Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/669

 OYRENAIC

591

CYRENE

Palu, Patriarch of Jerusalem and administrator of the See of Limasol. Blessed Pierre Thomas, a Carmelite and papal legate, who strove hard to convert the Greeks, died at the siege of Famagusta in 1366.

After frightful massacres, the Turks allowed the Greeks to reorganize their Church as they liked: viz, with an archbishop styled "Most Blessed Archbishop of Nea Justiniana [a bhmder for Justinianopolis] and all Cyprus", and three bishops at Paphos, Citium, and Karpasia. In the seventeenth century the last-named see was suppressed, and its territory given to the arch- diocese; on the other hand the ancient See of KjTenia was re-established. Cyprus, like the other auto- cephalous orthodox Churches, has its "Holy Synod", which consists of four bishops and four priests. In the last three centuries there are few events to men- tion, apart from simoniacal elections and perpetual domestic quarrels. In 1668 Archbishop Nicephorus hold a council against the Protestants. In 1821 the four Greek bishops, with many priests, monks, and laj-men, were murdered by the Turks. After 1900 strife arose in the ancient Church of St. Barnabas, and it was found impossible to name a successor to the archbishop who died in that year. The Turkish conquest caused the ruin of the Latin Church: two bishops were then killed with many priests and monks, the churches were profaned, and the Latin Catholics left the island. However, as early as 1572, Franciscans could again reside at Larnaca; after a century they had gathered about 2000 Catholics of various rites. Since 1848 Cyprus has been ecclesiastically dependent on the new Latin Patri- archate of Jerusalem. The Franciscans have stations at Larnaca, Limasol, and Nicosia, with schools and five churches; Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition conduct schools in these three towns, and have a hos- pital and an orphanage at Larnaca.

The Maronites were very numerous during the period of Latin rule, but owing to persecutions of Greeks or Turks have mostly all departed or aposta- tized. The latter are called Linobambaci; some of them returned to Catholicism. Cyprus, with a part of Lebanon, still forms a Maronite diocese, with 30,000 faithful. They have in the island a few churches and four monasteries, but lack good schools (see Maronites). Among the resident Armenians there is only an in.significant number (12) of Catholics; the rest obey the Gregorian Patriarch of Jerusalem and have two priests and a monastery. Other Chris- tians of Eastern Rites, who lived in Cyprus during the Middle Ages, subject to their own bishops, have now completely disappeared.

CoBHAM. .4n Attempt at a Bibliography of Cyprus (4th ed., Nicosia. 1900). about 700 titles: Idem, A Handbook of Cyprus (London, 1901); Mas-Latrie, Hisloire de Vile de Chypre sous le r'fgne des princes de la maison de Lusiffnan (Paris, 1861-65): Idem, Histoire des archcveques latins de Vile de Chypre in Arehivex de VOrient latin, II, 207-328: Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus (London. 1901): Phrankodes, Kun-pi? (Athen.^i, 1890); Fortescde, The Orthodox Eastern Church (London, 1907). S. PeTRIDKS.

Csrrenaic School of Philosophy. — ^The Cyrenaic

School of Philosophy, so called from the city of Cyrene, in which it was fo\inded. flourished from about 400 to about .300 b. c, and had for its most distinctive tenet Hedonism, or the doctrine that pleasure is the chief good. The school is generally said to derive its doctrines from Socrates on the one hand and from the sophist, Protagoras, on the other. From Socrates, by a perversion of the doctrine that happiness is the chief good, it derived the doctrine of the supremacy of pleasure, while from Protagoras it derived its relativist ic theory of knowledge. Aris- tippus (flourished c. 400 b. c.) was the founder of the school, and counted among his followers his daughter Arete and his grandson Aristippus the Younger. The Cyrenaics started their philosophical inquiry by agreeing with Protagoras that all knowl-

edge is relative. That is true, they said, which seems to be true; of things in themselves we can know nothing. From this they were led to main- tain that we can know only our feelings, or the im- pression which things produce upon us. Transfer- ring this theory of knowledge to the discussion of the problem of conduct, and assuming, as has been said, the Socratic doctrine that the chief aim of conduct is happiness, they concluded that happiness is to be attained by the production of pleasurable feelings and the avoidance of painful ones. Pleasure, therefore, is the chief aim in life. The good man is he who obtains or strives to obtain the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. Virtue is not good in itself; it is good only as a means to obtain pleasure. This last point raises the question: What did the Cyrenaics really mean by pleasure? They were certainly sensists, yet it is not entirely certain that by pleasure they meant mere sensuous pleasure. They speak of a hierarcliy of pleasures, in which the pleasures of the body are subordinated to virtue, culture, knowledge, artistic enjoyment, which belong to the higher nature of man. Again, some of the later Cyrenaics reduced pleasure to a mere negative state, painlessness; and others, later still, substituted for pleasure "cheerfulness and indifference". The truth seems to be that in this, as in many other in- stances, sensism was satisfied with a superficial and loosely- jointed system. There was no consistency in the Cyrenaic theory of conduct; probably none was looked for. Indeed, in spite of the example of the founders of the school, the later Cyrenaics fell far below the level of what was expected from philoso- phers, even in Greece, and their doctrine came to be merely a set of maxims to justify the careless man- ner of living of men whose chief aim in life was a pleasant time. But, taken at its best, the Cyrenaic philosophy can hardly justify its claim to be con- sidered an ethical system at all. For good and evil it substituted the pleasant and the painful, without reference, direct or indirect, to obligation or duty. In some points of doctrine the school descends to the commonplace, as when it justifies obedience to law by remarking that the observance of the law of the land leads to the avoidance of punishment, and that one should act honestly because one thereby increases the sum of pleasure. The later Cyrenaics made common cause with the Epicureans. Indeed, the difference between the two schools was one of details, not of fundamental principles.

Zeller. Socrates and the Socratic Schools, tr. Reichel (Lon- don, 1885), 338 sqq.; Ueberweg-Heinee, History of Philos- ophy, tr. Morris (New York. 1892), I, 95 sqq.; Windelband. History of Philosophy, tr. Ti'fts (New Yorli, 1901), 85 8qq.; Turner, History of Philosophy (Boston. 1903), 89 sqq.

William Turner.

Cyrene, a titular see of Northern Africa. The city was founded early in the seventh century b. c. by a Dorian colony from Thera and named after a spring, Kyre, which the Greeks consecrated to Apollo; it stood on the boundary of the Green Mountains (Djebel Akhaar), ten miles from its port, Apollonia (Marsa Sou.sa). It was the chief town of the Lydian region between Egypt and Cartilage (Cyrenaica, now vilayet of Benghazi), kept up commercial relations with al! the Greek cities, and reache<l the height of its prosperity under its own kings in the fifth century B. c. Soon after 460 it became a repulilic; after the death of Alexander it passed to the Ptolemies and fell into decay. Apion bequeathed it to the Romans, but it kept its self-government. In 74 B. c. Cyrene be- came a Roman colony. There were many Jews in the region, with their own synagogue at Jerusalem (Mat., xxvii, 32; Acts, ii, 10; vi, 9, xi, 20, sq.), who rebelled, A. D. 73, against Vespasian and in 11.5 against Trajan.

Cyrene is the birthplace of the philosophers Aris- tippus, Callimachus, Carneadcs, Eratosthenes, and