Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Vol. 3 (Augustine: On the Trinity)

The ecclesiastic of these early times is sometimes imagined to have been a morose and ungenial ascetic, wasting his energies in unprofitable hair-splitting and taking little or no interest in the everyday needs of his contemporaries. In marked contrast with this imaginary bishop stands out the kindly figure of the real bishop of Cyrus, as the modest statements and hints supplied by his own letters enable us to recall him.

As an administrator and man of business, he was munificent and efficient. Stripped, as we have already learned, of his family property by his own act and will, he must have been dependent in his diocese on the revenues of his see. From these, which cannot have been small, he was able to spend large sums on public works. Cyrus was adorned with porticoes, two great bridges, baths, and an aqueduct, all at Theodoret's expense.1 On assuming the administration of his diocese, he took measures, he tells us,2 to secure for Cyrus "the necessary arts," and from these three words we need not hesitate to infer that architects, engineers, masons, sculptors, and carpenters would be attracted "from all quarters" to the bishop's important works. For this increased population, it is interesting to note that Theodoret provided competent practitioners in medicine and surgery, in which it would seem he was not himself unskilled.3 His keen interest in the temporal needs of his people is shown by the efforts he made to obtain relief for them from the cruel pressure of exorbitant taxation.4 So unendurable was the tale of taxes under which they groaned that in many cases they were deserting their farms and the country, and he earnestly appealed to the Empress Pulcheria and to his friend Anatolius to help them.5 The tender sympathy he felt for all those afflicted in body, estate, and mind is shown in his letters on behalf of Celestinianus (or Celestiacus), a gentleman of position at Carthage who had suffered cruelly during the attack of the Vandals,6 and in the admirable and touching letters of consolation addressed to survivors on the deaths of relatives. That these should have been religiously preserved need excite no surprise.7 Of the terms on which he lived with his neighbors, we can form some idea from the justifiable boast contained in his letter to Nomus. In the quarter of a century of his episcopate, he writes, he never appeared in court either as prosecutor or defendant; his clergy followed his admirable example; he never took an obol or a garment from anyone; not one of his household ever received so much as a loaf or an egg; he could not bear to think that he had any property beyond his few poor clothes.8 Yet he was always ready to give where he would not receive, and in addition to all the diocesan and literary work he conscientiously performed, he spent more time than he could well afford in all sorts of extra-diocesan business which his position thrust in his way.

As a shepherd of souls, he was unceasing in his efforts to win heathen, heretics, and Jews to the true faith. His diocese, when he assumed its government, was a hotbed of heresy.9 Nevertheless, in the famous letter to Leo,10 he could boast that not a tare was left to spoil the crop. His fame as a preacher was great and wide, and makes us the more regret that so little survives of the discourses which, in turn, roused, cheered, and blamed. The eloquence of his extant writings provides indications of the force of spoken utterances, which were no less marked by learning and literary skill. Two of his letters give vivid pictures of the enthusiasm of oriental audiences in Antioch—once so populous and so keen in theological interest, where now, amid a people numbering only about a fiftieth part of their predecessors of the fifth century, there is not a single church. We see the Patriarch John in a frenzy of gladness at Theodoret's sermons, clapping his hands and springing again and again from his chair;11 we see the heads of the congregation receiving the bishop of Cyrus with frantic delight as he came down from the pulpit, flinging their arms round him, kissing his head, his breast, his hands, and his knees, and hear them exclaiming, "This is the Voice of the Apostle!"12 But Theodoret had to encounter the fury of opposition sometimes. Again and again in his campaign against heretics and unbelievers, he was stoned, wounded, and brought near to death.13 "He from whom no secrets are hid knows all the bruises my body has received, aimed at me by ill-named heretics, and what fights I have fought in most of the cities of the East against Jews, heretics, and heathen."14