foundation · 412 · Alexandria
Theophilus died on 15 October and there were three days of disorder before his nephew was installed. Socrates, who is not friendly, says two things worth keeping: that the military commander in Egypt was behind the rival candidate, and that from this point the Alexandrian episcopate went beyond the limits of its priestly functions and assumed the administration of secular matters. Everything Cyril is remembered for afterwards — the closing of the Novatianist churches, the expulsions, the quarrel with the prefect Orestes, the murder of Hypatia by a mob whose relationship to him is argued about to this day, and finally Ephesus and Nestorius — happens inside a see that had already become something other than a pastoral office. This page held the council of 431 and not the accession.
To hold the see of Alexandria against the archdeacon Timothy and the soldiers backing him.
Thirty-two years of the most powerful bishopric in the East, and, on Socrates' account, the moment it stopped being only a bishopric.