Life and Character.
Archbishop of Alexandria;
d. there June 27, 444. His early life is known
only from notices in Socrates and a few elsewhere.
He was a nephew of the archbishop Theophilus,
whom he accompanied in 403 to Constantinople to
attend the synod Ad Quermm (see Chrysostom, § 4).
When the uncle died, Oct. 15, 412,
Cyril succeeded him in his see. The
government was not pleased with this
choice. It feared, not without reason,
that the new bishop would show too much
independence; and, indeed, on every occasion Cyril
proved that he was master in Alexandria. He
closed the churches of the Novatians, expelled
the Jews from the city in spite of the opposition
of the prefect Orestes, and when soon afterward
Nitrian monks insulted the prefect in the open
street, he praised their leader as a martyr. He
did not order the murder of Hypatia (q.v.), but
his lector and the parabolani, who were guilty of
it, were well aware that the female philosopher was
an eyesore to the archbishop. His restless,
violent conduct, which excited the masses, seems to
have hurt him at the court. Theodosius II. as well
as Pulcheria listened to him rather than to the
prefect. For the rest of the archbishop's life, which is
closely connected with the dogmatic controversies
of the times, see Nestorius?. From the very
beginning Cyril opposed Nestorius. It was the
climax in his life when the emperor confirmed the
deposition of his opponent which he had decreed
at the Synod in Ephesus in 431, whereas he
retained his office, though the Syrian bishops had
declared him also deposed. His administration
shows the Alexandrian bishops at the height of
their power and influence, from which they were
thrown by the pretentious but short-sighted and
incapable Dioscurus (see Eutychianism;
Monophysites). Among the Greeks Cyril is commemorated
on June 9, among the Latins on Jan. 28. [Leo XIII]?.
promoted him in 1883 to the rank of doctor ecclesioe.
Literary Activities.
In general Cyril's literary activity was in the
dogmatic and exegetical field. In his homilies and
epistles dogmatic subjects are often touched upon.
As an apologist Cyril became famous by his
refutation of the attack of the emperor Julian upon
Christianity, in thirty books, of which only the
first ten are extant entire, eleven to twenty in
fragments. The dogmatico-polemical literary
activity of the archbishop was very comprehensive.
At the head stand the writings on the
doctrine of the Trinity composed
before the Christological controversy.
The controversy itself caused a large
number of treatises against Nestorianism. The
results of the exegetical labor of the patriarch are
contained in the seventeen books "On Worship in
Spirit and in Truth," in the thirteen books of
"Elegant Expositions" on the Pentateuch, as well as
in numerous commentaries on the Old and New
Testaments. The typico-allegorical interpretation,
characteristic of the Alexandrian school in
opposition to the Antiochian school, is very prominent in
Cyril's exegesis. The most important work in that
direction is the comprehensive commentary on the
Gospel of John.
Significance for Doctrine.
As regards his teaching, Cyril not unjustly bears
the title of "Seal of the Fathers," as the one who
finally fixed the true doctrine of the Trinity. Great
as is his glory in that direction, the question has
often been raised whether his Christology does not
contain traces of a relationship with Apollinarianism,
which he himself opposed from conviction (see
Apollinaris of Laodicea). At any rate, his
Christology approaches very near the limit which separates
orthodoxy from Monophysitism?. It rests on the
suppositions of the older Alexandrians
(Athanasius) and the Cappadocians by which they knew
themselves in agreement with Apollinaris against
every theory that denied the substantial unity of
the incarnate Redeemer with the
second person of the Trinity. Looking
at the personality of the Redeemer,
the energetic assertion of the unity
of the person resulted from it
indeed, but also a reckless neglect of the individual
man in him. The God-Logos remained, with the
human nature which he has assumed, the same
one inseparable subject which he was before. The
"physical union" is "not confounded," though
both natures are to be distinguished "in theory
alone." The attacks to which this view was
exposed on both sides Cyril could only meet by
giving to the idea of " nature " a meaning which
disregards everything individual. In this way alone
does the assertion become explicable that before
the incarnation two natures existed, the divine and
the human, but after the incarnation only one, the
definite divine-human nature, or, as Cyril
expressed it in the words of the creed regarded by
him as Athanasian, but in reality composed by the
hated Apollinaris, "one nature of God the Logos
made flesh." The nature is here only thought of
as "common." Christ is no man like Paul and
Peter; he is the author of a new humanity.
Nevertheless, Cyril makes all dependent on the Redeemer's
assuming the perfect human nature. But Cyril's
assertions do not help over the contradiction that
this Redeemer in spite of his "rational soul" had
no free will, but was "inflexible in mind." They
are, indeed, not intended for that, because by his use
of the idea of nature Cyril did not need to take
exception to the "perfect man," like Apollinaris.
He could speak the easier in favor of a mutual
communication of the properties of the divine and
human nature in the Redeemer (communicatio
idiomatum), and thus avoid the danger of a fusion at
least for his belief. The "in two natures" of the
Chalcedonian formula of 451 found no support in
Cyril's Christology. But his Christology overcame
that formula, for the Byzantine theologians who
had to interpret it did so by explaining the
doctrine of the two natures according to Cyril's teach
ing of one nature (see Leontius of Byzantium;
MONOPHYSITES).
Initial text from Schaff-Herzog Encyc of Religion