The Lenten Lectures
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1. The Lenten Lectures St. Cyril delivered his pre-baptismal catechetical lectures in the Lent of (probably) 349 A.D.l The audience consisted principally of the higher class of catechumens, i.e., those who, having decided to "take the plunge," had, before Lent, given in their names with a view to receiving Christian initiation through baptism by total immersion, chrism and Holy Communion in the night of Holy Saturday and the early morning of Easter Sunday. Since a common name for baptism was
"enlightenment," the candidates were called photizomenoi, "those to be enlightened" or "those being enlightened." Adult baptism, except in emergency, was the rule in the fourth century. Among those present were also many baptized Christians, for whom the Lenten exposition of the creed served as a refresher course. Men and women were separated, occupying opposite sides of the church.2
Cyril never formally published his Catecheses. According to a scribal note,3 we owe the preservation of their text to the fact that some of the spoudaioi (divots, probably the local monks and nuns) reported Cyril in shorthand as he was speaking. According to this note, Cyril's lectures were taken down in one year only. This statement is a little difficult to square with the extensive variations in the manuscripts,4 which suggests stratification there, i.e., that the manuscripts
1 For the year, see Telfer 36-38.
2 Procat. 14.
3 At the end of the Catecheses in the old Munich MS; RR 2.342-343 n.
20.
4 See especially Toutee's two recensions of Catechesis 2; there are two different versions of 2.16-20.
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
reflect the catechizing of more than one year. Similarly, the advanced theology of the Holy Spirit in Catecheses 16 and 17 also suggests a date considerably later than 350. Again, the one-year view is difficult to harmonize with the various indications of the season5 and with Cyril's reference to "what has been said to previous classes,"6 for Cyril very probably did not give the Catecheses before 349, the year represented by our text if it represents the lectures of only one year. Owing to the rule of the secret (attested by the scribal note following the Procatechesis), the Catecheses must have circulated privately at first, being available only to the baptized and photizomenoi. Towards the end of the century, St. Jerome mentioned their being in (public?) circulation: "Exstant eius
Catecheses, quas in adolescentia composuit."7 This perhaps implies Jerome's belief that the lectures had not been adequately revised.
Syllabus and Arrangement The syllabus of the Catecheses, at least in the form in which they have reached us, is the exposition and "demonstration" of the Jerusalem Creed. The only exception is the second part (18-37) of Lecture 4, and Lecture 4 is somewhat exceptional. The fact that the Creed is delivered to the candidates only at 5.12 may seem to suggest that it was only part of the syllabus. But Catecheses 6-18 deal with the clauses of the Creed in order and, as Cyril points out in 18.22, Catecheses
1-3 have for their subject the clause in the Jerusalem Creed, "one baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." Catechesis 4.4-17 is a summary exposition of the Creed, and 5 At lS.7 ("The season is winter . . :), Gifford says that this passage and 4.30 "show that the Lectures were delivered in the year when
Easter fell early." But in 14.10, spring had already arrived, and not merely official spring, but also the spring flowers. 13.1S may be relevant to this problem.
6 6.21. Cyril apparently refers here to his own previous lectures; he usually refers to himself either by "we" or in the passive voice.
7 De viris illustribus ll2.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Catechesis 5 deals with the "faith" by which we believe and "the faith (Creed)" which we believe. See also 4.3 and 18.32.8
But while it is possible to establish by inspection the fact that the syllabus of the extant Catecheses is substantially the Jerusalem Creed, this proves that the entire syllabus of Cyril's
Lenten preaching was the Creed, only if it can be assumed that the extant Catecheses are complete.
St. Jerome's Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitanum 11-139 probably implies that in 394 the syllabus was still, substantially, the Creed. The fifth.century Old Armenian Lectionary gives nineteen lessons for the Jerusalem Lenten preaching;lO since these agree almost exactly with the eighteen lessons taken by Cyril as his texts, they imply an unchanged syllabus.
The Armenian Lectionary represents the Jerusalem liturgy of ca. 440. A rather different picture of the syllabus is given by the western lady pilgrim, Aetheria or Egeria, who spent three years in the Holy Land probably within the period ca. 385-396.11 While in Cyril's time the forty-day Lent probably meant six or seven weeks, in Egeria's time Lent lasted for eight weeks, since neither Saturdays nor Sundays, not being fast days, were counted. The syllabus as described by Egeria fell into two parts; the first five weeks were taken up by a Scripture course; the Creed was delivered at the end of the fifth week and its exposition occupied the next two weeks, there being no lectures during Holy Week. There appears to be some discrepancy between this account of the syllabus and that given by St. Jerome, which seems to agree with what we find in the extant Catecheses.
8 The description of the syllabus given in Procat. 11 is probably compatible with the syllabus being the creed.
9 PL 23.379·82, al. 363-66.
10 Rituale Armenorum, ed. F. C. Conybeare and J. A. Maclean (Oxford 1905), Appendix 2, esp. p. 518.
II Though K. Meister and the philologists want to place the Peregrinatio considerably later, and E. Dekkers has advocated the date 415-417. The Peregrinatio (or ltinerarium) is now found (ed. E. Franceschini and R. Weber) in Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 175 (cf. P. Geyer's ed., Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 39). For Egeria's account of the catechizing and its syllabus, see chapters 45-46.
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
How were the nineteen Lectures distributed over Lent?
Lectures 6-8 belong to successive days (d. 7.1; 8.1), as also do 10-12 (11.1; 12.4). Lecture 14 was given on a Monday
(14.24) and there was one day's interval between Lectures 3 and 4 (4.32). In 18.32, after concluding his exposition of the last clause of the Creed, Cyril says that he has given as many lectures on the Creed as was possible during Lent. The Lectures vary considerably in length and the distribution of the subject matter is uneven, four lectures (6-9) being devoted to the words, "one God, the Father Almighty, Creator ... ," two lectures (16 and 17) to the Holy Spirit, while one lecture
(15) covers the Resurrection, Ascension and Session, and one lecture (18) the Church, the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting.
The most attractive suggestion so far made about the distribution of the Lectures is that of Telfer. Pointing out that Lecture 18 is really a double lecture, so that there were twenty lectures in all, he has suggested that Cyril gave twenty lectures in Greek to the Greek-speaking population and twenty in Syriac (Palestinian Aramaic) to the Syriac-speaking members of the community. Cyril would then have lectured on each of the forty days of Lent, as he perhaps claims in 18.32.12
The Jerusalem Creed and its Demonstration In 5.12 the Creed is formally delivered to the candidates by the Church as represented by Cyril, the local bishop.
Cyril's teaching was severely biblical. In 4.17, explaining that the substance of the Lenten course is the "demonstration" of the Creed from Scripture, Cyril says: "Concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the Faith, not even a casual statement must be made without the Holy Scriptures." For Aristotle, "opinion" was converted into genuine knowledge
12 Telfer M-1l6. The hypothesis does not very well explain why Lectures 6-8 and 10·12 were delivered on consecutive days.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
by a demonstration (apodeixis, Cyril's word) which, grounding particular propositions in indemonstrable, self-evident primary premises, made them luminous and evident. Cyril, apparently following the method of the Alexandrine school of Clement and Origen, keeps but transforms this pattern.
Cyril's "demonstration" is highly paradoxical insofar as it shows that the Creed, itself culled from Scripture (5.12), is really contained in Scripture. This procedure grounds the Creed not in self-evidence but in authority and mystery. But the method of the Lectures is also apologetic. Cyril attached immense importance to the proof from miracles and prophecy.
Especially from prophecy; in 13.9 he seems to say that the important thing about the miracles of Jesus was that they had been prophesied. Similarly in 14.17, engaging to produce
"Scripture testimony" in proof of the Resurrection, Cyril says, "the Lord Jesus Christ himself supplies it in the Gospels"and then quotes our Lord's appeal to the type of Jonah. It is not, of course (d. 14.15), that Cyril regarded the New
Testament as less authoritative than the Old; he stressed the argument from prophecy partly because it is a rational, apologetic argument (for prediction is miraculous) and partly because the Jews, against whom much of Cyril's argument was directed, acknowledged the inspired character of the Old
Testament. Cyril's persistent polemic against the Jews is a blemish upon the Catecheses, but it must be remembered that in Palestine the Jews would have been the chief critics of Christianity and Cyril's age was not one that easily distinguished between religious error and bad faith. Cyril assumed that almost every detail of the birth, passion and resurrection of Jesus had been prophesied in the Old Testament; it was a principle of exegesis with him that "concerning
Christ all things may be found written; nothing is doubtful, for nothing is without its text" (i.e., in the Old Testament).13
Lectures 12-14 provide massive illustration of this method. It 13 Cat. 13.38; cf. 13.21.