Skip to main content

Cyril of Alexandria (+444)

Cyril of Alexandria was born in Egypt in 376. 

As a young man, Cyril trained for six years at the monastery of Macarius in the Nitreia hills.  

From 385, Cyril's uncle on his mother's side was bishop Theophilus of Alexandria. Upon leaving the monastery, Cyril was ordained as a deacon by his uncle. Cyril attended the controversial "Synod of the Oak" along with his uncle in 403. When Theophilus died in 412, Cyril took on his role as bishop of Alexandria, which at the time was the fourth most important bishop in the Christian church. 

During his tenure as bishop between 412 and 444, Cyril was involved in many controversies. 

Cyril, as head of the mainstream church, closed down the rival assemblies of the Novatians, a break-away Christian group. 

In 415, he was involved in a standoff with the Jewish community, challenging the secular authority of the governor Orestes. A follower of Cyril, Ammonius, even attacked the Roman official, injuring him with a stone. When he was arrested and tortured to death, Cyril commemorated him as a martyr. 

In the same year 415, Cyril of Alexandria facilitated the actions of the "parabalani" monks who murdered the influential pagan woman, Hypatia. 

In 428, Nestorius, who had previously served at Antioch, become bishop of Constantinople, the second most senior cleric in the Christian church. Motivated in part by rivalry between the bishoprics of Alexandria and Antioch, from 429, Cyril entered into controversy with Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, over the latter's rejection of the title "Theotokos" for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nestorius argued that, in respect of Christ, Mary was neither "bearer of man" nor "bearer of God" but "bearer of Christ". Cyril perceived Nestorius to be dividing Christ into two persons. He asserted, "One nature of the incarnate Word." Later, Cyril composed 12 anathemas condemning the teaching of Nestorius, and demanded these were agreed to. At the Council of 431, Nestorius was deposed and his teaching (or what he was alleged to have taught) was condemned. 

Cyril's many writings earnt him the accolades "Guardian of Exactitude and "Seal of the Fathers".

Cyril of Alexandria died in 444. 

On the occasion of Cyril's death, Theodoret of Cyrrhus wrote these words in private letter, "Great care must then be taken, and it is especially your holiness's business to undertake this duty, to tell the guild of undertakers to lay a very big and heavy stone upon his grave, for fear he should come back again, and show his changeable mind once more."

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The origin and spread of the early Baptist churches in the North West of England and elsewhere

The origins of Baptist churches go back to the 1600s.  The very first Baptist church began in 1609 and was for English speaking Christians based in the Netherlands, relocating to London in 1611 (Thomas Helwys). These churches were known as "General Baptists" and followed the theology of Arminius and the Anabaptists.  A second genesis of Baptist churches was in London in about 1638 (John Spilsbury). These churches followed the Reformed Theology of John Calvin and the Synod of Dordt. In 1644, the First London Baptist Confession was signed by seven Baptist churches in the capital.  Baptist churches later spread from London outwards.  During the time of the English Civil War (1642-1651), there were Baptist Christians in the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell. In 1648 the New Model Army campaigned in Lancashire during the Second Civil War.  1. John Wigan & the "Coldhouse cause"   During the time of the English Civil War (1642-1651), John Wigan (d. 1665),...
Post a Comment
Read more

Die Erweckung (revival of evangelical Christianity in Germany in the 1800s)

Die Erweckung (literally, "the Revival") is a name for the revival of evangelical Christianity in Germany in the 1800s. It has overlap with the Réveil in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands, and also with the second Evangelical Revival in Britain and the Second Great Awakening in America. The Pietist movement, which began during the Baroque era around 1675 under the leadership of Philip Spener, had waned by the 1730s. By this time, Halle university, originally founded by Pietists and a flagship of the movement, became a centre for rationalism under academics such as Christian Wolff (1679–1754).  In the interim, Pietism was kept alive in part by a network of small groups (the Diaspora) which followed the spirituality of the Moravian Christians, a movement similar to Pietism but with its own church structures under the leadership of Von Zinzendorf. There was also the Basle-based Christentumsgesellschaft founded by Urlsperger in 1780, a society founded to counter the ratio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know you've got till it's gone

If you are old enough (or, young enough) to get the reference, the title of this blog post is a line from a 1970 song . The next line is, "They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot." This is a post about things that we have as Evangelical Christians, but perhaps have failed to cherish and value. These are reasons to stay Evangelical - even if other Christian traditions might at times seem appealing, tempting even. Evangelical Christianity is the faith I have received, the form of Christianity I was born into spiritually, and which has been my home since 1991. At least in this post, my concern is not to question the legitimacy of other Christian traditions, such as Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, or the faith of those brought up in those traditions, so much as to value my own tradition, and to encourage my fellow evangelicals to "stick with it" and "dig deeper" rather than going elsewhere. This blog is dedicated to a couple of dear friends who i...
Post a Comment
Read more