of

THE saME aUTHOR,

TO THE nEWLY bAPTIZED²³⁵⁷

2357 This general title of the five following Lectures is omitted in many mss.  “In Cod. Ottob. at the end of the special title of this first Mystagogic Lecture, after the words “to the end of the Epistle,” there follows the statement “Of the same author Cyril, and of John the Bishop” (Bened. Ed.).  See Index, Authenticity.

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Lecture XIX.

First Lecture on the Mysteries.

With a Lesson from the First General Epistle of Peter, beginning at Be sober, be vigilant, to the end of the Epistle.

1.  I have long been wishing, O true-born and dearly beloved children of the Church, to discourse to you concerning these spiritual and heavenly Mysteries; but since I well knew that seeing is far more persuasive than hearing, I waited for the present season; that finding you more open to the influence of my words from your present experience, I might lead you by the hand into the brighter and more fragrant meadow of the Paradise before us; especially as ye have been made fit to receive the more sacred Mysteries, after having been found worthy of divine and life-giving Baptism²³⁵⁸

2358 This Lecture was delivered on the Monday after Easter in the Holy Sepulchre:  see Cat. xviii. 33.

2359 τὴν ἔμφασιν τὴν.…γεγενημένην , is found in all the mss.  “Nevertheless it would seem that we ought to read τῶν.…γεγενημένων, which Grodecq either read or substituted” (Ben. Ed.).  With the proposed reading the meaning would be—“the significance of the things done to you,” which agrees better with the meaning of ἔμφασις.

2.  First ye entered into the vestibule²³⁶⁰

2360 τὁν προαύλιον, called below in § 11 “the outer chamber.”  Cf. Procat. § 1, note 3.  It appears from Tertullian, De Corona, § 3, that the renunciation was made first in the Church, and afterwards in the Baptistery:  “When we are going to enter the water, at that moment as well as just before in the Church under the hand of the President, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels.”

2361 Ex. xiv. 9; 23.

3.  Now turn from the old to the new, from the figure to the reality.  There we have Moses sent from God to Egypt; here, Christ, sent forth from His Father into the world:  there, that Moses might lead forth an afflicted people out of Egypt; here, that Christ might rescue those who are oppressed in the world under sin:  there, the blood of a lamb was the spell against²³⁶²

2362 ἀποτρόπαιον

2363 φυγαδευτήριον, the word commonly used in the Septuagint for “a city of refuge.”  But the Verb φυγαδεύω is Transitive in 2 Macc. ix. 4, as well as in Xenophon and Demosthenes.  The application of the blood of Christ in Baptism is represented by marking the sign of the Cross on the forehead.  Compare the lines of Prudentius quoted by the Benedictine Editor: “Passio quæ nostram defendit sanguine frontem, Corporeamque domum signato collinit ore.”

4.  But nevertheless thou art bidden to say, with arm outstretched towards him as though he were present, “I renounce thee, Satan.”  I wish also to say wherefore ye stand facing to the West; for it is necessary.  Since the West is the region of sensible darkness, and he being darkness has his dominion also in darkness, therefore, looking with a symbolical meaning towards the West, ye renounce that dark and gloomy potentate.  What then did each of you stand up and say?  “I renounce thee, Satan,”—thou wicked and most cruel tyrant! meaning, “I fear thy might no longer; for that Christ hath overthrown, having partaken with me of flesh and blood, that through these He might by death destroy death²³⁶⁴

2364 Heb. ii. 14, 15.

5.  Then in a second sentence thou art taught to say, “and all thy works.”  Now the works of Satan are all sin, which also thou must renounce;—just as one who has escaped a tyrant has surely escaped his weapons also.  All sin therefore, of every kind, is included in the works of the devil.  Only know this; that all that thou sayest, especially at that most thrilling hour, is written in God’s books; when therefore thou doest any thing contrary to these promises, thou shalt be judged as a transgressor²³⁶⁵

2365 Gal. ii. 18.

6.  Then thou sayest, “And all his pomp²³⁶⁶

2366 Herod. II. 58:  “The Egyptians were the first to introduce solemn assemblies (πανηγύρις) and processions (πομπάς).”  At Rome the term “pompa” was applied especially to the procession with which the Ludi Circenses were opened and also to any grand ceremony or pageant.

2367 θεατρομανίαι.  Cf. Tertull. Apologet. 38; “We renounce all your spectacles.…Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the Circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground.”  He calls the theatre “that citadel of all impurities,” De Spectaculis, c. 10, “immodesty’s peculiar abode,” c. 17, and gives a vivid description of the rage and fury of the Circus in c. 16.

2368 Ps. cxix. 37.

2369 μίμων, the name either of a species of low comedy, “consisting more of gestures and mimicry than of spoken dialogue,” or of the persons who acted in them.  Cyril’s description of the coarse and indecent character of the mimes is more than justified by the impartial testimony of Ovid, Trist. ii. 497: “Quid si scripsissem mimos obscœna jocantes, Qui semper vetiti crimen amoris habent; In quibus assidue cultus procedit adulter, Verbaque dat stulto callida nupta viro. Nubilis hos virgo, matronaque, virque, puerque Spectat, et e magna parte Senatus adest. Nec satis incestis temerari vocibus aures; Assuescunt oculi multa pudenda pati.” A theatre is mentioned as one of the buildings erected by Hadrian in his new City Aelia Capitolina built on the site of Jerusalem; and that theatrical performances were continued in the time of Cyril we know from the accusation that in a time of famine he had sold one of the Church vestments, which was afterwards used upon the stage.

2370 Lactantius, Epitome, § 63:  “Histrionici etiam impudici gestus, quibus infames fœminas imitantur, libidines, quæ saltando exprimunt, docent.”

2371 κυνηγεσίαις, the so-called “venationes” of the Circus in which the “bestiarii” fought with wild beasts.

2372 The “bestiarii” were feasted in public on the day before their encounter with the beasts.  See Tertull. Apologet. § 42:  “I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, after the manner of the beast-fighters at their last banquet.”  Ib. § 9:  “Those also who dine on the flesh of wild beasts from the arena, who have keen appetites for bear and stag.”  These latter, however, were chiefly the poor, to whom flesh was a rarity:  Apuleius Metam. iv. 14, quoted by Oehler.

2373 ψυχὰς ἐκτραχήλιζον, an allusion to the risk of a broken neck in the chariot-race.  Tertull. de Spectaculis, § 9:  “Equestrianism was formerly practised in a simple way on horseback, and certainly its ordinary use was innocent:  but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from a gift of God into the service of demons.”  The presiding deity of the chariot-race was Poseidon (Hom. Il. xxiii, 307; Pind. Ol. i. 63; Pyth. vi. 50; Soph. Œdip. Col. 712), and both this and the other shows of the Circus, and of the theatre, were connected with the worship of the gods of Greece and Rome, and therefore forbidden as idolatrous:  “What high religious rites, what sacrifices precede, intervene, and follow, how many guilds, how many priesthoods, how many services are set astir” (Tert. de Spect. § 7).

7.  Moreover, the things which are hung up at idol festivals²³⁷⁴

2374 πανηγύρεσι.  The Panegyris was strictly a religious festival, but was commonly accompanied by a great fair or market, in which were sold not only such things as the worshippers might need for their offerings, e.g. frankincense, but also the flesh of the animals which had been sacrificed.  Cf. Dictionary of Greek and Rom. Antiq. “Panegyris.”  Tertull. Apolog. § 42:  “We do not go to your spectacles:  yet the articles that are sold there, if I need them, I shall obtain more readily at their proper places.  We certainly buy no frankincense.”

2375 Compare St. Paul’s argument against meats offered to idols, 1 Cor. x. 14–21:  and on Cyril’s Eucharistic doctrine, see notes on Cat. xxii.

8.  After this thou sayest, “and all thy service²³⁷⁶

2376 The form of renunciation before Baptism is given in the Apostolic Constitutions, VII. 41:  “I renounce Satan, and his works, and his pomps, and his services, and his angels, and his inventions, and all things that are under him.”  Cf. Tertull. De Spectaculis, § 4:  “When on entering the water, we make profession of the Christian faith in the words of its rule, we bear public testimony that we have renounced the devil, his pomp, and his angels.”

2377 Herod. ii. 62:  “At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices (to Minerva, or Neith), there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses.…These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps (Λυχνοκαΐη).”

2378 Fountains and rivers had each its own deity or nymph, to whom sacrifices were offered, and incense burned.

2379 ἐς τοῦτο διέβησαν.  These words are omitted in many mss., and regarded by the Benedictine Editor as a spurious addition made to complete the construction.  The words ἢ τοιαῦτα at the end of the sentence are better omitted, as in several good mss.

2380 Cat. iv. 37; Apost. Const. vi.:  “Be not a diviner, for that leads to idolatry.…Thou shalt not use enchantments or purgations for thy child.  Thou shalt not be a soothsayer nor a diviner by great or little birds.  Nor shalt thou learn wicked arts; for all these things has the Law forbidden.”  Deut. xviii. 10, 11.

2381 Apost. Const. vii. 41:  “And after his renunciation let him in his association (συντασσόμενος) say, I associate myself with Christ.”

2382 πειραθήσῃ (Cod. Mon. 1) is a better reading than πειρασθήσῃ.  Cf. Plat. Laches, 188 E:  τῶν ἔργων ἐπειράθην.

2383 Phil. iii. 13.  On the pillar of salt, see Wisd. x. 7:  “Of whose wickedness even to this day the waste land that smoketh is a testimony,…and a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul.”  Joseph. Ant. I. xi. 4:  “Moreover I have seen it, for it remains even unto this day.”  Bp. Lightfoot, Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Cor. xi. remarks that the region abounds in pillars of salt, and “Mediæval and even modern travellers have delighted to identify one or other of these with Lot’s wife.”

2384 Dan. ii. 35; 45.

9.  When therefore thou renouncest Satan, utterly breaking all thy covenant with him, that ancient league with hell²³⁸⁵

2385 Is. xxviii. 15.

2386 Cf. S. Ambros. De Mysteriis, c. ii. 7:  “Ad orientem converteris; qui enim renunciat diabolo ad Christum convertitur:”  “Where he plainly intimates.…that turning to the East was a symbol of their aversion from Satan and conversion unto Christ, that is, from darkness to light, from serving idols, to serve Him, who is the Sun of Righteousness and Fountain of Light” (Bingh. Ant. xi. vii. 7).

2387 Cf. Didaché, vii. 1; Justin M. Apolog. I. c. 61 A; Swainson, Creeds, c. iii. on the short Baptismal Professions.  “The writings of S. Cyprian distinctly tell us, that in his day the form of interrogation at Baptism was fixed and definite.  He speaks of the “usitata et legitima verba interrogationis,”—and we know as distinctly that the interrogation included the words, “Dost thou believe in God the Father, in His Son Christ, in the Holy Spirit?  Dost thou believe in remission of sins and eternal life through the Church?”

10.  Guarded therefore by these discourses, be sober.  For our adversary the devil, as was just now read, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour²³⁸⁸

2388 1 Pet. v. 9.

2389 Is. xxv. 8; Rev. vii. 17.

2390 πανηγυρίσεις

2391 Is. lxi. 10.

11.  And these things were done in the outer chamber.  But if God will, when in the succeeding lectures on the Mysteries we have entered into the Holy of Holies²³⁹²

2392 These words seem to imply that the Lectures on the Eucharist were to be delivered in the Holy Sepulchre, though the Mysteries themselves may be called metaphorically “the Holy of Holies.”

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH