Theophilus

Theophilus of Alexandria held the see of Alexandria from 385 to 412 as its patriarch and, in Egyptian church usage, as Pope of Alexandria. Fifth-century Greek church historians, especially Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, together with the more partisan account of Palladius, are the principal contemporary or near-contemporary narrative sources for his life; later Coptic historical compilations add stories about his youth that are not corroborated by those earlier writers. His date of birth is unknown, and no reliable contemporary text names his native city. He was Egyptian and the uncle of Cyril of Alexandria, who would succeed him. He advanced in the Alexandrian clergy and followed Timothy I as bishop in 385, in the reign of the emperor Theodosius I.

During the first phase of his patriarchate Theophilus was a leading agent of the suppression of public pagan cult in Egypt. In 391, against the background of Theodosian legislation, he oversaw the occupation and destruction of the Serapeum of Alexandria, the celebrated temple of Serapis, an episode recounted by Rufinus of Aquileia as well as by Socrates and Sozomen. Other temples in the city and in the Egyptian countryside were closed or turned into churches under his direction. These measures formed part of a broader late-fourth-century transformation of Alexandria’s religious topography and displayed the patriarch’s willingness to use both imperial law and popular Christian pressure against remaining pagan institutions.

In the years around 400 Theophilus emerged as the chief episcopal adversary of Origenist teaching among the monks of Egypt. Having earlier shown some sympathy with allegorical methods, he called a synod at Alexandria that condemned doctrines ascribed to Origen and then acted against Origenist leaders in the desert settlements of Nitria and Scetis, notably the monks known as the Tall Brothers. They fled Egypt, first to Palestine and then to Constantinople, where they sought the protection of Archbishop John Chrysostom. Theophilus treated their reception in the capital as an affront to his authority over Egyptian monasticism and as a doctrinal challenge, and the dispute widened into a confrontation between Alexandria and Constantinople.

In 403 Theophilus came north and was the dominant figure at the Synod of the Oak, assembled near Chalcedon, which deposed John Chrysostom. The imperial court of Arcadius carried out the sentence; Chrysostom was exiled and died in 407. Writers favorable to Chrysostom, Palladius among them, present Theophilus as motivated by pride and personal hostility; the fifth-century historians record a mixture of theological, jurisdictional, and court-political factors. The affair left Theophilus with a deeply divided reputation: in much of the Greek and Latin Christian world his name remained bound to the injustice done to Chrysostom, while the church of Egypt continued to regard him as a legitimate and authoritative pope of Alexandria.

Theophilus died in Alexandria in 412. Cyril, his nephew, succeeded him and continued several of his uncle’s policies, including resistance to Origenist speculation and a strong conception of Alexandrian prerogative. Only fragments of Theophilus’s own literary work remain, chiefly festal letters issued for the date of Easter, pieces of anti-Origenist controversy, and letters connected with the conflict over Chrysostom. He is not associated with a later religious order. Later Latin-style canonization procedures do not apply to his period; liturgical commemoration has been characteristic of the Coptic Orthodox tradition rather than of the Byzantine or Roman calendars, a pattern that mirrors the conflicting assessments of his career already found in the church historians of the fifth century.