Section 07: Exile and Rehabilitation
The political history of Cyril’s episcopate: his long conflict with Acacius of Caesarea — fought on the twin axes of jurisdiction (the metropolitan rights of Caesarea against the rising honor of Jerusalem) and doctrine (Acacius the Homoian, Cyril the conservative drifting toward Nicaea) — which cost Cyril three depositions and roughly sixteen of his thirty-five episcopal years in exile; and the rehabilitation that crowned his career when the Second Ecumenical Council and its synodal testimony vindicated his orthodoxy and his see.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Contents
| File | Topic |
|---|---|
| The Three Exiles | The conflict with Acacius over jurisdiction and doctrine; the first deposition (c. 357), with the famine charge of selling church property to feed the poor, and Cyril’s appeal to a higher synod; the restoration at Seleucia (359); the second exile (c. 360) under the Acacian ascendancy; the return under Julian’s amnesty; the third and longest exile under Valens (c. 367); and the final restoration in 378 after Adrianople and Gratian’s edict — with shaky dates flagged as disputed |
| Vindication at Constantinople 381 | Cyril’s presence at the Second Ecumenical Council; his acceptance of the Nicene faith and homoousios; the synodal letter (preserved in Theodoret, HE 5.9) testifying that he was the canonical bishop of Jerusalem who had “in time past combated the Arians”; the 381-vs-382 question of where that testimonial belongs; and the council as the formal close of the “semi-Arian” charge |
How to Use
- Read The Three Exiles first for the narrative of conflict and displacement, then Vindication at Constantinople 381 for the rehabilitation that resolved it.
- The dates in this period are genuinely uncertain in the sources; the files use “c.” and structured
[Disputed: ...]notes rather than false precision, following Drijvers’s reconstruction. - The doctrinal substance behind the political conflict — what “semi-Arian” did and did not mean for Cyril — is treated in Cyril and the Arian Crisis.
Cross-References
- For the councils that frame this period, see Ecumenical Councils
- For the wider pre-schism ecclesial world and its imperial politics, see Pre-Schism Church
- For the other great anti-Arian bishop repeatedly driven into exile, see St. Athanasius
- For the theologian who presided at Constantinople 381, see St. Gregory the Theologian
- For the doctrinal side of the conflict, see Section 06: Creed and Doctrine
References
- See each content file for full bibliographic entries. The primary sources are the church historians Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret (NPNF Series 2, Vols. 2–3) — the synodal testimonial is in Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.9 — and the standard modern reconstruction is Jan Willem Drijvers, Cyril of Jerusalem: Bishop and City (Leiden: Brill, 2004), with R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (T&T Clark, 1988).