The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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Syriac, Greek, and Hebrew learning. He gave a large estate to the
poor, and entered a monastery near Apamea, but was taken out of it
against his will, and consecrated bishop of Cyrus in 423, being very
young. He converted all the Marcionites, Arians, and other heretics
in his diocese, in which he reckons eight hundred churches, or
parishes. (Ep. 113, p. 987.) Cyrus was a very small poor town in a
desert country, eighty miles from Antioch, one hundred and twenty
from Apamea, and one hundred and seventeen from Samosata. Though
Theodoret lived in great poverty, he enriched the poor and the
churches, and built for his city an aqueduct, two large bridges,
porticoes, and baths. In 430 pope Celestin and St. Cyril of
Alexandria wrote to John, patriarch of Antioch, against Nestorius,
who on his side sent an orthodox letter to the same prelate: soon
after St. Cyril wrote his third letter to Nestorius, to which he
subjoined twelve anathematisms against the errors of Nestorius. In
this writing certain obscure phrases occur, which John of Antioch
thought favorable to the heresy of Apollinaris: whereupon he engaged
Theodoret to undertake a confutation of them. Theodoret carried on
this contest with great warmth in several writings, and when the
ecumenical council of Ephesus was assembled in 431, refused, with
John of Antioch, and the rest of the forty Oriental bishops, to
enter it, because Nestorius had been condemned in it on the 21st of
June, before they arrived at Ephesus on the 27th. They even went so
far as to pretend to excommunicate St. Cyril, and form a schism in
the church. F. Garnier, the most declared enemy to Theodoret among
the moderns, lays to his charge several things, of which Tillemont
and others clear him. It is certain that he wrote with great
bitterness against St. Cyril, and his anathematisms, as appears from
the works which he wrote upon that occasion, especially certain
letters and fragments of his Pentalogus, (or work in five books,
against St. Cyril,) still extant. But St. Cyril having made a clear
confession of his faith in a letter to Acacius of Ber[oe]a, Theodoret
loudly declared him orthodox, and this he proved even in letters
which he wrote to Nestorius himself, and to Alexander of Hierapolis,
his own metropolitan, the warmest of all St. Cyril's enemies. John
of Antioch and many others made their peace with St. Cyril, about
the month of April. In 433, Theodoret stood out some time longer, by
refusing to condemn the person of Nestorius. St. Cyril and John of
Antioch afterwards admitted him to their communion without requiring
that condition, and Theodoret labored to gain over Alexander of
Hierapolis; but in vain, so that this prelate was banished by the
emperor; Theodoret himself, though he enjoyed the communion of St.
Cyril, and of John of Antioch, was often accused, because he
persisted to defend the person of Nestorius. The persecution was
often renewed against Theodoret, so long as he adhered to Nestorius,
especially after St. Cyril, St. Proclus, and all the western