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244 told briefly. He wrote to Domnus, the successor of John in the see of Antioch (and afterwards unhappily conspicuous in the Eutychian controversy), in behalf of Athanasius sometime bp. of Perrha, who described himself, falsely it appears, as sorely wronged by some of his own clergy (Ep. p. 208). In another letter to Domnus, peremptory in style, he took up the cause of another aged bishop named Peter, who professed to have been expelled and plundered of his property on the pretext of a renunciation of his see, which after all had been extorted from him (Ep. p. 209). In both these cases Cyril shewed a somewhat impulsive readiness to believe the story of a petitioner, and a somewhat dictatorial temper in regard to the affairs of another patriarchate. He wrote also a work against the Anthropomorphites, whose wild fancies about the Divine nature (as being limited and corporeal) had given such trouble in the days of his predecessor; and in a letter on this subject to Calosirius, bp. of Arsinoe, he added a caution against the false mysticism which insisted on prayer to the exclusion of all labour, and on the "senseless" opinion that the Eucharistic consecration lost its efficacy if the sacrament was reserved until the following day. "Christ's holy Body," wrote Cyril, "is not changed; but the power of consecration and the life-giving grace still remain in it" (Op. vi. 365). In the last year of his life he wrote to Leo, then bp. of Rome (to whom, as archdeacon of Rome, he had written in 431 against the ambitious schemes, as he regarded them, of Juvenal bp. of Jerusalem [Leon. Ep. 119, 4]) on the right calculation of Easter for A.D. 444, which, according to the Alexandrian cycle of 19 years, he fixed for April 23. In 444, on June 9 or 27, his eventful life ended.

Cyril's character is not, of course, to be judged by the coarse and ferocious invective against his memory, quoted as Theodoret's in the fifth general council (Theod. Ep. 180; see Tillem. xiv. 784). If this were indeed the production of Theodoret, the reputation to suffer would assuredly be that writer's. What Cyril was, in his strength and in his weakness—in his high-souled struggle for doctrines which were to him, as to all thoughtful believers in Christ's Divinity, the expressions of essential Christian belief; or in the moments when his old faults of vehemence and impatience reappeared in his conduct—we have already seen. He started in public life, so to speak, with dangerous tendencies to vehemence and imperiousness which were fostered by the bad traditions of his uncle's episcopate and by the ample powers of his see. It would be impossible to maintain that these evils were wholly exhausted by the grave errors which—exaggerations and false imputations set aside—distinguished his conduct in the feud with the Jews and with Orestes; when, although guiltless of the blood of Hypatia, he must have felt that his previous violence had been taken as an encouragement by her fanatical murderers. The old impatience and absolutism were all too prominent at certain points of the Nestorian struggle; although on other occasions, as must be admitted by all fair judges, influences of a softening and chastening character had abated the turbid impetus of his zeal and had taught him to be moderate and patient. "We may," says Dr. Newman (Hist. Sketches, iii. 342), "hold St. Cyril a great servant of God, without considering ourselves obliged to defend certain passages of his ecclesiastical career. . . . Cyril's faults were not inconsistent with great and heroic virtues, faith, firmness, intrepidity, fortitude, endurance, perseverance." Those who begin by condemning dogmatic zeal as a fierce and misplaced chivalry for a phantom, will find it most difficult to be just to a man like Cyril. But if his point of view, which was indeed that of many great religious heroes, and eminently of Athanasius, be fully understood and appreciated, it ought not to be difficult to do justice to his memory. The issue raised by Nestorianism was to Cyril a very plain one, involving the very essence of Apostolic Christianity. Whatever ambiguities might be raised by a Nestorian use of the word πρόσωπον, it was clear to Cyril that the new theory amounted to a denial of the Word Incarnate. Nor was it a mere theory of the schools. Its promulgator held the great see of the Eastern capital, involving a central position and strong court influence, and was no mere amiable dreamer or scholastic pedant, whose fancies might die away if left to themselves. He has in modern times been spoken of as "the blameless Nestorius": he was in his own times spoken of as "the incendiary" on account of a zeal against other forms of heresy which impelled him to take strong measures against opponents of his own. This was the enemy against whom Cyril did battle for the doctrine of a real Incarnation and a really Divine Christ. He had to reckon on opposition, not only from Nestorius himself, but from large numbers—a miscellaneous company, including civil functionaries as well as prelates—who accepted the Nestorian theology, or who thought strong language against it uncalled-for and offensive. He might have to encounter the displeasure of an absolute government—he certainly had for some time the prospect of that displeasure, and of all its consequences; he had the burden of ill-health, of ever-present intense anxiety, of roughly expressed censure, of reiterated imputations affecting his own orthodoxy, of misconceptions and suspicions which hardly left him a moment's rest. Whatever faults there were in his conduct of the controversy, this at least must be said—not only by mere eulogists of a canonized saint, but by those who care for the truth of history—that the thought as well as the heart of Christendom has for ages accepted, as the expression of Christian truth, the principle upheld by Cyril against Nestorius. A real and profound question divided the disputants; and that stanza of Charles Wesley's Christmas hymn which begins, "Christ, by highest heaven adored," conveys the Cyrilline or Ephesine answer to that question in a form which exhibits its close connexion with the deepest exigencies of spiritual life. Cyril, as a theological writer, has greater merits than are sometimes allowed by writers defective in a spirit of equity. His style, as Cave admits, may be deficient in elegance and in eloquence; he may be often tedious, 