CIRILLONA. – Syriac poet, who lived toward the end of the 4th century. Only the discovery of his hymns (ed. G. Bickell, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 27 [1873], pp. 566–98) brought C. to light; he was certainly a cleric, probably a priest, and lived either in Syria or, more probably, in Mesopotamia.
Six of his hymns are known, of great literary beauty and of considerable importance for dogma, especially for Mariology.
BIBL.: German translation of the hymns in Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Ausgewählte Schriften syrischer Dichter, Kempten–Munich 1910, pp. 1–45; I. Ortiz de Urbina, La mariologia nei Padri siriaci, in Orientalia Christ. Period., 1 (1935), pp. 110–12.
Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina