(A.D. 389.)
[Roman, Greek, and Syriac Kalendars. Authorities:--Sozomen, Theodoret,
and his own writings.]
Cyril succeeded Maximus in the patriarchal see of Jerusalem, about the
year 350. The story that Maximus was deposed, and Cyril substituted by
Acacius, Bishop of Cæsarea, is inconsistent with probabilities, and
with the testimony borne by the second general Council to the canonical
regularity of his consecration. The other tale, which Jerome credited,
that Cyril obtained the see from Acacius on condition of disclaiming
the ordination which Maximus had bestowed, is utterly incredible, and
probably sprang from the prejudices of a rigid party which mistrusted
Cyril.
The paschal season of 351 was marked at Jerusalem by the luminous
appearance of a cross, which appeared in the sky over the city. It
produced a great impression, and S. Cyril sent an account of it to
Constantius.[63]
[63] The genuineness of this letter, in which he mentions also the
finding of the cross, has been doubted. One objection is that it
contains the word "consubstantial," which at that period Cyril would
hardly have used. But it is by no means improbable that this word was
interpolated by copyists, for the purpose of obtaining the authority of
Cyril for that term.
Cyril, a man of gentle spirit, eminently a peace-maker, was cast in
times of great difficulty. The Arian party was in power, through the
favour of the emperor; and a large number of prelates were semi-Arians;
not disbelieving in the divine nature of Christ as consubstantial with
the Father, but doubting the expedience of stating the doctrine in
plain words which could not be misunderstood. All who were timorous,
not thoroughly illumined with the Holy Spirit, and wanting in that
keenness of theological discrimination which makes doctors of the
Church, hesitated and temporised. It was inexpedient to take too harsh
an attitude towards these weak brethren, and drive them into the arms
of the Arians, and this Cyril felt. Firm in his own faith, deprecating
the injudicious fire of some Catholics who were resolved at all costs
to produce a rupture between those who walked in the clear light
of Catholic certainty, and those who fluttered in the twilight, he
laboured with words of conciliation to avert such a catastrophe.
At the end of 357, or the beginning of 358, an important change took
place at Jerusalem. For two years Cyril had been forced into opposition
to the demands of Acacius. He maintained for Jerusalem, as the mother
Church, possessing an "Apostolic throne," and marked out for honour in
the Nicene Council,[64] an independence of Cæsarea which Acacius would
not grant; and he was also obnoxious to Acacius on theological grounds,
as holding the orthodox doctrine.
[64] Canon VII. "Since a custom and old tradition has obtained, that
the bishop of Ælia (Jerusalem) should receive honour, let him hold the
second place, the metropolitan (of Cæsarea) being secured in his own
dignity."
Acacius now summoned a small council of bishops of his own party, which
Cyril declined to attend. This was regarded as contumacy; and he was
gravely accused of having committed an offence in selling some of the
church ornaments to provide food for the famine-stricken poor. Sozomen
says that he sold Church treasures and sacred veils. Theodoret mentions
a vestment of cloth of gold presented by Constantine to be worn by the
bishop when baptizing. Such an accusation does Cyril honour, and ranks
him with other illustrious prelates, Ambrose, Augustine, Exuperius,
Gregory the Great, Ethelwold of Winchester, who all in like manner
sanctioned the principle that the law of love is the highest law of
all. It is worth remark that in this case, as in that of S. John
Chrysostom, the alliance of a narrow formalism was found, not with
orthodoxy, but with heresy.
By the synod convened by Acacius, Cyril was condemned and expelled
from Jerusalem. He appealed, with more formality, as it appears,
than had been usual in such cases, to "a higher court;" proceeded to
Antioch, where he found that the patriarch Leontius was dead, and
that no one had been appointed his successor; and ultimately found
a welcome at Tarsus, where Silvanus, the bishop, one of the best of
the semi-Arians, received him, in disregard of the remonstrances from
Acacius. This circumstance brought Cyril, for the next few years, into
connection with the semi-Arian party; and he illustrates the fact that
it contained men of whom Athanasius could say, in his noble readiness
to discern substantial unity under verbal difference, "We do not treat
as enemies those who accept everything else that was defined at Nicæa,
and scruple only about the word consubstantial; for we do not attack
them as raging Arians, nor as men who fight against the fathers, but we
discuss the matter with them as brothers with brothers, who mean what
we mean, and differ only about the word."
Considerable excitement had been caused in Antioch in 350 by the
ordination of Aetius as deacon, by the patriarch Leontius. This man,
the most odious of the extreme Arians, had gone through many changes
of life, as a vinedresser's slave, a goldsmith, a medical man, a guest
and pupil of Arian bishops, and a professor of that disputatious
logic in which the heresy was at first embodied. He was the first to
affirm openly that the Son was essentially unlike the Father. Leontius
intended his diaconate to be a means of propagating Arianism. But
Flavian and Diodorus, the pillars of Catholicism in Antioch, had
threatened formally to renounce his communion; and he thought it best
to depose Aetius. Now Leontius was dead, and his throne was filled
by Eudoxius, the intriguing and thoroughly irreligious bishop of
Germanicia. He gained his promotion by fraud, and the aid of court
eunuchs; and he openly patronized Aetius, whose views he had imbibed.
The state of confusion and discord had become intolerable, and a
General Council was resolved upon. Consultations were held as to the
best place; and Constantius the emperor lent his ear to the mischievous
counsel of Acacius and his party, which recommended the breaking the
single council into two, in the hopes of being able thereby to "divide
and govern." Constantius agreed, and Ancyra and Ariminum were named as
the two places. But Ancyra was afterwards thought unsuitable, and it
was decided that one portion of the council should meet at Seleucia
instead of Ancyra.
The ultra-Arian Valens was governing in the West. Both councils met in
359. Four hundred bishops of the West, including some from Britain,
assembled at Ariminum. About eighty were Arians, for the most part of
the advanced school.
The Easterns met at Seleucia, and numbered one hundred and sixty; of
these the great majority, one hundred and five, were semi-Arians, and
of the rest a party were shifty followers of Acacius. Only one small
party of Egyptians were loyal to the faith of Nicæa; nevertheless
the council of Seleucia restored S. Cyril to his see, annulled his
deposition decreed by Acacius, and deposed Acacius himself, and
Eudoxius of Antioch.
In the mean time trickery and violence had been at work at Ariminum. A
creed approved by the Arian emperor was sent to the bishops, and they
were most falsely assured on imperial authority, that the council of
Seleucia had accepted it. The bishops' patience began to give way.
They shrank from a winter on the shore of the Adriatic; they were
utterly weary of so long a sojourn at Ariminum, and their weariness
disposed them to concession. Bishop after bishop signed the imperial
creed; but about twenty held out, headed by two Gallicans, Phœbadius
and Servatius. Taurus, the emperor's officer, appointed to keep order
and enforce his object, tried both menaces and tears. At last, by a
miserable sophistry, Valens carried his point, and won for Arianism
a scandalous victory, whilst it exposed the untruthfulness which
characterized the Arian policy.
Acacius had returned to Constantinople with wrath in his heart,
resolved to ruin the semi-Arians and Cyril. He persuaded Constantius
to allow a council to be summoned to meet at Constantinople next year,
January, 360. About fifty bishops were present. Acacius ruled the
assembly; Aetius was made a scape-goat by the Acacians for having too
boldly given expression to the error which they sought to propagate
insidiously. The council then deposed the leading semi-Arians, but not
on doctrinal grounds. Cyril of Jerusalem, and Silvanus of Tarsus were
deposed, and with the emperor's power to back their decisions, they
were driven into banishment. At the same time the unreality of their
censure of Aetius was shown by the enthronement of Eudoxius, who was
his chief supporter, at Constantinople, on Jan. 27th. On Feb. 15th he
dedicated the restored church of the Eternal Wisdom, for the service
of which Constantius offered splendid vessels, curtains, altar-cloths,
blazing with gold and jewels. In the midst of the ceremonial, Eudoxius
began his sermon with these words, "The Father is irreligious, the Son
is religious." A commotion followed; the bishop bade the people calm
themselves. "Surely the Father worships none, and the Son worships the
Father!" A burst of laughter followed this speech, which became a good
jest in the society of the capital. This was the man Acacius and his
packed council had set up, when they cast down Cyril. Eudoxius was well
fitted to hand on the old traditions of Arian profanity.
The emperor Constantius died, Nov. 3rd, 361, and Julian having recalled
the exiled bishops, S. Cyril returned to his see.
The unhappy man who was now lord of the empire had been for some
ten years a hypocrite in his Christian profession. No sooner was he
proclaimed emperor, than he openly professed himself a restorer of the
old religion. Then it was that he "washed off the laver" of baptism by
a hideous self-immersion in bull's blood,[65] and sought to cleanse
his hands from the touch of the bloodless Sacrifice by holding in them
the entrails of victims. He set up an image of Fortune in the great
church, and while he was sacrificing there, Maris, bishop of Chalcedon,
now a blind old man, was led up to him at his own request, and rebuked
his impiety. "Will thy Galilæan God cure thy blindness?" asked Julian.
"I thank my God," said Maris, "for the blindness which saves me from
seeing the face of an apostate."
[65] The Rite of Taurobolia, Prudent. Peristreph. 10.
The last of Julian's attacks upon Christianity was his attempt to
rebuild the temple of Jerusalem. He did indeed wish to aid the Jews in
their desire of renewing the Levitical sacrifices, and to secure their
attachment to his government in spite of its paganism; but his main
object was to confound the Gospel by raising up the fabric which it had
expressly doomed, and thus reviving the system of which that fabric had
been the symbol and centre.
The rapturous hopes of the Jews were expressed in the scene which
followed the imperial mandate, when silver spades and mattocks were
employed, and earth was carried away from the excavations in the rich
dresses of delicate women. The faith of the Christians was expressed
by Cyril's denunciations of the predestined failure. Full of confidence
he proclaimed that the enterprise, so far from succeeding, would
prove to all men the impossibility of resisting the decree of God.
Great must have been his faith, for every appearance was against him.
The heathen historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, tells us what ensued.
After all possible assistance had been given by the authorities,
"fearful balls of fire breaking out near the foundations with repeated
attacks, scorched the workmen several times, and rendered the place
inaccessible; and in this way, after obstinate repulses by the fiery
element, the undertaking was brought to a stand." Various details are
added by Christian writers, as of an earthquake, a whirlwind, fire
from heaven, a luminous cross in the air, and marks of crosses on the
garments of the Jews. It is possible that in these particulars there
is an element of exaggeration, and that in the fiery eruption itself,
natural agencies were employed. But that those agencies should manifest
themselves at that particular crisis will appear accidental, as men
speak, to those only who do not estimate the exceeding awfulness of the
occasion,--the unparalleled historical position of Julian, the mystery
of iniquity in his general policy, and the specially anti-Christian
malignity of this attempt at a confutation of Christ's words.
"His shafts, not at the Church, but at her Lord addrest," might well be
cast back upon himself by a manifestation of "the finger of God," as
real and awe-inspiring as any of those natural phenomena, the presence
of which under particular circumstances made them a sign of judgment
against Pharaoh.
Julian promised, in his vexation, says Orosius, to revenge his failure
on S. Cyril on his return from the Persian war. But this return never
took place. Cyril was again exiled by the Arian emperor Valens,
in 367. He returned in 378, when the emperor Gratian ordered the
restoration of the Catholics. He found his diocese rent by schism,
corrupted by heresy. Adultery, robbery, and poisoning were general.
The council of Antioch in 379, informed of the deplorable condition of
the diocese, sent Gregory of Nyssa, already charged with reforming the
churches of Arabia, to assist him in pacifying spirits, and repressing
immorality; but his labours were without result. In 381, S. Cyril was
present at the General Council of Constantinople, and subscribed the
condemnation of the semi-Arians and Macedonians. He died in 386, at the
age of seventy.