Saint Cyril of Alexandria

Saint Cyril of Alexandria was bishop of Alexandria in Egypt from 412 to 444 and the last great representative of the Alexandrian tradition in the Greek East. He defended the faith that Jesus Christ is one person, true God and true man, and that Mary is the Mother of God. The Church remembers him on June 27.

He was probably born in Alexandria, between 370 and 380. He was a nephew of Theophilus, who had governed the Church there since 385. In 403 he accompanied his uncle to Constantinople and took part in the “Synod of the Oak,” which deposed the bishop of that city, Saint John Chrysostom. When Theophilus died in 412, the still young Cyril was elected his successor, although disputes and riots preceded the election.

He governed energetically and sought to assert the primacy of his see throughout the East. He had the churches of the Novatians closed, and after bloody riots between Jews and Christians he brought about the expulsion of the Jews from the city, which set him at odds with Orestes, the prefect of Egypt. In 415 a Christian mob led by a lector named Peter murdered the philosopher Hypatia. The historian Socrates Scholasticus writes that this crime brought disgrace on Cyril and on the whole Church of Alexandria, though he does not say that the bishop ordered it. The extent of his responsibility remains disputed.

In 428 Nestorius became bishop of Constantinople. In his preaching he used the expression Mother of Christ instead of the title Mother of God (Theotokos), which was very dear to popular devotion. From 429 Cyril opposed him, including in letters to Nestorius himself and to Pope Celestine I. He taught that the same eternal Son of God was born in time of Mary, and that she is therefore truly the Mother of God. Nestorius was condemned by the Apostolic See and in 431 by the Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council, over which Cyril presided by authority of the pope. After turbulent sessions Nestorius was deposed and later sent into exile.

The bishops of Antioch long refused to recognize the council, but Cyril patiently worked for agreement and in 433 reached a formula of reconciliation with them. He left extensive writings: biblical commentaries, among them one on the Gospel of John, works in defense of faith in the Holy Trinity and of the teaching about Christ, and a reply to the treatise of the Emperor Julian the Apostate against the Christians. His letter to Nestorius was approved by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Later tradition called him the guardian of exactitude and the seal of the Fathers.

He died on June 27, 444, in the thirty-second year of his episcopate. Since antiquity he has been venerated as a saint in both East and West, without a formal canonization process. In 1882 Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church. In 1944, fifteen centuries after his death, Pius XII dedicated the encyclical Orientalis Ecclesiae to him and called him the glory of the Eastern Church and the celebrated champion of the Virgin Mother of God.