ON SAINT CYRIL, BISHOP OF JERUSALEM.
IN THE YEAR 389.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem (Saint)
Section I. The veneration of Saint Cyril, his Acts, his exile.
[1] The Order for reciting the Divine Office in the Laura of our Holy Father Sabbas at Jerusalem (which they call the Typicon, and which the other Monasteries around the holy city observe, as well as all the Churches now existing among the Greeks), printed at Venice in 1604 together with the great Greek Menaea and other Ecclesiastical books, Feast day among the Greeks. prescribes for this present day the Feast of the holy Patriarch Cyril of Jerusalem, with an epithet accommodated to present-day usage: for in the time when Cyril lived, the Patriarchal title was not yet in use among the holders of the Theadelphic, as it is commonly called, See; although that Church on account of the prerogative of antiquity has always been called the Mother of Churches, and wished to be considered equal to the Patriarchal sees. As for the veneration in the usage of the Greek Church, Among the Latins, after Galesinius and Molanus, Baronius, following in the Roman Martyrology, wrote thus: At Jerusalem, Saint Cyril the Bishop, who having suffered many injuries for the faith from the Arians, and often driven from his Church,
at length, famous for his glory of holiness, rested in peace: to whose inviolate faith the Ecumenical Synod, writing to Damasus, gave distinguished testimony: which he then adduces in the annotations from Theodoret, Book 5, chapter 9, in these words: We present to you Cyril, the Most Reverend and Most Holy Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, which is the Mother of all, as having been created long since by the Bishops of the province (as the canon requires), and as having fought many battles against the Arians in many places. On the same day the name of Saint Cyril is inscribed in the Syriac Calendar published at Rome in 1624 before the Ecclesiastical Office of that people: And in the Syriac Calendar: and in the Arabic Egyptian Martyrology sent to us from Rome, the memory of Saint Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, is noted: but on the twentieth day of this month. In another more ancient Calendar of the same language, the Most Illustrious Risius, Archbishop of Damascus, found the name of Cyril with the epithet "divine," from whom we have a translation of the month of March from that source; we also have extracted from a manuscript Arabic Codex and rendered into Latin by Amabilis Burzaeus, which, corresponding closely to the said Calendar, contains certain prayers embracing the commemoration of many Saints at once, the seventh of which, serving the month of March, about the middle says: Let us magnify Cyril the innocent.
[2] His eulogy in the manuscript Synaxarion of our Claremontine College, on March 11, on which day chiefly Saint Sophronius, Bishop of the same city, is venerated, Eulogy from a manuscript for March 11, is found as follows: The Memory of our Holy Father Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem. He was first made a Monk under Constantine the Great, strenuously exercising himself in that profession, and afterwards, on account of the outstanding virtue of his manner of life, was ordained Bishop of Jerusalem: In which, concerning the acts at the Council of Constantinople. in which dignity he conducted himself so holily and laudably that he was even called to a Synod, in which, refuting and confounding the impious Manes and his adherent, the deranged Macedonius, who attacked the Holy Spirit, he filled the assembly of the Orthodox with joy and spiritual exultation. In all things, rightly contending for the Christian doctrines, and faithfully feeding the flock entrusted to him, and having worked many miracles for the glory of God, he departed to the Lord, receiving the eternal kingdom and life and exulting with the Saints who are blessed without end.
The Ecumenical Synod of Constantinople, celebrated in the year 381, is indicated here: in which the heresiarch Macedonius was condemned, and is well known from the published canons of that Council and from the entire Ecclesiastical history; but Manes, his associate, has been obscure until now and is known only from this source. For it must not be thought that the most impious founder of the Manichaeans is meant; whose errors, although they had greatly prevailed through Africa and Asia, neither is this Council read to have touched upon, nor could it greatly have concerned itself with them, since it was intent with all its efforts on this one thing alone: that the peace and profession of the Nicene faith might be restored to the Christian Church; to which the Manichaeans did not belong, and therefore they were not ordered to be present with the rest. Moreover, among the Bishops of Palestine, Cyril of Jerusalem subscribed first to the aforesaid Council, as being judged the legitimate Bishop of that See by the sentence of the Council: as is indicated in the synodal letter cited from Theodoret, according to which we also say that he was restored to his rank in the following year, and thus lived until the twelfth year of the Emperor Theodosius, the year of Christ 390.
[3] Another eulogy from the Menaea for March 18. The same manuscript has another eulogy of the same Cyril on this day, which is entirely proper to his veneration, and in no way different from that which the manuscript Menologium of Basil at Crypta-ferrata has somewhat more briefly, and the great Menaea have more fully, prefaced by a verse in which his death on this day is indicated:
Ὀγδοάτῃ δεκάτῃ θὰνατος μέλας ἧιλε Κύριλλον.
On the eighteenth, dark death came upon Cyril.
The eulogy is as follows: Born of pious parents who held the right faith, Cyril was imbued with the same disciplines and grew up, and flourished under the Empire of Constantius. After Maximus, Bishop of Jerusalem, had passed to immortal life, this Blessed Cyril was deemed worthy of the episcopal grace, In which the election of Cyril, a most ready champion of Apostolic doctrines. While Acacius was holding the throne of the Church of Caesarea, having been proscribed by the Council of Sardica because he would not allow the Son to be called equal to the Father, and refusing to accept the sentence of condemnation pronounced against himself; but maintaining himself in the episcopal office by a kind of tyrannical violence. This man, since he was known to the Emperor, having received power from him, expelled the blessed man from his See and compelled him to flee from Jerusalem. Exile, He went to Tarsus and joined himself to the admirable Silvanus: and when a Synod was convoked at Seleucia, since Cyril was a not inconsiderable part of it, Acacius, indignant, rushed to Constantinople and so stirred up the Emperor's mind against Cyril in anger that he obtained the pronouncement of a sentence of exile against him. But when Constantius was removed from the living, Restoration, and his successor Julian professed to embrace all with equal benevolence, he ordered the Bishops expelled from their Sees under Constantius to return to their own Churches: among whom Cyril too was restored to his throne. And rightly and according to the good pleasure of God, feeding the flock entrusted to him, and leaving to the Churches as his memorial those Catecheses which are circulated under his name; Bodily appearance. not surviving a long time after his return, he rested with a blessed end. He was of an entirely moderate bodily stature, pallid, with hair, with a flat nose, a square face, evenly drawn eyebrows, gray and thick hairs clothing his cheeks (which, divided in two down his chin, flowed into a beard), and his whole bodily bearing was rustic.
[4] Thus far the manuscripts as well as the printed Menaea, which are to be corrected in this one point, that they give Cyril so brief a life after the return granted by Julian: since Saint Jerome in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers says that, often driven from the Church and received back, at the last under the Emperor Theodosius he held the Episcopate undisturbed for eight years. The multiple ejection of Saint Cyril will be treated more fully by us below: now, as concerns the principal one, we shall first receive its causes from Sozomen, and then its outcome from Theodoret and Nicephorus. And Sozomen indeed, having enumerated the Bishops whom the Arians deposed in the Conciliabulum of Constantinople, seeking to annul what had been done at Seleucia, in Book 4, chapter 24, begins thus: Furthermore, together with them Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, is deposed, Cyril opposing the Arians, because he had communicated with Eustathius and Elpidius, who had strenuously opposed the Council of Melitina (in which he himself had also participated); and because after the deposition in Palestine he had entered into communion with George and Basil, Bishop of Laodicea; and because when he had been constituted Bishop of Jerusalem, as if already the Bishop of an Apostolic See, he had disagreed with Acacius, Bishop of Caesarea, concerning the metropolitan right: And contending with Acacius about the Primacy, whence it came about that they took up enmities between themselves, and each accused the other of not thinking truly and sincerely about God. For each had previously come under suspicion: the one because he favored the doctrine of Arius; the other, namely Cyril, because he followed those who asserted the Son to be consubstantial with the Father. Accordingly, Acacius, being of this mind, having called together the remaining Bishops of his region and of his opinion, On account of church property sold during a public famine, first deposes Cyril for the following reason. When famine had seized the territory of Jerusalem, the multitude, destitute of the necessities of life, took refuge with Cyril as Bishop for the purpose of imploring help: and when he had no money to relieve it, he sold the treasure of the Church and the sacred hangings. When this was done, the story goes that a certain man noticed an actress clothed in a precious garment which he himself had donated to the Church; that he carefully inquired of her whence she had it; that he discovered that a merchant had sold it to her, and the Bishop had sold it to the merchant. And that Acacius, bringing this charge, He is deposed. had deposed Cyril. He adds: That the matter was so I have indeed received by report. These are the words of that writer, who lived close to the events which he here narrates.
[5] Theodoret, however, a contemporary of Sozomen, in Book 2, chapter 27, has this: At that time Acacius, upon the death of Eusebius, held the Episcopate of Caesarea, the first city of Palestine: whom indeed the Council of Sardica (in the year 347) had deposed, having been convicted of Arian heresy; but he, despising so great a multitude of Bishops, resisted the sentence passed against him. The primacy of Jerusalem was held by Maximus... When he had been transferred to immortal life, Cyril, an eager and ready champion of Apostolic doctrine, was placed in the episcopal rank. These two, I mean Cyril and Acacius, quarreling between themselves about the primacy, Deposed inflicted the most grievous disadvantages on the people of their Churches. For Acacius, seizing upon a slight pretext, deposed Cyril and expelled him from Jerusalem. Cyril, however, set out for Antioch, which he found bereft of a pastor. Thence going to Tarsus, he lived with Silvanus, a truly admirable man and at that time the Bishop of that Church. When Acacius learned of this, He participates in the Council of Seleucia, he sent a letter to Silvanus and informed him of Cyril's deposition. But Silvanus, both because he revered Cyril and because he somewhat feared the multitude which had most eagerly embraced Cyril's teaching, did not at all prohibit him from the ecclesiastical ministry. When the Bishops assembled, Cyril together with Basil, Eustathius, Silvanus, and the rest became a participant in the Council.
[6] Acacius also came to the assembly of Bishops, who were one hundred and fifty in number; and said that he would not communicate with them on the matters called into deliberation until Cyril, as having been deposed from the Episcopate, were excluded from the Council. Accordingly, certain men who were devoted to peace begged Cyril Despite the protest of Acacius, to withdraw from the Council, promising that after a judgment had been made concerning the doctrine of faith, his case would be discussed. When Cyril by no means complied with their counsel, Acacius left them and departed, and having gone to Eudoxius, freed him from fear and restored his courage; because Eudoxius had promised that he would be both the patron and helper of his cause. Who, having gone to Constantinople to Constantius And having forbidden him to enter the Council, he went together with him to Constantinople: for Constantius, having returned from the West, was then staying there. Acacius greatly inflamed the Emperor's mind to anger (having accused the assembly of Bishops before the Emperor and called that gathering a band of wicked men collected for the ruin of the Churches): He accuses the Synod and Cyril, but especially by the charges which he had fabricated against Cyril did he stir up his bile. For he said that the sacred stole, woven with golden threads, which the most excellent Emperor Constantine had donated to Macarius, Bishop of that city, to adorn the Church of Jerusalem, for him to wear while performing the ministry of most sacred Baptism, Cyril had sold: and that a certain one of those who are accustomed to sing on the stage had purchased it: and that he had put it on: and that while dancing he had fallen and had perished, crushed by the fall: and that these Bishops, having this man as a member of the Council, had undertaken to judge matters in dispute and to decide on the cases of others.
[7] By these things therefore Constantius was so moved that he wrote a sentence of exile against Cyril, as the Menaea relate; And obtains a sentence of exile, he certainly took no account of him when he wished to disturb the Acts of the Council of Seleucia, and, persuaded by his associates who feared the consensus of the multitude,
he summoned only ten of their leaders to Constantinople: where how bravely and freely they defended the orthodox doctrine, although before that they had been either Semi-Arians or had adhered to them, both Theodoret recounts in the same place, and we shall see below from the same: intending to show that Silvanus, the host of Saint Cyril, either already before or at least through the instruction of Cyril, was entirely of the right belief regarding the faith, and had been estranged from the company of the Semi-Arians; even though by common counsel with them he had opposed the Arians, Acacius, and others. Which Arians, as Nicephorus records in Book 9, chapter 43, in the fifth session refused to come into the assembly, ... but neither would they profess the same faith as the others, nor respond to the charges brought against them. Indeed, even when invited to hear the case of Cyril of Jerusalem, whom they themselves had ordered to leave the Episcopate, He himself is condemned at Seleucia. they were not present: for there was no one there to compel them. But the other party not only freely conducted these proceedings: they also deprived Acacius and whoever had taken refuge with him of their rank... When these things had been thus done, Acacius quickly set out for the Emperor: and indeed, as was said, he obtained a sentence of exile against him; and he arranged for the confirmation of his deposition by the assembly of Arians in the same place, as was mentioned above.
[8] Afterwards, when Cyril was again restored under the Empire of Julian, Acacius did not permit him to rest in peace, The charge of Arianism cast upon Saint Cyril. but again expelled him from his See, substituting Hilarion; concerning whom and two others previously installed in place of Cyril, we shall treat below, after we have vindicated the name of Saint Cyril from the calumny of those who have branded him with the mark of Arianism or Semi-Arianism: among whom Rufinus, in Book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 23, speaks thus of his entry into the Episcopate: At Jerusalem, Cyril, after Maximus, having received the Priesthood by a confused ordination, sometimes varied in faith, and more often in communion. Socrates casts a similar stigma upon him in Book 5, chapter 8, where Cyril of Jerusalem is numbered by him among the chief Fathers of the Synod of Constantinople, who at that time, moved by repentance, had devoted himself wholly to the faith of the Consubstantial. But less credence is to be given in this matter to men who were themselves wavering in the Catholic faith and spotted with various stains of heretical wickedness, than to the very writings of Cyril himself, plainly and fully Catholic, and to the persecutions by the Arians, whose errors he in no way shared, as Theophanes excellently teaches and demonstrates for the year of the common era 355, that is, 347 of the Alexandrian reckoning, which he uses, writing as follows:
[9] In this year, Acacius of Caesarea and Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Bishops, deposed Maximus, Bishop of Jerusalem: and appointed Cyril, whom they hoped would agree with them, in his place. About the same time, while Cyril was Bishop, the sign of the life-giving Cross, From Theophanes the charge is refuted. shining with a great light, appeared in the sky on the holy day of Pentecost: and it passed from Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified, to the Mount of Olives, where he was assumed into heaven: and a crown resembling the appearance of a rainbow encircled the appearing sign: and on the same day the same vision was manifested to Constantius: concerning which a letter of Cyril to the Emperor Constantius, in which he calls him Most Pious, is circulated. Wherefore some calumniators suspect Cyril himself of Arian opinion, and allege that in the Catecheses, which he expounded for the benefit of the innumerable multitude requesting holy Baptism on account of the portent of the life-giving Cross seen in the sky, he suppressed the word Consubstantial. But they are deceived and err in judgment. For it was proper, out of simplicity of heart rather than deliberate purpose, to call the Emperor, who had been led into heresy by the wiles of the Arians, yet with paganism not yet fully abolished, Most Pious; and it was fitting to pass over the word Consubstantial, which still offended the ears of many and would have deterred the ignorant from holy Baptism through the controversies of adversaries, and to express the meaning of Consubstantial more clearly by words of equivalent significance. Which indeed was done by Blessed Cyril: who, interpreting word by word the creed published at Nicaea, proclaimed God true from God true. To which could have been added that, concluding the aforesaid letter, he prays well for the Emperor praising τὴν ἁγίαν καὶ ὁμοουςὶαν τριάδα, the holy and consubstantial Trinity: as if subtly planting a barb, and professing that the title Most Pious is used only in the sense in which it was proper to suppose he held the right faith either in reality or by a readiness of mind prepared to receive instruction.
Section II. The always orthodox faith of Saint Cyril: the suspicion of Semi-Arianism wiped away.
[10] These things can be sufficient, taken in their natural sense, to purge Saint Cyril of all suspicion of heresy: but since under the Empire of Constantius the orthodox religion lay so prostrate throughout the entire East, Saint Cyril adhering to the Semi-Arians against Acacius, that those very ones who attacked it, divided principally into two factions, some absolutely denied with Acacius that the Son was of the same substance as the Father, so as to wish him to be called a pure creature; while others, with Basil of Ancyra, suppressing the expression of the Consubstantial, professed the Son to be indeed similar to the Father, but establishing the similarity not of essence or nature, but of will and operation in both, and in this sense defining many things which, if one looks at the mere sound of the words, could seem entirely conformable to the Orthodox faith (as can be seen from their own Letter, cited by Epiphanius in heresy 73): so, I say, since the doctrine of those who did not think rightly about the second Person of the Trinity was divided among itself, it seems difficult so to separate Cyril from Acacius as not to associate him with Basil and his Semi-Arian followers: especially since the afore-cited Epiphanius numbers Silvanus, to whom Cyril, driven from Jerusalem, retired, among the Semi-Arians.
[11] He did not communicate with their heresy, Cardinal Baronius opened the way to dissolving this knot, taking his occasion from Epiphanius himself: namely that Saint Cyril had a twofold contention with Acacius; one concerning faith, the other concerning rank. Just as concerning Eutychius of Hierapolis, a Bishop of the Acacian faction, Epiphanius says that, having received from Blessed Maximus, the Confessor and Bishop of Jerusalem, the manifestly orthodox faith, he was not, on account of enmity against Cyril, associated with Acacius, but having the orthodox faith, he dissembled for a time on account of his own throne... neither confessing nor denying: so also Baronius judges it must be said concerning Cyril, that although he seemed to have adhered to Basil and other Semi-Arians, he nevertheless in no way consented to their profession concerning the faith, but only intended to use their authority to recover his See, from which he had been expelled by the factious conspiracy of Eutychius and Acacius, against whom he thus pleaded his cause in the Council, as we saw above from Nicephorus.
[12] Nor indeed are these things said without foundation: since while Epiphanius recites the profession of Semi-Arian faith and the subscription of the Bishops consenting to it, Indeed he drew Silvanus of Tarsus away from it: he does not find among them, I do not say the name of Cyril, but not even that of Silvanus, who was doubtless persuaded by Cyril so that (although in the first session, according to Nicephorus, Book 9, chapter 43, he himself had been the advocate of retaining the Antiochene formula, which had undoubtedly been the seedbed of the Semi-Arians) nevertheless, after the departure of Acacius and his accomplices, he should more openly profess the Nicene faith, and should not lend his name to those who, a few from many, deceived by the fraud of Acacius, had signed the formula of faith proposed by him, and who seemed to wish only to suppress the word Coessential as foreign to the Scriptures, but pretended to strike with anathema any dissimilarity to the Father: since this alone, as Epiphanius testifies, was the bait of the deceitful hunters. For when they conversed among themselves, they said and taught that the Son of God is a creature, but is similar to the Father, just as according to the opinion received among men. For sculptors also make statues and liken images in gold and silver... and they have a likeness; but nothing according to the quality of those represented: so among them the fraud was to confess indeed that the Son was similar to the Father, but to hold that he had nothing of the Father's divinity at all: whence afterwards arose the term ὁμοιουσίας, which was opposed to ὁμοουσίᾳ, and by the difference of a single letter, little esteemed, drew nearly the whole world into Arianism.
[13] But much more clearly from Theodoret is understood what was the position of Silvanus, and therefore of Cyril himself, Who acting bravely at Constantinople, before the dissolution of the Council of Seleucia, through what he is recorded to have done in the Synod of Constantinople before the Emperor Constantius. For when Eudoxius pressed that Eustathius the Armenian and his party be commanded to pronounce anathema on the word Consubstantial, because it was not found in Scripture: On the contrary, said Silvanus, the expressions From Nothing and Of a Different Substance, which are neither found in the sacred letters, nor in agreement with the oracles of the Prophets or the teaching of the Apostles, ought to be rejected and excluded from all divine assemblies. The Emperor agreed with this, He compels the Arians to abjure. and commanded those men to pronounce anathema on these expressions. Although they at first attempted to contradict, afterwards, however, having perceived the Emperor's intention, they utterly abjured those very expressions which Silvanus had proposed to them, although reluctantly; and from then on they began to press more vigorously that the word Consubstantial also be condemned with anathema. But Silvanus, having rightly and truly concluded his argument, replied both to them and to the Emperor: If God the Son exists neither from nothing, nor is a creature, nor from any other essence; therefore he is consubstantial with God the Father, and God from God, light from light, and has the same nature as his begetter. He himself steadfast in faith But although he concluded these things with firm reasoning and truth; yet none of those present obeyed him: indeed the Acacian and Eudoxian faction began to raise frequent outcries against Silvanus, and the Emperor himself began to burn with such anger that he threatened to drive him and his supporters into exile. Then Eleusius of Cyzicus and Silvanus with certain others said that it was in his power to inflict punishment on them: but that to follow piety or impiety was in their own power, and that they would therefore never betray the teaching of the Fathers. He endures exile. Then Constantius, who ought to have admired their wisdom, bravery, and freedom of speech in defending the Apostolic doctrine, ejected them from their Churches and commanded others to be substituted in their places.
[14] Thus far Theodoret, Book 2, chapter 27, from which it is manifestly apparent how he who was thus disposed at the Council of Constantinople when he had passed there from the Council of Seleucia, believed at the Seleucian Council itself: and how much the presence of Cyril availed to retain them and others in the right faith, or to recall them to the same, if any perhaps, communicating with heretics, had wavered concerning it: so that concerning Silvanus and others who likewise refused to subscribe their names to the Semi-Arian profession, we can and should understand Many others thinking rightly at Seleucia. that which Epiphanius says in the cited passage, that there were many members of that Synod who confessed wonderfully concerning the faith, and who did not reject the term Coessential: but also declared themselves ready, if a proper Synod were held, to confess and not to deny. That Meletius of Antioch was also such a man he concludes from his first sermon, and also from the things which the Antiochenes confessed concerning him when he was expelled from the See; no longer at all
not even in passing making any mention of the word Creature; but confessing the Father and Son and Holy Spirit as coessential, three substances, one essence, one divinity: just as our Fathers confessed when gathered at the Council of Nicaea. Just as Meletius of Antioch, although appointed by Acacius,
[15] But just as this Meletius, appointed at Antioch by Acacius and his accomplices, was thought to be of their opinion: but in reality was not found to be so, as Epiphanius says: so the same people appointed Cyril, whom they hoped would agree with them, in the place of Maximus, as Theophanes states: which nevertheless did not prevent either of them from being considered legitimately and canonically appointed. For in those most troubled times of the Church, Just as Cyril too, dissembling at the beginning. in which under an Arian Emperor the Arians could do anything they wished in the East, it was a small matter not to appear as too ardent a defender of Athanasius: which was enough for Acacius and his party to arrange, by the common consent of the provincial Bishops, among whom they numbered themselves though unworthy and excommunicated, the election of one whom they hoped would favor them or at least not vigorously oppose them. The worst indeed was their intention, but not always bad were these men, who, using some dissimulation for a time, were only taking care that the power to defend the Church and to preserve it in sound doctrine should not be taken from them: which would have happened if, wishing to cut everything to the quick, they had rejected as invalid all the acts of Acacius and all Ordinations in which he had in any way participated, because of the sentence of deposition pronounced against him at Sardica, and had entirely abstained from his communion.
Section III. The Series of Bishops of Jerusalem.
[16] Cyril the legitimate successor of Maximus. Therefore Cyril, whom the Ecumenical Synod assembled at Constantinople commended to Damasus, either as having been canonically created long since by the Bishops of his province as Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, we shall regard as such after Maximus; who was certainly not deposed (as Theophanes alone seems to have said, although through the word καθεῖλεν he perhaps wished to signify that he was removed from the living by the Arians through poison or some other fraud) but died at least by natural death (as nearly all others say), and this in the year, according to the Chronology of Theophanes, 347, of the common era 355. Jerome, however, at the eleventh year of Constantius, which was the year of Christ 347, not accurately observing the reckoning of the times, writes as follows: Maximus, Bishop of Jerusalem after Macarius, dies: after whom the Arians invade the Church, that is, Cyril, Eutychius, again Cyril, Irenaeus, Cyril a third time, Hilarius, Cyril a fourth time; Whether also in the mind of Saint Jerome? as if numbering Cyril among the Arians: and then adds: Of whom Cyril, when he had been ordained Presbyter by Maximus, and after the death of Maximus the Episcopate was promised to him by Acacius, Bishop of Caesarea, and the other Arians, on condition that he repudiate the Ordination of Maximus, served as Deacon in the Church; for which impiety, rewarded with the payment of the Priesthood, he solicited Heraclius, whom Maximus dying had substituted in his own place, by various fraud, and degraded him from Bishop to Presbyter. Which things Jerome undoubtedly received exaggerated beyond the truth from authors who were not well disposed toward Cyril; or if they are true, they argue a grave stain at the beginning, which the purity of his later life and Catholic doctrine so washed away that not even its memory has been left with other writers.
[17] And in the year 347? But it certainly could not be true that this disturbance began in the eleventh year of Constantius: since it is entirely established that the same Maximus celebrated the Council of Jerusalem for the restoration of Athanasius in the year 350: and although Baronius concedes that he died in the following year, he does so on no certain argument; but because he found no reason for leaving him alive any longer, and despaired that any light would come forth in the confusion of subsequent times. From the year 355 Cyril began, We, however, having Theophanes, the most accurate Chronographer, as our guide, begin the Episcopate of Cyril from the year 355, and up to the eighth year after the Council of Constantinople, the year of Christ 390, we find fully thirty-five solid years: which is the number of years that the tables prefixed to Theophanes assign to his See, erring only in this, that they numbered the twelve years of the intruded Hilarion before the aforesaid Council separately from the years of Saint Cyril: by which arrangement they were forced to defer the death of Cyril to the beginning of the fifth century: against the express opinion of Theophanes, who places the beginning of Cyril where Hilarion's first year was placed. So that it is entirely clear that these tables began to be added to the text of Theophanes or filled in long afterwards by copyists, who cared little how well they agreed either with the truth or with Theophanes. Yet we can conveniently retain however many years that author of the tables assigns to individual Bishops, provided we follow the traces marked by writers of approximately the same age, and distribute those years appropriately.
[18] There are some who think that the same Cyril is not repeated four times by Jerome, To Jerome there is but one, but that four different Cyrils are numbered by him; but this neither appears probable, nor will it ever be wrung from his words, however confused by corrupt punctuation. Cardinal Baronius, however, favors their opinion when, removing the punctuation marks, he reads Jerome's passage as if Eutychius, Irenaeus, and Hilarius had Cyril as a first name; and only the fourth, without a second name (the use of which no examples from that period will prove), was simply called Cyril. Indeed, it cannot even be said that Jerome or his copyist, having fallen into error, prefixed the name Cyril to each one for the word κύρις, an honorific appellation in use among the Greeks, in Latin Domnus: for the same writer makes the one who is here simply called Cyril the immediate successor of Maximus, and the entire history of that period requires that at that time some real Cyril sat at Jerusalem. Moreover, since elsewhere Jerome says that Cyril, whose Catecheses he praises, was often expelled from the Church and received back; it is clear that this very thing he wished to inculcate and explain in this passage by so many repeated iterations of the same name.
[19] Against Jerome, who maintains a single Cyril, indeed against all Greek writers of Ecclesiastical History, A twofold Cyril in Epiphanius, (whose consensus would rightly make us certain of Jerome's meaning, even if he had spoken more obscurely here) Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, stands opposed, in heresy 66, establishing two Cyrils for one, and having listed the first thirty-seven Bishops of Jerusalem, ordering the chronology of the remaining ones and writing as follows: In sum, from the Ascension of Christ up to Manes and Aurelian and Probus, there are 276 years according to some chronographers, and according to others 246: from that time until now there have been other Bishops: Bazas, Hermon, Maximus, Cyril, Erennis, another Cyril, Hilarionus, who now holds the Church, against whom the charge is made that he belongs to the sect of the Arians... so that from the aforesaid Manes up to the present time, namely the thirteenth year of Valens, the ninth year of Gratian, the first year of Valentinian the Younger, there are 93 years; more correctly indeed than what Petavius found in the Greek text, 77, which he converts to 107, without coming any closer to the truth: but before we undertake to arrange the series of Bishops of Jerusalem within the limits set by Epiphanius, to establish our doctrine concerning Cyril, we must first explain the chronological markers that Epiphanius uses.
[20] The years of Valens begin from the fourth day before the Calends of April, on which he was raised to the partnership of the empire by his brother Valentinian in the year 364; Writing in the year of Christ 377, the few days of Gratian, from the ninth day before the Calends of September to the same September and the beginning of the new year among the Greeks, are not to be reduced to the reckoning; but his first year is counted as that which the Greeks number as 368. Therefore, of Valentinian the Younger, admitted to the scepter immediately after the death of his Father on March 17 of the year 375, his first year, coinciding with the eleventh of Valens and the seventh of Gratian, persuades us that the aforesaid Valentinian's first year has erroneously crept in for the third; and that Epiphanius wrote the things we have cited in the year 377. It is moreover easy to find how, from this starting point, that is from the year 377, ascending through 93 years, one arrives at 284, that is, of the Alexandrian Era, from whose Chronographers Epiphanius measures the years of Christ, a year indeed from the birth of Christ 276, but from his Ascension into heaven 244, not 246: unless one believes Epiphanius held with many that Christ lived only thirty-two years and preached for a single year. But when we have arrived at the year 284 of the common era as stated, we still do not have the birth year of the Manichaean heresy together with the empire of Probus, One hundred and one years indeed after the beginnings of the Manichaeans. unless, adding to the 93 years another eight, we ascend to 276, so that the interval of time from the year in which Epiphanius wrote to the said terminus becomes one hundred and one years. For which you will observe that the Alexandrian Era places eight fewer years from the birth of Christ to the persecution of Domitian than we commonly do, and absorbs those years, dissimulated around the times of Domitian. Epiphanius therefore, following this Era, counted eight fewer years between the beginnings of Probus and his own times than he would have counted had he found the years of the Roman Emperors nowhere diminished.
[21] Having thus observed these things in passing, so that we may correctly arrange the years of those Pontiffs of Jerusalem whom Epiphanius names there, Series of the Bishops of Jerusalem. and from this determine whether there can be a place for a second Cyril, we retrace the series of the said Bishops from the more certain principles of Eusebius, the most ancient, indeed the first, Christian chronographer, in such a way that at the same time we may teach the reader that while the names and sequence of all those first leaders of that Church are found, more or less, in Epiphanius and Nicephorus, the spans of time assigned to individual Bishops in Nicephorus and to some in Epiphanius are not to be trusted. For, to begin with Epiphanius, where it is said: The Bishops of Jerusalem from the circumcision are numbered μέχρις ἐνδεκάτου Ἀντωνίνου up to the eleventh year of Antoninus, it should be read from Eusebius μέχρις ἐννεαδεκάτου Αδριανοῦ up to the nineteenth year of Hadrian: for thus Epiphanius could have found in Eusebius, who places the first year of Hadrian under the Consuls Aemilius and Antistius, The years of the same in Nicephorus and Epiphanius are to be corrected. which was the year of Christ 116, and places the beginning of Marcus, the first promoted to the chair of Jerusalem from the Gentiles, under the Consuls Lupercus and Acilianus, which was the year of our era 135. Marcus, the first from the Gentiles, in the year 135. From which the sum of years collected from Nicephorus up to Marcus falls so far short that it reaches only the year of Christ 89.
[22] From the beginning of Marcus up to Cassian, who began to hold office under the Consuls Silvanus and Augurinus, Eusebius has twenty-one years; Cassian in the year 156, but Nicephorus places only eight years between the two. After Cassian there sat Publius, Maximus, Julian, up to the tenth year of Antoninus Pius, the year of Christ 148, says Epiphanius. Eight others, But then, according to Eusebius, Marcus was still in office, having died only in the year 156. And since it is not probable that six Bishops died within three years, it is clear that Gaianus, Symmachus, and Gaius, who succeeded Cassian after the three aforesaid, must have extended beyond the eighth year of Verus, which Epiphanius assigns as their last: and this
is made much clearer from the subsequent Bishops: Julian, Capito, and Maximus, Maximus in the year 185, to whom Epiphanius assigns the end in the sixteenth year of Verus, the year of Christ 167: whereas the last of them, Maximus, began to hold office under the Consuls Maternus and Bradua in the year 185, on the testimony of Eusebius. And so between the beginnings of Maximus himself and those of Cassian, the interval would have been twenty-nine years, abundantly sufficient for nine Bishops: but not for Nicephorus, who assigns so many years to individuals that their collected sum amounts to thirty-seven years. Then he augments the interval between this second Maximus and Alexander much more greatly; for that interval, with his numbers collected, would be forty-five years, certainly double what we have from Eusebius, who refers the beginning of Alexander to the Consulship of Pompeius and Asper, Nine others, which is the year of Christ 207. For the intermediate Bishops, Epiphanius distributes them so that Antoninus, Valens, and Dulichianus governed the Church up to Commodus and the year of Christ 180, and Narcissus and Dius up to Severus and the year of the common era 193. Alexander in the year 207, Germanio and Gordius, also called Sardianus by others, up to Antoninus Heliogabalus, who began in 219: another Narcissus would have reached the time of Alexander, son of Mammaea, namely the year 222: then Alexander became Bishop of Jerusalem, whom we have said above from Eusebius was created in the year 207.
[23] After him up to Cyril there were six Bishops, and they are named by both Epiphanius and Nicephorus. The names and times of some of them are now wanting in the Greek text of Eusebius, but are found in Jerome in his Chronicle rendered into Latin under the name of Eusebius: in which, Decius reigning for thirty months, Mazabenes in the year 250, Alexander is said to have been killed at Antioch for his martyrdom: and Mazabenes and Fabius, unnamed in other catalogues, to have succeeded him. Decius was killed in the year 251: so that it is necessary that these successors of Alexander presided for fifteen years, and reached the twelfth year of Valerian and Gallienus, the year of Christ 265, Three others, when in the same Jerome the Episcopate of Hymenaeus is noted: after whom, as Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, under the Consuls Faustus and Gallus, Zabdas is ordained, in the fourteenth year of Diocletian, the year of Christ 298. Then Hermon in the seventeenth year of the same Diocletian, whose name and time have also dropped out of the Greek text of Eusebius now in our hands, Macarius in the year 314, but are found equally with those preceding in Jerome's version. Finally, under the Consuls Volusianus and Annianus, in the year 314, it is established from Eusebius that Macarius, whose deeds we have given on March 10, was elevated to the Chair of Jerusalem, if anything can be established from any writer: for Eusebius writes about Macarius as a contemporary, while he was still living, and as one in some way subject to his own Metropolitan See of Caesarea, so that his testimony must absolutely be regarded as irrefutable in this place.
[24] Hence moreover various errors remain to be corrected in the catalogues of Epiphanius and Nicephorus: for within the years of the Emperor Alexander, who ended his life and empire in the year of Christ 235, Epiphanius concludes the time of Bishop Alexander: certainly not from his own opinion, but from a catalogue which he transcribed, most incompetently compiled. For Epiphanius himself in his book On Weights and Measures, number 19, says: In the persecution of Decius, Babylas suffered martyrdom at Antioch; Fabian at Rome; Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, at Caesarea. Mazabenes is then said to have sat until Gallus and Volusianus, that is, the year of Christ 251; Hymenaeus up to Aurelian, indeed up to the beginning of Probus in the year 276: whence Epiphanius begins to derive new and independent calculations. But how little his earlier calculations are apt, is clear from the testimonies of Eusebius cited above: just as also how little in this part too the numbers of episcopal years in Nicephorus hold up, which from the beginning of Alexander to Zabdas amount to only sixty-two years, when in reality there were eighty-six. From the beginning of Zabdas to Macarius, Nicephorus has nineteen years, which according to Eusebius are only sixteen. Finally, the whole sum of episcopal years collected from Nicephorus from the birth of Christ to Macarius has fully one hundred fewer years than is fitting.
Moreover, from the same source from which Nicephorus drew, but somewhat altered, as customarily happens, George Syncellus also received the years of the aforesaid Bishops: but since he, ending with the Emperor Domitian, contributes nothing to our purpose, we did not wish to insert his chronography here for refutation, lest we cast darkness upon ourselves.
Section IV. What did Cyril do and suffer, and at what time, in the Episcopate of Jerusalem?
[25] We have set forth in the previous paragraph the entire chronological order of the Bishops of Jerusalem, hitherto obscure in so great a disagreement among authors; both for use to us elsewhere, and so that it might provide a foundation for establishing the chronology of the times which Cyril spent partly as Bishop and partly in exile: although otherwise it could have been sufficient to have demonstrated that Macarius began to preside in the year 314. For thus he, dying in the twentieth year of his Pontificate, Maximus created in the year 333, but only having begun it, left the vacant Chair to the distinguished Confessor Maximus in the year of Christ 333, which should be counted as the first of Maximus: for Baronius demonstrates that he sat for more than twenty years; and the tables affixed to Theophanes establish that he reached the twenty-third year of his Episcopate, which would correspond to the year 355 of our era. Then Cyril in the year 355. From this point we accept the first fifteen years of Cyril, those most turbulent ones, wrongly attributed to the first Cyril by the author of the tables: after which, with Cyril now expelled for the third time, Hilarius is said to have held the See for twelve years; until Cyril, restored again in the year 382 of this century, after the sentence of the Ecumenical Council, obtained the longed-for peace for the Church, already so long afflicted by the Arians: from which, after eight years, and therefore before the year 390, he departed to eternal rest and the rewards of his labors, Died in the year 389, in the eleventh year of the Emperor Theodosius. Thus, counting the years of Cyril from beginning to end, we shall plainly find thirty-five, which is the number the tables prefixed to Theophanes assign to his See; but after they had premised a twofold error: one indeed, that they numbered the twelve years of the intruded Hilarion separately from the years of Saint Cyril: the other more serious and apparently deliberate, that, having correctly assigned twenty-three years to Maximus at the beginning, ending at the year 335, they then leave him only six, and by surreptitiously eliminating one or two other years, assign the remaining fifteen to a Cyril different from the one to whom they give thirty-five years.
[26] That someone of this name succeeded Maximus, who had been deposed long before his death, has not hitherto been found in any of the Greek historians: There was no other of this name intruded under Maximus, nor is there anyone who says that the man was expelled from his place, who, on account of the marks of his distinguished confession, was most dear to the Clergy and people of Jerusalem and venerable even to the Arians themselves. The Synod of Jerusalem, celebrated by him for the restoration of Athanasius in the year 350, certainly proves, as we said above, that he then presided at Jerusalem. The question therefore can only proceed as to whether after the death of Maximus only one, or successively more persons of the same name, occupied the See of Jerusalem by right or by wrong. On both sides a weighty authority contends: for two Cyrils there is the above-cited passage of Epiphanius, Epiphanius distinguishes Maximus's successor who indeed weaves the series of the ancient Prelates of the holy city unfortunately, but who does not seem to have been able to err in things done in his own time: especially since up to the year 338 of Christ, and the sixtieth year of his age, he lived in Palestine as Hegumen of the Monastery of Eleutheropolis, from which, translated to the episcopal dignity of Constantia in Cyprus, he seems through his disciples, who from time to time visited their elderly Father, to have been able to learn with sufficient certainty what was being done there in his absence in so notable a matter and one so gravely concerning the state of the Church. Distinguishes from our Cyril, In this opinion, however, everything that some cast against Cyril concerning his doubtful faith and his more variable communion with the Arians and the adversaries of the Arians, and the letter written to Constantius, would apply only against the first Cyril, and the holy Cyril under the Empire of Julian, commended to the Apostolic See by the Ecumenical Synod, and the most celebrated writer of the Catecheses, would remain entirely immune from all suspicion either of perfidy or of dissimulation, which is not far removed from perfidy.
[27] On the other hand, however, the authority of Saint Jerome is no less: whose two testimonies, from the Chronicle and from the book On Writers, compared with each other, seem to declare without doubt the opinion in favor of a single Cyril, which the writers of the century nearest to him also held. For Jerome in his youth inhabited Syria around the year 370, But not Jerome: only fifteen years after the death of Maximus; not only devoting himself to the exercises of the solitary life, but also most eager to increase his knowledge: among whose first literary exercises there seems to have been the care of writing the Chronicle from Eusebius in Latin. His supplement, moreover, ending with the sixth consulship of Valens and the second of Valentinian (which was the year 378 of the common era, from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar and the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, not 351 as the manuscripts and printed texts commonly have, but from which the three hundred and fiftieth, perhaps written as 349) it seems to follow that either in that very year, Who perhaps wrote at Jerusalem in 378, on the fifth day before the Ides of August, when Valens was defeated and burned by the Goths, Jerome, still at Jerusalem, finished it; or in the immediately following years, having been brought from Jerusalem to Constantinople, before he went to Rome: where it is established that he was not long; but in the year 385 of this century, when Cyril was still peacefully governing the Church at Jerusalem, he returned there, and spent the principal remaining part of his life there and in nearby Bethlehem. At whatever time therefore we say the Chronicle was written, it will always have to be admitted that Saint Jerome, when he wrote it, could have had a more accurate knowledge of the entire history of the Church of Jerusalem than Epiphanius, long before Maximus had departed from the living, absent in Cyprus; While Epiphanius was absent in Cyprus. distracted by the governance of the Church of Constantia and by far different cares of studies and business. Who therefore could have had less certain knowledge of what had been done at Jerusalem in that confusion of Church and religion after the death of Maximus; and hearing so diverse a report about Cyril, could have thought that the one who seemed to have been promoted by the Arians was different from the one who was known to have been driven into exile by the same people for the free defense of the Catholic faith.
[28] If indeed this Cyril entered the Episcopate in the manner which Jerome describes, then he rightly incurred both the suspicion of Arianism and suffered the due penalties of sacrilegious dissimulation from those very ones whom he had as the authors of so great a crime: What kind of man was Cyril at his entry into the Episcopate? but if (which we consider more probable) it was not Cyril himself who by various fraud solicited Heraclius and degraded him: but rather Maximus dying, having been solicited by various fraud, appointed Heraclius as his successor, whom therefore Cyril, as an intruder, degraded from Bishop to Presbyter, as the reading of Scaliger allows to be understood; it could more innocently have come about that
Cyril, canonically elected by the Catholic Clergy and Bishops, and not seeing sufficient protection in that election Ejected about the year 357, (Heraclius having been nevertheless ordained by those who had deceived the dying Maximus), believed that he should use the power of Acacius for the overthrow of his rival, and therefore kept his own mind about the faith hidden for the time being. For thus he will be relieved of a great part of the crime, even if he is not held entirely innocent: especially if, having once received the Order of the Presbyterate from Maximus, he allowed it to be conferred upon himself a second time, as if it had not been properly conferred. But if he merely abstained from the exercise of his Order; such dissimulation involved much less guilt, but in the meantime it did not have a lasting fruit: for a few years after that ordination, roughly in the year 357, Cyril incurred the hatred of Acacius; nor could he return to his See, having been proscribed by an edict of Constantius, until Julian, the successor of Constantius, restored their former dignity to all exiles. Who meanwhile occupied the Episcopate of Jerusalem is difficult enough to determine. We consider it probable that Heraclius, whom Nicephorus seems incorrectly to have named in second place, was restored to the chair, chiefly with the support of Eutychius of Hierapolis, who from then on professed open enmity against Cyril, to such a degree that, for the sake of pursuing those enmities, although he himself held the manifestly orthodox faith, he joined himself to Acacius the Arian, the adversary and rival of Cyril. This Eutychius, however, when Heraclius's hope was frustrated, seems to have invaded his Episcopate, or at least to have managed everything in it according to his own will, so that for this reason Jerome, suppressing the name of Heraclius, writes that Eutychius was first substituted in the place of Cyril.
[29] Returned in the year 361, But when Cyril was recalled from exile in the year 361, what he did and accomplished for restoring the splendor of his Church, we find recorded in no literary monuments. There is only Socrates, Book 3, chapter 17, from whom it is proved that Cyril was also endowed with the spirit of prophecy: for he narrates that when everything was being prepared for the restoration of Solomon's Temple with great zeal of the Jews by command of Julian, who was planning to deal the final blow to the Christian cause before his expedition against the Persians, it came to the mind of Bishop Cyril He predicts the final destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. that the time had already arrived when not a stone would remain upon a stone in the temple, but the oracle of the Savior would be completely fulfilled. When the Bishop had said these things, at night a great earthquake was stirred up, which shook the stones of the ancient foundations of the temple, and disturbed them all together with the buildings situated nearby. From which terror and dread seized the Jews; and the report even attracted those whose dwellings were far distant from the place to come and view it. And so, when very many were present, another prodigy occurred: for fire sent from heaven consumed all the instruments of the workmen. For one could see hammers, chisels, saws, axes, hatchets, and finally all the tools the artisans had for completing the work, devastated by the conflagration of the flame. The fire fed on those things for the entire day. The Jews therefore, struck with the most terrible fear, even unwillingly confessed that Christ is God... for on the following night figures of the cross, formed by the light of rays, seemed as if impressed upon their garments; which, when they contemplated them as day dawned and desired to wash and delete them, they were in no way able to do so... Accordingly, the temple at that time, instead of being rebuilt, suffered the greatest ruin.
[30] Theodoret recounts the same things, but much more distinctly, in Book 3, chapter 17. And the history of the same destruction from Theodoret When they began to dig and to carry out the earth, although many thousands of men were devoting their labor to this work during the day, they report that at night the earth was spontaneously transported back into the ditch. They destroyed moreover the remnants of the old building, hoping to construct everything anew from scratch: but after they had heaped up infinite measures of plaster and lime together, unexpectedly violent winds began to blow, whirlwinds to burst forth, storms and tempests to arise, which completely scattered all that material. But when they continued further in their madness and would not be taught by the indulgence of divine benevolence; first a very great earthquake occurred, and astounded beyond measure those who had not been initiated into the divine mysteries of Christ: but when they had laid aside their fear, fire erupted from the excavated foundations, burned a great many of the diggers, and put others to flight: likewise at night, when very many were sleeping in a certain nearby portico, the building with its roof suddenly collapsed and crushed all who had given themselves to rest there. On that same night and the following day, again the brilliant form of the saving Cross was seen in the sky; and the very garments of the Jews were marked with figures of the Cross, not brilliant ones indeed, but made of a black color: which things those adversaries of God, having seen, and being very much afraid of the plagues inflicted from heaven, fled from there, plainly confessing that he is the true God whom their ancestors had crucified.
[31] Sozomen agrees with Theodoret, except that concerning the fire bursting from the foundations during the second attempt at the work, he narrates the opinions of various persons in this manner. And from Sozomen, And this is said by all both freely and is believed as certain, and is called into doubt by no one: except that some proclaim that the flame rushed against those very ones who were trying by force to approach the temple, and did what we have said; but others say that the same thing happened as soon as they began to carry out the rubble... and finally he concludes thus: If anyone thinks that credence should by no means be given to these things, let him be persuaded at least by those who received them from eyewitnesses and who are still living: let him also be persuaded both by the Jews themselves and by the pagans who abandoned the work they had begun, or rather were not even able to begin it. Thus Sozomen, not entirely agreeing with Socrates in that he says that as a result of these miracles some of the Jews immediately considered Christ to be God... others shortly afterwards transferred themselves to the Church, were initiated into the mysteries, and with hymns and prayers sought to appease Christ for their impious deeds: whereas Socrates reproves their obstinacy, just as Theodoret reproves the stubbornness of Julian, to whose ears these things, when reported, were indeed able to reach, but to his heart in no way.
[32] These things were done in the year 362 or at the beginning of the following year, Cyril is ejected shortly after, before Julian moved against the Persians on the third day before the Nones of March; who, pierced on June 26 by a divine hand rather than a human one, how long Cyril sat in peace is not clear. We believe that those twelve years which are assigned to Hilarion alone, with Herennius or Erennis passed over in the tables (for the reading of Epiphanius varies, as also that of Jerome, in whom some read Hirenius, others Irenaeus, who is also Arsenius in Nicephorus), we believe, I say, that those twelve years are not inconveniently divided between the two, so that immediately after the death of Julian, the Arians, thinking this was their opportunity, again expelled Cyril from the Church; that Church, however, did not long mourn his absence, but with the most pious Emperor Jovian elected, And again after the year 370 and prudently and bravely rejecting the Arians who were craftily trying to insinuate themselves upon him, received him back. But when the same Jovian died an untimely death in February of the immediately following leap year, and Valens, brother of Valentinian the Elder, was raised to the partnership of his brother's Empire on the fourth day before the Calends of April, the Arians gradually raised their horns; and when they began again to stir up other things at their pleasure in the Eastern Church, they also unfolded their machinations to overthrow Cyril; which they seem to have finally achieved after the year 370, when they also arranged for the substitution of Hilarius or Hilarion.
Section V. The writings of Saint Cyril: praise from the hymn of the Proper Office.
[33] He writes a letter about the apparition of the Cross to Constantius. That the Catecheses of Saint Cyril survive, which he wrote in his youth, Jerome testifies in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 112, making no mention of the letter written to Constantius about the apparition of the Cross; which accordingly Rivetus orders to be dismissed, being always an enemy, in the spirit of his faction, to the Cross of Christ and all that pertains to promoting its veneration, in which manner he is rightly reproved by our Labbé. But Jerome did not see it at Jerusalem, from where it was sent: at Constantinople, where it was directed, Theophanes saw or received it, writing those things which we took from him in Section I. Nor does any reason appear why it should be denied to be Cyril's, under whose name Glycas transcribes part of it: Likewise about the year 356, since the opening of that letter agrees very well with the first years of Cyril in the Episcopate, which is as follows: I send these first offerings of letters to you from Jerusalem, O Emperor beloved of God, which it is fitting for you to receive and for me to give: not filled with the flatteries of words, but declaring the divine prodigies of heavenly things. The day of the Nones of May, however (which I know not what interpolator added to the Greek text, as if on that day the heavenly sign had appeared), neither Theophanes nor Michael Glycas read, nor could they truly have read it: since the day of Pentecost never coincides with the Nones of May: wherefore those who inserted this letter into the great Library of the Fathers rightly thought that gloss should be expunged. If, however, the event narrated occurred in the month of May, it could not indeed have happened in that very year 55 of this century, in which Easter fell on April 16 and Pentecost fell on July 4: but in some one of the four following years: of which the year 56 is preferred, having Pentecost on May 15: or the year 57, in which the said feast was observed on the eleventh day of the same month.
[34] Before this letter, however, the golden Catecheses of Saint Cyril are to be esteemed, And about the year 366 he delivered the Catecheses, which when Jerome says were written in his youth, he seems to have read the annotation prefixed to them, in which they are noted as having been transcribed in the year of Christ 333, in which, however, Cyril was not yet Bishop. But we have said above that among the Orientals the years are counted not only from the birth of Christ but also from his Ascension into heaven: and when these are thus counted in the latter manner, by adding the years which Christ is believed to have lived in mortal flesh, thirty-one or thirty-three, we shall have the year 364 or 366 of the common era; when Cyril, already past fifty, was struggling against the Arians, who were contriving a second exile for him; or, having been recently restored by the same, he did not wish, by emphasizing the word Consubstantial too provocatively, to exacerbate them more violently against himself: which just as the most holy writer Theophanes rightly excused, so now no one can reprove: but if anyone believes that Cyril is called a youth by Jerome in respect to his Episcopate, not so very long since entered upon, and in respect to the far greater old age which he attained in it; perhaps he too will not stray from the truth.
[35] These Catecheses were first found in Greek by Joannes Grodecius in an old manuscript in the possession of Stanislaus Hosius, Cardinal of Warmia, and rendered into Latin, Which, from an ancient Greek manuscript, were published in Latin, and then collated with a Polish translation of the same, supplied to him by Jacobus Uchanski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland, who had obtained them, already written in the Slavonic language, from Bulgaria and Macedonia. Therefore, just as
the ancient translation of the Letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, found in a twofold manuscript at Oxford and published by Ussher, confirmed the truth of the Greek manuscript of Florence, From a comparison with the ancient Slavonic translation they are proved genuine; most highly commended by the greatest scholars, over that edition of Pacaeus, which alone had existed until then and deserved little credence; so that no sensible person can doubt that those Letters of Saint Ignatius are genuine, which the agreement of ancient manuscripts in two languages commands us to recognize as uncorrupted and in no way interpolated: so nearly the same thing has happened here, that, with the Slavonic version agreeing with the Greek text, the most incorrupt integrity of the Catecheses of Cyril can be established for us.
[36] That Cyril is their author, who can testify more certainly than Theodoret, By Theodoret a writer of approximately the same age? He indeed, in Dialogue 2, which is called "Unconfused," cites the fourth Catechetical sermon on the ten dogmas of Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, and produces verbatim what is found there concerning the generation from the Virgin. Similarly, Saint John Damascene in his Third Oration on Images produces words taken from Catechesis 12, And cited by Saint John Damascene and others, and that under no other name than that of Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem: not to mention John Cyparissiotus, who is said to have flourished in the twelfth century and produces a fragment of the tenth Catechesis. Accordingly, their translator rightly judged in his dedicatory letter to Gaspar, Bishop of Wroclaw, that these are to be far preferred to any instructions of any more recent writers whatsoever: because the authority and majesty of Christian doctrine is renowned among those ancient and orthodox Bishops who taught sound doctrine and true Apostolic traditions, and the rites of the Church instituted by Apostolic men at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, And are greatly to be valued. in the Eastern Church, and subsequently committed them to writing for posterity. Which indeed was done in a twofold manner: Not however as studiously written by him, one way, that what they had spoken to the people, they themselves would write more studiously; the other way, that either by selected notaries appointed for this purpose or by studious members of their audience, the very same words taken down in the order of the speech as it was delivered, they would afterwards review and permit to be circulated under their name. This latter procedure was easily accomplished by the ancients on a twofold account: both because the ancients (as is clear also from the profane histories of the Romans) had marvelous abbreviations of nearly all words for such use, which they employed and afterwards transcribed each word at full length; and because those holy Fathers, in preaching the word of God, pronounced slowly with a certain great majesty, so that the people might be more deeply moved by the venerable discourse, and might more easily perceive and retain in memory what was being said.
[37] That the latter was the practice of Saint Cyril in preaching, the inscription of each one indicates: Κατήχησις φωτιζομὲνων ἐν Ιεροσολύμοις σχεδιασθεῖσα εἰς τὸ etc. Catechesis for those being illuminated at Jerusalem, delivered extemporaneously on the text, etc. as well as a certain very ancient Greek annotation But as taken down from the mouth of one dictating. which Grodecius found affixed to the said Catecheses in these words: Many indeed are the other instructions dictated by Cyril in individual years, both before and after baptism, to those who had been recently illuminated: but these, when they were being spoken in the three hundred and thirty-second year of our Lord Jesus Christ (namely, counting from the Ascension), certain studious persons, taking them down, transcribed them, in which you will find for the most part, according to the Scriptures, concerning all the necessary dogmas of faith, what it is useful to come to know. Theophanes indeed speaks of the Catecheses as if they had been dictated twenty years before, when on account of the sign seen in the sky he had innumerable persons to be instructed in the Christian mysteries: but since it is asserted that such were dictated by him in individual years, just as it was not surprising that these which survive were esteemed by the common people as having been delivered on that most celebrated occasion, so in a doubtful matter one should rather rely on the very assertion of those who transcribed them: The earlier ones concerning the articles of faith; for the annotation seems to have been entirely theirs.
[38] And indeed in the earlier eighteen Catecheses he instructs τοὺς φωτιζομένους (which in the present case it would have been better to render as "those beginning to be illuminated" rather than "the illuminated") concerning things pertaining to baptism: then he treats of the recognition and confession of sin, which used to precede the baptism of adults: indeed he also highly commends the exorcisms, and shows what power the water of baptism has: then he sets forth in summary all the dogmas of the Catholic Church, which he finally interprets and explains more fully together with the entire Apostolic Creed. In the later five Mystagogical instructions, however, for τοῖς νεοφωτίςοις, that is the newly illuminated, who had already been made capable of somewhat more solid doctrine through the very use and experience of the mysteries, he explains everything carefully concerning Baptism, the Chrism, the Eucharist, and the awesome Sacrifice of the Mass. And he commemorates nearly all those Ceremonies The later ones concerning the Mysteries and rites of the Church, which even now are employed by the Catholic Church in administering those same sacraments, such as: renouncing Satan, professing the Creed of faith, being anointed with chrism in baptism, washing the hands, exchanging the kiss of peace, making the commemoration of the Angels and of the whole heavenly host, invoking the Saints, praying for the living and the dead, offering for them the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ: so that for refuting nearly all the fabrications of the recent heretics, who falsely claim that the Catholic rites and sacraments were recently devised by the Popes for the sake of gain, these Catecheses by themselves are abundantly sufficient.
[39] Some of these, therefore, named by ancient authors, since the defenders of new dogmas could not deny that they are by Cyril; they attempted to snatch away from us at least those five Mystagogical ones, whose authority against themselves they saw to be utterly irresistible, through Robert Cocus the precentor, who contends that they should be attributed to Cyril's successor John. Gesner had indeed timidly indicated the same thing in his bibliography, not concerning these five alone but concerning all, to be convicted of rash suspicion by Theodoret and Damascene, but led into such suspicion because in the index of Greek books Since they are of the same style and both are ascribed to him. which the Republic of Augsburg purchased from Antonio Eparco of Corfu, they are named as belonging to John, Bishop of Jerusalem: But (if the slip of a single copyist, either hurrying or half-blind, were to count for anything against the agreement of multiple exemplars in different languages, and therefore it should be investigated, as Gesner warns, whether they might belong to John, who lived long after Cyril; yet may have been deliberately ascribed to the other, so that they might have more authority) the same doubt about both sets, which bear the same title and are written in so identical a style that it is clear to the reader they are by one and the same author, should have been entertained by Cocus. But what of John? Was he so much later than Cyril that even his authority would not be the greatest and most solid against novel fictions, if he had dictated those catecheses? The first of this name immediately succeeded Cyril himself, the second sat under the Emperor Anastasius, the third ceased to live in the forty-fifth year before the capture of the city, the year of Christ 575; as the Chronology of Nicephorus attests.
[40] Rivetus: by whom is he to be refuted? Philip Labbé promises in his examination of heterodox critics to demonstrate that what André Rivet, the associate and accomplice of Cocus, has more laboriously amassed and divided into three or four chapters is no more valid: which we too would attempt here, were it not that against Rivet and his followers we believe that both the similarity of style and the attestation of the writers cited above fight sufficiently and more than enough. Therefore we return to the Greek Office of Saint Cyril, from which this commentary began, in which everything is full of outstanding encomiums concerning his orthodox doctrine; Ecclesiastical Canon, especially the canon or hymn marked with this acrostic:
Κύριλλον ὑμνῶ τὸν πρόεδρον Ἀιλίας.
I sing Cyril, the President of Aelia.
Here Cyril is praised The efficacy of doctrine in Cyril, for having adorned his soul with virtues and made his mind superior to bodily things; for having become the good odor of Christ and by the fragrance of his words having driven far away the intolerable cesspool of all heresies, which received its name from mania: which words, since they allude to the madness of the Manichaeans, indicate that the author of this hymn either read what we have brought from the Claremontine Synaxarion, or saw some fuller Acts in which mention is made of Manes or Manens; if Cyril refuted him in person at the Council, as it is certain that he reproved Macedonius, he cannot have been the founder of the Manichaeans, who had been dead for fifty or more years. Cyril is then said to have clearly explained the mystery of the divine Trinity by the splendors of his spiritual wisdom, And praising his orthodoxy and to have modulated as on the lyre of the Holy Spirit a divine song of the one Christ in two natures: by preaching one power, one essence, one will of the threefold hypostasis in the deity, he dissolved the error of a manifold deity. It is added And the holiness of his life, that having a mind inflamed with divine fear, he reduced all the fuel of pleasure to ashes, and extinguished with tears the flames of passions, and kept his lamp unextinguished: and finally that, driving far from the eyelids of his soul the drowsiness of sloth, he peacefully fell asleep in the sleep befitting the just. Certain Acts of his collected at Terni. In a certain authentic instrument sent to us from Terni, it is said that the Reverend Lord Pietro Antonio Nardo of Terni, most learned in the study and doctrine of divine and human things, Prior of the Cathedral Church, in the year 1474 took care to have commentaries on the deeds of the most blessed Proculus and of Saint Anastasius the Pontiff and of Blessed Valentine, citizen and Bishop of the same city, as well as of Blessed Cyril, citizen of Terni and Bishop of Jerusalem, which had been obliterated and almost entirely forgotten through the injury of the times, sought out by his diligence and expense through nearly the whole world, and collected into a single volume, to be handed down to the memory of posterity for the purpose of increasing the devotion of his fellow citizens: and when he was taken from the midst of life by a premature and bitter death, his nephew Pietro Francesco, having justly and bravely avenged his death, out of his own piety toward his homeland... published them for the public advantage of his city. Informed by this indication, we wrote to Terni, so that those who from that codex had caused the discovery of Saint Anastasius to be transcribed by the hand of a public Notary and sent to us, to serve for August 17, might be willing to do the same for Cyril: but with the death of those in whose possession the said Codex then was, the reply came that despite every effort no trace of it could be found.