41 - Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius

Summary

In 412 Cyril became bishop of the church of Alexandria and all Egypt, succeeding his uncle Theophilus whose episcopacy was famously marked by controversy with the Constantinopolitan church in the person of its bishop, John Chrysostom. Cyril carried forward his uncle’s legacy by entering into a dispute with another bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, within the first year of the latter’s episcopal tenure in the Eastern capital. Soon after the start of Nestorius’s episcopacy in 428, a local Christological dispute erupted between two groups in Constantinople regarding the propriety of the terms Theotokos (“bearer of God”) and Anthropotokos (“bearer of the human being”) for the Virgin Mary. Nestorius handled the situation by rejecting both terms and proposing that the word Christotokos (“bearer of Christ”) be used instead, though this solution did little to quell the conflict. In early 429 Cyril, claiming that these rumblings in the imperial capital were beginning to cause distress and uncertainty in Egypt, decided to stake out a position in the growing debate by denouncing Nestorius’s Christology in his Festal Letter 17 and Letter to the Monks of Egypt, though without naming Nestorius in either communication.