Section 03: The Mystagogical Catecheses
The five Mystagogical Catecheses — post-baptismal lectures delivered in Bright (Paschal) Week to the newly baptized in the Anastasis, unveiling the mysteries of baptism, chrismation, and eucharist they had just received — are among the most precious liturgical documents of Christian antiquity. They also carry the compendium’s central source-critical question: are they by Cyril or by his successor John II of Jerusalem? This section surveys the five lectures and then presents the authorship debate in full, per the repository’s protocol for disputed questions.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Contents
| File | Topic |
|---|---|
| The Five Mystagogies | The five post-baptismal lectures of Bright Week, the Anastasis setting, the mystagogical method (revealing the meaning of rites just undergone), and their unrivaled value as the earliest detailed Eastern witness to initiation and eucharist; the authorship question noted briefly and deferred to its own file |
| The Authorship Question | The flagship source-criticism: are the Mystagogical Catecheses by Cyril or by John of Jerusalem? The three manuscript families and their ascriptions; the arguments for Cyril (Yarnold, Doval and his stylometric analysis, the “lecture-notes” theory), for John (the manuscript names, the liturgical-development argument), and for both; Mazza on the mystagogical method; the SC 126 (Piédagnel) edition — presented without adjudication per METHODOLOGY §4 |
How to Use
- Read The Five Mystagogies first for the documents themselves and their place in the Jerusalem catechetical year.
- Then read The Authorship Question for the careful, both-sides treatment of who wrote them — the model of the repository’s handling of a genuinely contested scholarly question.
- The detailed rites these lectures expound are treated in Section 04: Initiation Rites and Section 05: The Eucharist in Cyril; this section keeps to the documents and the authorship debate.
Cross-References
- For the liturgical horizon the mystagogy interprets, see Divine Liturgy
- For the Holy Spirit invoked in chrismation and the eucharistic epiclesis, see Pneumatology
- For the repository’s protocol on disputed and sensitive questions, see METHODOLOGY
- For the Lenten lectures that precede the mystagogy, see Section 02: The Catechetical Lectures
- For the historiographic survey of the scholars named here, see Modern Scholarship
References
- See each content file for full bibliographic entries. The primary source is Cyril (or John) of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses (PG 33; critical edition A. Piédagnel, Catéchèses mystagogiques, SC 126; NPNF Series 2, Vol. 7; McCauley & Stephenson, FOTC 64; Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem, Routledge 2000). The authorship debate is anchored in Alexis James Doval, Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogue (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2001), with Enrico Mazza, Mystagogy (New York: Pueblo, 1989), and Juliette Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).