§ 171. CYKIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 945
he unquestionably stands far below his unfortunate antagonist. Tlie judgment of the CathoL'c historians is bound by the authority of their church, which, in strange bhndness, has canonized him.' Yet Tillemont feels himself compelled to admit that Cyril did much that is unworthy of a saint.' The estimate of Protestant historians has been the more severe. The moderate and honest Clir. W. Franz Walch can hardly give him credit Tor anything good ; ' and the English historian, II. H. Milman, says he would rather appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, loaded with all the heresies of !N^estorius, than with the barbarities of Cyril.*
But the faults of his personal character should not blind us to the merits of Cyril as a theologian. He was a man of vigorous and acute mind and extensive learning, and is clearly to be reckoned among the most important dogmatic and polemic divines of the Greek church.^ Of his contemporaries Theodoret alone was his superior. He was the last considera-
' Even the mouopliysite Copts and Abyssinians celebrate his memory under the abbreviated name of Kerlos, and the title of Doctor of the World.
^ Memoires, xiv. 541 : " S. Cyrille est Saint : mais on nc pent pas dire que toutea ses actions soient saintes."
* Comp. the description at the close of the fifth volume of his tedious but thorough Ketzerhistorie, where, after recounting the faults of Cyril, he exclaic:-;, p. 932: "Can a man read such a character without a shudder? And yet nothii: r '4 fabricated here, nothing overdrawn; nothing is done but to collect what is scattered in history. And what is worst: I find nothing at all that can be said in his praise." Schr('>ckh (1. c. p. 352), in his prolix and loquacious way, gives an equally unfavorable opinion, and the more extols his antagonist Theodoret (p. 355 sqq.), who was a much more learned and pious man, but in his life-time was persecuted, and after his death condemned as a heretic, while Cyril was pronounced a saint.
* History of Latm Christianity, vol. i. p. 210: "Cyril of Alexandria, to those who esteem the stern and uncompromising assertion of certam Christian tenets the one paramount Christian virtue, may be the hero, even the saint : but while ambition, intrigue, arrogance, rapacity, and violence, are proscribed as unchristian meanfl — barbarity, persecution, bloodshed, as unholy and unevangelic wickednesses — posterity will condemn the orthodox Cyril as one of the worst heretics against the spirit of the Gospel. Who would not meet the judgment of the divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nestorius rather than the barbarities of Cyril ? "
' Baur (Vorlesungen iiber Dogmengeschichte, i. ii. p. 47) says of Cyril : " The current estimate of him is not altogether just. As a theologian he must be placed higher than he usually is. He remained true to the spirit of the Alexandrian theology, particularly in his predilection for the allegorical and the mystical, and he had a doctrine consistent with itself."
946 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
ble representative of the Alexandrian tlieology and the Alex andrian church, which, however, was already beginning to degenerate and stiffen; and thus he offsets Theodoret, who is the most learned representative of the Antiochian school. He aimed to he the same to the doctrine of the incarnation and the person of Christ, that his purer and greater predecessor in the see of Alexandria had been to the doctrine of the Trinity a century before. But he overstrained the supranaturalism and mysticism of the Alexandrian theology, and in his zeal for the reality of the incarnation and the unity of the person of Christ, he went to the brink of the monoi^hysite error ; even sustaining himself by the words of Athanasius, though not by his spirit, because the Nicene age hud not yet iixed beyond all interchange the theological distinction between ovaia and
UTTOCTTacrt?.'
And connected with this is his enthusiastic zeal for the honor of Mary as the virgin-mother of God. In a pathetic and turgid eulogy on Mary, which he delivered at Ephesus during the third ecumenical council, he piles upon her predicates which exceed all biblical limits, and border upon idolatry.'' " Blessed be thou," says he, " O mother of God! Thou rich treasure of the world, inextinguishable lamp, crown of virginity, sceptre of true doctrine, imperishable temple, habitation of Him whom no space can contain, mother and virgin, through vvhom He is, who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed be thou, O Mary, who didst hold in thy womb the Infinite One ; thou through whom the blessed Trinity is glorified and worshipped, through whom the precious cross is adored throughout the world, through whom heaven rejoices and angels and archangels are glad, through whom the devil is disarmed and banished, through whom the fallen creature is restored to heaven, through whom every
* This is not considered by R. P. Smith, when, in the Preface to his English translation of Cyril's Commentary on the Gispel of Luke from the Syriac (p. v.), ho bays, that Cyril never transcended Athanasius' doctrine of fjiia (pim^ tov ©soO \6yov ir«(rapKft»;ufVi7, and that both are irreconcilable with the dogma of Chalcedon, whici rests upon the; Antiochian theology. Comp. §§ 137-110, above.
' Encomium in sanctam Mariam Deiparam, in torn. v. Pars ii. p. 380 (in Migne'a ed torn. X. 1029 sqq.).