xii Socrates and Sozomen agree in the assertion that Acacius, Patrophilus the Arian Bishop of Scythopolis, and their adherents ejected Maximus and put Cyril in his place19.  But ac- cording to the statement of Jerome already quoted20 Maximus, when dying, had not only nominated Heraclius to be his successor, which, with the consent of the Clergy and people was not unusual, but had actually established him as Bishop in his stead (in suum locum substituerat).  The two accounts are irreconcileable, and both improbable.  Touttée argues not without reason, that the consecration of Heraclius, which Jerome attributes to Maximus, would have been opposed to the right of the people and Clergy to nominate their own Bishop, and to the authority of the Metropolitan and other Bishops of the province, by whom the choice was to be confirmed and the consecration performed, and that it had moreover been expressly forbidden seven years before by the 23rd Canon of the Council of Antioch. Still more improbable is the charge that Cyril had renounced the priesthood conferred on him by Maximus, and after serving in the Church as a Deacon, had been rewarded by the Episcopate, and then himself degraded Heraclius from Bishop to Priest.  As a solution of these difficulties, it is suggested by Reischl21 that Cyril had been designated in the lifetime of Maximus as his successor, and after his decease had been duly and canonically consecrated, but had incurred the calumnious charges of the party opposed to Acacius and the Eusebians, because he was supposed to have bound himself to them by accepting consecration at their hands.  This view is in some measure confirmed by the fact that “in the great controversy of the day Cyril belonged to the Asiatic party, Jerome to that of Rome.  In the Meletian schism also they took opposite sides, Cyril supporting Meletius, Jerome being a warm ad- herent of Paulinus22,” by whom he had been recently ordained Priest.  It is also worthy of notice that Jerome’s continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius was written at Constantinople in 380–381, the very time when the many injurious charges fabricated by Cyril’s bitter en- emies were most industriously circulated in popular rumour on the eve of a judicial inquiry by the second general Council which met there in 381, under the presidency of Meletius, Cyril, and Gregory of Nazianzum23.  Had Jerome written of Cyril a year or two later, he must have known that these calumnies had been emphatically rejected by the Synod of Constantinople (382) consisting of nearly the same Bishops who had been present at the Council of the preceding year.  In their Synodical letter24 to Pope Damasus they wrote:  19 Socr. H. E. ii. 38; Soz. iv. 20.  The Bishops of Palestine, except two or three, had received Athanasius most cordially a few years before (Athan. Hist. Arian. § 25). 20 p. ii. 21 Vol. I. p. xli. note. 22 Dict. Chr. Biogr. “Cyrillus,” p. 761:  and for the Meletian Schism, see “Meletius,” “Paulinus,” “Vitalius.” 23 Hefele, ii. 344. 24 Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. v. 9. 8 Life of S. Cyril.