Cyril's Ephesus council crushed Nestorius in 431
Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444, Cyril of Alexandria wrote fiercely on Christ's natures and chaired the Council of Ephesus that deposed Nestorius. Later ages crowned him Pillar of Faith and, in 1883, Doctor of the Incarnation—while his street politics with prefect Orestes stayed brutal.
Cyril (c. 376–444) was a major voice in late antique Christology. As president of the 431 Council of Ephesus he defended the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in one person against Nestorius, who was removed as Patriarch of Constantinople. Catholics and Orthodox venerate him as Pillar of Faith and Seal of the Fathers; Pope Leo XIII named him a Doctor of the Church in 1883 as Doctor Incarnationis. He also pressed hard for calling the Virgin Mary Theotokos, the God-bearer.
Born about 376 in Didouseya (modern El-Mahalla El-Kubra), he grew up under his uncle Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria. In 403 he attended the Synod of the Oak that deposed John Chrysostom. When Theophilus died on 15 October 412, Cyril became patriarch on 18 October after riots against rival Archdeacon Timotheus—Socrates Scholasticus dryly noted Alexandrians were always rioting. His own books reveal a reader steeped in earlier Christian authors, among them Eusebius, Origen, and Didymus.
He inherited a see that rivaled the civil prefect amid violent tension among pagans, Jews, and Christians. He closed Novatianist churches and clashed with Orestes, the Augustal prefect, over secular versus ecclesiastical power. In 415 an edict on mime shows and dancing drew crowds; conflicts around that order deepened the feud between bishop and governor. That feud turned lethal in March 415, when a Christian mob killed Hypatia, the philosopher and mathematician who lent Orestes her considerable authority. Socrates Scholasticus condemned the killers without naming them; the only ancient writer to blame Cyril is the later Neoplatonist Damascius, who was eager to exploit the scandal, so the patriarch's personal guilt remains contested.
Source: Cyril of Alexandria
