Suggest an Edit — Patriarch Theophilus

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Biography

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Theophilus served as Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 until his death in 412, heading the see of Egypt during a decisive generation in the Christianization of the Eastern Roman Empire. Little is recorded of his early life; he was Egyptian by origin and rose within the Alexandrian clergy, succeeding Timothy I. In Coptic reckoning he is counted as the twenty-third Pope of Alexandria. He was the maternal uncle of Cyril, who followed him on the throne of Saint Mark and dominated the christological controversies of the following decades. Contemporary church historians such as Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Palladius portray him as an energetic and often severe administrator whose policies left a deep mark on Egypt and on the wider imperial church.

In the early 390s Theophilus became a principal agent of the imperial campaign against public paganism. After the edicts of Emperor Theodosius I, he obtained authority to close and dismantle temples in Alexandria. The most famous episode was the destruction of the Serapeum, the great temple complex of Serapis, which ancient Christian and pagan writers alike treated as a turning point in the city's religious life. Cult statues and temple buildings were pulled down; Theophilus used the occasion to advertise the triumph of the church and to reuse materials and sites for Christian worship. He also issued festal (paschal) letters and other writings, of which only fragments and translations survive, and he took a strong interest in the calendar and in the discipline of the Egyptian monasteries that looked to Alexandria.

Theophilus's later years were dominated by the Origenist controversy among the monks of Nitria and Scetis. At first associated with a more allegorical reading of scripture, he subsequently aligned himself with monks who rejected Origenist spiritualizing of the divine image. He condemned Origen's books, expelled leading Origenist monks including those known as the Tall Brothers, and pursued them when they sought refuge in Palestine and then at Constantinople. That pursuit drew him into conflict with Archbishop John Chrysostom of Constantinople. In 403 Theophilus presided at the Synod of the Oak, near Chalcedon, which deposed Chrysostom on a mixture of disciplinary and political charges. The deposition, later reversed in the public memory of much of the Greek East, permanently damaged Theophilus's reputation in many Orthodox and Catholic narratives, while the churches of Egypt continued to honor him as a defender of the faith and of Alexandrian prerogatives.

Theophilus died in Alexandria in 412 and was succeeded by his nephew Cyril. His pontificate strengthened the administrative and economic power of the Alexandrian see, expanded its hold over the Egyptian countryside and monasteries, and set patterns of episcopal intervention that Cyril would inherit. He is commemorated as a saint in the Coptic Orthodox Church on 18 Paopi and in the Ethiopian Church; he is generally not venerated in the Byzantine Orthodox or Latin calendars, where the memory of Chrysostom's exile remains decisive. Surviving sources are partisan. Palladius and the supporters of Chrysostom are hostile, while Coptic tradition is laudatory, so many personal details of his character and private life cannot be independently verified.

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