THEOPHILUS, Bishop of Alexandria. - B. in 385, d. in 412. He displayed great activity in the destruction of pagan temples and in the erection of Christian churches.
A character not free from ambition and not scrupulous in his choice of means, he was the soul of the persecution against St. John Chrysostom, installed in the Byzantine see that T. wanted reserved for some Alexandrian, a creature of his. The permanent Council of Constantinople presided over by T. deposed Chrysostom in 403, and he was exiled in 404. The pretext for this enmity was the hospitality granted by Chrysostom to the three monks called the "Tall Brothers," expelled by T. because they favored Origenism. Pope Innocent I, called into the matter by Chrysostom, excommunicated T., and the excommunication accompanied him until his death. T. had as his successor in the see his nephew St. Cyril.
Little remains of T.'s copious literary legacy (ed. PG 65, 53-68). Only a small part of his 27 paschal letters is preserved, and rarely in the original Greek text. The same may be said of his other letters and of the homilies, among which are the one 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 English 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 is also preserved. The authenticity of the Vision on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt is doubtful (ed. Syriac trans. A. Mingana, in Bulletin of John Rylands library [1929], pp. 383-474). T.'s doctrine is orthodox, and his authority was invoked during the Monophysite controversy.
Bibliography3 works
Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina