Second Dissertation

Under Jovian and in the early days of Valens, he lived peaceably in Jerusalem. ^A Upon the death of Acacius, Cyril appointed Philumenus to the Church of Caesarea; and when he was deposed by the Eutychian faction, and Cyril the Elder was substituted in his place, upon his being driven out, Cyril again substituted Gelasius, his sister’s son, in that see in the year 366.

Our Cyril, in the opinion of some, was delegated along with many others to Liberius in order to accept the Nicene faith in the year 366.

By the mandate of Valens, Cyril was sent into exile for the third time in the year 367. Those substituted in his place were Heraclius, the other Cyril, and Hilarius, who held the see in the year 375.

In various exiles, he underwent many struggles against the Arians.

After the death of Valens, he returned to Jerusalem, and recovered the see for the third time in the year 378.

He found his Church deformed by heresies, schisms, and corruptions of morals: and he sought aid from the Council of Antioch in the year 379.

^B Rufinus and Melania reconciled all the Pneumatomachi who had been expelled from the Church by him in the year 379 or 380.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, sent by the mandate of the Council of Antioch to Jerusalem to pacify the Church, departed in the year 380, the matter left unfinished, due to the prevailing stubbornness of the schismatics and heretics.

Four hundred monks of the Paulinian party, through the efforts of Rufinus and Melania, embraced the communion of Cyril in the year 380.

Cyril rejected two monks who had been excommunicated by the bishop of Alexandria on account of self-castration.

He attended the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 381.

His life is praised, and his canonical ordination is defended by the Council of Constantinople, of almost all the same Fathers who had celebrated the council of the previous year, in the year 382.

He may have been present at the council in Constantinople in the year 383.

Cyril died on the 18th of March in the year 386.

SECOND DISSERTATION

*On the writings of St. Cyril, and especially the Catecheses. In which their truth and integrity are defended: the name, nature, and method are explained: the year, time, and place in which they were delivered are set forth: and the Cyrillian method of teaching and speaking is investigated.*

* [XCIII] CAPUT PRIMUM [CHAPTER FIRST]

*The writings of St. Cyril are enumerated, whether genuine, doubtful, lost, or supposed, along with fragments.*

1. I shall first establish the number of the writings of St. Cyril: then, since I defend the truth and sincerity of each of the individual minor works, apart from the Catecheses, in the admonition prefixed to them, and explain what pertains to them, here I shall undertake an examination of the Catecheses themselves. Their truth, antiquity, and integrity I shall assert with as much force as I can against the malevolent slander of Protestant critics. Afterwards, I shall speak of the entire genre of the Catecheses, and I shall explain first of all the nature and inner rationale of those of Cyril. What is the reason for their inscription, what is the authority of the titles prefixed to them: in what precise year and time, on what days and hours, and under what circumstances they were delivered. Then I shall speak of the Cyrillian method of teaching and speaking, of the aids employed by him, and finally of his style. I begin with the enumeration of the writings.

2. Few writings of Cyril have reached us: nor is it attested by any certain monuments that many more were composed by him. Whatever we possess of his that is genuine and sincere was written either before his episcopate or at the very beginning of it. Truly it is strange that a man exercised and trained in speaking from his very youth should have left behind, in such a long series of years during which he presided over a most noble Church, almost no ^C monument of his own genius: or that those who took down in writing his catecheses, which were captured from the mouth of the speaker while he was still a presbyter, should have preserved for posterity none—or almost none—of the homilies and sermons he gave after being raised to the rank of the episcopate. We possess only three entire, genuine, and sincere works of Cyril: the Catecheses delivered to the candidates for illumination throughout the whole of Lent, and the five Mystagogical ones pronounced to the neophytes on each day of Easter week. There follows the homily on the paralytic lying by the pool: which, as having been delivered by Cyril while he was still indubitably a presbyter, we have placed before the letter to Constantius. There succeeds at last that letter to Constantius, which was sent by him at the beginning of his episcopate. We shall vindicate the truth of the Catecheses in this dissertation: that of the other two minor works, in the notice prefixed to them.

3. The memory of the lost monuments of Cyril is in the modest fragments which the ancients [XCIV] have preserved. The Council of the Lateran, St. Maximus the martyr, and an anonymous author older than the eighth century in a work not yet published, cite two testimonies of our Cyril from a certain homily on that place of the Gospel of John, in which it is recorded that the Lord changed water into wine at the wedding feast. Another fragment is cited by Leontius in an unpublished work against the Monophysites, from a homily of Cyril on those words of John 16:28, *I go to my Father*. What

regarding those fragments, I have explained my thoughts in the Admonition prefaced to them. If anyone wishes to count them among the spurious works, or at least the doubtful ones of Cyril, I do not object. To me, they seem to contain nothing alien to Cyril; and by joining them with the homily on the paralytic, the suspicion arises—not illegitimately—that there was once a complete work of homilies by Cyril on the Gospel of John.

4. Also to be counted among his lost works are the homilies which a presbyter used to deliver at the same time as he was pronouncing the catechetical lectures, which perhaps were never captured in writing. He preserved the arguments and the memory of three, or even four, of these in his catechetical lectures. In Catechetical Lecture 10, no. 14, while speaking of the priesthood of Christ, he refers to a homily which he had recited on the Lord’s day in the assembly of the preceding day, in which he interpreted the words: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," whether from Psalm 109:4 or from the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5:6. This homily would have been a great help to us in understanding Cyril’s opinion on the eternal priesthood of Christ, had it survived. In Catechetical Lecture 13, no. 16, he indicates that he had spoken previously about the silence of the Lord when He was judged by men. In Catechetical Lecture 14, no. 24, he repeats for his audience, in summarized form, a portion of what he had said on the preceding day—which was that Sunday—at the assembly concerning the Assumption, or as we say, the Ascension of the Lord, when, obedient to the customary order of reading in the Church, he had been led by the reading of that day to speak of the Lord taken up into the heavens. In Catechetical Lecture 13, no. 9, he recalls to his audience’s memory the exposition he had made not so long before on Psalm 58, and on these words of it: "They will return at evening, and they will suffer hunger like dogs, and they will surround the city," which words he had applied to the leaders of the Jewish people while Jesus was being arrested. Finally, in Catechetical Lecture 12, no. 18, he testifies that he had said elsewhere that the "iron rod" signified the Roman Empire; which he had perhaps put forward in some exposition of the second Psalm. That Cyril delivered catechetical lectures every year is noted in a certain observation by some amanuensis, which we published after the list of the Catechetical Lectures [XCV] prefaced to the procatechesis: but this signifies only those that we have recorded in writing. Also to be numbered among the lost works is the continuation of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius by Gelasius of Caesarea, who testified that he undertook that work at the urging of his uncle Cyril, in Photius, codex 89, p. 210; indeed, from Photius, both seem to have contributed their labor to the same work; but what Photius says, that he had found in other monuments that Cyril and Gelasius had composed no history of their own, but had only rendered the Latin of Rufinus into Greek, I would rather had not been said by so great a man; for the history of Rufinus was written long after the death of Cyril, who is mentioned in it in his own place.

5. The works falsely attributed to Cyril are of two kinds; for some are by excellent authors, or at least not bad ones, attributed to our Cyril by error: others are by scoundrels, foisted upon his name by manifest fraud. In the first order I number the homily on the Meeting of the Lord, which, when some learned men judged it not alien to Cyril, I hope I have proved by certain documents to have proceeded—albeit from a learned and erudite author—from a much more recent one. Likewise the *Ecclesiastical and Mystagogical History*, or explanation of the sacred liturgy, which in some manuscripts is attributed to Basil of Caesarea, in others to Cyril of Jerusalem: but it is the true offspring of Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, edited in the *Bibliotheca Patrum* in Greek and Latin under this title, *Theoria mysteriorum*; which indeed Thomas Milles, having found it in a manuscript codex of the Bodleian library, gave at the end of Cyril’s works, much shorter, and as he opines, more sincere. He judges that work to be of Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who occupied this see around the year 1226. I would more willingly believe it to have proceeded from the Germanus who flourished in the times of Leo the Isaurian, in the year 726; which, indeed, having been increased later by additions, grew into a larger bulk. But since it has a certain author in one or the other of those Germans, I have not thought it ought to be reprinted here. In the fifth volume of the Councils of Hardouin is published a booklet by an anonymous author, *De sex synodis*, which in the Royal manuscript collection, codex 2931, fol. 219, is called *Κύριλλος ἐπίσκοπος Ἱεροσολύμων*, Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, a clearly false attribution. Among the various sacred works edited by Stephen Le Moine, volume 1, page 68, it is attributed to Germanus of Constantinople. To the homilies *On the Meeting* I have added a brief chronology, which is not Cyril’s, yet is found under his name in some manuscript. The name of Cyril was prefixed to these works not with evil intent, but by error. There follow the letters supposed [to be] from Cyril to the Roman Julius, and from Julius to Cyril, concerning the day of the Nativity of the Lord, which certainly never proceeded from Cyril or Julius. In another copy, they are called letters not of Cyril, but of Juvenal to Julius, and of the same to Juvenal. Juvenal could indeed have written on the same subject, not to Julius—who died a hundred years earlier—but to one of the Roman pontiffs. But whether he wrote those [letters] is doubtful; not to say it is completely false. But almost every impudence is surpassed by the fact that some ignorant and foolish scoundrel forged letters of Augustine to Cyril, and of Cyril to Augustine, concerning the death and miracles of Saint Jerome: which indeed I hesitated to reprint [[XCVI]], as they are more worthy of the flames than of the types. Yet this opinion prevailed, so that they would not be found missing in this work, so that by this one example it might be declared how much was permitted to a lie. Of the same bran is the fragment cited by Saint Thomas under the name of Cyril, with which I have concluded all the works of Cyril, whether genuine or spurious.

CHAPTER II.

6. So clear and bright are the arguments brought forward from the Cyrillian Catecheses for the defense of Catholic dogmas, that certain Protestants, distrusting the twisted little arguments by which they labor to evade them, [find] this knot inextricable for themselves.

^A they judged it better to sever than to untie, and they labored to snatch our catecheses away from our Cyril—having first cast suspicions upon the good faith of Grodecius and Prevotius—or at least to rob them of all authority, as having been deformed by interpolations and additions. Rivetus, pressed by the authority of Jerome, admits that Cyril composed catecheses; but he says it is rightly called into doubt whether those are the ones we possess. Yet since proofs are produced from our catecheses as being Cyril’s by Theodoret, John of Damascus, and John Cyparissiota, he is unwilling to deny bluntly that the Catecheses for the Illuminati are in large part Cyril’s; however, he does not doubt at all that some things in them have been removed and others stitched on: their arguments for which I shall reveal below. But when, ignorant that the five mystagogic catecheses were confirmed by similar testimonies of the ancients who cited them, he absolutely adjudges them away from Cyril, to attribute them rather to a certain John of Jerusalem. For the rest, he holds it for certain—and says that the very thing speaks for itself—that they are not pure from the corruption of interpolators. Albertinus acquiesces entirely in this judgment. For a long time now, that opinion of both critics, and of those who followed this authority, has been rejected and exploded, even by those who embraced the same parties and the same communion. For which reason it would perhaps be better for us to abstain from a controversy that at this time no longer exists. Yet, so that it might not later enter anyone’s mind to revive that obsolete and hissed-down opinion, I have decided that the truth and integrity of all the catecheses must be placed in such a light, in the judgment of learned men, that if anyone does not yet have the matter sufficiently explored, he might be ashamed even to have doubted such open truth. I begin with the first eighteen catecheses.

7. That Cyril of Jerusalem composed catecheses cannot be doubted, on account of the authority of Jerome, an author of the same age. That they are no others than ours is proven by a twofold argument. The first is taken from the external testimonies of the ancients, by which it is established that our catecheses existed as early as Cyril's own time, or at least in the times immediately following, and were attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem without doubt. The second is internal, and drawn from the catecheses themselves. Scarcely any of the catecheses are destitute of the testimony of the ancients. But some cite them under the name of the author, others merely compile and transcribe them, with the author’s name suppressed, or indicated only generally as the Holy Fathers. The second catechesis is praised with this title of “Cyril’s second catechesis,” and the designation of the words with which it begins, by the Sixth Ecumenical Council held in the year 787; the fourth is praised by Leontius, and before him by Theodoret, writing one hundred years after the said catecheses, with the designation of the “fourth catechesis on the ten dogmas,” and of the special title “on the generation from the Virgin,” which is prefixed to the words cited by Theodoret in the catechesis. The fifth is cited ^C in the catena on John; the sixth by Photius and Peter Siculus; the seventh by Anastasius, the author of the 153 Questions of the sixth or seventh century, by St. Maximus, and by Philip the Solitary; the ninth in the catena on John; the tenth by John Cyparissiota; the twelfth by John of Damascus; the thirteenth occurs multiple times in the catenas on Luke and on John; the eighteenth by the author of the Questions under the name of Athanasius, by Elias of Crete, and by Antonius Melissa. All of these praise our catecheses under the name of Cyril, and almost all under the name of the Jerusalemite. Only Elias of Crete [praises them] under the name of the Holy Fathers in general. Nor does less authority accrue to them from those who, with the author’s name unspoken, transcribe and compile his sentences. For it is thereby established that they existed in their time. St. Nilus, who lived for some time with Cyril, left almost no catechesis of his intact, from which he did not insert into his own epistles—sometimes even longer sentences word-for-word—such as from the pro-catechesis, cat. 2, 4, 7, 12, 16, 18. Rufinus, who spent a long time in Jerusalem and saw Cyril, translated many things from cat. 13, 14, 15, and 18 into his own exposition of the Creed. Basil also appears to have used Cyril’s sentences from the pro-catechesis, and Gregory Nazianzen from cat. 3. Proclus and Basil of Seleucia sometimes appear to compile the twelfth catechesis. Likewise, the author of the Caesarian Dialogues [appears to have used] the sixteenth catechesis; John of Damascus sprinkled into his books some sentences from cat. 4 and 15. From the fifteenth catechesis, the pseudo-Hippolytus took some things in his book *On the Consummation of the World and the Antichrist*. The ninth catechesis existed in some manuscripts in the tenth century, and indeed even in the eighth, under the name of a homily of St. Basil *On God the Incomprehensible*. I omit others, whom it is possible to find noted in the index.

8. But what is this great cloud of witnesses? One is enough. For if, from the authority of any ancient—for example, Theodoret or Rufinus—it is established that even one of our catecheses, such as the fourth or thirteenth, is Cyril’s, that a point is proved for all of them. So connected are they all with one another, and so do they conspire to the forming of one body of doctrine, that not even one can be torn away from the rest. The author himself warned of this, pro-catechesis n. 11: that from all the catecheses together, ^D as if from so many stones placed in order and cemented, one structure of Christian instruction is built, no part of which can be omitted or removed without danger to the whole edifice. For once one catechesis is torn away, or even some part of it, you have an imperfect and maimed [version of] what is proposed in the entire work: the instruction of the Christian candidate and the exposition of the Creed. This is the order of all the catecheses [XCVIII]—that the later ones always depend on the former, and the former encompass the expectation of the later; the subsequent catecheses are promised in the preceding ones, and in the subsequent ones the preceding are cited. The author promises in pro-catechesis n. 11 a full and complete exposition of our dogmas in the various catecheses

to be held throughout Lent. He promises too, in cat. 4, n. 3, and cat. 5, n. 12, a precise and diligent exposition of the individual chapters of the creed. But in cat. 18, n. 32, he testifies that he has completed and finished this as far as he is able in various catecheses. He cites the first, second, and third catecheses in cat. 18, n. 22, saying that he had spoken about baptism and penance in the earlier catecheses. Likewise, he cites the first and third in cat. 4, n. 32, and cat. 16, n. 30. He cites the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, twelfth, and perhaps also the following three in cat. 17, n. 2. Furthermore, in catech. 7, n. 1, he cites the sixth; in the eighth, n. 1, the seventh; he cites the tenth in catech. 11, n. 1, and in cat. 13, n. 9; the eleventh in cat. 12, n. 4, and cat. 13, n. 9. He refers to the twelfth in cat. 13, n. 9. He calls the thirteenth to mind in cat. 14, n. 1. He mentions it and the fourteenth in cat. 16, n. 4. In the sixteenth, n. 32, he promises the seventeenth, and in the seventeenth, n. 4, he cites and refers to the sixteenth in various places. From these things you understand that all the catecheses are the work of one hand: which the one purpose and scope of all of them would otherwise sufficiently prove, as well as the one method of teaching and speaking used in all, the same doctrine frequently inculcated and repeated, the same sentiments repeated often and in almost the same words, and the same manner of citing and interpreting the Scriptures. Therefore, since the catecheses are asserted to be Cyril’s by the authority of ancient and contemporary authors, it is proven and concluded that they all proceed from the same person.

9. I come to the second argument, which I include in two propositions. The first is that our catecheses were most certainly held in Jerusalem; the second, that the author wrote in the fourth century, indeed before the middle of the fourth century: at which age it is certain that Cyril was a presbyter of the Church of Jerusalem, and that he held the catecheses while still a young man, and, to speak with Jerome, in his youth. All the pages cry out that the catecheses were spoken in Jerusalem. He calls his listeners Jerusalemites in cat. 3, n. 7: *Recognize, O you Jerusalemites.* In cat. 12, n. 20: *As for the places, since you are a Jerusalemite, you have already known before, etc.;* in cat. 18, n. 34: *shine, O new Jerusalem.* When he discourses on the mysteries of the Christian religion, he does not omit what was done in Jerusalem, and from that he asserts the dignity of the city, or defends their truth from the sight of the places themselves. He reminds his listeners in cat. 3, n. 7, that Jerusalem received the first fruits of baptism when it approached the baptism of John: *For of all goods,* he says, *the prerogative is in Jerusalem.* In catech. 16, n. 4: *The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles at Pentecost, here in Jerusalem, for all the prerogatives among us are here.* And in cat. 17, n. 13: *When the days of Pentecost were fulfilled, here in this city of Jerusalem (for this also is our prerogative: and we speak not of those things which happened among others, but of the goods granted among us).* ^A Since it was Pentecost, etc. See also his catech. n. 16 and 38.

Regarding the holy Eucharist, in cat. 18, n. 33, he calls those mysteries taken from the altar—which, he says, received their beginning thence—instituted primarily in Jerusalem. Proving the truth of Christ’s advent in cat. 10, n. 19, he assumes as a witness the holy wood of the cross, which, he says, is seen among us to this day; the palm located in the valley, which provided branches to the children celebrating Christ with praise; the place of Gethsemane, still as it were pointing out Judas; and he adds: *This holy Golgotha, elevated above others, bears witness, showing itself as a conspicuous object; it testifies by the holy monument, and the stone which lies there until this day.* In cat. 13, n. 38, he repeats the same testimonies again, to which he adds new things; first of all the present desolation of the house of Caiaphas, and in n. 39, the praetorium of Pilate, *now reduced,* he says, *to a solitude.* He adds: *This holy Golgotha, towering over others, and making faith until the present day concerning how the rocks were cleft on account of Christ at that time.* He also calls the nearby monument and the stone lying near the monument a testimony. In the same cat., n. 22, he says that he is speaking about the trophies of the Lord on the thrice-holy Golgotha itself. *For others,* he says, *merely hear; we, however, both see and touch.* In n. 23, proving that the Lord was truly crucified, *You see,* he says, *the place of Golgotha.* An acclamation of the assenting audience followed. In cat. 14, n. 22, he again calls the rock of the monument, and the stone conspicuous to this present day, and the very church of the Resurrection itself, in which he was speaking, built by Constantine, a testimony to the true resurrection of Christ. For other places, see cat. 4, nn. 10 and 12. He cites the Mount of Olives ^C as a witness to the ascension in cat. 14, n. 23: *You have many witnesses. You have this very place of the resurrection; you have the place of the ascension situated for us to the East.* He also bids his listeners contemplate the Mount of Olives from the city itself in cat. 12, n. 11. He also describes the desolation of Sion, a place subdued by the plow and filled with cucumber patches, as if a witness before witnesses in cat. 16, n. 18. He testifies in cat. 7, n. 6, and cat. 10, n. 11, that he is holding his prayer from the region and in the sight of the Jerusalem temple. He ^D calls James, the brother of the Lord, the first bishop of the church of which he was a member, in cat. 4, n. 28, and cat. 14, n. 21, and calls the former deacons the firstborn children of this once-barren Church. He was speaking on Mount Golgotha itself, as he himself testifies in cat. 4, nn. 10 and 14; cat. 10, n. 49; cat. 13, nn. 4, 22, 39; cat. 16, n. 4; in the church of the Resurrection built at the very place of the sepulcher, in cat. 14, n. 9; built and magnificently adorned by Constantine and his sons, ibid., nn. 56, 22, and 14. Indeed, he says that he will hold his mystagogical catecheses in the chapel of the Resurrection itself in cat. 18, n. 33. So that from all these facts it is certain that our catecheses are by a Jerusalemite author.

10. It is now not difficult to demonstrate the antiquity of the catecheses, which cannot be more recent than the middle of the fourth century. There are many proofs of this antiquity.

^A Arguments taken from the catecheses themselves. First, the author, from the age of Isaiah to his own, did not yet count a full and exact thousand years; for he says in cat. 16, num. 18, that Isaiah lived nearly a thousand years before. In fact, nearly one thousand and one hundred years had passed away; yet this error reveals even more the antiquity of the author. Cat. 16, num. 9, he counts two hundred years from the death of the apostles to Manes. But in cat. 6, num. 20, he puts seventy years at most from Manes to his own times, adding that in his time there were still alive those who had seen Manes with their own eyes. The year in which Manes appeared, as agreed by chronologists, is the year of Christ 277, to which, by adding the seventy years that had elapsed since then, you have the year in which the catecheses were spoken: the year of Christ 347. Second, he was writing with a fresh memory of the persecutions. Cat. 16, num. 8, referring to the infamous mysteries of the Montanists, stained with infanticide, he says: "Up to these recent times, when the persecution was raging, we labored under the suspicion of these crimes, because the Montanists were called by the common name of Christians along with us." There remained those who, during the persecutions, could have offered insult to Christ. Cat. 3, num. 15: "If any of you has crucified Christ with blasphemous words; if anyone has denied Him before men out of ignorance." And cat. 2, according to another copy, num. 19, p. 37: "If anyone is here among you from among the heathens, who has at some time spoken reproachfully against Christians, or has lain in wait for the holy Churches during the time of persecution." At that time, indeed, the Church was rejoicing in the peace that followed the completed persecutions and the honor shown by the princes, cat. 18, num. 27, but the fear of a renewed persecution had not yet rested, cat. 13, n. 23. "See that you do not deny Him at some time during a time of persecution. Do not rejoice in the cross only in a time of peace, but also hold the same faith in a time of persecution." Third, he said that not long after, through the piety of the emperors, the holy places were adorned and the city of Jerusalem enlarged. Cat. 12, n. 20, he says that a few years before, the place at Bethlehem had been overgrown with woods; for when the grove of Adonis—planted there by Hadrian—was cut down through the work of Helena, [He speaks of the interior cave, which served as a vestibule to the monument of Christ, for the sake of the easier decoration by Constantine, that monument was cleared and removed]. He was living under those emperors who had built the church of the Resurrection, cat. 14, n. 14: "The emperors of this time have built this holy church of the Resurrection in which we are." He attributes this building and decoration to a time after Constantine was already deceased, in num. 22. He speaks, therefore, in the cited place from num. 14, about the sons of Constantine, Constantius and Constans; and since Constans died at the beginning of the year 350, it is necessary that the catecheses were written before that time. He speaks, in cat. num. 16, of the baths recently built at Jerusalem, and cat. 14, num. 9, of the outer walls later added to the city. Fourth, at that time there stood grand ruins of the temple, not only of the outer ^B perimeter, but also of the inner building, in which were the cherubim, cat. 15, num. 15. But in Julian's time, in the year 363, at that time by the very hands of the Jews, and by fires descending from heaven, and by earthquakes, all the buildings that protruded from the ground were laid low and dissipated; such that Greg. Nyssenus in his time could say that the temple could no longer be recognized even by its vestiges: *τοῦ ναοῦ μὲν οὐδὲ ἐξ ἰχνῶν γινωσκομένου* (orat. catech. cap. 18, tom. III, p. 73). Fifth, there was a war [CI] in Mesopotamia between the Romans and the Persians, cat. 15, n. 6, which, as it persisted during almost the entire reign of Constantius and Julian, was ended in the year 363 by the death of the latter and the shameful but necessary treaty of Jovian.

11. Sixth, since the author accurately reviews all the heresies that had arisen concerning the subject he was treating, he enumerates none other than those older ones of the first, second, and third centuries, and in the Manichaean one, as the most recent of all, he is accustomed to conclude his review. See cat. 6, n. 20, and cat. 16, n. 9. He also mentions the Sabellians, and the Arians as if they were occupying almost the whole Church in his time, cat. 4, n. 8, cat. 15, n. 10, and in other places; which obviously fit very well into that earlier part of the fourth century: when, namely, the Church, being almost divided over the *consubstantial*, one party would alternately pursue the other with the accusation of a different and opposite heresy. He never calls the Arian heresy by name, but complains that it is taught and spreads covertly. Indeed, there were few professors of pure Arian heresy at that time, and they were hidden and ejected from the Church. But after the middle of the fourth century, they clearly raised their heads: and against them Cyril fought most gravely. He refutes their blasphemies everywhere. He is silent concerning the more subtle cavils invented by them not long after. Of the Arians and their opponents he speaks thus in cat. 15, n. 7, as if blame and fraternal hatred had attached to both. I do not think he would have spoken thus after his later dissensions with Acacius. Therefore, he spoke the catecheses before these times. He writes of the heresy of Marcellus as if it had recently arisen, cat. 15, n. 27, *προσφάτως ἀναφυεῖσα*. But this was first heard in the year 335. There is no mention of the Pneumatomachians or the Apollinarians, although, after they appeared, Cyril was most hostile to them. Seventh, he cites no authors except the ancients: Clement of Rome and Irenaeus. He also uses Justin, Archelaus, Eusebius of Caesarea: but you will find no one more recent than Eusebius either cited by him or compiled. Eighth, at the time when the said catecheses were given, the gifts of healings, prophecy, and miracles were common in the Church. The author testifies in more than one place that these gifts, in baptism, were accustomed to be given according to the measure of the faith and disposition of each person. See especially cat. 1, n. 5, in which he says that the remission of sins is given to all equally, but the communication of the Holy Spirit according to the proportion of the faith of each. "If you believe," he says, cat. 17, n. 36, "you will receive not only the remission of sins, but also..."

the magnificent graces of the spiritual gift of your King." Cat. 5, num. 11, having distinguished between a twofold faith—one of dogmas and another of miracles—he urges the auditor to provide by himself the former, which depends upon his assent, and to expect from God the latter, which aspires to things superior to human strength. Cat. 10, n. 13, he says that through the invocation of Christ, diseases are often cured. ^A Cat. 13, n. 40, he testifies that by the sign of the cross, diseases are healed in his time, demons are put to flight, and the impostures of sorceries and enchantments are overturned. Concerning the present power of this same sign to drive away demons, and the efficacy of exorcisms to that end, he speaks everywhere. See cat. 4, n. 13; cat. 13, nos. 3, 36; cat. 16, n. 19. But these gifts were already rare at the end of the fourth century. Finally, other indications of antiquity shine forth in the Catecheses: the public worship of idols and the derision of the Christian religion by the Gentiles; the Lenten period constant at only 40 days, whereas at the beginning of the sixth century it consisted of seven weeks at Jerusalem; the ancient Creed expounded by Cyril, which by the end of the fifth century had already been changed into the Nicene or Constantinopolitan [Creed]; the priesthood attributed to Christ from eternity; the asserted subjection of the Son to the Father, even according to his divinity—which is scarcely heard of among Catholic writers after the middle of the fourth century; the omission of the terms *consubstantial*, *hypostasis*, *person*, and the like, which were already common at that time and are absent from no theological work after the fourth century. From these arguments, and especially from those mentioned in the first, second, third, and sixth places, I think it is amply demonstrated that the Catecheses were written before the year 350; in what precise year they were to be consigned, we shall discuss in the fifth chapter. Meanwhile, it must be explored what Rivetus brings forward order to remove the Catecheses from Cyril or to declare them corrupted. ^B

[He was] not less than thirty years of age in 347 or 348, when he was delivering the catecheses; at which age his successor, John, was elevated to the episcopate, as Jerome testifies (ep. 61, now 38). Who will wonder that the care of holding catecheses was entrusted to him as a presbyter, when in the second or at most the third year after, the episcopate of the city was committed to him? He became bishop in the year 350 or 351. Could he not take on the care of catecheses in the year 348? Rivetus says, secondly, that Cyril composed the catecheses, Jerome being the witness; but that ours were pronounced extemporaneously and taken down from the mouth of the speaker—which, however, he persuades himself with difficulty regarding a young man. To be sure, if we listen to Rivetus, we will deny that Cicero composed the Catilinarian orations because he poured them out extemporaneously. Be that as it may, even if one cannot say that a speech is "composed" which is extemporaneous and delivered without any premeditation, was it not permitted for Jerome to be unaware that the catecheses of Cyril had been spoken extemporaneously? But who assured Rivetus that Cyril either pronounced his catecheses without any premeditation, or had not beforehand reflected upon and ordered what was to be said? Or that those which he poured forth without writing, he did not afterwards arrange and commit to letters? Thirdly, he finally says that in a manuscript codex of the Augustan Library, the 18 catecheses *for the illuminands* and the five *mystagogical* [catecheses] are attributed to a certain John of Jerusalem. I marvel at his negligence in this matter, lest I accuse him of bad faith. In that codex, the catecheses of the illuminands are attributed to no one, neither to John nor to Cyril, but Marcus Welserus placed an inscription by his own authority: *Catechetical Instructions of the Bishop of Jerusalem*, who I think is Cyril. ^C Perhaps from the Greek codex he took the words "Catechetical Instructions of the Bishop of Jerusalem," although he does not transcribe the Greek words. In truth, the *mystagogical* ones in that book are attributed to John, but of these [we shall speak] below.

12. He could bring forward nothing lighter or more futile. First, he persuades himself with difficulty that the public instruction of catechumens in those times had been committed to a young man. Yet Jerome, who was closer to that age and far more trustworthy than Rivetus, affirms it. Indeed, Rivetus himself says that not a few things are found in the catecheses which seem to have proceeded from a young man, having been written carelessly and lacking that firmness of judgment which we observe in the writings of those who are older. I confess that I find nothing of the sort; but Rivetus slays himself with his own sword while he denies that the care of the catecheses was committed to the young Cyril, and [yet] says that his Catecheses preserve the traces of a young man. In the usage of Jerome, "a young man" not infrequently signifies a man of thirty years and more. Since Cyril has seen and observed the pristine state of the holy places before their purgation, ^D [was he not...]

13. Nor was Rivetus any more successful in attacking the integrity of the Catecheses. He trusts that he has discovered many interpolations in them, which he estimates not by the omission of manuscript codices, or by dissimilarity of style, or by comparison with the true and certain opinions of Cyril, or by other critical arguments, but from his own prejudiced opinions, which he supposes Cyril would not have dared to injure, and from that single argument that, with the removal of those sentences which he would wish had not been written, the sense of the author and the sequence of the context remain intact. O admirable license, and miserable ignorance of argumentation! If such a method holds, it will be permissible to repudiate at will all parentheses, more ample declarations and confirmations of the same sentence, etc., in the name of interpolations, and to tear apart the writings of the ancients most impudently. But let us briefly weigh the examples of interpolations proposed by him. The first is from cat. 12, n. 25, in which place Cyril proves that it was fitting for Jesus to be born of a virgin, since those who perform the priesthood in His law in an excellent manner, abstain from a woman. If he had attended to that statement well, he would surely have spared the sentence, which, even though it supports the common custom of priestly continence...

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^A...signifies, however, that it was not entirely free from objections. He would have spared, in the same Catechesis, n. 33, the sentiment, had he understood it, and had he seen that it contained nothing regarding the cult and veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But deceived by a poor interpretation, and himself affixing a sense to the Cyrillian words that was utterly absurd, he rightly denied that they were Cyrillian, just as he conceived them out of ignorance. He also attacks in one assault three sentiments, or rather the same sentiment repeated three times, in Catechesis 4, n. 10; Catechesis 10, n. 19; and Catechesis 13, n. 4, concerning the wood of the Cross shown at Jerusalem and preserved to the present day. First, that the discovery and finding of the Cross under Constantine is fabulous. Second, that the words "to the present day" are wont to be spoken of a longer span of time, not of the shorter one of about twenty years which elapsed from the discovery of the Cross to the time of Cyril. He attacks the truth of the discovered Cross by the mere silence of Eusebius; yet far outweighing this is the testimony of Cyril, a contemporary and necessary author, repeated in three different places, and further confirmed by him in his letter to Constantius, n. 3, [CV]. I deny, however, that the words "to the present day" declare a long delay of time, those words being applied by the holy Evangelist Matthew (xxvii, 8) to a span of at most ten years, and by Cyril himself in Catechesis 17, n. 10, to a span certainly not great, which had elapsed since the conversion of the emperors to the Christian religion. But that which utterly cuts and solves the knot is this: what Cyril says concerning the preserved Cross, he says also concerning the stone of the monument shown until his own age, in Catechesis 10, n. 19; Catechesis 13, n. 39; and Catechesis 14, n. 22, where he uses the same words, "to the present day." And yet the Cross was discovered and the stone with the sacred monument was exposed at one and the same time. Although it is to be judged that he intended the span of time in both places to reckon not from the epoch of the Cross's discovery and the stone's exposure, but from the very time of the Passion and Burial, down to the present day. Finally, Rivetus counts as an addition that which Cyril says in Catechesis 18, n. 16, concerning the power inherent in the bodies and bones of the holy dead, nay, even in their tokens while alive, for the working of miracles; which Rivetus thinks contrary to the very doctrine of Cyril in Catechesis 17, n. 30, where he refers the efficacy of these sacred tokens to the present power of the Holy Spirit: just as if he denies that in Catechesis 18. One passage should have been explained by the other, not one condemned by the other.

14. But I wish to deal liberally with Rivetus, and I confess that the writings of Cyril have been corrupted by some additions. The Procatechesis and the ninth Catechesis are found in some manuscripts under the name of St. Basil with notable variations and additions. The same manuscripts present a double version of the second Catechesis: and both are not a little different from each other. In Catechesis 16, n. 3, a large addition is read in the Coislinian codex; and another is read in the same Catechesis in various manuscripts, n. 23. The word *ὁμοού...* ^B or *ὁμοούσιον* has crept into various exemplars in Catechesis 4, n. 7; Catechesis 16, n. 3 and 23; and Catechesis 17, n. 32 and 34. Likewise, differing readings in several manuscripts seem to have been changed deliberately, in Catechesis 4, n. 16; Catechesis 11, n. 5 and 20; and Catechesis 17, n. 5, since unskilled scribes either seemed to recede from the Catholic sense, or not to express it with sufficient clarity. But what ancient book is immune from this injury of time? There is no lack of certain arguments, both from the authority of more sincere manuscripts and from the rules of critical art, by which additions may be discerned. In sum, doubt and suspicion will remain in very few sentences; which cannot take away the authority of the whole work, which is approved by testimonies of every kind, unless we wish to strip all books and ancient instruments of all their credit.

CAPUT III. The Mystagogic Catecheses are also asserted to be Cyril’s; and their integrity is vindicated.

15. That some speak timidly and doubtingly of the catecheses for the illuminandi, they speak with almost certain confidence of the mystagogic ones, that they are—Robert Cocus, Andreas Rivetus, Edm. Albertinus—supposititious under the name of Cyril: and they trust that it must be granted to them entirely that they should be conceded to be Cyril’s, while generously acknowledging to the Catholics that they are at least corrupted by notable additions. I shall attempt to overthrow this opinion of theirs with a triple argument. The first, from the testimonies of the ancients; the second, from Cyril himself; the third, I shall take from the catecheses themselves. The cause of our adversaries' confidence was that testimonies of the ancients had not yet been produced in favor of the mystagogic catecheses. It was discovered later that they were praised by ancient authors under the name of Cyril. Eustratius, who lived in the age of Justinian, two hundred years after Cyril, recites a long piece of testimony from Catechesis 23. Anastasius, an author of the sixth or seventh century, praises the nineteenth. Nico the monk, a writer of the tenth century, uses the testimony of Catechesis 23 in his manuscript *Pandect*. The author of an unpublished booklet on the divine mysteries brings forth many testimonies from Catecheses 22 and 23. And it is wonderful that Eustratius, Nico, and the author of the aforementioned booklet cite only those [passages] which our adversaries produce as the most certain examples of additions.

16. But let us grant that Cyril himself is the asserter and vindicator of his own work. For both in the catecheses for the illuminandi he promises that he will hold mystagogic ones, and in the mystagogic ones he confesses himself to be the author of the catecheses for the illuminandi. In Catechesis 18, n. 33, he confesses that he will deliver the individual mystagogic ones, having mentioned the subject of each, in the very place of the holy Resurrection: they were in fact delivered there, as is evident from Catechesis 20, nn. 7 and 4, where he makes mention of the Lord's monument as if set before them. Rivetus thinks he has destroyed the force of this argument by asserting that this whole passage in Catechesis 18 is an interpolation. Which indeed, being otherwise worthy of no response, we refute abundantly in the admonition to Catechesis 18, n. 9. Furthermore, Cyril in Catechesis 13, n. 19, promises a catechesis which would treat of the Eucharist, in

^A which he intended to explain how Christ bore the figure of bread in the Eucharist: this was accomplished in Catechesis 22, n. 3. He likewise, in Catechesis 16, n. 26, promises the twenty-first; while he says that he would explain to the hearers in their own time how the grace of the Holy Spirit was to come upon them: which is the entire subject matter of the twenty-second catechesis. But in Catechesis 19 he professes to be the author of the previous catecheses, n. 9. For having recited the shorter Creed, which was pronounced after the renunciations in the Jerusalem Church; and which contained the confession of the three persons of the Trinity and of one baptism of repentance; he subjoins: "Concerning which, in the previous catecheses, as divine grace granted, we have spoken to you more at length." It is the same author and the same hearers of both sets of catecheses. In the last of all, Catechesis 23, n. 1, he says that on that day he was about to put the finishing touch upon the spiritual edifice of the instruction of the hearers; which, to restrict and conclude solely to the mystagogical catecheses, would seem too narrow and restricted. Moreover, if it is established that one of the mystagogical catecheses is by Cyril, it is proven at once that he is the author of them all. They are joined and bound together with one another, and form a single body of Christian doctrine concerning the three sacraments. In the nineteenth, n. 11, the twentieth and those following are promised; in [CVI] the twentieth, n. 1, refers back to the nineteenth. In the twenty-third, n. 1, all those preceding are cited. Wherefore, if it is established by the authority of this, of Eustratius, of Nicon, etc., that they belong to our Cyril, then all are asserted by the same act to belong to one author. It must be added that the mystagogical catecheses and the catecheses for the illuminandi conspire toward one single goal of Christian instruction, so that they cannot be separated from one another.

11. ^B You have others, Cat. 21, n. 7; Cat. 22, n. 7 and 8, and at the same place he explains the formula of renunciations, Cat. 19, n. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Thirdly, the headings of doctrine singular to Cyril, or the singular methods of explaining and establishing an otherwise common doctrine, are the same in both. He attributes to the baptism of John the power of remitting sins, Cat. 3, n. 7, yet so that it did not confer the Holy Spirit, ibid. n. 9, and Cat. 17, n. 8. He repeats both in Cat. 20, n. 5. He says that foods offered to idols are rendered impure by the invocation of demons, in almost the same words, both in Cat. 3, n. 3, and Cat. 19, n. 7. He repeats the power of baptismal water to effect holiness, Cat. 3, n. 3, from the invocation of the Trinity. He delivers the same, Cat. 20, n. 3, regarding the exorcized oil; Cat. 21, n. 3, regarding the holy chrism; and likewise regarding the eucharistic bread and wine changed by invocation into the body and blood of Christ. In which place, the use of similar comparisons in both catecheses is to be noted. For just as Cat. 3, n. 3, explains by the example of foods which are made impure by the invocation of demons how simple water becomes capable of effecting holiness through the prayers of the Church, so Cat. 19, n. 7 proves that the aforementioned foods are rendered impure by the invocation of demons by the example of the eucharistic change: and again by the same example he asserts that the power of the Holy Spirit is conferred upon the holy chrism through the prayers of the Church. Cat. 3, n. 5, observes that Aaron was first washed before he was consecrated a priest by anointing [CVII]. The same observation ^C Cat. 21, n. 6. He says in Cat. 18, n. 33, that the anointing of the chrism makes us consecrated in the manner of priests, which he confirms in the recently cited place, Cat. 21; and when he says that we have justly obtained the appellation of "christs" from this anointing, ibid. n. 5, he confirms the doctrine which he had asserted in Cat. 10, n. 11 and 14, that the Lord was called Christ from [His] priesthood. He teaches that the Holy Spirit was given to the humanity of Christ, so that it might exuberate from Him unto us, Cat. 17, n. 9; the same doctrine is in Cat. 21, n. 6. He says that before the reception of baptism and anointing we were not yet properly worthy of the name of Christians, Cat. 21, n. 5; thus he reports in the Procatechesis, n. 15, that the hearers would receive the appellation of Christ at the time of baptism. He affirms that before either sacrament they were not yet fit for the warfare of Christ, nor sufficiently prepared for the struggle with the devil, Cat. 5, n. 13, and Cat. 17, n. 36. He hands down the same in Cat. 21, n. 4, which he confirms in both places by the example of Christ, who was baptized and received the Holy Spirit before He engaged in the struggle with the devil. He calls the anointing of the chrism a spiritual amulet of body and soul, Cat. 21, n. 7. See similar things in Cat. 17, n. 37. I omit many other similar things regarding the power of exorcisms to burn and put to flight demons, Procat. n. 9, Cat. 16, n. 19, and Cat. 20, n. 3. Regarding the pomps of Satan and various superstitions, Cat. 4, n. 37, and Cat. 19, n. 6, 8. Regarding foods offered to idols, Cat. 3, n. 3, and Cat. 4, n. 28, and Cat. 19, n. 7. Regarding the burial of Christ, which he calls the planting of the true vine, Cat. 13, n. 35, and Cat. 14, n. 11, as also Cat. 20, n. 7. Fourthly, there exist many things which prove the same author for both sets of catecheses. First, the method of teaching and discussing is the same in both catecheses: he first places a text of Scripture as a theme, the commemoration of which he does not fail to interweave in the catechesis given the occasion. Furthermore, just as in the catecheses for the illuminandi he explains the words of the Creed or the individual parts of the mysteries of Christ part by part, so in the mystagogical [catecheses], he explains the individual sacred ceremonies in the order in which they were performed, with their respective causes and reasons assigned. In both, he asserts and proves individual chapters from the Old Testament; and when clear testimonies are lacking, he recurs to types and figures. Finally, he concludes both similarly with a brief moral exhortation, a vote and favorable desire, and a very similar glorification of the Holy Trinity or of Christ. Second, the manner of alleging and explaining Scripture is the same in both. It is peculiar to Cyril to bring forward sometimes lengthier testimonies; and to explain them in the manner of a paraphrase; by subjoining to each statement a brief exposition, as if by parenthesis, through which he interrupts the words of Scripture and speaks in the midst of them. Examples are obvious in the catecheses of the illuminandi; in the mystagogical [catecheses]

^A there is the same simplicity of style in everything, the same color of oration, no figures, exclamations, antitheses, or apostrophes, and similar locutions appear throughout; I will give a few examples. Cat. 19, no. 2, calls the vestibule of the baptistery *propylaeon tou baptisteriou oikon*; procat. no. 1, *propylia ton basileion*. Cat. 19, n. 8, regarding the devil embracing those subject to him, *hos oikeion periepontos*; and cat. 1, n. 3, regarding the angels protecting the just, *hoi de periepousin hos oikeioi*. Cat. 19, n. 1, regarding the ceremonies of baptism, and the gifts received at that time, he says *ten emphasin ten pros hymas gegenemenen*, and procat. n. 15, *labete energeian theion pragmaton*. Concerning the Eucharist cat. 22, n. 5, *en typo artou didotai soi to soma*; cat. 13, n. 19, *to soma autou typon eheren artou*; cat. 23, n. 22, *ou pollo mallon asphalesteron*. The same locution occurs throughout the earlier catecheses: cat. 12, n. 28, *poion mallon esti dyskoloteron*; cat. 4, n. 30, *ou pollo mallon kai eukōloteron*. He calls demons cat. 20, num. 3, Evil virtues, *tou Ponērou dynameis*; cat. 17, n. 30, Evil spirits, *ta tou Ponērou pneumata*; cat. 20, n. 2, adverse virtues, *hai antikeimenai dynameis*. The devil, however, cat. 15, n. 22, as the adversary power, *dynamis enantia*. He calls the devil and demons cat. 20, n. 3, *antikeimenēn energeian*, and procat. n. 10, *tas antikeimenas energeias*. I could collect many other locutions familiar to Cyril, which occur in both sets of catecheses. With these I think it is abundantly proven that he is the author of both sets of catecheses: now we must weigh what the adversaries object.

18. The argument of Palma Coccius, Rivetus, and Albertinus is drawn from the Augustan codex, which attributes the five mystagogical catecheses not to Cyril, [CVIII] but to John, bishop of Jerusalem. To these I also liberally add that in the Ottobonian codex they are adjudged to both, to Cyril and to John. But what is the authority of one or another codex against the consensus of all the others, and the suffrage of ancient ^B authors, and the arguments drawn from the thing itself? And yet, firstly, it is established from this that our catecheses are not by an unknown author, but by some bishop of Jerusalem. Although otherwise it is sufficiently certain from the catecheses themselves that they were delivered at Jerusalem: both from the express assertion of the author, cat. 20, n. 7, testifying that Christ was buried in the very place where he was speaking, *enthade pephyteutai he ampelos he alethine*, and pointing out the Lord’s monument set before them, ibid. num. 4, *apo staurou epi to prokeimenon mnema*; and from these words of the shorter symbol, cat. 19, num. 9, *Et in unum baptisma poenitentiae*; which is the proper enunciation of this article for the Church of Jerusalem. Secondly, since ^C there were several prelates at Jerusalem named John, our catecheses cannot be attributed to any one of the later ones; but rather either to John I, the successor of our Cyril, or to John II who sat after Elias in the year 514 before Peter; for the third John, who lived toward the end of that century, being later than Eustratius, cannot be the author of the work cited by Eustratius.

A. Lest they be attributed to John II, the first obstacle is the simplicity of the liturgy described in the 23rd catechesis, which it is certain had become much more ample and prolix by the sixth century. In the commemoration of the dead, n. 9, there is mention only of bishops; the names of archbishops and patriarchs had not yet been introduced into the liturgy. Also the public worship of idolatry, those assemblies and markets on the solemnities of idols, is an obstacle; or, as is read in some codices, in the temple and solemnities of the idols; and meats, breads, and other eatables suspended there; of which mention is made cat. 19, num. 7, for in the sixth century no traces of that thing remained. The same reasoning prevents the catecheses from being attributed to John, the immediate successor of Cyril. For it is rightly doubted whether the worshipers of idols would have dared such things after the year 386. Thirdly, that if we were to concede that this John was the author of these catecheses, their authority in our controversies would be no less, being of almost the same antiquity. But that the splendid work should be snatched away from Cyril, the authority of a single codex does not compel; on the contrary, the arguments brought forward by us above, which are ineluctable for there being a single author of all the catecheses, stand in the way.

19. There are other arguments of Rivetus, that the mystagogical [catecheses] are not cited by the ancients. That is false and ignorantly asserted, as we have shown by producing the testimony of the ancients: "That the catecheses of the illuminandi are as it were patches stitched together from various places of Scripture, and are verbose to the point of nausea even in unnecessary matters, while the mystagogical are brief in difficult, great, and not so commonly known matters; destitute of Scriptural testimonies in most of their assertions; and if they ever use them, it is mostly done ridiculously." I say nothing about the prolixity of the former catecheses: almost each of which contains a subject matter that has often been treated and expounded by holy Fathers in many books and large volumes, although [CIX] there exist many shorter than any mystagogical one, cat. 1 and 8, not to mention the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth, which are not more prolix than the twenty-third. Cyril, according to the richness and abundance of the matter to be treated, and the measure of the time given, would sometimes produce the oration, sometimes contract it. He treats the subject of each mystagogical [catechesis] most sufficiently, and so that nothing is lacking; nor would you see the treatises of other Fathers on the same subject to be much more ^D abundant. But he was compelled by the shortness of time, delivering it after the synaxis and the whole people dismissed, at the hour of dinner, cat. 18, n. 33. He used collected testimonies of the Scriptures where the matter demanded; and there are many catecheses for the illuminandi in which fewer [Scriptural testimonies] are found than in the mystagogical ones: the procatechesis, the first, fourth, ninth, etc. In the mystagogical [catecheses] he had to treat certain secret rites taught by the apostles to the Church without writing; which Basil, book De Spiritu sancto, cap. 27, teaches are kept by tradition alone without writing. Although Cyril, retaining his own custom, continues the Old Testament and the prophets

[Beginning of PG 33, 141]

...[as] formerly obtained in previous editions, I consider suspect. But that disturbance no longer exists, having been removed by the authority of the manuscripts that we have used. Regarding those matters contained in the two following numbers, he is completely silent, and brings forward no reason whatsoever for attacking them. It is ill done that, out of the mystagogical catecheses, almost only that which Rivetus pronounces to be an interpolation is brought forward by ancient authors under the name of Cyril as testimony. Yet, if those things which displeased Rivetus are removed, a principal part of the ecclesiastical liturgy is lopped off; a part which has never been omitted in any Church at any time. I make nothing of the suspicion of corruption which Albertinus casts, from the fact that in an unpublished treatise on the divine mysteries, some things are presented as lopped off and abbreviated, along with many variations. For who among recent Greeks, in compiling catenae and pandects, or in citing the ancients otherwise, is ignorant of a habit of lopping off testimonies at will, in order to seize upon that one thing of which they have need for their present argument? Not to mention the incompetence which perhaps may be detected in the scribe of this little work, and in the author himself, such that you cannot reach the sense of his discourse even by guessing. We would certainly deserve ill of all writers if we were to amend their works on the faith of such scribes.

CAPUT IV. On the name of catechesis and its various significations: and on diverse catecheses. On the double genre of the Cyrillian catecheses, and their inscriptions, and titles, and the Scripture readings indicated in the title.

21. The name of catechesis is almost unused by the Latins, yet no one is ignorant that it is Greek; because it is derived from the word ἦχος, sound, and κατηχέω, I resound, and properly signifies a sound insinuated into the ears; and it is accommodated to any instruction given to the mind through the ears. Thus Paul in 1 Cor. xiv, 19: "In the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might teach others (ἵνα καὶ ἄλλους κατηχήσω), than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." The discourse was concerning any speech prepared for edification. In the same sense, Theodore the Studite inscribed his moral exhortations to the monks subject to his care with the name [CXI] of catecheses. Thus the name of catechist can be attributed to any teacher, as Jerome does in epist. 51, old ed. p. 32, when he says: "I had Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus as catechists in the Scriptures." In the letter of Clement to James, num. 13, Peter says that Clement, who was to succeed him in the episcopacy, would catechize after him, μετ’ ἐμὲ κατηχεῖν μέλλοντα. Cyril in the procat. n. 6, playing on the derivatives of the verb ἠχέω, refers the words κατηχεῖσθαι and περιηχεῖσθαι to the hearing of an exterior sound, interpreting the word ἐνηχεῖσθαι regarding the interior sound which the Holy Spirit pours into the mind. Less subtly, Gregory of Nyssa also attributes the word catechesis to the interior inspiration of the Holy Spirit, lib. II in Psalmos, cap. 10, pag. 323: "Ἐνεργεῖτο ἡ κατήχησις, ἡ κατὰ τὸ ἀπόῤῥητον τῇ ψυχῇ παρὰ τοῦ Πνεύ-

Πνεύ-^Aματος, Operabatur catechesis, a Spiritu sancto animæ secreto infusa." Just as, however, among profane authors catechesis is accustomed to designate that primary instruction by which the elements and rudiments of some science are handed down, so in ecclesiastical usage catechesis is taken to signify the primary instruction in sacred doctrine. Thus Paul, Gal. vi, 6: "Let him that is catechized in the word, communicate to him that catechizeth, in all good things." Clement of Alexandria, lib. V Strom., pag. 750, calls catechesis a certain milk, as if it were the first nourishment of the soul: "Γάλα μὲν ἡ κατήχησις, οἱονεὶ πρώτη ψυχῆς τροφή, νοηθήσεται." In this sense Pamphilus the martyr, in his exposition of the chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, Bibl. Coisl. cod. 23, calls those sermons of Peter to the Jews which are found in Acts xi, 14; iv, 8; x, 28, catecheses. And Cyril says that Paul, in Cat. 17, n. 26, catechized Rome: "Κατηχήσαντα δὲ καὶ τὴν βασιλίδα Ῥώμην." From catechesis come the "catechumens," who were imbued with the first precepts of Christian doctrine. Yet with Cyril and the Church of Jerusalem, catechesis had a wider application than the name "catechumen." For, to omit the fact that the instructions on the sacraments given to the neophytes after baptism are called catecheses by Cyril, the earlier catecheses are also said to have been for those who, having given their names for baptism, had, by a usage almost peculiar to the Church of Jerusalem, dropped the name of catechumens and were called the faithful.

^B 22. But as the lot or degree of those desiring to profess the Christian religion was twofold, so the catechesis was twofold. The first degree was that of the catechumens, in which alone the name of catechumens was retained at Jerusalem; it was for those who, whether of their own accord or led by the efforts and exhortations of clerics or other faithful—upon whom God had bestowed a special gift or zeal for this matter—declared their will to profess the Christian religion. The desire of these was long tested; and once tested, being initiated by the sign of the cross and by prayers, or by other ceremonies according to the diversity of places, they were reckoned under the name of catechumens; and since they were dismissed after the readings and sermons in the assembly, they had become accustomed to be called "hearers" in either Church. See Const. ap. lib. VI, cap. 5 and 12; Conc. Laod. can. 5: Cyril seems to allude to this appellation, procat. n. 6. Meanwhile, at the hands of the catechist, they were instructed. Sometimes those catechists were appointed to that office by duty; sometimes, with no one specifically designated, any of the faithful who was moved by personal zeal discharged that office. The name of the catechists is common among the ancients. In the false epistle of Clement to James, n. 13, the catechists are distinguished from bishops, priests, and deacons. In the same way in the Clementine homily 3, n. 71, it is said: "Honor the presbyters, the catechists, the deacons." In the Church of Alexandria there was a school of catecheses to which Pantaenus, Clement, Origen, and others succeeded. In the Church of Carthage, the lector Optatus was placed in charge of that office by Cyprian, as he testifies in these words in epist. 24 (Pamel., 29 Oxon.): "We have appointed Optatus among the lectors as a teacher of the hearers." The same post was held almost two hundred years later in this Church by that deacon Deogratias, who, having asked Augustine for the materials necessary to worthily perform his ministry, obtained from him the book *De catechizandis rudibus*. St. Gregory of Nyssa also wrote a catechetical discourse on the same subject for the utility and assistance of those catechizing. You see that, in the same Church, the office was entrusted at times to lectors, at times to deacons, at times to laymen, as was Origen. For to this, not a grade of order, but learning or a special gift was required. Certainly in some Churches no one seems to have been specifically appointed to that office. Cyril, mentioning this former catechesis in Cat. 15, num. 18, says: "If you have begotten anyone through catechesis, make him careful:" in this passage he addresses any one of the hearers. Elsewhere he invites them to struggle strenuously against the enemies of the Church, and even to preach the Gospel; and those who are able to win souls for Christ, let them labor at it solicitously. All of which does not exclude a man officially appointed to instruct the catechumens; but it seems to imply the special care left to each one, as his will allowed or as the occasion presented itself. Augustine mentions no one at Milan designated for this office and placed in charge of his conversion; no trace of such a catechist is observed at Rome: and the same can be said of many Churches. However that may be, besides the catechists, godfathers and godmothers were accustomed to inform the mind of these catechumens in the precepts of Christian doctrine. But to these catechumens, the inner dogmas of our religion were not revealed. Only the vanity of ethnic superstition and the absurdity of Gentile mythology and philosophy were proved. They were taught the moral precepts of the Gospel, as well as the general dogmas of our faith regarding the unity of God, judgment, and the general resurrection, along with the sacred history of both Testaments. Truly, Cyril denies that the mystery of the Trinity was declared to them, cat. 6, num. 29, and says that if a discourse on that matter ever occurs in the presence of catechumens, it is done in entirely veiled words. Therefore he takes extreme care, procat. n. 7, that those things which were heard in the catecheses not be divulged in the presence of catechumens. He also orders the Creed to be hidden from them with great religion, cat. 5, num. 12. Nevertheless, Gregory of Nazianzus, in oration 40, in which he invites catechumens to give their names and receive baptism without delay, explains to them at the end both the Trinity and the Creed, albeit in other words, in its entirety. I know that other exceptions to the common law could be brought forward. 24. The order of the catechumens was that of those who...

^A were to receive baptism at the coming Easter; they registered their names on various days, according to the custom of the place. To them were addressed the first eighteen catecheses of Cyril. Among the Latins, these were called *electi* and *competentes*, as if seeking baptism together; among the Greeks, they were called *phōtizomenoi* (those being enlightened), *baptizomenoi* (those being baptized), *mellontes phōtizesthai* (those about to be enlightened), *phōtisthēsomenoi* (those who will be enlightened); regarding which appellations I shall speak in the following numbers. They assumed these names while still retaining the name of catechumen. But in the Church of Jerusalem, by a singular usage, they laid aside the name of catechumen, and in its place they were called the faithful (*procat. num. 6, cat. 1, num. 4, cat. 5, num. 1, cat. 6, n. 29*). They were prepared for baptism by the confession of sins, fasts, prayers, and exorcisms. In the Latin Church, they underwent various scrutinies, in which, after the exorcisms, they were ordered to profess their renouncements; salt was placed in their mouths; their ears and nostrils were touched with saliva, etc. The addresses or catecheses delivered to them were of a triple kind: 1st, moral, by which they were exhorted not to receive baptism without sincere will and faith, and to prepare themselves for that grace with worthy labors of penance. Of this kind are the procatechesis and the first catechesis of St. Cyril, and the two catecheses of St. John Chrysostom *pros tous mellontas phōtizesthai* (to those about to be enlightened), which are found in the old edition, vol. I, orat. 60, p. 705, and 21, p. 235, which in the new edition are joined together in vol. II, pp. 224 and 254: the former was delivered thirty days before baptism, the latter ten days after. There are also many sermons of a similar argument for the *competentes* by Augustine. 2nd, the Creed was explained to those about to be baptized. We have few and almost no catecheses among the Greeks regarding the handing down of the Creed, but many sermons of the Latins on the same subject. 3rd, among the Latins, the Lord’s Prayer was handed down and explained in a separate sermon. But among the Greeks, there was no such custom; nor was the Lord’s Prayer heard until after baptism. I omit the brief explanation of the individual sacraments which took place on the very vigil of Easter, when those who were to be baptized were about to approach them. Cyril makes mention of these in *cat. 18, n. 32*, and we have certain sermons of Gaudentius of Brescia on that subject. But it must be admitted that in no Church was the care for the instruction of those to be baptized observed as diligently as in that of Jerusalem. Elsewhere, the Creed was commonly handed down in a single sermon, or at most in two during the end of Lent; only once does it occur that the explanation of the Creed is divided into three or four sermons. But in the Church of Jerusalem, the whole time of Lent is consumed in this business, and seventeen catecheses are attributed to it. We have no similar example in all of antiquity. I have found no work in which the entire instruction of the baptized is collected together and bound into one volume. There would be something closely related to the Cyrillian work if there had been preserved to posterity the work of which Gennadius testifies in his *Catalogus virorum illustrium*, cap. 23; he says, namely, that Niceas, bishop of the city of Rome (in the codex San-Germanensis, *pro Romanæ* it is read *Romacianæ*, and for *Niceas* it is written *Aneckitus*; and in the ms. Sangermanensis it is reported as *Romacianæ*) composed in simple and clear language six booklets of instruction for the *competentes* seeking baptism, in which the first contained how the *competentes* who desire to arrive at the grace of baptism ought to conduct themselves; the second dealt with the errors of heathendom; the third was on the faith of the one Majesty; the fourth against genethlialogy [astrology]; the fifth was about the Creed; the sixth was about the victim of the Paschal lamb. It is not our place here to inquire who that Niceas is, or Anechitus, or Anicetus, the bishop of the city of Rome or Romaciana. Only observe that the first book was similar in subject matter to the procatechesis and the first Cyrillian catechesis; the second and third to the sixth catechesis; the fourth to the places in the second, fourth, and ninth catecheses; the subject of the fifth is treated through almost the entire work of the catecheses; the sixth, however, was only to be read or pronounced on the very vigil of Easter: similar to some sermons of Gaudentius delivered on that night and to those instructions which Cyril promises he will give at the appropriate time (cat. 18, n. 32), while the sacrament of baptism and the following [rites] are administered to the hearers. Moreover, the instruction of those to be baptized was the proper care of the bishop or of a presbyter acting in his place; nor, as with the simpler catechumens, was it entrusted to those catechists of whom we spoke in the number above. We have almost no sermons for the *competentes* except those of the bishops. St. Ambrose testifies that he himself handed down the Creed to the *competentes*. Augustine used to do this himself after his episcopate, and before his episcopate [he did so] from the duty of speaking imposed upon him by the bishop in his place. In the Roman Church, the presbyter handed down the Creed, but the pontiff was not weighed down by the burden of affairs so as not to do it. At Constantinople, the patriarch from the pulpit on the day of *Parasceve* [Good Friday] proposed and explained the Creed to those to be baptized, as Theodore testifies (*Hist. pag. 563*). John, Cyril's successor, had catecheses, the same one [John] as in Jerome (*epist. 38, new edit.*). Chrysostom at Antioch had two homilies for those being illuminated. The whole burden of the sermons was placed upon him by Meletius and Flavian. For this same reason we judge that Cyril, while still a presbyter, was placed in charge of delivering catecheses and homilies to the people. This must also be said of Eusebius, who in his letter to his Caesareans, no. 2, proposing the Creed of his Church, says that he is announcing that faith which he believed and taught both in the presbyterium and in the episcopate. Therefore, the presbyter taught the Creed in such a way that the bishop also taught it. Rufinus, in his *Invective 1 against Jerome*, says of the deacon Eusebius, p. 262: “Another deacon, and at the same time a father to me, was a doctor of the Creed and the faith.” He indicates, I believe, a godfather and sponsor, who would explain the Creed and the faith to him in private instructions; this does not exclude the public and solemn instruction of the bishop, heard together with the other *competentes* in the assembly of the Church. 24. The catecheses of Cyril are double; ten and...

eight of the former are prepared for those who are about to receive baptism; five mystical ones [CXV] addressed to the neophytes, which discuss the three sacraments conferred together. The former are inscribed: *catecheses phōtizomenōn*, literally of those who are being illuminated. This is the surest designation for those to be baptized in Jerusalem; for Cyril addresses them by this name from the beginning of the procatechesis: "Already the scent of blessedness is upon you, O ^A *phōtizomenoi*," and not only there, but also in cat. 11, n. 9, and cat. 13, n. 21. The same term is used to designate those to be baptized in *Const. apost.* lib. VIII, cap. 7, 8, and 35; in the Council of Laodicea, can. 46 and 48; in the Trullan Council, can. 78; and finally in the *Euchologion*, p. 543. There is not one opinion on the force and power of this term. Thomas Millesius thinks it signifies the same as those who are imbued with knowledge, and there are not lacking probable reasons for thinking so; for this is the common meaning of the verb *phōtizein* in the LXX Bible, 4 Kings XII, 2, where it is said of the priest Jehoiada instructing and admonishing the boy-king Joas with his counsels and precepts, "the priest Jehoiada instructed (illuminated) him," and chap. XVII, v. 28, concerning the Samaritan priest sent to the Cutheans to teach them the law of the Lord, "he was instructing (illuminating) them how they should fear the Lord"; and in Ecclesiasticus XLV, 17, regarding Aaron: "The Lord gave him to teach Jacob His testimonies, and to illuminate Israel in His law." Hence the Fathers frequently use the verb *phōtizein* to mean "to instruct." See Cyril of Alexandria, lib. I in Joan. cap. IX, p. 73; the synopsis of Athanasius, n. 17, p. 145; Theodoret, in lib. II Paralip., p. 384. Cyril himself in this sense, cat. 18, n. 32, speaking of the necessary instruction to be given by him to those about to come to the mysteries, says: "Your soul being instructed (illuminated) through the word of teaching." Your soul being first illuminated by the word of doctrine. Still closer to our subject, St. Maximus on these words of pseudo-Dionysius *De coelesti hierarch.* c. 3, n. 2, "Since order... has it, p. 46: It is necessary for those coming [to baptism] to be illuminated by the knowledge of the divine Scriptures." And shortly after, on the words of the author "that some are to be illuminated," he says again: "Note that illumination precedes baptism," where he seems to allude to the name and state of the *phōtizomenoi*, who were being prepared for baptism by necessary instructions. But I would rather believe that Maximus was led to this manner of speaking by the ecclesiastical use of addressing those to be baptized by the name *phōtizomenoi*, rather than that this appellation itself was derived from the instruction given to those to be baptized. For it has always pleased me that *phōtizomenoi* here signifies those who are being baptized: a view in which very weighty reasons have confirmed me. First, that famous and universally used title of baptism, by which it is called *phōtismos* or illumination, attributed to it as an own and excellent name, as Nazianzus says at the beginning of oration 40, p. 638. Cyril follows the common use ^B of the word *illuminare* to mean "to baptize" throughout his work; see procatechesis n. 2, cat. 13, n. 21, cat. 18, n. 32. From that public use of this word, it came about that Cresconius, in *Breviarium* can. CLXXXIII, translated the word *phōtizomenoi* in the Laodicean canon 46 as "those who are being baptized"; and so the word is consecrated to signify baptism, such that Chrysostom, in *hom. 13 in Epist. ad Hebr.* p. 828, distinguishing the baptized [CXVI] and the catechumens, calls the former *phōtizomenoi*. "A good life," he says, "nothing better, both regarding those who are being illuminated, and those who are being catechized." Secondly, the same persons who are called *phōtizomenoi* were called by another name, *baptizomenoi* (those being baptized). In the *Const. apost.* they are addressed now by one name, now by the other, lib. VII, cap. 8, and lib. III, cap. 16. Facundus, lib. IX, c. 3, cites the book of Theodore of Mopsuestia *Ad baptizatos*; which in the 4th session of the Fifth Council is perpetually inscribed *Ad baptizandos*: it was, of course, *pros tous baptizomenous*. In our Cyril, in the title of cat. 1, instead of *phōtizomenōn*, it is reported in the Roe and Casaubon codices as *baptizomenōn*, and in the title of catechesis 7 Grodecius read *phōtizomenōn ē baptizomenōn*, when he translated it as "of the illuminated or of the baptized." What is more, Cyril himself, who calls his hearers by the term *phōtizomenōn*, also addresses them by the other, cat. 16, n. 26, "The grace, O you who are being baptized (*baptizomenon*), is about to reach you." To you also, who are being baptized (*baptizomenos*), the grace is to come. Thirdly, those who are called *phōtizomenoi* here are in Chrysostom, in the orations numbered 22 by us, called *hoi mellontes phōtizesthai*, those about to be illuminated. The author of the homily on the evangelical parable of those hired into the vineyard, found in the Works of Chrysostom, vol. VI, p. 559, distinguishing the baptized from those to be baptized, calls the former *pephōtismenous* (illuminated) and the latter *phōtisthēsomenous* (those to be illuminated). Finally, in the *Euchologion*, when those to be baptized are called *phōtizomenoi*, as if for the explanation of this word, pp. 195, 196, 343, 344, they are called *hoi pros to phōtisma eutrepizomenoi*, those who are prepared for illumination. From all of which it is evident that those to be baptized are called *illuminandi* from the baptism for which they were being instructed.

25. Someone might ask why they were called *phōtizomenoi* and *baptizomenoi* in the present tense. Perhaps no other reason needs to be sought than the common usage, not only in Holy Scripture and among the holy Fathers, but also among profane writers and in almost all languages, of using the present tense for the future. I know no author who makes freer use of this license than our Cyril; which fact has caused me no little trouble in translation. However, another cause can be brought forward, which might have even more weight in the Jerusalem Church: namely, as those to be baptized were regarded with the sure hope and expectation of baptism, as if they were already receiving it; or rather, their state, in which they were being purged by exorcisms, labors of penance, and other exercises of piety, and were being instructed in the communication of the more secret doctrines of the Christian religion, was looked upon as a certain anticipated baptism and a certain commencement of ^D baptism.

Certainly, Cyril addresses those about to be baptized in many places as if they were already tasting and receiving the blessings of baptism. He begins his first catechesis with these words: "Disciples of the New Testament, and partakers of the mysteries of Christ, now indeed by calling, but soon also by grace." He says in the Procatechesis, n. 1, that they were already inspired by the fragrance of the Holy Spirit; and in n. 6, that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes their mind the home of God; in n. 13, that they became children of the Church after they had given in their names; and in Catechesis 11, n. 9, that they were already being made children of God. "You are not yet," he says, "O you who are to be illuminated, now being made children of God, for you shall be made [CXVII] children of God." In Catechesis 13, n. 23, he says they were already receiving the remission of sins: "You now receive the remission of sins," etc., in which place, in my judgment, he uses the present tense for the future. Indeed, he says that their soul is being purified from sins through the exorcisms, Procatechesis, n. 9. Nay, even in Cat. 18, n. 26, he did not fear to call them already regenerated in the Church. Let us, therefore, cease to be surprised if, also in Cat. 12, n. 1, he seems to say that they are already feeding on the flesh of the sacrificed Christ; although I believe this was said only of the faithful. Finally, since in the Church of Jerusalem, the name of catechumens being dismissed, they were counted under the common name of the faithful with those who were baptized, as if they were joined with them in the participation of the same blessings, they were looked upon as those who were already beginning to be baptized. And that rationale proves very well and happily that it was done, in the Church of Jerusalem in the first instance, that the appelation of *phōtizomenoi* and *baptizomenoi* (those being illuminated and baptized) was given to those about to be baptized, being attributes not of the future but of the present tense: but that this rationale was foreseen and considered in the very sanctioning of the appellation, so that they might be called by that method rather than another, I very much doubt; and from the reasons I adduced in the previous number for reducing the voice of *phōtizomenoi* to its truer sense, I believe that in this case the present tense was simply put for the future.

26. The rationale for determining this Latin interpretation is now easy. First, the interpretation of "illuminated" by Grodecius, which has been retained in subsequent editions, must be entirely removed. For it deceives those who do not know Greek; because it corresponds not to the verb *phōtizomenoi* [illuminandis] of the present tense, but to the participle *pephōtismenoi* [illuminatis] of the past, and designates illumination that is past and completed, not present. Moreover, the force and use of the words *phōtizomenoi* and *baptizomenoi* are the same. But that it is alien to this place for *baptizomenoi* to be translated as "baptized" [baptizati], and to be spoken of those who are not yet baptized, no one fails to see. The same judgment applies to the other word of similar meaning. Finally, among the Latins, the word "illuminated" [illuminati] was the proper appellation of neophytes. Augustine, tom. V, serm. 120, n. 3, speaking of this: "Those men, the *albati*, the illuminated, hear your word through me: for being illuminated by your grace they stand before you." The poverty of the Latin language causes us to lack a passive participle of the present tense, nor can we render the words *phōtizomenoi* and *baptizomenoi* literally with one word. By using a circumlocution we can say ^A those who are being illuminated, or baptized; or as was observed neglectfully by the Bollandists, those beginning to be illuminated or baptized: which naming is most conformable to the other rationale brought forward by me in the previous number, why the Greek word was placed in the present rather than the future tense. But in an appellation of common use, a circumlocution was to be avoided, and one word had to be used, lest I say that that present tense must be reduced to the future. There remained, therefore, the word "those to be illuminated" [illuminandi], in which I have acquiesced. And I protect myself with the authority of the very accurate author Cotelier, who interpreted the word *phōtizomenoi* in the *Apostolic Constitutions*, book VII, c. 7, 8, and 35, in this way. It is clear from the authorities adduced in n. 24 that *phōtizomenoi* is the same as "those about to be illuminated" [mellontes phōtizesthai], "those to be illuminated" [phōtisthēsomenoi], "those being prepared for illumination" [pros to phōtisma eutrepizomenoi], [CXVIII] all of which are of the future tense. Jerome, commemorating certain words in his 38th letter of the letters given by John, successor of Cyril, to Theophilus, translates the Greek word which I think was from the usage of the Church of Jerusalem, *phōtizomenois* or *baptizomenois*, as "to those who are to be baptized" [iis qui baptizandi sunt]. But now, enough of the "to be illuminated."

27. Other catecheses of Cyril, after Pascha and during the night of baptism, of the sacred chrism, and of the sacraments of the Eucharist, were spoken to the neophytes, to explain the force and power of those mysteries which it was not lawful to declare except to the baptized. They were held on individual days of the Paschal week, beginning from Monday. Two catecheses explanatory of baptism were given, one of the chrism: two were left; the first of which explains the truth of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the other the order of the sacred liturgy. He seems to have promised a sixth catechesis in Cat. 18, n. 33, which would be entirely occupied with moral teachings on how life should be lived worthily in the future; but we do not have it. I believe it was an exhortation held on Paschal Saturday, when the white robes were laid aside: such as exist in great numbers among the Latins, and some still remain among the Greeks; which, since it contained no exposition of either dogmas or sacraments, the structure of twenty-three Christian instructions having been completed in the catecheses, as Cyril himself says at the beginning of Cat. 23, seems to have been omitted in the collection of catecheses. They are inscribed as *Mystagogical Catecheses*, as if they were bestowing a more secret knowledge of the mysteries or sacraments. Cyril calls them by the title of catecheses in Cat. 18, n. 33; but in the catecheses themselves, they are only accustomed to be designated by the name of *mystagogical*. Both appellations are cited by authors. We have many sermons of Latin Fathers of similar subject, fewer and almost none of the Greeks. There are those of Gaudentius of Brescia and several others to neophytes, sermons of Augustine and others to the "infants" [in-fantes] concerning the sacrament of the altar, and concerning the laying aside of white robes. In the Augustinian appendix there exist some sermons concerning the mystery of baptism spoken after Pascha, but there is no work like the Cyrillian, which

contains the entire initiation of the neophytes in order, clearly expounded, besides the book of St. Ambrose, *On the Mysteries*, and six books of the same author *On the Sacraments*; by which the discourses delivered on diverse days in succession are gathered into one volume.

28. To the individual catecheses, both those for the illuminands and the mystagogical ones, titles are prefixed at the beginning, containing the argument of the catechesis: along with the first words of that reading from Scripture, which the author previously had set before himself as a theme for the discourse, having been read in the assembly. Those titles, collected together, were reduced into an index, which in manuscripts is accustomed to be placed before the body of the catecheses. The procatechesis lacks both argument and reading; however, in some indices, this argument is affixed to it: περὶ τοῦ μὴ πειράσαι, *On not being tempted*. Catechesis 19 and 23 has no argument regarding the reading. In the argument, the words of the symbol, which are expounded in the subject catechesis, are accustomed to be recited. ^B Many have this one thing for an argument; in a few, the words of the symbol that are explained and the matter being treated are recited. This is almost peculiar to the sixth and the fifteenth catechesis: there are certain catecheses which, besides a greater and general argument, have peculiar and smaller titles, prefixed to the individual sections of the catechesis, and indicating their argument. This occurs almost only in the fourth catechesis, and in the sixth, in which there is only one minor title toward the middle of the catechesis, *On heresies*. The antiquity of those titles is the same as the catecheses, and they were placed by those who first transcribed the catecheses. For they are cited by the ancients, in the first place by Theodoret, who, in citing the fourth catechesis, mentions not only the general argument about the ten dogmas, but also the peculiar title of the section cited by him, *On the generation from the Virgin*. Furthermore, therein are contained the very words of the Hierosolymitan symbol, such as they are related by Cyril. ^C Then, however, the readings which they assign to each catechesis are truly those which had been read before the catechesis: which, as I shall say below, the transcribers could not have known, having been chosen according to the catechist’s whim, unless they themselves had heard them. But that those inscriptions are not Cyril’s own seems to be confirmed by two reasons: 1st, because the words of the symbol are sometimes related differently in those titles than by Cyril himself; 2nd, because the author himself, when about to organize his argument, seems to have been otherwise. For in some catecheses, to the general argument containing the scope of the whole catechesis, a peculiar argument is added, which is treated in the catechesis only incidentally and by occasion. The second catechesis is inscribed, *On repentance and the remission of sins*: this is the general and complete argument of the discourse. Yet there is added *and on the adversary*, namely, the devil; regarding which matter the author speaks only by occasion while inquiring into the causes of sin in numbers 3 and 4. The inscription of the sixth catechesis is *On the monarchy of God*, which is indeed, as Cyril himself witnesses in cat. 7, n. 1, the argument of this discourse; ^D and also *on heresies*. In truth, Cyril discourses at length on the heresies that had opposed the unity of God: but according to his usual custom, while he explains the individual heads of our doctrine, he simultaneously recounts the opposing heresies. For which reason, therefore, this title should have been ascribed to almost every individual catechesis for the same cause. Moreover, in the sixth catechesis Cyril does not attack only the heresies, but before them even the multiplied divinities of the pagans: it should have been said, therefore, *and of polytheism and heresies*. Finally, catech. 15 has for its argument the words of the symbol concerning Christ who is to come as judge, etc., by which the whole scope of the discourse is contained; nevertheless, there is added *and of the Antichrist*; which matter is treated by Cyril at length, in truth, but by occasion and with respect to the primary scope. Therefore, I do not believe those inscriptions were Cyril’s, but those of the scribes and notaries, who consigned to writing the catecheses taken from his mouth.

29. As far as the readings of Scripture are concerned, that they are optimally assigned in the inscriptions is confirmed by Cyril himself, who for the most part confirms them by his own testimony in the catechesis itself, and says that what is mentioned as read in the inscription had been read. [CXIX] The procatechesis alone does not have a reading prefixed at the beginning, although most certainly the sacred readings had preceded, as is apparent from n. 4, yet it did not have a proper reading: the cause of which thing I conjecture to be this, that on the Lord's day it was held for the dismissal of the illuminands, after the readings of the Old and New Testaments, read in order and explained in the public discourse, which certainly seemed to have sufficed. The readings from the catecheses are not taken from the accustomed order of readings to be had in the Church, but are selected at the discretion of the orator according to the quality of the argument to be treated. One locus of Cyril can confirm this, cat. 14, n. 24, where he says that it happened by divine providence that, when on the following day he was about to speak according to the order of the words of the symbol concerning the Ascension of the Lord, the reading in the Sunday synaxis, had from the order of annual readings, had afforded him the occasion and place to anticipate this argument. From which it follows that the other readings, which wonderfully fit the argument of each catechesis, were chosen outside the order of annual readings, and indeed no order of books is observed in these readings: sometimes from the prophets, sometimes from the apostle Paul, sometimes from Job, sometimes from the Catholic Epistles, they are not taken in any certain series; but all are accommodated to the argument of the matter to be spoken. Those readings do not seem to have been very long. Especially the shorter ones of the mystagogical catecheses. For since in the first three the beginning and end of the reading are assigned, the reading of the nineteenth catechesis is complete in six of our verses: that of the twentieth and twenty-first, in eight verses. The readings of the earlier catecheses are somewhat longer: for example, cat. 4, when in the title it is indicated that the reading is begun from the very beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is evident from the catechesis itself, not only the sixth verse, n. 4, but also

as the eighth and ninth, n. 15, to have been read. Before catechesis 13, the whole of Isaiah chapter 53, in which the prophecy of Christ's passion is contained, seems to have been read. From catechesis 15, n. 13 and 21, it is evident that almost the entire seventh chapter of Daniel was read. Likewise from cat. 18, num. 11 and 15, the whole of the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel. It is unnecessary to note that those readings were recited by a reader. ^A

CHAPTER V

30. There is no single opinion among the older or more recent authors concerning the year in which Cyril’s catecheses were delivered. The author of the chronological note subject to the list of catecheses published by us numbers the year from the advent of Christ, according to the Augustan codex, as 352; according to the Ottobonian and Grodecian codices, 332. How this author counts the years from Christ’s advent is uncertain. And so, the authority of this otherwise later writer is useless, both because of this and because of the variety of readings. Theophanes thinks these catecheses were delivered on the occasion of the cross seen in the heavens under Constantius, when many, moved by this miracle, sought baptism. The cross appeared [CXXXI] in the month of May in the year 351, and since the catecheses were delivered during Lent, on this hypothesis they should be referred to the year 352. The Bollandists, led by the authority of the chronological note read according to Grodecius’s version, and interpreting the years from the advent of Christ as years from his ascension, assign the catecheses to the year 364 or 365. Thomas Milles refers the catecheses to the year 350, on account of the Mesopotamian war (cat. 15, num. 6); Tillemont to the year 347, on account of the seventy years which Cyril mentions had elapsed since Manes (cat. 6, n. 20). I will not laboriously refute all these opinions. The opinion of Theophanes and the Bollandists has already been rejected, since we proved above in chapter 2, num. 10 and 11, that the age of the catecheses cannot be assigned later than the middle of the fourth century. Nor should we attribute them to the year 350, as we said that the death of Constans stands in the way, who was killed at the beginning of that year (Julian, Orat. 1, p. 47), which death was brought to Constantius, living in the East, during the winter. Moreover, Cyril spoke at that time when several emperors governed the Roman Republic simultaneously. For in cat. 23, num. 8, he says that in the liturgy the sacrifice is offered for the emperors, ^D *ὑπὲρ βασιλέων*, and those were the emperors who, with their father Constantine, had built and adorned the holy church of the Resurrection (cat. 14, n. 14). That they may not be thought older than the year 344, it is an obstacle that he says in cat. 10, n. 19, that Persians die for the name of Christ. But the Persian persecution began only in the year 344, according to the better method of calculation. Cyril in cat. 6, n. 20, counts 70 years from the beginning of Manes, which, added to the year 277, in which it is established that Manes first appeared in the Roman Empire, give the year ^A 347, in which Tillemont therefore acquiesces. I would not, however, believe that Cyril counted the years so precisely that it is not permissible for a year to drift one way or the other for us; wherefore I would believe that the catecheses were held rather in the year 348, for these reasons.

31. First, it seems that there was a mature Easter in the year when Cyril held the catecheses. For in catechesis 18, which most certainly was delivered on Holy Saturday, he speaks thus in number 7, as if still placed in the middle of winter, which certainly is wonderful in those southern parts. It is winter-time, he says, as you see: the trees now stand as if dead: for where indeed are the leaves of the fig tree now, where are the fruits of the vine? Nor had he spoken in almost any other way at the beginning of Lent, a full month earlier, cat. 4, n. 30. You see how the trees stand now for so many months without fruit and leaves. Therefore, Easter was not late in that year. And yet in the year 347, Easter fell on the twelfth of April: at which time it is absolutely incredible that the trees and figs in Palestine were still devoid of leaves; especially since otherwise the year was not marked by an extraordinary winter prolonged beyond its limits. For Cyril in cat. 14, n. 10, speaking a few days after the equinox, bids us observe the earth full of flowers and every herb just budding. If Easter had been a little later, the trees would have clothed themselves with foliage by that time. In the year 348, however, Easter was on the third of April; which is less inconsistent with those remnants of winter. Much less can we conjecture the catecheses into the year 349 [CXXXII], in which year Easter was celebrated on April 23. In the year 346, Easter was March 23, or, according to Victorius's table, the thirtieth of the same month. But when the fourteenth catechesis was being delivered, a few days had already passed by the equinox, and the Xanthicus month had begun; the beginning of which cannot be placed earlier than March 25. But if Easter in that year is placed on March 30, no other day could be assigned to catechesis 14, which was delivered on a Monday, num. 24, except the twenty-fourth of March, which was outside the Xanthicus. Concerning the year 345, in which Easter fell on the seventh of April, I say nothing; it can be refuted by the same reasoning as the year 347. And so, it seems one must settle on the year 348. Secondly, the war between the Romans and the Persians, mentioned in cat. 15, n. 6, fits better with the year 348. For very weighty authors assign the second siege of Nisibis to the year 346: furthermore, truces between the Romans and Persians followed this; having been violated not long after by the perfidy of the Persians, the war flared up again, and the battle at Singara was joined in the year 348 according to the Fasti of Idatius and the Chronicle of Jerome; although the authority of the Emperor Julian, Orat. 1, p. 47, is opposed, placing this battle six years before the death of Constans; but perhaps an error has crept into the numeral notation. However, we think Cyril talks about the preparation for war, which preceded the battle joined in the summer. For the battle of Singara is assigned to the year 347 con-

^A consigned to the tenth year of Constantius. But in some manuscripts, it is read as the ninth. Theophanes also places the siege of Nisibis before the eclipse, which occurred on the sixth of June, in the year 346. We judge, therefore, that there was no war in Mesopotamia in the year 347, the good faith of the truce, which was violated in the following year, being meanwhile kept. This argument especially targets Tillemont, who, since he places the resolution of the siege of Nisibis in the year 346, and the battle of Singara in 348, cannot defend his epoch for the catecheses of the year 347, which would necessarily have been delivered during the midst of a truce. Thirdly, Cyril mentions, in Catechesis 15, no. 7, the grave dissensions of bishops, clergy, and Churches, carried even to the shedding of blood by the fervor of the spirit; truly, I confess, there were turmoils in the Church before the year 347 for Cyril to be able to speak in such a way. But toward the end of this year, with the Council of Sardica having split into two parts, when the bishops of both sides had struck one another with mutual anathemas, there followed a still greater offense for the pious, and slaughter much more violent than before. That Cyril, ibid. no. 9, accuses both parties—the one of relegating Christ to the order of creatures, the other of asserting the paternity of the Son—could have afforded him the occasion to speak thus; the mutual accusations of the Sardican and Philippopolitan prelates in their synodal letters regarding this matter, and the defense of Marcellus undertaken with such great zeal by the Sardicans—whom [CXI II] Cyril held for a certain and proven heretic (cat. 15, no. 27)—could have caused him not to seem sufficiently fair to the better cause. For these reasons, I have decided that the year 348 should be preferred to any other epoch for the catecheses. Nevertheless, I leave it free for them to be assigned to the year 347.

32. That these catecheses were spoken during Lent almost every page proclaims. Although, at the beginning of the sixth century, it was established at Jerusalem that Lent consisted of seven weeks of fasting, as Peter, the bishop of this Church, bears witness in a fragment cited by Damascene at the end of his oration on the fasts (vol. 1, new ed., p. 504), which can also be said of the Alexandrian Church from other authorities brought forward by the same author; yet in the time of Cyril, both the Alexandrian and the Jerusalemite Churches used a Lent consisting of only six weeks and forty days, as we proved in the final note to the third catechesis. Eighteen catecheses occupied the entire Lent. Although we have said something regarding the days on which each were delivered in the notice prefixed to each, we judge that everything should be gathered here, augmented with new observations or rather conjectures. We think the Procatechesis was delivered on a Sunday; the character of the ecclesiastical assembly described in no. 4, which seems to fit only a major synaxis, persuades us of this. Beyond this, however, we do not think any were held on a Sunday: certainly no trace of this exists. On the other hand, Cyril seems to distinguish the catecheses from the synaxes as being altogether different actions; and he commends the study of both for the candidates for baptism (cat. 1, nos. 5 and 6, and the procat.). In the fourteenth catechesis, no. 24, he says that in the homily of the Lord's day, while he was speaking to everyone, he nevertheless adapted his discourse more specially to the progress and instruction of those to be baptized. What is said of this Sunday, I think, should be said of the others; in which he would not speak for the candidates for baptism otherwise than by intermixing with the prayer those things which he foresaw were useful for them. For the same reason, I think no catechesis was spoken on the Saturdays, since the fast was broken on these days and the liturgy was celebrated. The eighteenth catechesis was delivered on Holy Saturday, but that was the only Saturday of the whole year on which there was fasting; nor is there any note in the other catecheses by which it could be gathered that any was delivered on a Saturday. We place the first, second, third, and fourth catecheses in the first week, since he says in the fourth, no. 3, that between this catechesis and the baptism of the hearers, the interval of the entire Lent would intervene. The fifth catechesis is also perhaps to be included in the same week. The sixth, seventh, and eighth catecheses were delivered on the following days; and consequently are to be assigned to the second or third week of Lent. We have no note of the day which should be attributed to the ninth catechesis. Perhaps it alone should be adjudged to the third week. But the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth were declaimed on three continuous days, and therefore were to be assigned to the third or fourth week of Lent. A few days intervened between the thirteenth and fourteenth catechesis, from catech. 14, no. 1. The [CXXIV] thirteenth catechesis was perhaps the one delivered throughout the fifth week. We assign the fourteenth catechesis, which was held on the day after Sunday at the beginning of the month of Xanthicus, a few days after the vernal equinox, to the second day of Holy Week, following the epoch of the catecheses which we have set as the most probable of all. All the following ones are set until the eighteenth, which was most certainly spoken on Holy Saturday. There is no note as to which day the fifteenth and sixteenth catecheses were spoken. The seventeenth was held a few days before the feast of Easter, nos. 20 and 34. But if it displeases anyone that so many catecheses were concluded in one Holy Week, let him confer them, for all I care, to the year 347, and let him distribute all the catecheses from the fourteenth to the eighteenth among the final weeks of Lent. As far as the mystagogical ones are concerned, they were all pronounced in the Paschal week, from Monday to Friday, on which day the last was pronounced.

^A 33. Now, concerning the hours at which the catecheses were delivered, we must investigate whether they were given after the synaxis around midday (Cat. 18, num. 33). Regarding the catecheses for the illuminandi, the eighteenth was concluded in the morning hours toward the end of the sacred vigil. We believe the Procatechesis was spoken during the middle of the liturgy on the Lord’s Day; for the others which were delivered on weekdays, they were spoken toward evening. Though it is true that in Lent there were sometimes two sermons daily, one in the morning hours and one toward evening—as is evident from the homilies of Basil on the Hexaemeron and some of St. Chrysostom—the usual hour for the synaxis in almost all places was from the ninth hour until evening, or, as we are accustomed to count it, from the third hour after midday. Epiphanius, in his *Expositio fidei* (num. 22), says that the Lenten synaxes were accustomed to be celebrated from the ninth hour until evening. He was expressing the customs of Palestine and Cyprus. That John Chrysostom was accustomed to preach at Antioch during Lent in the afternoon hours is proven by his ninth and tenth homilies to the people of Antioch; at the beginning of these, he removes the vain superstition of those who, because they were not fasting due to some preceding infirmity, were afraid to come to the synaxis and hear the word of God after having eaten. Yet in the homily *De diabolo tentatore* (num. 1, new edit. tom. II, p. 261), he mentions a sermon given by himself two days prior in the morning hours to those about to be baptized, concerning the renunciation and pact with Christ: *“Indeed, we said to the mystagogues in the morning that we would discuss the renunciation and the commitment.”* In the same sermon earlier, he mentions that he was already giving a second sermon on that same day, and that he had also discoursed in the morning hours. And yet it was Lent. But some indications of a later hour occur in the Cyrillian catecheses. It is common for him to complain about the constraints of the hour and the little time left to him for speaking, as in Cat. 4, n. 20, and Cat. 13, n. 8, where in those places, from the very beginning of his speech, he repeats once and again that he is pressed by the limited time. Item 11. 22, Cat. 14, n. 27, Cat. 15, n. 33, where he says the day is now advanced, *dià tò polù tēs hēmeras*, Cat. 17, num. 20. That he spoke these in the morning hours on the days of fasting, there seems to be no cause. I believe that after the [CXXV] catecheses followed those prayers accustomed at Jerusalem at the lighting of the evening lamps, about which Socrates (Hist. lib. v, cap. 21) speaks, for Cyril pronounced the catecheses in the Church of the Resurrection. Countless testimonies to this fact exist, some of which I produced in chapter 2, num. 9, toward the end of this dissertation. If, as Cyril himself testifies, any catechesis had to be held outside the Church of the Resurrection, those two would perhaps have had to be excepted in which he discourses on the Holy Spirit; these, as he says, he thought it fitting should be spoken in the upper church of the Apostles on Mount Sion, which was consecrated by the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. But he denies that this reason was sufficient to change his habit of speaking in the church of the Mountain of Golgotha for that reason ^B or that the catecheses were spoken in the nave, or in the portico of the same, as some have liked to think, or rather in the vestibule of the baptistery. The entire reasoning of those who opine that they were spoken in the portico is that it was not permitted for catechumens to enter into the church; regarding this matter, I do not know if anything more foolish could be said. For it was permitted to all, even to Gentiles, to hear the sacred readings and sermons in the church: they were only excluded from the Mass of the faithful. This could be proven by countless places in the authors, but I bring one testimony from Cyril (Procat. num. 4), in which he exhorts anyone who might perhaps have given his name for baptism with ill-will, that, moved by the reverence of the order and composition of the ecclesiastical assembly, the modesty of those assisting, and the ordered series of readings and sacred instructions, he might take on a better mind. Therefore, access was given to those about to be baptized to see the synaxes. In num. 14 of the same, he says the church was closed, and that they all were inside. These facts completely contradict the open and exposed portico. Perhaps the other opinion regarding the vestibule of the baptistery will seem more probable. From the very beginning of the Procatechesis (num. 1), Cyril has this: *“You have already stood around the vestibule of the royal palace”*: which, from the parallel place in Cat. 19, num. 2, should be understood of the vestibule of the baptistery. Furthermore, that custom existed in many Churches, so that the creed was handed down not in the church, but in the baptistery or its vestibule. Regarding the church at Milan, Ambrose (Epist. 20, num. 4): *“After the readings and the sermon, with the catechumens dismissed, I handed over the creed to some candidates in the baptistery of the basilica.”* Regarding certain Orientals, Anastasius Sinaita, in his *Anagogicarum in Genesim contemplationum* lib. IV: *“The priest,”* he says, *“initiates them in the vestibules with catechesis and breathes on them to expel the air and the demons that dwell in the generation of sin.”* Finally, in that same assembly, it is evident that at Jerusalem the exorcisms and catecheses were celebrated (Procat. num. 14). But since it is established that the renunciations before baptism in that same church were performed in the vestibule of the baptistery (from Cat. 19, num. 2), the same also seems to be thought concerning the exorcisms performed throughout the time of Lent. These things do not necessarily conclude that. The passage from the Procatechesis (num. 1) is perhaps nothing other than a translation and a metaphor, by which the author signifies that those to be baptized, having given their names, were as if introduced into the vestibule of the baptistery, separated by only one step from [CXXVI] the baptistery itself and baptism. If it concludes anything, it concludes at most that they entered into that vestibule to have their names inscribed; for the testimonies produced a little earlier make it certain that the Procatechesis was spoken in the church itself. We do not doubt that the renunciations at Jerusalem before baptism were performed in the vestibule of the baptistery, but we think the Lenten exorcisms were celebrated in the church itself, according to the witness of Cyril himself (Procat. num. 14), who, at the time of the exorcisms, orders those to be baptized to sit in silence in the closed church, the men separately from the women; just as in the closed ark Noe and his sons were on one side, and the wives of both on the other. Nor...

was the custom peculiar to Jerusalem that exorcisms should be held publicly in the church. In the same way, scrutinies took place in the Roman Church, as is evident to anyone examining the various orders of this Church. The same custom existed in the African Church, as is witnessed by the author of the book *De symbolo ad catechumenos*, no. 1, cited in Augustine, Vol. VI, p. 555: "What is the reason that on this night so much has been done regarding you? That you were each brought forth from secret places into the sight of the whole Church, and there, with neck bowed in the humility of feet, the examination was celebrated upon you on a spread hair-cloth, etc." Whatever may be said of the Church of Milan and those Oriental churches to which Anastasius refers—who indeed seems to refer not to exorcisms performed throughout the entire period of Lent, but strictly to those preparatory to baptism—it is certain that in many other Churches the Creed was indeed publicly handed down within the church itself. This is certain for the Roman Church from the Roman orders; for the Gallican from its sacramentaries and ancient missals; for the African from the sermons of Augustine and the African bishops addressed to the *competentes*, published among the works of Augustine and in his appendices; for the Constantinopolitan from Theodore the Lector, *Hist.*, p. 463. But if we come to the Church of Jerusalem, John, the successor of Cyril, speaks thus, according to Jerome, *Epist.* 38, new ed.: "The custom among us is such that we publicly hand down the holy Trinity for forty days to those who are to be baptized." The same person, speaking of the catechesis he held on all our dogmas—which is very similar to Cyril's fourth—says that he delivered it in the hearing of St. Epiphanius and the whole Church. Cyril himself signifies in many places that he spoke in the middle of the Church of the Resurrection, for example, *Cat.* 14, no. 14: "The emperors of this time built this holy church of the Resurrection in which we are, covered with silver and adorned with melted gold, etc."; and no. 22: "This holy house of the church, built by the emperor Constantine from his deep love for Christ, and as you see, thus adorned." As to the mystagogical catecheses, they were delivered not in the basilica of the Resurrection or the Holy Cross, but at the monument of the Lord in the very chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, which was called the *Anastasis*, as seen from *Cat.* 18, no. 33, and *Cat.* 20, nos. 4 and 7.

35. Now, to speak of the form of the catechetical gatherings; first, we observe that not only were the candidates for baptism present, but also all the orders of the Church. This is evident not only regarding the pro-catechesis from the fourth number of this discourse, but also from the other catecheses. The author advises in the pro-catechesis, no. 13: "When the faithful see those serving and expedited in their solicitude, let them not imitate their security; while these have received grace, the others still stand on the balance of doubt." The baptized faithful, therefore, were present, serving in exorcisms, readings, and other ministries regarding those about to be baptized. And in truth, he calls upon the psalmists or chanters in *Cat.* 13, no. 6, some of whom we may concede were from the number of the baptized; however, we flatly deny this of all. In *Cat.* 4, no. 24, and *Cat.* 12, no. 33, he calls upon the orders of monks and virgins. He also seems to address three kinds of auditors at the very beginning of his speech: professors of virginity, all the baptized faithful, and then all the auditors. In *Cat.* 4, no. 3, he appears to ask the baptized to listen with an even mind to the prayer accommodated to the simple and those unskilled in our doctrine. In *Cat.* 15, no. 18, he exhorts those who have begotten others through catechesis to diligently instruct their spiritual children concerning the Antichrist. No godparents other than the baptized are permitted: nor does he permit the Gospel to be preached to others (*Cat.* 3, no. 13). The church was closed, *Procat.* no. 14, and the catechumens were diligently excluded, to say nothing of the Gentiles; *Cat.* 6, no. 29. The doors of the church that led to the city were certainly closed. Yet those remained open that looked toward the holy Sepulchre, from which the ruins of the old temple, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Golgotha, as well as the ruins of ancient Jerusalem, could be seen, as many testimonies persuade us, in which he bids his auditors contemplate these things with their own eyes (*Cat.* 13, no. 23). "You see," he says, "the place of Golgotha." An acclamation of the assenting auditors followed. The catechetical gatherings were sometimes quite prolix and continued until late in the day, as we saw in no. 33. Sometimes he complains from the very beginning of the prayer that time is failing him (*Cat.* 13, no. 8), which he does not spend on the length of the reading, but on the exorcisms, with which these gatherings seem to have begun. I would not affirm that the catecheses were spoken as many times as the exorcisms were celebrated. Indeed, I would admit that the exorcisms were more numerous: concerning which it is said in the Clementine *Homily* 3, no. 73, to those being baptized, καθ' ἡμέραν χειροθετεῖσθε, "receive the imposition of hands daily." But that exorcisms and catecheses were often joined, the Latin scrutinies and the testimonies of the ancients make certain. Certainly at Jerusalem the auditors had received exorcisms before the pro-catechesis, as is evident from no. 9 of this discourse. In the same Church, exorcisms preceded the catechesis, as is evident from the just-cited passage, and from another, no. 13, where he prescribes what is to be done by those who arrived earlier than the hour of exorcisms, namely, that they should seek out their companions so that, having cut off idle talk and questioning, they might speak together of matters that pertain to piety. There was a different custom in the Church of Antioch. Catechesis preceded the exorcism. Chrysostom in the first catechesis to the illuminandi, new ed., no. 2, p. 227: Μετὰ τὴν παρ' ἡμῶν διδασκαλίαν, ὑπολύσαντες ὑμᾶς καὶ ἀποδύσαντες, γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀνυποδέτους μετὰ τοῦ χιτωνίσκου μόνου πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἐξορκιζόντων παραπέμπουσι γυνάς. "After the instruction heard from us, our Fathers send you forth—discalced and unclothed, with bare feet, and covered only by a tunic—to the voices of the exorcists." The custom of the Roman Church was contrary, which ordered the Creed to be handed down in the last place, after the scrutiny. It was contrary to the African Church, from which the author of book 11, *De symbolo ad catechumenos*, no. 2, says this: "The family of the Redeemer, having been cleansed through exorcism, after it has sung the canticle [of the Creed]."

and receives the remedy of the creed. There is nothing peculiar to Jerusalem in the exorcisms. The faces of those being exorcised were covered, see Procatechesis, n. 9. Cyril says nothing about discarded garments or shoes, nothing about a sub-stratum of haircloth. Since the ceremony of exorcism was long, and individuals naturally followed one after the other to the hand of the exorcists, Cyril commands, Procatech. n. 14, that with the benches divided for men and women, as long as others are being exorcised, the rest should sit and have some pious book before them, or one should read while another listens; or if a book is lacking, one should pray, another speak of something useful; but the assembly of virgins should either read or chant, yet so that no voice is heard: which he also commands for the married women. The exorcisms were followed by prayers or some chant, as the case might be. Then a reading from the book of Scripture was read, at the discretion of the preacher, accommodated to the subject of the future catechesis; which was followed by the catechesis. This was heard by those sitting. In Cat. 16, n. 22, Cyril says: "Think how many are sitting here now, how many souls are present." The speaker was sometimes interrupted by acclamations, as in Cat. 13, num. 23. This was a familiar custom in the East, as many passages of Chrysostom make certain; it was also used in Africa, as is evident from Augustine. The catechesis was undoubtedly followed by an act of thanksgiving for the teachings heard. Thus Basil, hom. 7 in Hexaem., p. 82, exhorts the listener: *Ἀναστάντες δὲ εὐχαριστήσωμεν ὑπὲρ τῶν εἰρημένων.* "Rising, let us give thanks for what has been said."

CHAPTER VI. On the teaching and speaking method of Cyril.

26. Such was the method of teaching and speaking of Cyril, which most aptly suited the purpose set before him of instructing candidates for the Church. It was, indeed, a doctrine accurate and fortified by necessary aids; a style simple and alien to all pretense and ornament, which sets forth naked truth and does not allow unrefined minds to understand one thing as another. I shall set forth first what kind of person Cyril was in explaining, proving, and defending our dogmas from the onset of the enemies of the Church; then I shall speak of the style and mode of his oratory. In explaining the faith, this is his usual method: first he cites the opposing doctrine; then he opposes to it the Catholic truth and fortifies it with the necessary aids of the Scriptures or other arguments, and thereafter refutes the objections of the adversaries. He sometimes disturbs this order by beginning with the dissolution of the objections, but he never omits to provide all these points. He thought it necessary, along with the Catholic dogma, to open up all the contrary views of the Gentiles, Jews, and especially of the heretics, so that, fortified by that evidence, the listeners would never allow themselves to be precipitated into them through ignorance. He repeats this very often; and since he thereby touches upon obscenities and the memory of things that are even improper to mention, he sees that he is defiling his own speech and the ears of the audience, yet he defends and purges himself with this necessity of fortifying them. ^A His reason for acting thus was twofold. First, because to have exposed certain monsters of opinions is to have refuted them. Therefore, in catechesis 6, he recounts excerpts from the books of the Manichaeans—the chapters of their insanity—which in themselves strike horror into any sane person, without any other refutation, n. 33 and 34; he deems it sufficient to compare with these Manichaean stains the sanctity and chastity of the Church, so that the listener may perceive what should be chosen. The other reason was the fraud and deceit of the enemies of the Church, and especially of the heretics, and most of all the Manichaeans—who, more than others, were spreading in the province—in hiding the vices of their sect, cat. 4, num. 2; so that they would not impose their smooth-speaking on the ignorant, it was necessary to uncover what kind of people they were. When, however, he expounds the faith, he does so with chosen words and those taken from common usage. He does not mix in theological terms, those ^B in particular which at this time gave place to great contentions in the Church, which he studiously avoids: such as were "essence," "hypostasis," "person," and other words of the same kind. He was also more religious, lest he should mix private opinions into the faith. Whatever is revealed in the Scriptures, he confidently proposes; what God did not wish to reveal in them, he is afraid to touch at all. Thus, after he has explained what the Church proposes as credible concerning the divine generation, he allows the mystery of this nativity to be investigated by no one. See cat. 11, n. 10 and 11. In the same way, he wishes the question concerning the essence of the Holy Spirit to remain intact. See cat. 16, n. 1, 5, and 24; cat. 17, n. 1 and 17. While he expounds the mysteries of Christ, he follows up and explains individual adjuncts; but when he discusses the ceremonies of the sacraments, he declares the force and power of each one.

37. What pertains to the method instituted by Cyril for proving our faith, he made it a religious duty to assert nothing that he did not approve from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament; to such an extent that he consents that no faith be held in him unless he brings forward a clear demonstration of individual matters from the Scriptures, cat. 4, n. 17. In the third dissertation, I prove that nothing can be concluded by the heretics from this principle for the entire and absolute necessity and sufficiency of Scripture alone, with the authority of tradition and the Church indeed excluded; meanwhile, however, ^C I note that there was a threefold reason for Cyril to speak and act in this way. The first is that, with reasons and probabilities alone, destitute of the authority of the Scriptures, the decrees of theology are persuaded ineffectively; since, indeed, for any reasonings whatsoever, opposing reasonings are not lacking, by which the cord of contention may be drawn out without end. But with the explicit words of God taken from Scripture, it is necessary to concede the whole apparatus of words and opinions. Thus cat. 4, n. 8. Furthermore, it is an easy thing to be deluded by sophisms, cat. 12, n. 5, and one must take care in divine matters ^D not to be rashly led away by probabilities, cat. 4, n. 17. Which indeed had happened to the Gnostics, Manichaeans, and other heretics, who with a great apparatus of words and subtleties, concerning divine generation and the creation of the world [CXXX]

^A had brought to ruin. Second: he was persuaded that the Creed, which he explains in the whole eighteen catecheses, was nothing other than certain selected headings of doctrine from all the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament; which, therefore, were to be asserted from those same Scriptures (cat. 5, n. 12). Third, finally: it was certain to him that there were no parts of Christ’s actions and mysteries that had not been foretold long before by the prophets (cat. 13, n. 8 and 13). No wonder, then, if he wishes nothing to be said or believed about Christ that he does not endeavor to confirm by the testimonies of the ancient Scriptures (cat. 21, n. 5). Furthermore, he was not so inimical to arguments that he did not use them himself. For he refutes both the unity of God against the Manichaeans (cat. 6, n. 12 and 13), and the resurrection of the flesh against the Gentiles (cat. 18, n. 34 sqq.), with most valid reasons not drawn from Scripture. He does not omit to strengthen the truth of the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection of Christ with the domestic testimony of the monuments seen in Jerusalem. Doctrines that could not even be approved by Scripture, he defends by the authority of apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition, such as the canon of the Scriptures themselves (cat. 4, n. 33 and 35). The ceremonies and rites of the Church contained in the mystagogic catecheses, although he proves them from testimonies or allusions of Scripture, when he lacks those arguments, he thinks the authority of the Church suffices; in which he judges that all dogmas that ought to come to the notice of men are taught universally and without defect (cat. 18, n. 23). Meanwhile, when he brings Scriptures for the confirmation of our dogmas, he alleges them—as he thought—from the divinely inspired translation of the Seventy Elders, nor does he weigh the force of the Hebrew text: whence it happened that, while he presents many things pertaining to the matter and excellently concluding what he had undertaken to prove, he also alleges many things that do not have that same force. But this is a fault common to him with the other Greek and Latin Fathers: nor could you easily find a testimony alleged by Cyril for proving some dogma that earlier or subsequent disputers of ecclesiastical matters did not use similarly. He professes that he follows only the literal sense to build faith in divine dogmas (cat. 13, n. 9); yet, when opportunity is given, he does not unwillingly digress into an allegorical and mystical sense. See, among countless places, cat. 13, n. 18 and 21; cat. 14, n. 8 and 11; cat. 17, n. 10. But that is for the sake of greater declaration, not ^B for the sake of a proving argument. He employs the allegorical and moral sense more freely in the homily on the paralytic, which I think was delivered by a younger Cyril, and he also indicates in those homilies that he has used this way of alleging Scripture familiarly (cat. 13, n. 9), where he teaches that another method of treating Scripture is appropriate to the present argument. It will easily be forgiven him, as the custom of those times rendered it not only usual and common, but also laudable. ^D 38. Finally, I come to Cyrilliana, the method of defending our dogmas and attacking the enemies of the Church. He used various ways according to the diversity of the enemies. He proposes in the whole work of the catecheses [CXXXI] a triple or quadruple genus of enemies to be refuted by him (procat. n. 10): Gentiles, Samaritans, and Jews, and heretics: each of whom is to be vanquished by a different kind of weapon. Against the Gentiles, who neither receive nor know the Scriptures, he advises that Scriptures should be omitted and only arguments used (cat. 18, n. 10); thus he had also proven the general resurrection possible and necessary to them in that place. He also commands that the impious and ridiculous fables of their inept theology be cast in their teeth (cat. 12, n. 27; and cat. 13, n. 37), in which places he convinces them that, if they follow their own fables, they ought to concede both the possible birth from a Virgin and that the adoration of the Crucified is not illegitimate. Therefore, to refute the worship of idols (cat. 6, n. 10 and 11), it is enough for him to recount to their worshippers the disgraces and vices of the gods they adored. But when it happens that a Christian must dispute about the cross against infidels, he advises that he should first make the sign of the cross with his hand, and he promises that he who struggles against it will be reduced to silence (cat. 13, n. 22). And if arguments are lacking to an unskilled person, let him not be disturbed on that account, but preserve an unshaken faith. Ibid. n. 37. To the Samaritans, who receive only the law of Moses, he advises that this one book should be cast against them (cat. 18, n. 11); but the Jews, who acknowledge the entire Old Instrument, he attacks from all its books. To them he sometimes opposes the testimony of his Gentile apostles and the long series of fifteen bishops of Jerusalem taken from among the Hebrews (cat. 14, n. 15). He urges the express testimony of Paul, primarily an erstwhile persecutor, recognized late by the truth itself (cat. 10, n. 17, 18, 19, and cat. 14, n. 21). He also commends the testimony of James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, especially to the faithful Jerusalemites (cat. 4, n. 28; cat. 14, n. 21). To the Jews also he opposes the deplorable state of their republic (cat. 12, n. 17), and the ruin of their ancient temple according to Christ’s prophecy (cat. 10, n. 11). He demonstrates the truth of the Christian religion to both Jews and Gentiles alike: from Christ’s worship and name propagated throughout the whole world (cat. 10, n. 16); from the most savage Gentiles made mild by his religion, and not hesitating to meet death for it (cat. 10, n. 19; cat. 13, n. 40); from the power of the invocation of Christ and his cross in putting demons to flight, repelling sicknesses, and overthrowing the frauds of magic (ibid. and in other places passim). Finally, he refutes heretics most diligently from all the Scriptures of both Testaments; sometimes from the very leading of the natural light and valid arguments; sometimes by the mere exposition of ridiculous and impious dogmas; sometimes from their very novelty, as cat. 6, n. 20; cat. 16, n. 9; finally, by this or that reason, they are to be avoided.

^A he demonstrates that although they usurp the name of the Church, they are nevertheless deprived of the name of Catholics, which belongs properly to the one true Church (cat. 18, n. 26). When Cyril deals with morals, as in the procatechesis and the first catechesis, he seems to follow almost no certain order; but he imparts useful warnings for salvation to his hearers, just as they occur to his mind. He inculcates with great gravity the flight from pagan and Jewish superstitions, from spectacles and games; he prescribes the avoidance of commerce with heretics; he commends with great affection the study of prayer, the chastisement of the body, the reading of useful [CXXXII] books and above all of Holy Scripture, retreat, and reverence for Christ’s sacraments. He extols with the highest praises the purpose of virginity and the monastic life; and he conducts all these things with such fervor of the Spirit that you can recognize a heart burning with the love of virtue and divine things. Such was Cyril in teaching.

39. Concerning his style and manner of speaking, it remains for me to say [the following]. Masters of the art of oratory assign a triple figure to style: grave, middling, and attenuated, which is, of course, lowered even to the most common usage of pure speech; in this last genus Cyril’s style dwells, than which nothing is more accommodating for instructing unrefined minds. There are not here grave sentiments such as are wont to be employed in the amplification of great matters; there are not flowery, profuse sentiments varied with figures; there are not exclamations, apostrophes, and other ornaments of oratory: but simple and familiar speech, easy, perspicuous, ^C not obscured; but such as a father and teacher displays when instructing children and disciples; yet so that he never falls into a dry and bloodless style of speech. For he treats each subject according to the dignity of the matter, and sometimes uses a variety of speech not ungraceful, so that, if the place requires it, he may use a grand and lofty style of speech. See what he thunders against the Manichaeans (cat. 6, n. 33 and 35). He usually embeds his mind in short sentences, and excels in a compendious exposition of matters. In the fourth catechesis, he discussed all the dogmas of our faith in such a way that in that short declaration he omitted nothing, and left nothing obscure. His exhortation is wont to have more mildness than vehemence: his diction is not polished with the brilliance of ornate and elegant or refined Attic speech: it is, indeed, easy and perspicuous to the common people; but [it is] without much choice of words, or exquisite care of construction, so that he sometimes employs improper words, or at least improperly constructed ones. He often uses the same word in a different sense in various places. He not rarely has long and complex ^D periods; and his epistle to Constantius is constructed of hardly anything else. The construction sometimes hangs, with a period started but not completed; for example, cat. 20, n. 6, where, after the words *akribōs eidótōn hēmōn* (of us who know accurately) are placed in the absolute case, nothing follows to respond to them. You may observe almost the same thing in the epistle to Constantius, n. 5, and you have something similar in cat. 6, num. 6, where, after placing *epei oun* (since therefore) at the beginning of the number, he wanders through many things, and finally finishes by the words inscribed at the end of the number, *touto men oun soi* (this therefore to you). He delights in frequent parentheses, and those sometimes prolix. He digresses not rarely, but usually on a legitimate opportunity offered. There is a rather long digression in his homily to the paralytic, in which he seems almost to have forgotten his purpose. He uses translations and comparisons very sparingly, so that you would hardly recognize the Syrian and the Palestinian. ^B 40. The faults of style which I have noted in Cyril may have this cause, that he did not compose his catecheses in writing beforehand, but poured them forth extemporaneously. Credence is given to this matter not only by the author of the chronological note appended to the list of catecheses, who says they were taken from the mouth of the speaker by studious men, but also by the much older and more authoritative inscriptions of the catecheses, which [CXXXIII] at the beginning of each catechesis bear *schediashtheisa* (composed extemporaneously), although this word is lacking in some manuscripts. But in the catecheses themselves one can detect not a few indications of extemporaneous speech. The first is the often perturbed order of speaking. While the sequence of words of the symbol, or of dogmas, or of times, or of the Scriptures which he cites, or of the series of ecclesiastical ceremonies which are to be explained, provided a certain mode and order for the oration, the speech is sufficiently distinct and ordered. But where he lacked this aid for directing his speech, it usually runs on without any preserved order, as things pre-meditated offered themselves to his mind, pronouncing each one for itself. You may find this especially in the procatechesis, and in the first, third, and fifth catecheses. ^C The same thing may also be observed in the treatment of the individual sections of the oration; for the sections are ordered according to the words of the symbol; but in the section itself there is sometimes almost no order. Hence frequent repetitions, not only in different catecheses but in one and the same, of the same matter and often in the same words; I have marked many in the margin of the text. See especially how often he returns to the same argument in cat. 11, concerning the eternal, incomprehensible birth of the Son, free from any of the defects of human generation; and in cat. 16 and 17, concerning the one and undivided Spirit, and He who subsists separately. Secondly, he sometimes says that he had spoken in the catecheses of things which, however, you would seek in vain in the preceding ones. Thus in cat. 14, n. 3, he says he had adduced in the previous discourse the passage of Isaiah: *His burial shall be in peace*, which however does not occur in cat. 13. Likewise in cat. 17, n. 5, he testifies that in a previous catechesis he had alleged the psalm place: *Confirm me with a principal Spirit*, which is nowhere found there. He had undoubtedly premeditated to say these things, which, while speaking extemporaneously, he omitted, nor did he think himself to have forgotten them afterwards. The third argument for extemporaneous speech is the careless citation of the Scriptures, and the different recitation of one and the same testimony in different places. Thus in cat. 1, n. 2, he reads from Paul, Eph. iv, 22, *phtheiromenon kata tas epithumias* (corrupt according to the lusts), and in cat. 20, num. 2, *en tais epithumiais* (in the lusts). He cites Daniel otherwise in cat. 4, n. 31, and cat. 18, num. 15. The words of Christ, *Unless one be born of water and the Spirit* (John III, 5), etc., otherwise...