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Heraclides Cyprius, Bishop of Ephesus

Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography

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Heraclides (5) Cyprius, bp. of Ephesus; a native of Cyprus, who had received a liberal education, was versed in the Scriptures, and had passed some years in ascetic training in the desert of Scetis under Evagrius. He then became deacon to Chrysostom, and was in immediate attendance on him. On the deprivation of Antoninus, bp. of Ephesus, a.d. 401, there being a deadlock in the election through the number of rival candidates and the violence of the opposing factions, Chrysostom brought Heraclides forward, and he was elected by the votes of seventy bishops to the vacant see. The election at first only increased the disturbance, and loud complaints were made of the unfitness of Heraclides for the office, which detained Chrysostom in Asia (Socr. H. E. vi. ii; Soz. H. E. viii. 6; Pallad. p. 139). At the assembling of the synod of the Oak, a.d. 403, Heraclides was summoned to answer certain specified charges brought against him by Macarius, bp. of Magnesia, a bishop named Isaac, and a monk named John Among these charges was one of holding Origenizing views. The urgency with which the condemnation of Chrysostom was pressed forward retarded the suit against Heraclides which had come to no issue when his great master was deposed and banished. After Chrysostom's second and final exile in 404, Heraclides was his fellow-sufferer. He was deposed by the party in power, and put in prison at Nicomedia, where, when Palladius wrote, he had been already languishing for years. A eunuch who, according to Palladius, was stained with the grossest vices, was consecrated bp. of Ephesus in his room (Pallad. Dial. ed. Bigot. p. 139). On the ascription to this Heraclides of the Lausiac History of Palladius, under the name of Paradisus Heraclidis, see PALLADIUS (7); also Fabricius, Bibl. Graec. x. 117; Ceillier, vii. 487.

[E.V.]