Canonical Letter to Domnus

Canonical Order and the Case of Peter§1

1Canonical Letter to Domnus

By Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria.

Cyril to Domnus.

1. On a deposed bishop also ceasing from sacred ministry.

When each of our affairs moves straight along the path of canonical good order, it stirs up no turmoil for us; it also frees us from the slanders of some, and, better still, wins us the good word of right-minded people. For who would not welcome an impartial verdict, whomever it may concern? Or how could judging rightly and lawfully be anything but beyond reproach, or rather full of every praise? I write this now because your piety, in the letters you sent to me and to our most holy and most God-beloved brother and fellow bishop Proclus, calls the most reverent and most God-fearing Peter a bishop, while he weeps and says that he has been removed without reason from the church assigned to him.

It would have been consistent either for him to hold the name of the priesthood together with its reality, or at least, if he truly deserved not to preside at the divine altar, not even…

Peter Was Given No Hearing§2

2…to be honored with the very title of bishop. But perhaps what I say may seem to your piety somewhat harsh and unbrotherly; yet in truth it is not so. For we suppose, perhaps, that we have shown the old man mercy by leaving him only the title; but it would have been far better to consider the other side as well. For he says that he could clear his good name, but that he was given no opportunity to defend himself, nor indeed was he granted a canonical hearing. Had anything of the kind taken place, the record of the proceedings would itself have made his case plain: either proving that he had been caught by the charges and declared guilty, with nothing more to say as one who had been wronged, or else declaring him free and giving him back the right to preside over the church that had been placed under his hand. But since nothing of the kind was done, he cries out against what has happened; he says that he has suffered intolerable injustice…

A Fair Trial Before the Bishops§3

3…and that he has been thrown out unlawfully; and he adds that all the money belonging to him was seized as well.

Let your holiness, then, bearing in mind what the divine canons decree and what befits the church and those appointed to sacred ministry, and yielding besides to our letters, stop the old man's tears. And if he chooses to go to trial against those who bring the charges against him, let him be tried in the customary way before your piety, with the most God-fearing bishops under your authority sitting with you, of course, unless he objects to some of them as suspect. For we do not believe that any of the most God-fearing bishops harbors hostility toward a brother; but so that this may not become a pretext that undoes the judgment he will receive, by making it seem not to have been…

Peter's Money Must Be Returned§4

4…justly done, there is no harm in some who are under suspicion being absent from the tribunal.

2. On the bishop's having authority over everything that belongs to the church.

As for the money unjustly taken from him, it is right that it be given back, for two reasons. First, because nothing of the kind ought to have happened at all; and because it deeply grieves the most God-fearing bishops everywhere on earth, and casts them into the utmost dejection, to be required to give account of how they managed the expenses that fall to them, whether these come from the church's revenues or from the offerings of certain people. For each of us will give account of his own time to the Judge of all (Romans 14:12). For treasures and immovable estates, inalienable for the…