CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

CYRIL OF JERUSALEM, St. (ca. 313-ca. 386). Archbishop of Jerusalem (q.v.) during the 360s, Cyril was a successful pastor and an innovating liturgist. He coped admirably with an exceedingly difficult period in the history of the Eastern Church, the Arian crisis-which troubled the orthodox almost the entire century (see Arius). While not siding openly with the formula of the Council of Nicaea, his resistance to extreme Arian pressures earned him exile on at least two occasions. His Catechetical Homilies, delivered as a final catechesis for those preparing for Baptism (qq.v.), together with his five short Mystagogical Homilies on the sacraments (q.v.) of Baptism, Anointing, and Eucharist (q.v.), are still preserved, and the latter constitutes one of the earliest commentaries on Christian worship extant.

Responding to the new establishment of the Church inaugurated earlier in the century by Constantine (q.v.), and to the new prominence given as a result to the Holy City, he appears to have been among the first, if not the first, to begin an elaborate cycle of daily and festal services. The latter were clearly tied to the unique privilege of Palestine, i.e., that it was the site of the events recorded in the Scriptures (q.v.), and certainly must have been encouraged by the pilgrims who had begun to arrive in great numbers, for example, Egeria (q.v.). The liturgical practices begun by Cyril in Jerusalem eventually found their way, in whole or in part, to the Great Church in Constantinople (qq.v.), and exercised an influence on the whole Christian world as well.