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Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313–386)
§ 1. The Year. The incidental notes of time in the Catechetical Lectures are sufficient to determine with considerable probability the exact year in which they were delivered.
In Cat. xiv. 14, Cyril speaks in the Plural of the Emperors then reigning (hoi nun basileis) as having completed the building (exeirgasanto) and embellishment of the great Church of the Resurrection. This can only apply to the sons of Constantine, Constans and Constantius, and as Constans died early in 350, the Lectures must have been delivered before that year.
In Cat. xv. § 6, Cyril asks, "Is there at this time war between Persians and Romans, or no?" The time thus indicated was apparently that of the campaign which ended in the disastrous defeat of Constantius at Singara, 348, the battle being soon followed by a suspension of hostilities.
The Benedictine Editor tries to find another proof of the date of the Lectures in Cyril's description of the state of the Church in Cat. xv. §7: "If thou hear that Bishops advance against Bishops, and clergy against clergy, and laity against laity, even unto blood, be not troubled." Touttée refers this account to the fierce dissensions which followed the Synod of Sardica, where Athanasius and Marcellus were declared innocent and received into communion, while the Encyclical of the dissentient Bishops, who had withdrawn to Philippopolis, condemned them both. But it is now ascertained that the Synod of Sardica was held not in 347, as Touttée supposed, but in 344: and Cyril's description may unhappily be applied to the state of the Church at almost any time from the Council of Tyre, by which Athanasius had been deposed in 335, until long after any date which can possibly be assigned to Cyril's Lectures.
There is a much more definite note of time in Cat. vi. § 20, where speaking of Manes Cyril says: "The delusion began full seventy years ago." If we may assume that the outbreak of this heresy is to be dated from the famous disputation between Archelaus and Manes in 277, it follows that Cyril must have made this statement in 347 or 348. And further, if Dr. Routh is correct in fixing the date of the Disputation between July and December 277, the Lent in which the Lectures were delivered must have been, as Touttée decides, that of 348, not of 347, as Tillemont had supposed.
§ 2. The days. It is expressly stated by Sozomen that "the interval called Quadragesima" was made to consist of six weeks in Palestine, "whereas it comprised seven weeks in Constantinople and the neighbouring provinces."
It is certain the Catechetical Lectures i.-xviii. were all delivered in these six weeks, being preceded by the Procatechesis, which was addressed to the candidates before the whole congregation at the public Service on Sunday (§ 4). In the same context Cyril says, "Thou hast forty days for repentance," and again in Cat i. § 5, "Hast thou not forty days to be free for thine own soul's sake?" It thus appears probable that the first of the eighteen (Catechetical Lectures was delivered on the Monday of the first week of the Fast, the forty days being completed on the night preceding the Great Sabbath, that is to say, the night of Good Friday, when the fast was brought to an end at a late hour.
With regard to the date of Cat. iv., which contains a brief preliminary statement of all the articles of the Creed, we may obtain some evidence from an incident recorded in a letter of Jerome to Pammachius. John, who had then succeeded Cyril as Bishop of Jerusalem, had on a certain occasion discoursed on the Creed and all the doctrines of the Church in the presence of Epiphanius and the whole congregation. Jerome, being ignorant of the peculiar custom of the Church of Jerusalem, rebukes the supposed presumption of the Bishop, "that a man deficient in eloquence should in one discourse in Church discuss all the doctrines concerning the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the descent into hell, the nature of angels, the state of departed souls, the Resurrection of Christ, and of ourselves, and other subjects." The rebuke calls out a statement from John: "The custom among us is that for forty days we publicly deliver the doctrine of the Holy and Adorable Trinity to those who are to be baptized." This being the custom at Jerusalem in Cyril's time, we may conjecture that Cat. iv., which corresponds closely to the description of John's discourse, was delivered, like that, on a Sunday before the whole congregation: and this is in fact suggested by Cyril's own words in § 3: "Let those here present, whose habit of mind is mature, and who have their senses already exercised to discern good and evil, endure patiently to listen to things fitted rather for children." That this could not have been later than the Sunday following that on which the Procatechesis was delivered, is shewn by the mention in the same section of "the long interval of the days of all this holy Quadragesima," an expression which could not well have been used later than the second Sunday in Lent.
§ 1. The Creed. The ancient Creed which was used by the Church of Jerusalem in the middle of the fourth Century, and which Cyril expounded in his Catechetical Lectures, was recited by him to the Catechumens at the end of the fifth Lecture, to be committed to memory, but not to be written out on paper (§ 12). Accordingly it is not found in any of the MSS., but instead of it the Nicene Creed with the Anathema is there inserted in Codd. Roe, Casaub. This could only have been added after Cyril's time, when the motives for secrecy had ceased.
The Creed which Cyril really taught and expounded may be gathered from various passages in the Lectures themselves, and especially from the Titles prefixed to them.
With the Creed of Jerusalem thus ascertained, it will be instructive to compare the Nicene formula, and for this purpose we print them in parallel columns.
CREED OF S. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM.
CREED OF NICÆA.
From S. Athanasius, De Decretis Fidei Nicænæ.
Pisteuomen eis hena Theon,
Patera Pantokratora,
§ 1. List of Works. Besides the Catechetical and Mystagogic Lectures translated in this volume, the extant works of S. Cyril include (1) the "Letter to the Emperor Constantius concerning the appearance at Jerusalem of a luminous Cross in the sky:" (2) "The Homily on the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda:" and (3) Fragments of Sermons on the Miracle of the water changed into wine, and on John xvi. 28, "I go to My Father."
Another work attributed by some authorities to Cyril of Jerusalem and by others to Cyril of Alexandria is a Homily De Occursu Domini, that is, On the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the meeting with Symeon, called in the Greek Church he Upapante.
The other Fragments and Letters mentioned in the Benedictine Edition have no claim to be considered genuine.
§ 2. Authenticity of the Lectures. The internal evidence of the time and place at which the Lectures were delivered has been already discussed in chapters viii. and ix., and proves beyond doubt that they must have been composed at Jerusalem in the middle of the fourth century. At that date Cyril was the only person living in Jerusalem who is mentioned by the Ecclesiastical Historians as an author of Catechetical Lectures: and S. Jerome, a younger contemporary of Cyril, expressly mentions the Lectures which Cyril had written in his youth. In fact their authenticity seems never to have been doubted before the seventeenth century, when it was attacked with more zeal than success by two French Protestant Theologians of strongly Calvinistic opinions, Andrew Rivet (Critic. Sacr. Lib. iii. cap. 8, Genev. 1640), and Edmund Aubertin (De Sacramento Eucharistiæ, Lib. ii. p. 422, Ed. Davent., 1654). Their objections, which were reprinted at full length by Milles at the end of his Edition, were directed chiefly against the Mystagogic Lectures, and rested on dogmatic rather than on critical grounds. The argument most worthy of notice was that in a MS. of the Library of Augsburg the Mystagogic Lectures were attributed to John, Bishop of Jerusalem. This is admitted by Milles, who gives the title thus: Mustagogikai katecheseis pente 'Ioannou 'Episkopou Ierosolumon, peri baptismatos, chrismatos, somatos, kai haimatos Christou.
I do not find this Codex Augustinus mentioned elsewhere by any of the Editors under that name: but the Augsburg MSS. were removed to Munich in 1806, and in the older Munich MS. (Cod. Monac. i), the title of the first Mystagogic Lecture is Mustagogia prote 'Ioannou episkopou Ierosolumon. Also in Codd. Monac. 2, Ottobon. there is added at the end of the Title, tou autou Kurillou kai 'Ioannou episkopou. That John, Cyril's successor, did deliver Catechetical Lectures, we know from his own correspondence with Jerome: and this very circumstance may account for his name having been associated with, or substituted for that of Cyril.
To Rivet's objection Milles makes answer that if the mistakes of a transcriber or the stumbling of an ignorant Librarian (imperiti Librarii cæspitationes) have in one or two MSS. ascribed the Lectures to John or any one else, this cannot be set against the testimony of those who lived nearest to the time when the Lectures were composed, as Jerome and Theodoret. Also the internal evidence proves that the Lectures could not have been delivered later than the middle of the fourth century, whereas John succeeded Cyril about 386.
Moreover it is quite impossible to assign the two sets of Lectures to different authors. In Cat. xviii. § 33 the author promises, as we have seen, that he will fully explain the Sacramental Mysteries in other Lectures to be given in Easter week, in the Holy Sepulchre itself, and describes the subject of each Lecture; to which description the Mystagogic Lectures correspond in all particulars. Other promises of future explanations are given in Cat. xiii. § 19, and xvi. § 26, and fulfilled in Myst. iv. § 3, and ii. § 6, and iii. § i. On the other hand the author of Myst. i. § 9, after quoting the words, "I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and in one Baptism of repentance," adds, "Of which things I spoke to thee at length in the former Lectures."
By these and many other arguments drawn from internal evidence Touttée has shewn convincingly that all the Lectures must have had the same author, and that he could be no other than Cyril.