Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the seventieth 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, Shorter Writings and Isaiah, Part 1, from the period about AD 412 – 444.

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.

The first part of this volume gathers the shorter writings of Cyril that were translated in English: the opening of his long reply to the emperor Julian’s attack on the Christians, the Scholia on the Incarnation, and fragments of his lost books against Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and the Synousiasts. Many of the fragments are known only through quotation by later writers. The second part opens Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah, which continues in the next volume.

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.