HistoricalChristian.Faith

Cyril of Alexandria and the fall of Nestorius

Dates: patriarch of Alexandria 412–444 (b. c. 376, d. 27 June 444) · Wikipedia
Summary: Cyril was the ablest theologian and the most formidable ecclesiastical politician of his age, and the architect of the doctrine of the hypostatic union. This page tells the quarrel from his side: the nephew and heir of the Theophilus who had destroyed John Chrysostom, he took up the case against Nestorius in 429, secured Rome's mandate, hurled the Twelve Anathemas, convened the Council of Ephesus (431) before the Antiochene bishops could arrive and deposed Nestorius in a day, out-lasted his own counter-deposition, spent his treasury at the imperial court to make the verdict stick, and two years later sealed the peace with Antioch that abandoned his rival for good. He won on every front — and his theology, once purged of one ambiguous phrase, became the mind of the whole later Church.

The see and the inheritance (412)

Cyril succeeded his uncle Theophilus as patriarch of Alexandria in 412, inheriting both the most powerful see in the East and its habits of rule. His early years were marked by the same combativeness — the expulsion of the Jews from Alexandria, the struggle with the prefect Orestes, and the murder of the philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in 415, which his enemies laid at his door. He was, from the first, a man who fought to win.¹

Taking up the case against Nestorius (429–430)

When reports reached Alexandria that the new bishop of Constantinople was preaching against the title Theotokos, Cyril moved first through his annual paschal letter and a private warning, then in the measured, decisive Second Letter to Nestorius — the letter that would be read at Ephesus as the touchstone of orthodoxy. Against Nestorius's language of two who are merely joined, he set the hypostatic union:

Rather do we claim that the Word in an unspeakable, inconceivable manner united to himself hypostatically flesh enlivened by a rational soul, and so became man and was called son of man, not by God's will alone or good pleasure, nor by the assumption of a person alone.

— Second Letter to Nestorius (Ep. 4), source. The theological substance of this letter, and of his whole doctrine of the person of Christ, is set out on his christology page; here it is the opening move of a campaign.²

The Roman mandate and the Twelve Anathemas (430)

Cyril did not wait on Constantinople. He sent Pope Celestine a Latin dossier of Nestorius's own sermons, and when the Roman synod of August 430 condemned Nestorius, it committed the execution of the sentence to Cyril himself — making the prosecutor the judge's agent. An Alexandrian synod then issued his Third Letter, closing with twelve anathemas that turned the doctrine into pass-or-fail tests. The first struck at the title; the twelfth confessed a suffering God:

If any one confess not that the Word of God suffered in the Flesh and hath been crucified in the Flesh and tasted death in the Flesh… be he anathema.

— Third Letter to Nestorius, the Twelve Anathemas, source. The anathemas were his sharpest weapon and his most contested one: the Antiochenes read the twelfth as close to Apollinarian passibility, and the phrase would trouble the Church long after Nestorius was gone. Cyril's own balance — the natures “unconfused” within the one Christ — is weighed on his christology page.³

Ephesus: the council convened and the deposition (June 431)

At Ephesus, Cyril did with Nestorius exactly what his uncle had done with the accusers of Chrysostom: he took the bench. Rather than wait for John of Antioch and the Syrian bishops — Nestorius's natural defenders, still on the road — he opened the council after a fortnight, over the protest of the imperial commissioner and some sixty-eight bishops. His own words survive because Nestorius wrote them down to accuse him:

This great and holy Council has been patient enough, waiting for the coming of the godly bishops, who are expected to come.

— Cyril at the opening, quoted in Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, source. Nestorius, summoned three times and three times refusing to appear before his prosecutor, was deposed in a single day's session by the Cyrilline majority, and the people of Ephesus escorted the bishops home by torchlight.⁴

Counter-deposed — and unbroken (June–autumn 431)

The victory was not clean. Five days later John of Antioch reached Ephesus, and under the protection of the count Candidian held a counter-council that deposed Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus in turn; the emperor Theodosius at first confirmed both depositions, and Cyril was placed under guard. He got free the way the whole affair was decided — by leaving without leave and reaching Alexandria before any authority could stop him. Nestorius, in exile, described it bitterly:

Cyril… who was being guarded with all caution hid himself from them that were guarding him in Ephesus… and set out from Ephesus and gained his [own] city without being hindered by any one.

— Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, source. He was received in Alexandria as a conqueror.⁵

The gold that settled it (431–432)

What broke the deadlock at court was not argument but Alexandrian gold. A memorandum from Cyril's own chancery itemizes the gifts distributed to the officials and eunuchs around the emperor — carpets, ivory chairs and stools, ostriches, and, to a single official, “fifty pounds of gold… in order that he would help us in the cause.” By one reckoning the disbursements ran past a thousand pounds of gold. That the list is genuine is not in dispute, because it is his own:

…four ivory chairs, two ivory stools… two ostriches; and in order that he would help us in the cause about those matters which were written to him: fifty pounds of gold.

— Cyril, Letter 96 (to Paul the Prefect), trans. R. Pearse from ACO 1.4, source. It is the plainest evidence that the Ephesus verdict was made to stick at the palace, not in synod.⁶

The Formula of Reunion and the last years (433–444)

Two years after the council Cyril made peace with Antioch. Through the imperial envoy Aristolaus he and John of Antioch agreed the Formula of Reunion — a confession that affirmed Theotokos but used the “two natures” language he had resisted in the heat of the fight, and abandoned Nestorius. He announced it in a letter whose opening became famous: “Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, for the middle wall of partition is broken down.” It was the bridge from his own theology to Chalcedon. Cyril held Alexandria until his death on 27 June 444, honoured as the doctor of the Incarnation.⁷

Notes

• Cyril's method at Ephesus — convene the council before the other side arrives, take the bench as prosecutor, and secure the verdict at court — is his uncle Theophilus's method at the Synod of the Oak (403) run again a generation later. Theophilus had used it to destroy John Chrysostom; Cyril used it to destroy Nestorius, and it worked as well the second time.
• The one ambiguity Cyril left behind — the Apollinarian mia physis (“one incarnate nature of the Word”) formula he believed Athanasian — is the seam the Church tore along after Chalcedon, weighed on his christology page and on the christology timeline.
• Whether the man Cyril brought down actually held the heresy named for him is a live modern question, argued at “Was Nestorius misrepresented?”
• See the controversy timeline and Nestorius's parallel page.

Sources