Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/622

 618 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA Grennah. In the time of Herodotns Cyrene covered an area equal to the entire neighboring island of Platea (now Bomba). Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philoso- Bock-cut Temple, Cyrene. phy, Carneades, the founder of the New Acad- emy, the poet Callimachus, the astronomer Eratosthenes, and the eloquent bishop Synesius (in the 5th century) were natives of Cyrene. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, a Christian saint, patriarch, and doctor, born in Alexandria about 376, died there in 444. The patriarch Theo- philus, his uncle, had him educated under the abbot Serapion in one of the numerous monas- teries which then flourished around the Natron lakes (Nitric), in the delta of the Nile. At the end of his course of studies he was ordained priest and appointed preacher in the cathedral, where his discourses gained him great popular- ity. In 403 he accompanied Theophilus to the famous "synod of the oak" in Chalcedon, which sentenced St. John Chrysostom to depo- sition and banishment. This involved both himself and Theophilus in the excommunica- tion pronounced by the pope on the persecu- tors of Chrysostom. Theophilus died Oct. 15, 412 ; and three days later, after a violent con- test, Cyril was elected bishop of Alexandria. He commenced his official career by silencing the Novatians, whose churches he closed. Ac- cording to the historian Socrates, who is ac- cused of being favorable to the Novatians, and others, this step was followed by the forcible expulsion of the Jews, numbering 40,000, from Alexandria, and by a bitter quarrel between the patriarch and Orestes, prefect of Egypt. The prefect denounced the act of Cyril as a usurpation of the civil authority, alike opposed to law and good policy ; but Cyril managed to explain his conduct to the satisfaction of the emperor. As Orestes repelled every advance toward a reconciliation, the popular excitement increased, the opinion having gone abroad that the prefect opposed the bishop while he fa- vored Jews, heretics, and pagans. Thereupon 500 monks from the Natron lakes, having flocked into Alexandria to the bishop's support, met the prefect in the streets, attacked and dis- persed his escort, and demolished his chariot, while their leader, Am- monius, wounded Orestes in the face. The arrest, sentence, and execu- tion of Ammonius only brought the mischief to a crisis. Orestes, as well the celebrated Syne- sius, bishop of Cyrene, was wont, to attend the lessons of Hypatia. The rumor having spread that this accomplished wo- man, who was a pagan, was the chief instigator of the prefect's opposi- tion, she was waylaid on her return from the schools, dragged from her chariot, borne off to a neighboring church, and murdered. In 420 Atticus, bishop of Antioch, wrote to Cyril, urging him to do justice to the memory of Chrysostom by replacing his name on the dyptichs. Cyril's reply is full of unrelenting animosity; but in 421 he yielded the point, and thus at length became reconciled with the church of Rome. In the stormy contro- versy about the Nestorian heresy, commenced in 428, Cyril bore such a prominent part on the orthodox side that he is still called in the schools "the doctor of the Incarnation." The fact of Nestorius having been a monk in Antioch, and his great reputation for ascetic virtue, obtained many adherents to his doc- trine even in the monasteries of Egypt. Cyril took the alarm, warned both the monks and his people against the new doctrine, and wrote to Nestorius himself, who made a haughty reply. In February, 430, Cyril convened a synod in Alexandria, in which a formal expos- tulation was drawn up, and sent with a synodal letter to Nestorius. This proving of no avail, a second synod assembled in June, in which an exposition of the Nestorian doctrines was drawn up and sent to Rome. This appeal to the pope produced intense irritation in Constantinople, which was increased by letters, or rather doc- trinal treatises, addressed by Cyril to the em- peror, to his sister Pulcheria, and to the chief personages of the empire. The church of An- tioch and the whole of Syria took up the cause of Nestorius, thinking that Cyril and the bish- ops of his province leaned to the heresy of the Apollinarists ; and so this misunderstanding was complicated by national animosities. Pope CelestineL, in August, 430, condemned in coun- cil the doctrine of Nestorius, and gave Cyril