The Twelve Anathemas of St. Cyril

Council of Ephesus

The Third Ecumenical Council met at Ephesus in A.D. 431 to judge the teaching of Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, who divided the one Christ into two and refused to the Virgin Mary the title Theotokos, Mother of God. The council upheld the teaching of St. Cyril of Alexandria, whose Third Letter to Nestorius closed with these Twelve Anathemas confessing the one incarnate Christ.

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12

If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος), inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, The Word was made flesh] let him be anathema.

Nestorius: If anyone says that the Emmanuel is true God, and not rather God with us, that is, that he has united himself to a like nature with ours, which he assumed from the Virgin Mary, and dwelt in it; and if anyone calls Mary the mother of God the Word, and not rather mother of him who is Emmanuel; and if he maintains that God the Word has changed himself into the flesh, which he only assumed in order to make his Godhead visible, and to be found in form as a man, let him be anathema.