Thanks for coming back. I, too, hope you’ll one day enjoy those books as much as I have. It sounds like you’re already on to some very good reading.

I don’t think Kevin was rude, but rather righteously indignant. One touches a nerve when one goes after a canonized saint. And, as you’ll find in those recent studies, Cyril has already suffered mightily at the hands of historians with ideological axes to grind. Acknowledging the saints’ imperfections doesn’t require us to accept all charges on the accusers’ terms. As I said in my posts, Cyril was an operator; he could be irascible; he made some lousy judgments; but I don’t think I’m whitewashing by refusing the portrayal of him as a power-mad, murderous bigot (yet somehow a saint).

There are times, for Kevin as for Cyril, when the passions arise to serve their natural purpose, in this case the restoration of justice.

Your rude reply was not necessary.

Granted, I’m no patristics scholar. My knowledge of Saint Cyril comes from my reading of the relevant entries in “Encyclopedia Britannica” and “Butler’s Lives of the Saints”, and my reading of volume one of Samuel Moffett’s “History of Christianity in Asia”.

Mr. Aquilina: Thank you for your book suggestions. I hope I one day have the opportunity to read one of them.

But it’s so much easier to blah blah Hypatia blah than actually to research the real woman….

Suffice it to say, the only tentatively primary source we have about Hypatia’s horrible death is Socrates, and he’s not exactly a model of objectivity. As all later accounts appear to draw on his account, they can’t be considered primary, which particularly impugns their suppositions on the machinations of Cyril.

More importantly, if anyone is to blame someone for the death of another, blame the individual murderers in the crowd who did the deed (if in fact, it happened that way). Seeking some ultimate, if only tenuously connected, authority as the responsible party would have every crime attributed to all but those who commit them. Every person is responsible for his own sins and not anyone else’s, whether or not they are labeled crimes by society. Cyril, I’m sure, would not disagree that he was responsible for numerous sins. Hypatia’s death, however, is not one of them.

(* in fact we have something more: Church’s–that is, people’s–love and gratefulness for him since very early till late Byzantine times.)

/β

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_of_Alexandria

Saint Cyril had the Jews expelled from Alexandria, and as at least indirectly responsible for the murder of the Greek philosopher Hypatia. His conduct during the Nestorian controversy was particularly shameful; have you read how he convened and directed the Ephesian council?

None of which is to dispute his sanctity; it just serves no one to whitewash his career.