Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the sixty-ninth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius, from the period about AD 428 – 450.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.

The translations

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.

In this volume

Cyril was patriarch of Alexandria from AD 412 until his death in AD 444. He led the party against Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, taught that the Word of God is one with his own flesh, and made peace with the Antiochenes in AD 433. He also wrote long commentaries on Scripture.

Nestorius was born in Syria, lived as a monk at Antioch, and became patriarch of Constantinople in AD 428. His objection to calling Mary the Mother of God led to his condemnation at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, and he was exiled to Egypt. The Bazaar of Heracleides, written in his exile, survives only in Syriac and was found and printed in the nineteenth century.

The two parts of this volume stand on opposite sides of the controversy that led to the Council of Ephesus in AD 431. Cyril’s Five Tomes against Nestorius answer, passage by passage, the sermons of Nestorius at Constantinople. The Bazaar of Heracleides was written by Nestorius in exile many years later, and it survives only in a Syriac translation that was found in the nineteenth century. It is printed here with the two letters that Nestorius wrote to Pope Celestine in AD 430.

Dates and authorship

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.