“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 phænomenon as a sign from heaven confirming the truth of the Christian religion. Cyril regarded the occasion as favourable 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 Con- stantine had been rewarded by the discovery of the true Cross and the Holy places:  and xiii now the greater devotion of the Son had won a more signal manifestation of Divine approval.  The letter ends with a prayer that God may grant to the Emperor long to reign as the pro- tector of the Church and of the Empire, “ever glorifying the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, our true God.”  The word ὁμοούσιον, it is alleged, had not at this time been accepted by Cyril, and its use has therefore been thought to cast doubt upon the genuineness of this final prayer, which is nevertheless maintained by the Benedictine Editor25.  The letter as a whole is certainly genuine, and the phenomenon is too strongly attested by the historians of the period to be called in question.  While, therefore, we must reject Cyril’s explanation, we have no reason to suspect him of intentional misrepresentation.  A parhelion, or other remarkable phenomenon, of which the natural cause was at that time unknown, might well appear “to minds excited by the struggle between the Christian Faith and a fast-declining heathenism to be a miraculous manifestation of the symbol of Redemption, intended to establish the Faith and to confute its gainsayers26.” The first few years of Cyril’s episcopate fell within that so-called “Golden Decade,” 346–355, which is otherwise described as “an uneasy interval of suspense rather than of peace27.”  Though soon to be engaged in a dispute with Acacius concerning the privileges of their respective Sees, Cyril seems to have been in the interval zealous and successful in promoting the peace and prosperity of his own Diocese. We learn from a letter of Basil the Great that he had visited Jerusalem about the year 357, when he had been recently baptized, and was preparing to adopt a life of strict asceti- cism.  He speaks of the many saints whom he had there embraced, and of the many who 25 Epist. ad Constantium—Monitum, § x. 26 Dict. Chr. Biogr. p. 761. 27 Gwatkin, p. 74. 9 Life of S. Cyril.