The Ecclesiastical History, Dialogues, and Letters of Theodoret
Cyrrhus · 458
T
Theodoret of Cyrus
Theodoret of Cyrus
393 CE–458 CE · Antioch
Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393–458) was a bishop, theologian, and church historian born and educated at Antioch who served as Bishop of Cyrrhus in Syria for roughly thirty-five years. A leading figure of the Antiochene theological school, he was drawn into the Christological controversies of the fifth century, opposing Cyril of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus (431) and suffering exile after the Robber Council of Ephesus (449). He was fully vindicated at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and returned to his see, where he died around 458, leaving behind a vast corpus of biblical commentaries, polemical treatises, and the Ecclesiastical History.
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Stop 1 of 7393–416Birthplace, Early Formation
AntiochSyria
What they did here
Born c. 393 in Antioch on the Orontes and raised there; educated in Antiochene rhetorical and theological schools, and influenced by the ascetics Macedonius and Peter the Galatian whom his mother venerated, as he describes in his Historia Religiosa.
About Antioch
Antioch, on the Orontes at the site of modern Antakya in southern Turkey, was founded around 300 BCE by Seleucus I, was a Seleucid capital and then capital of Roman Syria. It was a centre of Hellenistic Judaism and of Greek rhetoric, where Libanius taught. According to the New Testament, followers of Jesus were first called Christians there; Ignatius was an early bishop, John Chrysostom was born there, and the city became the seat of one of the great patriarchates. Arab forces took it in 637 for the caliphate; the Byzantines recaptured it in 969, and after Seljuk rule it was a Crusader principality from 1098 until the Mamluk sultan Baybars razed it in 1268.
In Antioch at the same time
Across the traditions, in Antioch at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Theodoret of Cyrus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Shenoute of Atripe, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Nestorius, Diadochus of Photice, Ibas of Edessa
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Theodoret of Cyrus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.