CYRIL OF SCYTHOPOLIS. - One of the best Greek hagiographers, known above all for the care he takes in documenting and specifying chronology by all the means at his disposal. Born at Scythopolis, anciently Bethshan, today Beisan, in Samaria, around 524. His pious parents often gave hospitality to monks passing through. In 530 the most illustrious of these guests, St. Sabas, declared the young C. his disciple, and from then on his vocation was determined. In 543 C. received the monastic tonsure, went to Jerusalem, where he attended the dedication of St. Mary the New, then visited John the Hesychast at the Great Monastery. Despite the advice given him by this man of experience, the young C. did not enter the cenobium of St. Euthymius, but, a victim of that burning desire for solitude which animates all Eastern monasticism, he gave himself to the life of a hermit in the monastery of Calamon (of the reeds) on the banks of the Jordan. But an illness struck him as a punishment for his presumption. He regained his health by setting out for St. Euthymius in July 544. It was the period of the Origenist disputes in Palestine. When the heterodox monks were driven out of the New Monastery, C. was among the orthodox religious designated to go and repopulate it (21 July 555). Two years later he passed to the monastery of St. Sabas. The current opinion that he died as early as 558 rests only on an argument e silentio of very little weight.

Bibliography

BIBL.: C. left seven biographies devoted to St. Euthymius, St. John the Hesychast (this surname was erroneously transmitted by the Silentiarius), St. Cyriacus, St. Theodosius, St. Theognius, St. Abramius. E. Schwartz published a critical edition of them: Kyrill von Skythopolis (Texte und Untersuchungen, 49, II), Leipzig 1939. Of this publication E. Stein made a very acute review, and on the whole laudatory, in the Analecta Boll., 62 (1944), pp. 169-86. Schwartz's great fault was not to accept the chronology fixed by Monsignor F. Diekamp (Die originistischen Streitigkeiten im sechsten Jahrhundert, Münster 1899, pp. 11-15). Diekamp had proved that the indictions found in C.'s narrative from Apr. 531 onward are one unit behind. This demonstration had won general approval. E. Stein rejects the arguments adduced against it and gives (loc. cit., p. 179 ff.) a table of the real dates established by Diekamp and of the erroneous ones proposed by Schwartz. For the earlier editions of C.'s works, consult S. Vallhé, s. v. in DThC, III, II, col. 2581.

Ireneo Häuberr

@incollection{ec3_cirillo_di_scitopoli, author = {Hausherr, Ireneo}, title = {Cirillo di Scitopoli}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {1731}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/cirillo-di-scitopoli} }

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Cyril of Scythopolis

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