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Mariology

Cyril of Alexandria became noted in Church history because of his spirited fight for the title " Theotokos " during the First Council of Ephesus (431), establishing the ecclesiastically settled basis for all subsequent mariological developments. Prior to the controversy over the theology of Nestorius, Cyril rarely if ever used the Mariological title, but theo-political circumstances compelled him as Archbishop of one of the Empire's chief sees, to become involved and develop his theology."

Beginning in 429 Cyril wrote a series of letters to various ecclesiastical authorities in which he espoused the orthodoxy of "Theotokos". The propriety of the term was justified through appeals to earlier theologians who had used it, like Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Atticus. Following an epistolary exchange with the increasingly unpopular archbishop of Constantinople, in 430 Cyril wrote his famous 12 Anathemas in which anyone who refused to call Mary Theotokos was condemned. The following year over 100 bishops met in council at Ephesus to rule on the disputes. In between sessions at the Council Cyril delivered a number of sermons; some of those attributed to his hand are of disputed authorship, but 6 are recognised as genuine. Homily IV delivered upon the late arrival of western delegates is a particularly striking example of Cyril's developed Mariology. It is the foremost expression of Cyril's devotion to Mary, and is one of the first historical attestations of the salutation Χαῖρε ("Hail") being used to invoke the Virgin, a practice later standardised in Byzantine homiletics and hymnography such as the sermons of Chrysippus and Basil of Selecucia, and the Akathist hymn. Mary, who is credited with calling the council fathers together, embodies for Cyril the paradoxes of orthodox Christology, "container of the uncontained" and "the place for the infinite", among other lauded descriptions. Cyril's notions of the identity of Christ, therefore, have direct bearing on the identity of Mary. Wessell explains how "Cyril's spatial metaphors construed Mary as a sacred place" and how he "applied metaphors depicting royalty and exaltation to Mary: she was the treasure of the world, the crown of virginity, and the sceptre of orthodoxy." Subsequently, such praise would become normative in Marian theology.

In several of his works, Cyril focuses on the love of Jesus to his mother. On the Cross, he overcomes his pain and thinks of his mother. At the wedding in Cana, he bows to her wishes. The conflict with Nestorius was mainly over this issue, and some have argued that it has often been misunderstood. "he debate was not so much about Mary as about Jesus. The question was not what honors were due to Mary, but how one was to speak of the birth of Jesus." Wessell notes that in Homily V delivered at the council, Cyril argued that Nestorius' refusal to acknowledge God's incarnate birth from Mary was a blasphemy against Christ. At the same time, the close relationship between Christological and Mariological formulations going back to the Cappadocian Fathers created a climate wherein intellectual argumentation over disputed theology overlapped with blossoming lay piety. When the Council of Ephesus convened under Cyril's presidency it did so in the newly constructed Church of Mary, a venue that contributed to the devotional matrix of the debates. Whereas in the past scholars have often argued that Marian piety and theology only developed in the wake of the conciliar decrees, Shoemaker considers this to be refuted by the picture emerging from liturgical and archaeological evidence. The substance of Cyril's arumentation was Christological in orientation. His mature Mariology was chiefly in service to this, and to the end of discrediting Nestorius. Yet Wessel, quoting Homily IV, notes that the enthusiastic praises go beyond the strictly Christological. "She was not only valuable as a vessel storing something sacred but was herself precious and venerated: ‘Is it even possible for people to speak of the celebrated Mary? The virginal womb; O thing of wonder! The marvel strikes me with awe!’" Such sentiments served to further distinguish what Cyril believed to be orthodox theology from that which Nestorius taught, characterising the latter as subversive to both church and empire. As "scepter of orthodoxy", Mary became the standard of Christological fidelity in Cyril's theology; Nestorius's denial of "Theotokos" became the identifiable sign of his impugning of the divinity of Jesus.

St. Cyril received an important recognition of his preachings by the Second Council of Constantinople (553 d.C.) which declared;