Cyril

Cyril is known only as a correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), to whom these eight letters are addressed in the early-5th-century Ancyran milieu of Galatia in Asia Minor. The address lines give two different titles for him: in one letter he is "Cyril the Leading Citizen" (proteuon, the foremost man of his city) and in another "Cyril the Monk," so his exact standing is uncertain from the evidence alone. Nilus writes to him almost entirely on Mariological and exegetical questions, expounding the Theotokos as the second Eve and the mother of the faithful, and several times correcting what he calls Cyril's "carnal" reading of Scripture, particularly Cyril's inference from Matthew 1:25 ("he knew her") that Joseph and Mary had marital relations after Christ's birth, which Nilus rebuts by insisting on Mary's perpetual virginity. Beyond his role as the recipient of this teaching and the two honorifics attached to his name, Cyril is otherwise unattested.