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Catholic Saints
St. Cyril of Alexandria
00:22:58
During the Nestorian Controversy of the fifth century, heroic saints like Cyril of Alexandria defended the truth of Christ’s divinity. In this episode, Dr. Carl Vennerstrom and Mary McGeehan discuss the Nestorian heresy and how St. Cyril’s humble, courageous spirit aided the Church during a time of discord. Discussion question: St. Cyril of Alexandria was a defender of the truth in a time of great debate, much like the times we are living in today. By reflecting on St. Cyril’s life, how can you embody his humility and courage in controversy? Ask the Lord to show you the places in your life where you can stand up for truth.
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A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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B
Welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary McKeon, and I'm joined today with Dr. Carl Vennerstrom, professor here.
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C
Glad to be here.
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B
Thank you for joining us. And today we are going to talk about Saint Cyril of Alexandria. So the series Catholic Saints. We are looking to the lives of saints, learning about them, learning about their legacy, to share with us inspiration for our time here on earth and to grow in sync to d ourselves. So St. Cyril of Alexandria feast day is January 28th. Can you give us some general overview about the saint?
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C
Yeah.
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B
Set the stage.
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C
Absolutely. I think it's hard to overestimate the importance of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, especially for the Church's teaching on Christ. So who Christ is an important question, I think we can all agree. So pivotal question. Yeah. This is the big one. Who do you say that I am? So he was born in 376. Okay. So this is the fourth century. This is a big century for Christian doctrine. The Second Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople, would be a few years after his birth. So born in an auspicious time, then dying in 444.
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B
Okay.
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C
So as I said, he's important for this teaching on Christ. We could say Christology. He was the Patriarch of Alexandria, which is on the Nile river there in the. In the north of Egypt. So an Egyptian Christian, do we know,
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B
was he born in Egypt?
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C
Yeah, he was born in Egypt, a bit further south, but yes, yeah, he was born in Egypt. So Egyptians at this point in time spoke and wrote in Coptic. That was the sort of native language of Egypt, but then also Greek. So most, if not all of what we have from Cyril was written in Greek, I think sometimes translated into Coptic.
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B
It's a very accurate language. So that's nice.
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C
Greek. Yeah, yeah. They have many words to choose from, so it's good. He found himself embroiled in a controversy with Nestorius, which led to the Council of Ephesus, which we can sort of go into more detail later about the nature or natures of Christ. This Council of Ephesus was in 431, and it sided with Cyril after a long set of deliberations and house arrests and problems and then drama and. Yeah, a lot of drama. And then after even more controversy, the Council of Chalcedon met in 451, 20 years later after Cyril's death, and in large part confirmed his teaching. So then for almost All Christians. He became kind of the most important figure for thinking through this sort of language and attitude in which we approach Christ theologically, philosophically, scripturally kind of thing.
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B
Okay, so one quick question. Was it really, really within an 80 year period, if I'm calculating it right, that there were three different councils? If you said there is Constantinople, ephesus.
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C
Yes, like 70 years. Right.
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B
Okay. And is it just because it's this pivotal period, like fertile soil in the church, where enough years have passed of the apostolic age, that there. I don't know. Why were there so many councils? Why are there so many councils, period?
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C
This is a good question. So to understand that, you sort of have to go back to the first ecumenical Council, which is Nicaea. And so the councils were called in most cases by the emperor. He didn't necessarily have the idea of the controversies or the problems. But the emperors, no matter their sort of religious piety, wanted peace within the empire. And often these theological problems led to sort of political discord. So there is a kind of motivation on the part of the emperors to resolve these doctrinal questions.
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B
That is helpful. Thank you.
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C
Yeah. And then, yeah, I think the. The other element is then also related to the empire, that the universal church has more lines of connections kind of than it ever had before. And so what's happening in Asia Minor, in modern day Turkey, matters to people in Egypt, whereas it might not have mattered so much 200 years prior.
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B
Sure. Okay. So, yeah, that great growth and expansion too, of the Church coincides with this.
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C
That's right, yeah.
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B
And just to state the obvious was he was a priest. He was a bishop.
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C
Yeah, he was a bishop. So his uncle was the previous archbishop or patriarch of Alexandria.
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B
Okay.
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C
This guy's name was Theophilus. And Egyptians from this period, it's like the historians that recount this, like, love to talk about how Egyptians love to riot. And. And also his uncle Theophilus. So that's one thing, but the other thing is his uncle, Theophilus, the awful Theophilus was good at sort of wielding this power. So he get monks sort of stirred up in a frenzy. He also was a sort of cataloger and condemner of heresies of many types, some which he seemed to have almost invented himself. Like, for instance, he brought up a lot of spurious charges against St. John Chrysostom, his uncle the bishop, his uncle the bishop Theophilus.
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B
Okay.
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C
But actually Saint Cyril joined his uncle to go to this Council of oak which condemned St. John Chrysostom. Obviously not permanently. It didn't Stick. But yeah, anyways, he comes from a sort of lineage of fiery people. Yeah, right, right, exactly. And so a couple of examples he's often associated with. Let's just say one example with Hypatia. So Hypatia, by this time there were not. There was not the same prominence for pagan philosophers that there once had been in the Roman Empire, but still there were some pagan philosophers that were highly respected and they had their sort of circle of pagan students. And one of these was Hypatia, who is also. Also a woman, which is very rare for a philosopher with a sort of following in a school. And she had had some antagonisms and conflicts with Christians and a mob of monks and Christians and deacons and this kind of thing was stirred up and. And they murdered her and sort of like tore her body to pieces. So she, she became sort of this like, pagan martyr figure. And she's still seen as sort of like this pagan hero, feminist saint or something like that. Okay, yeah, or a pagan hero. Yeah, yeah. Like there's a lot of different groups that try to sort of claim her, claim her as her own. Yeah. And it's actually quite clear that Cyril didn't have anything to do with this, or at least there's no direct evidence tying to him. To him. And then he was accused of many things he didn't do by the Nestorians in these later controversies, and they never accused him of this. And if there had been a sort of hint of its plausibility, he probably would have been implicated. But yeah, he also had a lot of conflicts with the Jews in, In Alexandria, so he was no stranger to conflict anyways.
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B
Okay. Yes, that makes sense.
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C
And yet a saint and still a saint. Yes, Yeah. A saint isn't just being nice. It's. I, I appreciate that mean people can become saints.
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B
That's hopeful. Let's have hope. Patron of mean people.
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C
Yeah, well, yeah, something like that.
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B
Yeah, no, that. Okay, well, thank you for kind of the context of, of the time period of. Yes, just that, like, there are a lot of debates going on. So where did Nestorius come in?
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C
Yeah, so Nestorius, I think first it's helpful to explain the. The seas. So eventually there were sort of five patriarchal or ecumenical seas. Anyways. The first three that were important were Rome, Antioch and. And Alexandria. So sort of deep into Christian history, these were recognized as being patriarchal. Sees that is, they were founded by apostles, so Paul and Barnabas in Antioch, Peter in Rome, of course, and then St Mark in. In Alexandria. So apostles are People associated with apostles.
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B
Right, yes.
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C
Then later added to this group of important Cs and then called ecumenical Seas or Constantinople. And then even later than that, Jerusalem. So you think Jerusalem would be maybe the first ones, but it is actually the last of the five to get added. Despite its importance as a holy site, Jerusalem didn't have the same sort of ecclesiastical importance as. As these others. But Constantinople gets added. So Constantinople is a city which is sort of made up. It's not by the standards of Antioch and Rome. It's not an ancient city. Constantine, who aptly named it after himself, founded this city as a kind of new Rome in. And it's well placed in the Bosphorus for trade. And it's sort of this bridge between Europe and the Middle east and like
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B
the five most important hubs of Christian or Catholic Christian activity.
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C
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
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B
Sorry to cut you off.
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C
No, no, no, that's fine. Yeah. So Constantinople gets added because it's politically important. And then that means the bishop of Constantinople has also ecclesiastical importance. So.
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B
Okay, okay.
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C
But yeah, like the five most important hubs. This is a good way to think about it. So Nestorius ends up being the bishop or the archbishop, the patriarch of Constantinople.
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B
Okay.
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C
And he's a monk. He's a very serious moral person. He's very well educated. He's very precise in his terminology. And he had spent most of his life around people like that in a monastic setting. And so when he becomes the archbishop of Constantinople, he has a hard time adjusting to sort of popular piety. One the most important example for this controversy is that he rejects that people call Mary Theotokos. So this means like bearer of God or the one who gives birth to God.
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B
That's a strong claim.
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C
It is a strong claim. Yeah, that's right.
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B
Thing named after the Blessed Mother. I'm curious.
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C
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So he was upset about this because. Well, the problem as he saw it was that this implied that God could be passable. He could like suffer or be changed. And God is impassable. And. And he can't suffer. He can't change in.
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B
Wait, what is passable? What does that mean?
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C
Passable just means passable. Yeah, well, the word pathos in Greek can mean a lot of different things, but it often. I think the best way to understand it probably is just to be passive, to experience something sort of outside of your will or. Yeah, to be moved rather than to move.
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B
Okay.
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C
But it also associated with the emotions and sort of unpredictability, these kinds of things. So since God in himself can't be said to suffer passion because then he'd be imperfect, there'd be sort of something outside of his control. He can't. We can't say that God suffered or that God died or that God was born. And so to say that Mary gave birth to God is to say that God was like changed or that he suffered or had passion. So instead Nestorius wanted to say, you can call her Chrysotokos, that's fine. Christ means this, like this person that sort of unites the divine and the human and it's sort of fill in to refer to both. So you can call it the Chrysotokos, or you can say that she gave birth to Jesus, but you can't say that she gave birth to God. But this had this tradition of calling her Theotokos was old. And for Cyril it expressed something truly authentic about the Christian faith. And he actually relied. So his. One of his big points throughout his whole career as a theologian was that there's a single subject. So he wanted to avoid saying there's like this divine person who does miracles, is raised from the dead, and then there's this human person who is crucified, is beaten, weeps, weeps in the garden, weeps for Lazarus. And we call them both Christ, but it's really two, two persons or two sons, kind of, you want to say there's a single sub who does all of those things. And in a kind of ingenious way, in multiple points in his writings, he depends on the Nicene Creed. And so this really well expresses this idea of a single subject. So we say that I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. And then it keeps referring to the Son of God and it says for us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, that is the Son of God, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary. Okay, so the Son of God, the Son God was born of the Virgin Mary and became man for our sake. He that is the Son of God was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
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B
So he was trying to argue his perspective.
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C
Yeah, that's right. With the Creed as it was.
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B
Yeah.
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C
But with Nestorius you would have to say we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, and he did all these things. But then we also believe in the Son of God, and he didn't do all those things. Right. You would have to divide them up and so he gets criticized sometimes for, like, being sort of too mysterious or incoherent. But actually, philosophically, it all holds together pretty well.
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B
And the Nestorian perspective.
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C
Sorry, Saints cereals.
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B
Of the cereals. Yes. Okay.
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C
Yeah. So this becomes very important at Ephesus. Everyone's kept under house arrest for, like a year. There's all these controversies with the emperor, and people are sort of like, sneaking out letters and, like, the cane of a beggar who's, like, walking out of the city. All this kind of, like these crazy stories. And so it does give you some humility and patience with the controversies that happen now. It's like. It's true this and worse was happening. Like, all these intrigues and rivalries and
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B
more important topics, like being most important.
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C
Yeah, that's right.
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B
Okay, so just to recap, the story was really trying to divide, like, the man part, the humanity part, from Jesus and only attributing to Mary that she's the mother of. Of Christ as human, not mother of Christ as God. And then Saint Cyril, in his philosophical clarity, clarification, I guess, is really trying to emphasize the unity of his community,
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C
all for the purpose of salvation, that we can't be saved unless we're saved by God, and we can't be saved by God unless Christ is actually God.
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B
Since we're in 2023, you know, we. So are clear on the Church's teachings. But were there a lot of follow of Nestorius?
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C
Yeah.
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B
At this time period? Like, was he making a lot of headway in.
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C
He did get a decent number of adherents, and especially after he died. So there was the Council of Ephesus, but then again the Council of Chalcedon. After Chalcedon, there are people who took a sort of Nestorian route. They weren't following him personally because he was dead, but they sort of followed his followers and followed his. His teachings and the teachings of others associated with him. So these were especially Christians in the Far East. So the Syriac Church of the east, this is a church that went all the way to China, actually. And within Catholicism, Chaldean Catholics are people who belong to the Syriac Church of the east that then entered communion with Rome eventually.
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B
Okay. But this church initially was following Nestorian.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least roughly speaking.
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B
Okay.
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C
So they had, like, a big patrimony, and a lot of Christians were historians or at least sort of along these lines for many hundreds of years. And still today. They still exist today.
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B
Okay, but the Chalcedonians are in union with Rome.
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C
Yeah, we're Chalcedonians.
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B
Okay, good. To know.
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C
Yeah. You're a Chalcedonian.
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B
That's interesting.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Okay, well, so he was a. He. A heresy fighter.
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C
Yeah.
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B
It seems like one of the most important things he was known for is
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C
really fighting the heretic. Yeah, he's called the Pillar of the Faith and the seal of all the Fathers.
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B
Wow. Pillar of the faith, was he. Do we know what he specifically is a patron of?
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C
That I'm not exactly sure. Fighting? Yeah, Fighting heresy, maybe? Yeah, possibly. Yeah. He didn't have. There wasn't like a lot of devotion to him in the west until like the late 19th century, but he's probably still a patron of something.
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B
Yes, I'm sure I'll have to look it up. And are there any other, I don't know, noteworthy. Lots of notary things about his life, but other important details that you think are worth mentioning or does that kind of paint a broad picture?
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C
I think that gives you the main bits.
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B
Okay, well, as you think about his life, my last question is, when you think of St. Cyril, what are some of his Christocentric qualities or what were. Yeah, qualities. When you're thinking about the way he lived his life in his sanctity, in his vocation, that really emulated Jesus. Besides fighting for his.
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C
Yeah, yeah. I think one element would be an insight into the simple faith of believers. So he obviously had the intellect to engage in really complex theological debates, but he also had the sort of sensitivity to. To. To look for insight from the way common people worship. So yeah, he. He had a kind of humility about him in that way. So. Yeah, and it's nice because that humility is paired with his kind of courage and I don't know, he just didn't care what people thought about him necessarily. So, yes, he was fiery and could be harsh, but then also had this sensitivity and humility, that balance.
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B
That's beautiful. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
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C
Yeah, it was great.
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B
Thanks for joining us on this episode of Catholic Saints and Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Pray for us. Thank you.
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A
You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting form.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustan Institute and Ignatius Press. With award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks, and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustan institute. Please visit missioncircle.org.