Who Was St. Cyril of Alexandria? Theotokos, Ephesus, and Controversy

Every Orthodox service that calls the Virgin Mary "Theotokos," the one who gave birth to God, owes something to St Cyril of Alexandria. He led the fight for that title against Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, and presided at the Council of Ephesus in 431, which the Church counts as the Third Ecumenical Council. The Orthodox Church in America's Life calls him "a distinguished champion of Orthodoxy and a great teacher of the Church." The Oriental Orthodox churches honor him as their father in the faith too.

He is also one of the most criticized saints in Christian history. Even ancient writers who shared his faith criticized his methods, and many modern readers know him only as the bishop in office when a Christian mob murdered the philosopher Hypatia.

In brief

Cyril became bishop of Alexandria in October 412, succeeding his uncle Theophilus, and died in 444. His early years saw violent conflict in the city, including the expulsion of the Jews and the murder of Hypatia in 415. From 428 he opposed Nestorius, who resisted the title Theotokos. Cyril insisted that the one born of Mary is the eternal Word made flesh. At Ephesus in 431 he opened the council before the bishops from Antioch arrived and had Nestorius deposed, and a rival assembly deposed Cyril in turn. In 433 Cyril and John of Antioch were reconciled on a text that spoke of "a union of two natures." Chalcedon in 451 received Cyril's letters but defined Christ "in two natures," which those who rejected the council saw as a betrayal of Cyril's own formula of one incarnate nature of God the Word. That is why both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Orthodox claim him. On Hypatia, the nearest source, Socrates Scholasticus, blames a group led by a church reader named Peter and says the deed brought great discredit on Cyril, but does not say he ordered it.

Thesis: Cyril's teaching that Christ is one Person, the Word made flesh, was received by the whole Church and still unites Christians divided since 451, while the documents show a bishop whose methods were often harsh and whose role in Hypatia's death, though not proven, cannot be dismissed.

Bishop of a turbulent city

Cyril was the nephew of Theophilus, the patriarch who had presided at the synod that deposed St John Chrysostom. When Theophilus died on 15 October 412, rival factions fought over the succession, and on the third day Cyril was installed. The church historian Socrates Scholasticus, writing in Constantinople, probably in the 440s, says he took office "with greater power than Theophilus had ever exercised," and that he at once closed the churches of the Novatians, a rigorist Christian group, and seized their property.¹

Socrates then describes a spiral of violence. After a night attack in which, he reports, Jews killed Christians, Cyril led a crowd that took over the synagogues and drove the Jews out of the city, to the fury of the prefect Orestes. Some five hundred monks from Nitria came to support Cyril; one of them, Ammonius, struck Orestes with a stone and was tortured to death. Cyril honored him as a martyr, but "the more sober-minded, although Christians, did not accept Cyril's prejudiced estimate of him," and Cyril let the matter drop.² Socrates defends the title Theotokos and is no enemy of Cyril's doctrine, so his criticism here deserves weight.

The Theotokos controversy

Nestorius, a celebrated preacher from Antioch, became archbishop of Constantinople in 428. According to Socrates, his priest Anastasius preached: "Let no one call Mary Theotocos: for Mary was but a woman; and it is impossible that God should be born of a woman." Nestorius defended him and rejected the title. Socrates, who had read Nestorius's sermons, did not think him a heretic who denied Christ's divinity; rather, "he seemed scared at the term Theotocos, as though it were some terrible phantom." He also noted that earlier writers, including Origen and Eusebius, had used the title.³ For more on its background, see Mary in the Early Church.

Cyril saw more at stake than a title. In his second letter to Nestorius he wrote that the Word did not change into flesh or merely take on a man, but "the two natures being brought together in a true union, there is of both one Christ and one Son; for the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union." The Son born of the Father before all ages is the same Son born of the Virgin.⁴ If Mary bore only a man joined to God, then the one who died on the Cross was not God's own Son.

In 430 Cyril sent a third letter, backed by a synod at Rome under Pope Celestine, ending with twelve anathemas that Nestorius was to accept. The first reads: "If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος), inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh ... let him be anathema." The twelfth condemns anyone who will not recognize "that the Word of God suffered in the flesh."⁵ To the Antiochene bishops these chapters sounded like Apollinarianism, the old error that Christ lacked a full human mind.

Ephesus 431: a true council by an irregular road

Theodosius II summoned the bishops to Ephesus for Pentecost 431. John of Antioch and the Syrian bishops were delayed. On 22 June, sixteen days after John had announced that he would arrive within five or six, Cyril and the majority opened the council without them and without the Roman legates.⁶ Nestorius refused to attend. In a single long session the bishops judged Cyril's second letter to agree with Nicaea, condemned Nestorius's reply, and deposed him. Socrates, no partisan of Nestorius, still says Cyril "began a sharp skirmish of words, with the design of terrifying Nestorius, for he had a strong dislike for him."⁷

Five days later John arrived and held his own assembly, where forty-three bishops deposed Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus. The emperor first ratified the depositions decreed by both assemblies and had Cyril and Memnon confined, before accepting the majority council.⁶ Even John Chapman, a Catholic scholar who defended Cyril's doctrine and thought John's delay probably deliberate, wrote that "it is regrettable that all possible allowance was not made" for the absent bishops.⁸ The surviving acts record that Cyril's third letter and anathemas were read, but, as the editor of the standard English translation notes, "No action is recorded in the Acts as having been taken."⁹ Whether Ephesus formally adopted the twelve chapters is still debated.

Afterward Cyril worked hard to win the imperial court. Among his letters survives a list of gifts sent to officials in Constantinople. The historian Volker Menze calls it "arguably the largest bribe in antiquity" and argues that Cyril "veiled his gifts as blessings."¹⁰

The Church receives Ephesus not because its procedure was clean but because the whole Church recognized its teaching as the apostolic faith; see how the Orthodox Church knows which councils are ecumenical.

Reunion, "one incarnate nature," and why both sides claim him

In 433 John of Antioch sent Cyril a confession of faith. It called Christ "perfect God, and perfect Man," of one substance with the Father and with us, and said: "for there became a union of two natures. Wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord." It also confessed the Virgin as Mother of God. Cyril's glad reply opened: "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad."¹¹ This Formula of Reunion shows that Cyril could accept "two natures" language when the unity of Christ was clear.

When some of his own supporters were alarmed, Cyril defended a phrase he believed came from St Athanasius. Writing to Bishop Succensus, he called it what "the holy Fathers have stated: One Incarnate Nature of The Word." He explained that after the union "we do not divide the natures from one another," yet he could also say the union "took place out of two natures," comparing Christ to a human being made of body and soul.¹² The phrase actually came from a letter by Apollinarius that circulated under Athanasius's name. The scholar Hans van Loon argues that before 433 Cyril used the formula in his own words only once (twice more he quoted it from the pseudo-Athanasian letter), preferring to speak of a union "according to hypostasis."¹³

Chalcedon in 451 formally received "the synodical letters of the Blessed Cyril" to Nestorius and to the Easterns, together with Pope Leo's Tome, and confessed one Christ "in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably."¹⁴ Many in Egypt and Syria saw a step back toward Nestorius. Severus of Antioch, the great non-Chalcedonian theologian of the sixth century, objected that the council sought "to banish the confession that Christ is to be recognised as from two natures, and to introduce instead the confession that he is to be recognised as in two natures."¹⁵

The Chalcedonian churches answered by reading Chalcedon through Cyril. The Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) accepted both "two natures" and "the one nature made flesh of God the Word," provided each was understood as the holy Fathers taught, as a hypostatic union without confusion; it also condemned Theodoret's writings "against the Twelve Chapters of St. Cyril."¹⁶ In 1989 the official joint commission of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches declared that it had found common ground in the formula of "our common Father, St. Cyril of Alexandria."¹⁷ The site's article on what Chalcedon actually defined explains the council itself.

Hypatia: what the sources say

Hypatia was a mathematician and Platonist philosopher whom, Socrates says, all men admired for her dignity and virtue. In March 415, during Lent, she was murdered. Socrates, the nearest source, says it was rumored among Christians that she kept Orestes from reconciling with the bishop, and "some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter," dragged her into a church, killed her and burned her body. His verdict: "And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort."¹⁸

The standard English translation says the affair brought "not the least opprobrium" on Cyril, which sounds like an acquittal. The Greek, as quoted by the historian Philip Schaff, reads οὐ μικρὸν μῶμον, literally no small blame, on Cyril and on the Alexandrian church.¹⁹ Socrates assigns Cyril moral discredit. He does not say Cyril ordered the killing.

The later sources pull in opposite directions. John of Nikiu, an Egyptian bishop of the late seventh century, calls Hypatia a pagan "devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music" and says the people hailed Cyril as "the new Theophilus" afterward.²⁰ The pagan philosopher Damascius, writing in the early sixth century and preserved in the Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda, says Cyril saw the crowds at her house and "his soul was bitten [with envy], so that he immediately plotted her death."²¹ Both are late and partisan. Edward Watts, in a recent scholarly biography, argues that the mob probably did not set out to kill her and that the murder was "circumstantial, rather than premeditated," in the words of one reviewer.²² Schaff notes that Gibbon and Milman inclined to hold Cyril responsible, though Schaff himself judged that "the evidence is not sufficient"; some scholars still read his role more harshly.

{{moderate: The evidence supports Cyril's moral responsibility for a climate of violence in Alexandria, but not his direct command of the murder.}} William Bright, quoted by Schaff, put it soberly: "Had there been no onslaught on the synagogues, there would doubtless have been no murder of Hypatia."¹⁹

Did Cyril and Nestorius understand each other?

Scholars answer this differently. Several points suggest real misunderstanding. Socrates thought Nestorius was frightened of a word rather than a denier of Christ's divinity. Cyril accepted "a union of two natures" in 433, language not far from what Nestorius wanted. In his late defense, the Bazaar of Heracleides, Nestorius praised Pope Leo, whose Tome Chalcedon approved, as one "who used to preach the truth undaunted."²³ The German historian Friedrich Loofs concluded that Nestorius could have accepted Chalcedon's creed, and called it "a tragic feature in the fortune of Nestorius, that he had already been condemned, when the council, whose creed he could have accepted, was held."²⁴ In 1994 the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East declared that the old divisions "were due in large part to misunderstandings."²⁵

Other evidence points to a real difference. At Ephesus, Socrates reports, Nestorius said: "I cannot term him God who was two and three months old."⁷ In the Bazaar he welcomes the claim that his former opponents Flavian and Eusebius had admitted, as he taught, that "the union took place in prosôpon and not in the nature": a union of two complete natures in one prosôpon (person), rather than in the one hypostasis of the Word.²³ Loofs himself granted that "an interpretation according to the Cyrillian tradition could not have been accepted by Nestorius."²⁴ The issue was whether the eternal Word is himself the one subject of everything Christ did and suffered, including birth from Mary and death on the Cross. Cyril said yes without reservation. Nestorius hesitated.

A balanced answer: the two men often talked past each other, using "nature" and "person" differently, and hostility made it worse. Yet underneath lay a genuine difference about who is born and who dies. The Orthodox Church judges that Cyril saw this rightly, while it can grant that Nestorius was treated unfairly in procedure.

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence

For Cyril we are unusually well supplied. His letters and treatises survive in large numbers, as do the acts of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Socrates wrote within about thirty years of the events in Alexandria, and Nestorius's own defense survives in Syriac. Cyril's episcopate (412 to 444), Ephesus, the reunion of 433 and the main lines of the Hypatia affair are well attested.

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

The Lives add material the documents do not support. The OCA's Life says that Nestorius died in exile "in grievous torments" and that worms developed in the tongue that had blasphemed the Mother of God; Socrates, writing while Nestorius was still alive, says only that he was banished to the Oasis. The Life also tells how Cyril, after a dream in which the Theotokos asked Chrysostom to forgive him, was reconciled to Chrysostom's memory. That Cyril for some years refused to restore Chrysostom's name to the diptychs is attested; the dream is a later edifying story.²⁶

(c) Reported miracles

The OCA's Life reports that Cyril cast demons out of a pagan temple and built a church there for the relics of Sts Cyrus and John. This is reported, not documented.

The Orthodox position

As dogma, the Church confesses with Ephesus and Chalcedon that the Virgin is Theotokos and that Christ is one Person, the eternal Word, who took human nature into himself without confusion or division. Honoring Cyril as a father and teacher is common tradition. It is not dogma that every action of a saint was right; holiness is God's work in a repentant human being, not a certificate of good conduct. On how the Church recognizes saints, see How Does Someone Become a Saint in the Orthodox Church? Whether Cyril bears personal guilt for Hypatia, or how much he understood Nestorius, is theological and historical opinion.

The Orthodox Church keeps his memory on 18 January, together with St Athanasius, and on 9 June, which the OCA calls the day of his repose.²⁷ See also the Church Fathers guide and the Lives of the Saints.

The strongest objections

"A man who used mobs and bribes cannot be a saint"

Skeptics and many Protestants press this, and the honest reply concedes the facts. Chapman, a Catholic admirer, wrote that "more patience and diplomacy might possibly even have prevented the vast Nestorian sect from arising at all."²⁸ Yet the Church has never claimed its saints were faultless; Scripture tells of David and Peter without softening. The Church venerates Cyril for the faith he defended, that God himself was born and suffered in the flesh for us (John 1:14), not for his politics.

"Chalcedon betrayed Cyril" (the Oriental Orthodox objection)

Copts, Syriac Orthodox and Armenians argue, as Severus did, that "in two natures" and Leo's Tome reopened the door Cyril shut, and that Chalcedon received Theodoret and Ibas, who had attacked him. This is a serious argument from people who love Cyril as much as the Eastern Orthodox do. The Eastern Orthodox reply is that Chalcedon received Cyril's letters by name and that the Fifth Council made the Cyrilline reading binding. The agreed statements of the official dialogue suggest that both families confess the same Christ in different words, while disagreements over the later councils and some anathemas remain.

"Nestorius was condemned unheard" (the Church of the East objection)

The procedure was rushed, and Nestorius had grounds to complain, though he was summoned and refused to attend. The Assyrian Church of the East adds that its own confession of two natures in one Christ was never the division of Christ that Ephesus condemned, and in 1994 it and the Catholic Church jointly declared that the old divisions arose largely from misunderstandings.²⁵ A flawed process does not make the conclusion false; the Church's reception of the teaching is what made Ephesus ecumenical.

What we can say confidently

• {{very-strong: Ephesus (431) deposed Nestorius and upheld the title Theotokos, and Chalcedon (451) received Cyril's synodical letters as a standard of faith.}}
• Ephesus opened before John of Antioch and the Roman legates arrived, and a rival assembly deposed Cyril.
• In 433 Cyril accepted a confession speaking of "a union of two natures."
• The nearest source on Hypatia blames a mob led by a church reader and says the deed brought great discredit on Cyril.

What remains disputed

• {{debated: Whether Cyril directly ordered or knowingly encouraged the murder of Hypatia.}}
• Whether Ephesus formally adopted the twelve anathemas.
• How far Cyril and Nestorius disagreed in substance rather than in vocabulary.
• Whether "in two natures" is a faithful development of Cyril's teaching or a departure from it.
• How far the gifts to the court shaped the outcome after Ephesus.

Conclusion

Cyril is not an easy saint, and the Church does not ask us to pretend he was. His temper and tactics belong to the record, and so does Hypatia's death in his city, whatever his precise part in it. But the question he would not let go is the question of the Gospel: is the child in Mary's arms God the Word, who for us and for our salvation came down and was made man? When Orthodox Christians sing to the Theotokos, they answer as Cyril did, and that confession still draws Eastern and Oriental Orthodox toward one another.

Notes

1. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 7.7, trans. A. C. Zenos, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890), newadvent.org; John Chapman, "St. Cyril of Alexandria," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), which gives 18 October for the consecration. ↩
2. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.13-14, Zenos trans. ↩
3. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.32, Zenos trans. ↩
4. Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius, read at the first session of Ephesus, in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, trans. Henry Percival, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900), newadvent.org. ↩
5. Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas, in Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14. ↩
6. John Chapman, "Council of Ephesus," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909), newadvent.org. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.34, also reports both depositions. ↩
7. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.34, Zenos trans. ↩
8. Chapman, "Council of Ephesus." ↩
9. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, Council of Ephesus, Session I, editorial note following the Twelve Anathemas. ↩
10. Volker Menze, "Blessings, Bribes, and Bishops: Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Ephesus (431), and the Making of Orthodoxy," in The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age (Taylor & Francis, 2022), 48-64, doi:10.4324/9781003302407-4, abstract. The list is Cyril, Letter 96, in Letters 51-110, trans. John I. McEnerney, Fathers of the Church 77 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987). ↩
11. Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to John of Antioch, read at Chalcedon, in Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14. On the date 433, see Hans van Loon (note 13). ↩
12. Cyril of Alexandria, First Letter to Succensus, 6-7, trans. John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004), 352-58, as reproduced at st-takla.org. ↩
13. Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 521-30, excerpted as "On St. Cyril and the Mia Physis Formula," orthochristian.com (2016). ↩
14. Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith, in Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14. ↩
15. Severus of Antioch, no. 14 in the collection (from his answer to the fifteenth question sent by Thomas his syncellus, 513-18), in E. W. Brooks, ed. and trans., A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch, Patrologia Orientalis 12.2 (Paris, 1915), tertullian.org. ↩
16. Second Council of Constantinople, Capitula, anathema 8, and the Sentence of the Synod, in Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14. ↩
17. Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, First Agreed Statement, Anba Bishoy Monastery, Egypt, 20-24 June 1989, ecupatria.org. ↩
18. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 7.15, Zenos trans. The date (fourth year of Cyril's episcopate, March, in Lent) is Socrates' own; the Suda On Line notes give 415. ↩
19. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, §171, "Cyril of Alexandria," note (ccel.org), quoting the Greek of Socrates 7.15 and William Bright, A History of the Church from 313 to 451, 275. The Bright quotation also appears in Zenos's note to Socrates 7.15 (NPNF2 vol. 2). ↩
20. John of Nikiu, Chronicle 84.87-103, trans. R. H. Charles (London, 1916), tertullian.org. ↩
21. Suda, upsilon 166, "Hypatia," trans. Catharine Roth, Suda On Line (stoa.org / cs.uky.edu), drawing on Damascius, Life of Isidore. ↩
22. Aistė Čelkytė, review of Edward J. Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.10.07. ↩
23. Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 374-75, tertullian.org. The Leo passage and the prosôpon passage both fall on these pages; the latter refers to Flavian and Eusebius. ↩
24. Friedrich Loofs, Nestorius and His Place in the History of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 100-101, archive.org. ↩
25. Pope John Paul II and Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV, Common Christological Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, 11 November 1994, vatican.va. ↩
26. Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria" (9 June), Lives of the Saints, oca.org; Chapman, "St. Cyril of Alexandria," on the diptychs and Isidore of Pelusium. ↩
27. Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria," Lives of the Saints for 18 January and 9 June, oca.org. Chapman (1908) likewise gives 9 June and 18 January in the Greek Menaia. ↩
28. Chapman, "St. Cyril of Alexandria." ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Socrates Scholasticus. Ecclesiastical History, Book 7. Translated by A. C. Zenos. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 2. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890.
• The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Acts of Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople II, including Cyril's letters to Nestorius and to John of Antioch). Translated by Henry Percival. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900.
• Cyril of Alexandria. First Letter to Succensus. In John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts, 352-58. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004.
• Cyril of Alexandria. Letters 51-110. Translated by John I. McEnerney. Fathers of the Church 77. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987.
• Nestorius. The Bazaar of Heracleides. Translated by G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.
• Severus of Antioch. A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch from Numerous Syriac Manuscripts. Edited and translated by E. W. Brooks. Patrologia Orientalis 12.2. Paris, 1915.
• John of Nikiu. The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu. Translated by R. H. Charles. London, 1916.
• Suda, upsilon 166, "Hypatia." Translated by Catharine Roth. Suda On Line.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria" (18 January and 9 June). Lives of the Saints, oca.org.
• Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. First Agreed Statement. Anba Bishoy Monastery, 1989.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Chapman, John. "St. Cyril of Alexandria." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
• Chapman, John. "Council of Ephesus." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
• Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, §171. ccel.org.
• Loofs, Friedrich. Nestorius and His Place in the History of Christian Doctrine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914.
• Van Loon, Hans. The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 96. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
• Menze, Volker. "Blessings, Bribes, and Bishops: Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Ephesus (431), and the Making of Orthodoxy." In The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age, 48-64. Taylor & Francis, 2022.
• Čelkytė, Aistė. Review of Edward J. Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2017). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.10.07.

Sources from the traditions discussed (Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Catholic and critical)

• Common Christological Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. Vatican, 11 November 1994.
• Severus of Antioch and Nestorius (see Primary sources) represent the non-Chalcedonian and Antiochene cases in their own words; Damascius (via the Suda) represents the hostile pagan tradition.