Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Vol. 7 (Augustine: Gospel and Epistle of John)

Socrates and Sozomen agree in the assertion that Acacius, Patrophilus the Arian Bishop of Scythopolis, and their adherents ejected Maximus and put Cyril in his place. But according to the statement of Jerome already quoted, Maximus, when dying, had not only nominated Heraclius to be his successor, which, with the consent of the clergy and people, was not unusual, but had actually established him as bishop in his stead (in suum locum substituerat). The two accounts are irreconcilable, and both improbable. Touttée argues, not without reason, that the consecration of Heraclius, which Jerome attributes to Maximus, would have been opposed to the right of the people and clergy to nominate their own bishop, and to the authority of the metropolitan and other bishops of the province, by whom the choice was to be confirmed and the consecration performed, and that it had moreover been expressly forbidden seven years before by the 23rd Canon of the Council of Antioch.

Still more improbable is the charge that Cyril had renounced the priesthood conferred on him by Maximus, and after serving in the Church as a deacon, had been rewarded by the episcopate, and then himself degraded Heraclius from bishop to priest. As a solution of these difficulties, it is suggested by Reischl that Cyril had been designated in the lifetime of Maximus as his successor, and after his decease had been duly and canonically consecrated, but had incurred the calumnious charges of the party opposed to Acacius and the Eusebians, because he was supposed to have bound himself to them by accepting consecration at their hands. This view is in some measure confirmed by the fact that "in the great controversy of the day Cyril belonged to the Asiatic party, Jerome to that of Rome. In the Meletian schism A significant division in the early Church regarding the legitimacy of different bishops also they took opposite sides, Cyril supporting Meletius, Jerome being a warm adherent of Paulinus," by whom he had been recently ordained priest. It is also worthy of notice that Jerome's continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius was written at Constantinople in 380–381, the very time when the many injurious charges fabricated by Cyril's bitter enemies were most industriously circulated in popular rumour on the eve of a judicial inquiry by the second general Council which met there in 381, under the presidency of Meletius, Cyril, and Gregory of Nazianzum. Had Jerome written of Cyril a year or two later, he must have known that these calumnies had been emphatically rejected by the Synod of Constantinople (382), consisting of nearly the same bishops who had been present at the council of the preceding year. In their synodical letter to Pope Damasus they wrote:

"And of the Church in Jerusalem, which is the Mother of all the Churches, we notify that the most reverend and godly Cyril is Bishop: who was long ago canonically appointed by the Bishops of the Province, and had many conflicts in various places against the Arians."

The beginning of Cyril's episcopate was marked by the appearance of a bright cross in the sky, about nine o'clock in the morning of Whitsunday, the 7th of May, 351 A.D. Brighter than the sun, it hung over the hill of Golgotha and extended to Mount Olivet, being visible for many hours. The whole population of Jerusalem, citizens and foreigners, Christians and pagans, young and old, flocked to the church, singing the praises of Christ and hailing the phenomenon as a sign from heaven confirming the truth of the Christian religion.

Cyril regarded the occasion as favorable for announcing to the Emperor Constantius the commencement of his episcopate; and in his extant letter described the sign as a proof of God's favour towards the Empire and its Christian ruler. The piety of his father Constantine had been rewarded by the discovery of the true cross and the holy places, and now the greater devotion of the son had won a more signal manifestation of divine approval.