Confessor Cyril

The heading Confessor Cyril does not, by itself, identify a single historical person in the Christian sanctorale. In older Latin classification, confessor named a class of male saint who had borne public witness to the faith, often under pressure or exile, but had not been put to death. Several bishops and monks named Cyril were entered in martyrologies and synaxaria under that heading. The two who became Doctors of the Church—Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century and Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth—are the figures Western sources most often mean by Saint Cyril, Confessor. Other bearers of the name, from Crete to northern Russia and to twentieth-century new confessors, also appear in local calendars. Because these men belong to different centuries and sees, no single birth year, death place, feast, or patronage list can be attached to the bare epithet without conjecture, which the evidence does not allow.

Cyril of Jerusalem was bishop of Jerusalem in the mid-fourth century and is remembered chiefly for catechetical lectures given to baptismal candidates and to the newly baptized, an important witness to the creed and liturgy of the church in Jerusalem. He held to the faith of Nicaea while Arianizing emperors and neighboring bishops pressed the contrary view, and he was sent into exile more than once; later tradition therefore numbered him among the confessors. He took part in the Council of Constantinople in 381. Many Latin and Eastern calendars keep his memory on 18 March. His year of birth is not recorded with precision; he died in the mid-380s. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1883.

Cyril of Alexandria succeeded his uncle Theophilus as patriarch of Alexandria in 412 and remained in that office until his death in 444, a date that is securely attested. He was the leading theological voice of the Council of Ephesus in 431, which confessed the Virgin Mary as Theotokos and opposed the teaching associated with Nestorius of Constantinople. A large body of biblical commentary, festal letters, and christological writing survives under his name. The Roman Martyrology long commemorated him as bishop, confessor, and doctor; in the East he is often called the Seal of the Fathers. Like his namesake of Jerusalem, he has no exactly recorded birth year; estimates place his birth in Egypt in the later fourth century. Whether the Alexandrian patriarch should also be called pope depends on the ancient custom of styling the bishop of Alexandria papa. That usage is real, but it cannot be entered as a fact about Confessor Cyril until the intended man is named by see.

A further Cyril, Constantine of Thessalonica, took the monastic name Cyril and, with his brother Methodius, worked among the Slavs in the ninth century; he died in Rome in 869 and is venerated as an apostle to the Slavs rather than under the simple title Confessor. Monastic saints such as Cyril of White Lake (Kirill Belozersky) in northern Russia, and various Russian hierarchs named Kirill who suffered in the Soviet period, likewise cannot be reduced to the unadorned heading Confessor Cyril. In the absence of a diocese, a reliable feast, or an identifier such as a Wikidata Q-number, dates of birth and death, places of burial, religious order, marital status, children, papal or patriarchal office, canonizing or beatifying authority, and a list of patronages must be left unspecified. The subject, on any of these identifications, was male. A researcher who needs a particular Confessor Cyril should obtain a more precise designation—see, century, or feast—before treating any one of these lives as the intended biography.