Cyril of Jerusalem

Cyril was born about 313 and became bishop of Jerusalem around 350. He held the see, off and on, for thirty-five years — off and on because he was driven out of it three times and spent roughly sixteen of those years in exile. His trouble was Acacius of Caesarea, the leader of the Arian-leaning party in Palestine and, as metropolitan, Cyril's superior. Cyril resisted him on doctrine and disputed his jurisdiction; Jerusalem was the holier city, Caesarea the higher see. Acacius deposed him in 357, partly on the charge that Cyril had sold church property and vestments to buy food during a famine. Cyril did not deny selling them. He was recalled, exiled again under Constantius, restored under Julian, exiled a third time under Valens, and finally restored under Theodosius in 378. He was at the Council of Constantinople in 381, and the council explicitly recognized him as the lawful bishop of Jerusalem. What he left the church is a course of instruction. In Lent, probably about 350, in the great basilica Constantine had built over the tomb of Christ, Cyril delivered twenty-four Catechetical Lectures to people preparing for baptism — eighteen before Easter, and five more in the week after, given to the newly baptized and explaining the sacraments they had just received. Someone in the congregation took them down. It is the earliest complete course of Christian instruction that survives. They are extraordinarily concrete. He teaches the creed clause by clause. He explains what baptism does, what the anointing means, what happens at the Lord's table, and how to receive the bread — making the left hand a throne for the right. He warns against pagan practice and against heretical teachers by name. He teaches from the very ground where the events happened, pointing at the rock of Golgotha and the wood of the cross displayed in the church, and saying: this is not a rumor, it is here. He also wrote to the emperor Constantius in 351 to report a luminous cross seen in the sky over Jerusalem, stretching from Golgotha to the Mount of Olives, witnessed by the whole city. The letter survives. He died in 386, having spent almost half his episcopate in banishment. Rome named him a Doctor of the Church in 1883. Sources: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7); Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, Ecclesiastical Histories; The Pilgrimage of Egeria; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "St. Cyril of Jerusalem".