THEOPHILUS, bishop of ALEXANDRIA. - Born in 385, died in 412. He displayed great activity in the destruction of pagan temples and the erection of Christian churches.
Of a character not free from ambition and unscrupulous in the choice of means, he was the driving force behind the persecution of St JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, who was installed in the Byzantine see which T. wished to reserve for some Alexandrian of his own creation. The Permanent Council of Constantinople, presided over by T., deposed Chrysostom in 403; he was exiled in 404. The pretext for this hostility was the hospitality which Chrysostom had granted to the three monks called the "Macrodolphi," who had been expelled by T. for their favourable stance towards Origenism. Pope INNOCENT I, called upon by Chrysostom, excommunicated T., and the excommunication remained in force until his death. T. was successful in securing the see for his nephew, St CYRIL.
Little remains of T.'s abundant literary output (ed. PG 65, 53-68). Only a small part of his 27 Paschal letters survives, and these rarely in the original Greek. The same is true of his other letters and homilies, among which are the In mysticum caenam (attributed to St CYRIL: PG 77, 1016-29), the one in Coptic on the Cross and the Good Thief (ed. F. Rossi, Papiri copti del Museo egiziano di Torino, I, Turin 1887, pp. 64-90), and another also in Coptic on repentance and sobriety (ed. and trans. E. Budge, Coptic Homilies in the dialect of Upper Egypt, London 1910, pp. 65 and 212). A fragment of the Paschal Canon presented by T. to THEODOSIUS I also survives. The authenticity of the Vision on the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt (ed. and trans. into Syriac by A. Mingana, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library [1929], pp. 383-474) is doubtful. T.'s doctrine is orthodox, and his authority was invoked during the Monophysite controversy.