In the last issue of this article I began to present the Cyrillian Group of the major feasts of our Church. It was amid the activities in the Church in the late fourth century that the liturgical feasts were developed as an expression and reinforcement of the true faith as expressed by Cyril of Jerusalem.

Cyril became bishop of Jerusalem between 349 and 351 and may have been active in the church there as early as 330. The Church of Jerusalem had been relatively unimportant for some time previous to this, but after Constantine’s mother, Helena, visited the Holy Land and rediscovered the Holy Sepulchre in 326, Jerusalem’s situation began to improve. With its increasing importance came an increasing tension between Jerusalem and the metropolitan see of Caesarea. The Arian position of the Metropolitan Acacius of Caesarea and the anti-Arian stance of Cyril’s predecessor Maximus did much to heighten this tension. Upon Maximus’ death in 349, Acacius deposed Maximus’ chosen successor and put Cyril in the see. Though Cyril renounced as invalid the ordination he had received from Maximus, it soon became clear that he intended to continue his predecessor’s rather independent policy. Because of this policy he was deposed and apparently replaced by Arians on three different occasions. Cyril’s theology was on the margins of the True Faith, but his disagreement with the Nicene party was more semantic than doctrinal. In 381, by the time of the Council of Constantinople was called, the Arians had pushed Cyril into the True Faith camp where he became an outspoken leader in the struggle against Arianism.

The reasons behind Cyril’s liturgical innovations have not been explained beyond brief references to Jerusalem’s unique topographical possibilities as the site where many of the events celebrated by the feasts originally took place. According to Dix, Cyril’s innovations were due to “purely local circumstances and opportunities.” He feels that it is out of the question that Cyril saw beyond the needs of his won community when he devised his liturgical program. Such an argument of “local pride” does little to explain the origins of the Cyrillian Feasts, and it does nothing to explain why these feasts were adopted so uniformly throughout the East during one clearly defined historical period. Dix reveals his ahistorical approach when he states that although Cyril first made his innovations in the 350s and 360s, they were not universally accepted until the end of the 80s and 90s.

………. To be continued ……….