Crossword-Solution: CYRA 4 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Taking (says his admiring biographer, Theodoret of Cyra) to the peaks of the loftiest mountains, he passed his life on them, in spring and summer haunting the woods, with the sky for a roof, but sheltering himself in winter in a cave.

Some of the instances of this self-invented misery which are recorded, even as early as the time of Theodoret, bishop of Cyra, in the middle of the fifth century, make us wonder at the puzzling inconsistencies of the human mind.

Did these poor creatures really believe that God could be propitiated by the torture of his own creatures? What sense could Theodoret (who was a good man himself) have put upon the words, “God is good,” or “God is love,” while he was looking with satisfaction, even with admiration and awe, on practices which were more fit for worshippers of Moloch? Those who think these words too strong, may judge for themselves how far they apply to his story of Marana and Cyra.

Marana, then, and Cyra were two young ladies of Berhœa, who had given up all the pleasures of life to settle themselves in a roofless cottage outside the town.

Around them lived certain female slaves who had voluntarily chosen the same life, and who were taught and exhorted through a little window by their mistresses; or rather, it would seem, by Marana alone: for Cyra (who was bent double by her “training”) was never to speak.