Cyril of Alexandria

Dates

around 376 - 444 — Died on 27 June 444.

Region

Egypt

See

Alexandria

Language of composition

Greek

Commemoration

9 June, and 18 January with Athanasius (Orthodox Church in America and other Orthodox jurisdictions) — Julian-calendar jurisdictions observe these dates thirteen days later on the civil calendar.

Life

Cyril succeeded his uncle Theophilus as archbishop of Alexandria in 412, inheriting a see that had become one of the most powerful institutions in the eastern empire. The early years of his episcopate were violent: conflict with the Jewish community of Alexandria, conflict with the imperial prefect, and the murder of the philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in 415.

From 428 he was engaged against Nestorius, and it is his theology of the incarnation that the Council of Ephesus received. In 433 he agreed the Formula of Reunion with John of Antioch, accepting language about two natures that his own earlier letters had not used — an act of theological generosity that his more rigorous supporters disliked.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

• Second and third letters to Nestorius, with the twelve anathematisms
• That Christ Is One — Not archived here.
• Commentary on the Gospel of John; commentaries on the Old Testament — Not archived here.

Disputed, spurious or lost

• The formula 'one incarnate nature of God the Word' — Cyril used it believing it came from Athanasius. It comes in fact from Apollinaris, whose Christology the Church condemned. Cyril's own use of it is not Apollinarian, but the misattribution mattered enormously in the century that followed.

Theological and spiritual contribution

Cyril's central insistence is that there is one subject in Christ: the eternal Word, who is the one born, the one who suffers, the one who rises. That is why the theotokos title is not negotiable for him. It is a claim about who Jesus is, not a compliment to his mother.

His theology is the frame within which Chalcedon's two-nature language was later read, and the Fifth Council in 553 made that reading explicit. The Orthodox tradition calls him the Seal of the Fathers for that reason.

The twelve anathematisms are the sharpest form of his case. They were read at Ephesus and were never themselves received as a conciliar definition, and their language caused real difficulty for Antiochene readers — Theodoret wrote against them. Read them as a Father's position in controversy.

Controversy and reception

Cyril's conduct at Ephesus — opening the council before the Syrian bishops arrived, acting as judge in his own cause — was contested at the time and has been ever since. So has his role in the Alexandrian violence of the 410s. The murder of Hypatia was carried out by a mob; Cyril's degree of responsibility is disputed among historians and the sources do not settle it.

Holding this together with his standing as a Father is not a contradiction. The Church receives his theology; it does not thereby canonise his methods, and a page that omitted the criticism would be doing apologetics rather than history.