellings, and ill-treated those whom he captured. Theophilus arrived at Constantinople with twenty-nine of his suffragan bishops, and conferring with those opposed to the Archbishop, drafted a long list of largely unfounded accusations against Chrysostom, who refused to recognize the legality of a synod in which his open enemies were judges. Chrysostom was subsequently deposed.
Patriarch of Alexandria
Theophilus died on 15 October 412, and Cyril was made Pope or Patriarch of Alexandria on 18 October 412, but only after a riot between his supporters and those of his rival Archdeacon Timotheus. According to Socrates Scholasticus, the Alexandrians were always rioting.
Thus, Cyril followed his uncle in a position that had become powerful and influential, rivalling that of the 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 Novatianists to be closed and their sacred vessels to be seized.
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, meaning "God bearer", which became in Latin "Mater Dei or Dei Genitrix", or 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 some of his contemporaries believed would annihilate the person of Christ.
The main issue that prompted this dispute between Cyril and Nestorius was the question which arose at the Council of Constantinople: What exactly was the being to which Mary gave birth? Cyril affirmed that the Holy Trinity consists of a singular divine nature, essence, and being (ousia) in three distinct aspects, instantiations, or subsistencies of being (hypostases). These distinct hypostases are the Father or God in Himself, the Son or Word (Logos), and the Holy Spirit. Then, when the Son became flesh and entered the world, the pre-Incarnate divine nature and assumed human nature both remained, but became united in the person of Jesus. This resulted in the miaphysite slogan "One Nature united out of two" being used to encapsulate the theological position of this Alexandrian bishop.
According to Cyril's theology, there were two states for the Son of God: the state that existed prior to the Son (or Word/Logos) becoming enfleshed in the person of Jesus and the state that actually became enfleshed. The Logos Incarnate suffered and died on the Cross, and therefore the Son was able to suffer without suffering. Cyril passionately argued for the continuity of a single subject, God the Word, from the pre-Incarnate state to the Incarnate state. The divine Logos was really present in the flesh and in the world—not merely bestowed upon, semantically affixed to, or morally associated with the man Jesus, as the adoptionists and, he believed, Nestorius had taught.
Mariology
Cyril of Alexandria became noted in Church history because of his spirited fight for the title "Theotokos" during the First 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. Cyril created the basis for all other mariological developments through his teaching of the blessed Virgin Mary, as the "Mother of God." The conflict with Nestorius was mainly over this issue, and it has often been misunderstood. "[T]he debate was not so much about Mary as about Jesus. The question was not what honors were due to Mary, but how one was to speak of the birth of Jesus." St. Cyril received an important recognition of his preachings by the Second Council of Constantinople (553 d.C.) which declared;
- "St. Cyril who announced the right faith of Christians" (Anathematism XIV, Denzinger et Schoenmetzer 437).
Works
Cyril was a scholarly archbishop and a prolific writer. In the early years of his active life in the Church he wrote several exegetical documents. 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, the output of his writings was so extensive that his opponents could not match it. His writings and his theology have remained central to the tradition of the Fathers and to all Orthodox to this day.
- Becoming Temples of God (Ναοὶ θεοῦ χρηματιοῦμεν) (in Greek original and English)
- Second Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius
- Commentary on the Letter to Hebrews
- 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
- Cyrilli Alexandrini liber Thesaurus adversus hereticos a Georgio Trapesuntio traductus (in Latin and Greek)
Translations
- Festal letters 1-12, translated by Philip R. Amidon, Fathers of the Church vol. 112 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009)
- Commentary on Isaiah, translated with an introduction by Robert Charles Hill (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2008)
- Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, translated by Robert C. Hill, 2 vols, Fathers of the Church vols 115-16 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008) [translation of In XII Prophetas]
- Against those who are unwilling to confess that the Holy Virgin is Theotokos, edited and translated with an introduction by Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2004)
- Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000) [contains translations of selections from the Commentary on Isaiah; Commentary on John; Against Nestorius; An explanation of the twelve chapters; Against Julian]
- On the unity of Christ, translated and with an introduction by John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995.)
- J A McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Its History, Theology and Texts (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994) [contains translations of the Second and Third Letters to Nestorius; the Letters to Eulogius and Succensus; Cyril's Letters to the Monks of Egypt, to Pope Celestine, to Acacius of Beroea and to John of Antioch (containing the Formulary of Reunion), the Festal Homily delivered at St John's basilica, Ephesus, and the Scholia on the Incarnation]
- Letters 1-110, translated by John I McEnerney, Fathers of the Church vols 76-77 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, c. 1987)
- Cyril of Alexandria. Selected Letters, edited and translated by Lionel R Wickham (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983). [contains translations of the Second and Third Letters to Nestorius, the Letters to Acacius of Melitene and Eulogius, the First and Second Letters to Succensus, Letter 55 on the Creed, the Answers to Tiberius, the Doctrinal Questions and Answers, and the Letter to Calosirius,]
See also
In Spanish: Cirilo de Alejandría para niños
- Catholic Church in Egypt
- Dyophysitism
- General Roman Calendar
- List of early Christian saints
- Saint Cyril of Alexandria, patron saint archive
