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Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures
Edwin Hamilton Gifford; NPNF2-07 (1894) · Edition commentary
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Translator and historical edition notes (part 18)
year 370: but they prevailed rapidly when they had once taken root” (Scudamore, Dict. Chr. Antiq. “Relics,” p. 1770). Bingham (Ant. xxiii. 4, § 7) quotes a law of Theodosius, “that no one should remove any dead body that was buried, from one place to another; that no one should sell or buy the relics of Martyrs: but if any one was minded to build over the grave where a martyr was buried, a church to be called a martyrium, in respect to him, he should have liberty to do it.” The law wholly failed to suppress a superstition which was sanctioned by such men as Cyril, Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine.
ἐκ τῆς ὑπερθέσεως τῆς νηστείας τῆς παρασκευῆς, Ed. Bened.
“The ecclesiastical term τῆς ὑπερθέσεως we have rendered, according to the interpretation received among the Latins, by the word ‘superpositio.’ The ancients meant by it a fast continued for two or three days without food. Moreover, since the great week was observed with severer fastings, there were many who passed either the whole week or four, three, or two days, namely the Preparation and the Holy Sabbath (Easter Eve), entirely fasting as is testified by S. Irenæus (Euseb. Hist. V. 24) and others. The continuance of the fast throughout the Friday and Saturday was highly approved, as may be seen from the Apostolical Constitutions, V. 18.”
The passage referred to is as follows:
“Do you therefore fast on the days of the Passover, beginning from the second day of the week until the Preparation and the Sabbath, six days, making use only of bread, and salt, and herbs, and water for your drink: but abstain on these days from wine and flesh, for they are days of lamentation and not of fasting. Do ye who are able fast throughout the Preparation and the Sabbath entirely, tasting nothing till the cockcrowing at night; but if any one is not able to combine them both, let the Sabbath at least be observed.”
The fast of the Great Sabbath was to be continued through the night, as prescribed in the Apost. Const. V. 19:
“Continue until cock-crowing and break off your fast at dawn of the first day of the week, which is the Lord’s day, keeping awake from evening until cock-crowing: and assembling together in the Church, watch and pray and beseech God, in your night-long vigil, reading the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, until the crowing of the cocks: and after baptizing your Catechumens, and reading the Gospel in fear and trembling, and speaking to the people the things pertaining to salvation, so cease from your mourning.”
A chief reason for the watching was that Christ was expected to return at the same hour in which He rose. On the meaning of “superposition” see Routh’s note on the Synodical Epistle of Irenæus to Victor of Rome (Rell. Sac. ii. p. 45, ss.), and the passage of Dionysius of Alexandria there quoted.
1 Cor. xv. 35.
Ib. v. 16.
Ib. v. 36.
1 Thess. iv. 13.
Ib. v. 16.
μονονουχὶ δακτυλοδεικτῶν.
1 Cor. xv. 53.
μεταποιεῖται. The meaning of this word as applied to the Eucharistic elements is fully discussed, and illustrated from its use by Cyril and other Fathers, by Dr. Pusey (Real Presence, p. 189).
Matt. xiii. 43.
Dan. xii. 3.
Cyril refers to the glow-worm (πυγολαμπίς, Aristot. Hist. Animal. V. 19, 14), or some other species of Lampyris (Arist. de Partilus Animal. I. 3. 3).
Cf. Cat. iv. 31.
τῶν γενομένων. With the reading γινομένων (Codd. Monn. Vind.), the meaning will be—“share with us in the future what shall happen to us then.” On the argument of this section compare the passages quoted on § 4, note 7.
Ps. lxxxix. 37.
Cat. V. 12, notes 7 and 4. Cf. Plat. Theaet. 204 C: ἐφ᾽ ἑκάστης λέξεως, “each time we speak.”
Bishop Lightfoot (Ignatius, ad Smyrnæos, viii.) traces the original and later senses of the word “Catholic” very fully.
“In its earliest usages, therefore, as a fluctuating epithet of ἐκκλησία, ‘catholic’ means ‘universal,’ as opposed to ‘individual,’ ‘particular.’ In its later sense, as a fixed attribute, it implies orthodoxy as opposed to heresy, conformity as opposed to dissent.”
Commenting on this passage of Cyril, the Bishop adds that “these two latter reasons, that it (the Church) is comprehensive in doctrine, and that it is universal in application, can only be regarded as secondary glosses.”
ἐκκαλεῖσθαι. Cf. Heb. xii. 23.
Lev. viii. 3: ἐκκλησίασον.
Deut. iv. 10.
Ib. ix. 10: ἐκκλησίας.
Ps. xxxv. 18; Heb. ii. 12.
Ps. lxviii. 26: ἐν ἐκκλησίαις.
Matt. xvi. 18.
Ps. xxvi. 5.
Ps. xxvi. 8: Sept. εὐπρέπειαν . R.V. and A.V. “habitation.”
Ib. v. 12.
Ps. cxlix. 1.
Mal. i. 10.
Ib. v. 11.
1 Tim. iii. 15.
Acts xix. 14.
Eph. v. 25.
Gal. iv. 26.
1 Cor. xii. 28.
2 Cor. vi. 7, 8.
1 Tim. ii. 2.
Ps. cxlvii. 14.
Dan. xii. 3, Sept.
1 Thess. iv. 17.
Matt. xxv. 46.
John iii. 36.
Ib. v. 24.
Ib. iv. 36.
Ib. xii. 25.
Matt. xix. 29.
Ib. vv. 16–18.
Mark. x. 17.
Rom. vi. 22.
τῆς ὑμετέρας ἐν Χριστῷ ἀγάπης. Cf. Cat. xvii. 1, note 1. Athan. Epist. ad Epict. § 2: παρὰ τῇ σῇ θεοσεβείά. ad Serap. iv. 1: παρὰ τῆς σῆς εὐλαβείας.
The place meant is not the Church of the Resurrection in which the Service had been held, but the Anastasis or actual cave of the Resurrection, which Constantine had so enlarged by additional works that a discourse to the people could be held there: for Jerome (Epist. 61) relates that Epiphanius had preached in that place in front of the Lord’s sepulchre to clergy and people in the hearing of John the Bishop (Ben. Ed.).
Eph. v. 26.
Phil. iii. 1; and iv. 4; Luke xxi. 28.
Is. xl. 3.
Ib. lv. 1.
Ib. v. 2.
Is. lx. 1.
Ib. i. 26.
Ib. ii. 3.
Ib. xlix. 18.
Ib. lx. 8.
Ib. lxvi. 8.
Ib. lxv. 18.
Ib. xlix. 13.
Is. xliv. 22.
Ib. lxv. 15.
Eph. i. 3.
Ib. v. 7.
Ib. ii. 4.
Tit. iii. 4.
Eph. i. 17, 18.
“At the end of this Lecture in the older of the Munich mss. there is the following addition: Many other Lectures were delivered year by year, both before Baptism and after the neophytes had been baptized. But these alone were taken down when spoken and written by some of the earnest students in the year 352 of the advent of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And in these you will find partly discussions of all the necessary doctrines of the Faith which ought to be known to men, and answers to the Greeks, and to those of the Circumcision, and to the Heresies, and the moral precepts of Christians of all kinds, by the grace of God. The year 352 according to the computation of the Greeks is the year 360 of the Christian era”
(Rupp). The date at which the Lectures were delivered cannot possibly be so late as is here stated. See the section of the Introduction on the “Date.”
of
This general title of the five following Lectures is omitted in many mss. “In Cod. Ottob. at the end of the special title of this first Mystagogic Lecture, after the words “to the end of the Epistle,” there follows the statement “Of the same author Cyril, and of John the Bishop” (Bened. Ed.). See Index, Authenticity.
Lecture XIX.
This Lecture was delivered on the Monday after Easter in the Holy Sepulchre: see Cat. xviii. 33.
τὴν ἔμφασιν τὴν.…γεγενημένην , is found in all the mss. “Nevertheless it would seem that we ought to read τῶν.…γεγενημένων, which Grodecq either read or substituted” (Ben. Ed.). With the proposed reading the meaning would be—“the significance of the things done to you,” which agrees better with the meaning of ἔμφασις.
τὁν προαύλιον, called below in § 11 “the outer chamber.” Cf. Procat. § 1, note 3. It appears from Tertullian, De Corona, § 3, that the renunciation was made first in the Church, and afterwards in the Baptistery:
“When we are going to enter the water, at that moment as well as just before in the Church under the hand of the President, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels.”
Ex. xiv. 9, 23.
ἀποτρόπαιον
φυγαδευτήριον, the word commonly used in the Septuagint for “a city of refuge.” But the Verb φυγαδεύω is Transitive in 2 Macc. ix. 4, as well as in Xenophon and Demosthenes. The application of the blood of Christ in Baptism is represented by marking the sign of the Cross on the forehead. Compare the lines of Prudentius quoted by the Benedictine Editor: “Passio quæ nostram defendit sanguine frontem, Corporeamque domum signato collinit ore.”
Heb. ii. 14, 15.
Gal. ii. 18.
Herod. II. 58: “The Egyptians were the first to introduce solemn assemblies (πανηγύρις) and processions (πομπάς).” At Rome the term “pompa” was applied especially to the procession with which the Ludi Circenses were opened and also to any grand ceremony or pageant.
θεατρομανίαι. Cf. Tertull. Apologet. 38;
“We renounce all your spectacles.…Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the Circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground.”
He calls the theatre “that citadel of all impurities,” De Spectaculis, c. 10, “immodesty’s peculiar abode,” c. 17, and gives a vivid description of the rage and fury of the Circus in c. 16.
Ps. cxix. 37.
μίμων, the name either of a species of low comedy, “consisting more of gestures and mimicry than of spoken dialogue,” or of the persons who acted in them. Cyril’s description of the coarse and indecent character of the mimes is more than justified by the impartial testimony of Ovid, Trist. ii. 497:
“Quid si scripsissem mimos obscœna jocantes, Qui semper vetiti crimen amoris habent; In quibus assidue cultus procedit adulter, Verbaque dat stulto callida nupta viro. Nubilis hos virgo, matronaque, virque, puerque Spectat, et e magna parte Senatus adest. Nec satis incestis temerari vocibus aures; Assuescunt oculi multa pudenda pati.”
A theatre is mentioned as one of the buildings erected by Hadrian in his new City Aelia Capitolina built on the site of Jerusalem; and that theatrical performances were continued in the time of Cyril we know from the accusation that in a time of famine he had sold one of the Church vestments, which was afterwards used upon the stage.
Lactantius, Epitome, § 63: “Histrionici etiam impudici gestus, quibus infames fœminas imitantur, libidines, quæ saltando exprimunt, docent.”
κυνηγεσίαις, the so-called “venationes” of the Circus in which the “bestiarii” fought with wild beasts.
The “bestiarii” were feasted in public on the day before their encounter with the beasts. See Tertull. Apologet. § 42: “I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, after the manner of the beast-fighters at their last banquet.” Ib. § 9: “Those also who dine on the flesh of wild beasts from the arena, who have keen appetites for bear and stag.” These latter, however, were chiefly the poor, to whom flesh was a rarity: Apuleius Metam. iv. 14, quoted by Oehler.
ψυχὰς ἐκτραχήλιζον, an allusion to the risk of a broken neck in the chariot-race. Tertull. de Spectaculis, § 9:
“Equestrianism was formerly practised in a simple way on horseback, and certainly its ordinary use was innocent: but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from a gift of God into the service of demons.”
The presiding deity of the chariot-race was Poseidon (Hom. Il. xxiii, 307; Pind. Ol. i. 63; Pyth. vi. 50; Soph. Œdip. Col. 712), and both this and the other shows of the Circus, and of the theatre, were connected with the worship of the gods of Greece and Rome, and therefore forbidden as idolatrous: “What high religious rites, what sacrifices precede, intervene, and follow, how many guilds, how many priesthoods, how many services are set astir” (Tert. de Spect. § 7).
πανηγύρεσι. The Panegyris was strictly a religious festival, but was commonly accompanied by a great fair or market, in which were sold not only such things as the worshippers might need for their offerings, e.g. frankincense, but also the flesh of the animals which had been sacrificed. Cf. Dictionary of Greek and Rom. Antiq. “Panegyris.” Tertull. Apolog. § 42: “We do not go to your spectacles: yet the articles that are sold there, if I need them, I shall obtain more readily at their proper places. We certainly buy no frankincense.”
Compare St. Paul’s argument against meats offered to idols, 1 Cor. x. 14–21: and on Cyril’s Eucharistic doctrine, see notes on Cat. xxii.
The form of renunciation before Baptism is given in the Apostolic Constitutions, VII. 41: “I renounce Satan, and his works, and his pomps, and his services, and his angels, and his inventions, and all things that are under him.” Cf. Tertull. De Spectaculis, § 4:
“When on entering the water, we make profession of the Christian faith in the words of its rule, we bear public testimony that we have renounced the devil, his pomp, and his angels.”
Herod. ii. 62:
“At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices (to Minerva, or Neith), there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses.…These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps (Λυχνοκαΐη).”
Fountains and rivers had each its own deity or nymph, to whom sacrifices were offered, and incense burned.