CYRIL, SAINT (c.315-86). A bishop of .Te rusalem and an eminent Church Father. He was horn in Jermoalein about A.D. 315. and ordained a deacon in 334, a presbyter in 345, and, on the death of 'Maximus, in 351 was elected bishop of his native city. His metropolitan was the Arian bishop Acacius of with whom lie was soon engaged in hot conflict concerning originally the rights of his office, but ultimately their differenees of doctrine. Acaeius accused Cyril before a council at Gzesarea in 358, whose competency Cyril did not acknowledge, of selling the treasures of his church in a time of famine to feed the poor, and this Arianizing assembly undertook to depose him. He appealed to a larger synod, which was held at Seleueia (359), and was by it restored to his office; but once more. through the persevering hostility of Aca cius, he was deposed by a council assembled in Constantinople in 360. On the death of the Em peror Constantine (361) he was again restored to his episcopate. Soon after hi; old enemy Ace clue died, hut Cyril was immediately involved in new difficulties, and after considerable strife was banished, by order of the Emperor Valens, in 367; nor did he return till the Emperor's death in 378. He died March 18, 386.
Cyril's writings are extremely valuable, not because of their vigor, profundity, or beauty, but on account of their theology. They consist of twenty-three treatises, eighteen of which are addressed to ealeclunnens and five to the newly baptized. The former are for the most part doctrinal, and present to us in a more complete and systematic manner than the writings of any other father the creed of the Church ; the latter are ritual, and give us a minute account of bap tism, chrism, and the Lord's Slipper. Their style is simple and unattractive. Cyril's works were published by A. A. Touttee, the Benedictine monk (Paris. 1720; Venice, 1761) ; they were reprinted in Migne, Patrol. Grwea, xxxiii., and by G. C. Reischl and J. Rupp (2 vols., Munich, 1848-60: Eng. trans. by E. H. Gifford in The 1Virene and Post-Nieene Fathers, 2d series, vol. vii., New York, 1891). Consult Delacroix, Saint Pyritic de Vrusalem, sa vie et scs CelaTCS (Paris, 1865).