Cyprian of Carthage

ON ST. CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE, BISHOP AND MARTYR,

NEAR CARTHAGE IN AFRICA,

IN THE YEAR 258.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr, near Carthage in Africa. (S.)

BY C. S.

§ I. Why we treat of him today. The Life written by St. Pontius the deacon, and the proconsular Acts, the others being passed over, whence they are to be published: the Acts of two Cyprians confused: the Saint praised by various writers for various causes.

That St. Cyprian, surnamed Thascius and Caecilius, the illustrious doctor of Africa, Why he is given today. nay of the whole Church, and the first martyr among the bishops of the see of Carthage, suffered on the eighteenth day of the Kalends of October, that is on this fourteenth of September, his genuine proconsular Acts teach, which we shall praise and reprint below. That on the same day his sacred memory was formerly celebrated both in Africa and also at Rome, is established from the ancient Martyrologies and Sacramentaries to be recounted in their place in the Posthumous Glory, and out of which it will suffice meanwhile to have adduced here one, namely Bucherius's Martyrology, which has thus: On the eighteenth Kalends of October, of Cyprian of Africa. At Rome he is celebrated in that of Callistus, namely the cemetery. But since that day in the Roman Breviary is consecrated to the exaltation of the holy Cross, and the following day to the Octave of the Nativity of the most holy Mother of God, St. Cyprian's Office was transferred to the sixteenth day of the same month, and on it he is venerated together with St. Cornelius, Pope and likewise martyr. Yet just as we thought the deeds of that holy Pontiff should be set forth at the present day, on which he is believed to have been crowned with martyrdom and on which he is inscribed in the Martyrologies, so with even better reason we judged that St. Cyprian's Acts should be referred to this same day.

[2] His biographer St. Jerome in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 68, thus records: St. Pontius his deacon and biographer, Pontius, Cyprian's deacon, enduring exile with him up to the day of his passion, left an excellent volume of the life and passion of Cyprian. He so profited by the precepts and the familiar intercourse of so excellent a Master that he too deserved to be reckoned among the Saints, and to be venerated at the eighth day of March, at which his memory occurs in the Martyrologies, and at which he has been treated in our Work. In the Little Roman of Rosweyde he is called Pontianus, and it is said of him thus: At Carthage, of saint Pontianus, deacon of blessed Cyprian, who, always glorifying the Lord in his sufferings, deserved the crown of life. But Ado of Vienne, Usuard and others, as also the present Roman, with unanimous consent write Pontius with St. Jerome, and of these Ado announces him in this manner: At Carthage, of saint Pontius, deacon of blessed Cyprian the bishop, who, enduring exile with him up to the day of his passion, left an excellent volume of his life and passion, and, always glorifying the Lord in his sufferings, deserved the crown of life. Like things may be read in Usuard, Notker and the Roman Martyrology, in which mention is likewise made of the Life of St. Cyprian written by him.

[3] to be distinguished from a martyr of the same name, Antonio Possevino in the Apparatus sacer, volume 2, observes that in the Gembloux codex and by Trithemius he is wrongly called Pontinus. Yet in the Cologne edition of Trithemius of the year 1546, and in the Frankfurt edition of the year 1601, which I have in hand, one reads Pontius, not Pontinus. Our Henschen likewise rightly warned at the eighth day of March, where St. Pontius is treated, as we said, that this deacon of St. Cyprian is wrongly named a presbyter by Giacomo Filippo of Bergamo in the Supplement to the Chronicles at the year 259, and is confounded with the martyr of the same name who suffered at Cimiez in the Maritime Alps and is venerated on the fourteenth day of May, at which his Acts have been set forth in our Work. Into the same error, which the praised Possevino also observed, the cited Trithemius likewise fell. In what year, or by what kind of death — whether by martyrdom or by a peaceful decease after a holily spent life — he deserved ecclesiastical cult, is unexplored; but Tillemont certainly talks nonsense when in volume 4 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, article 63, he undauntedly asserts that he is honored among the Saints by the Church by reason of this Life written by him.

[4] He wrote the Saint's Life at the request of the faithful, But to come to the Life itself, there are two things by which he professes that he was led to write it. The first was, lest the illustrious deeds of that most holy Prelate, though then most well known even to the gentiles themselves, should fall away with the lapse of time; the other, that he might satisfy the wishes of the faithful. Certainly, he says, it was hard that, whereas our forefathers gave so much honor to plebeians and catechumens who attained martyrdom, out of veneration for martyrdom itself, that they wrote down many things about their sufferings — nay, I would almost say, well-nigh all — so that they might come also to our knowledge, who were not yet born; the passion of Cyprian, so great a priest and so great a martyr, should be passed over, who both had, without martyrdom, what he might teach, and whose deeds while he lived would not be laid open. But about the requests of the faithful he writes thus in the same place: There is added to the sum of it that you too desire to hear much about him, or, if it can be, all, longing with burning ardor to know at least his deeds, even if his living words have meanwhile fallen silent. In which part, if I shall say that we are deficient in the resources of eloquence, I say too little: for eloquence itself is deficient in a worthy faculty to satisfy your desire with a full spirit. Thus we are gravely pressed on both sides; since he burdens us with virtues, and you weary us with entreaties.

[5] Yet he did not undertake to narrate all the illustrious deeds of his holy Bishop; professing however that he but that his example, he says, may be set down in writing, it has seemed good to write a few things summarily; not because the life of so great a Man is hidden from anyone even of the gentiles, but that to our posterity also an incomparable and great record may be extended into immortal memory. Hence, first passing over what he had done as a gentile, he began the Life from his taking up the Christian religion. Then in chapter 1, according to our division, at number 10, passing over some things, he says: It is long to go through them one by one; it is burdensome to enumerate all his deeds. And in chapter 2, number 19: Many other and indeed great things I pass over, which the plan of keeping the volume within measure does not allow to be unfolded in a lengthier discourse. From this design it came about that he only touched briefly upon various deeds of the Saint, and passed over others altogether, especially of those which St. Cyprian himself had already commended to posterity through his letters, and about which he therefore said at the very beginning of the Life: He wrote many things through which the memory of a name worthy of remembrance survives, and the rich fruitfulness of his eloquence and of God's grace so extended itself in copiousness and richness of speech that perhaps to the end of the world it will not be silent.

[6] Hence likewise, because there existed proconsular Acts of the holy Martyr's confession, first before Aspasius Paternus and then before Galerius Maximus, proconsuls of Africa, passed over many things: but what he wrote, he did not recount their interrogations and his replies, being content to have said of the first confession: What the Priest of God answered when the proconsul questioned him, there are Acts to relate. More things of this kind will occur to be observed in the course of the Commentary. But of what deeds he did narrate, he is altogether to be said to have written with a faithful and sincere pen; for such credit is deservedly owed to a holy writer who was not only contemporary with the most holy Bishop and Martyr and his deacon, but was also his most faithful companion and member of his household in his last exile, and was separated from him only by his martyrdom, and even so unwillingly; as he himself testifies in our text, number 24, in these words: For on that day on which we first stayed in the place of exile — for the graciousness of his charity had chosen me among his household companions as a voluntary exile; and would that this had been permitted in his passion also!

[7] But how long before the said exile, which lasted a year, he lived with St. Cyprian, we do not know; are altogether worthy of credit, and have always but it is at the same time manifest that he could be excellently instructed about his deeds, partly in person, partly from the report of eyewitnesses or even of the Saint himself. This very thing he intimates in the Life in our text, number 3, when he says: After he (the Saint) had both learned the sacred Scriptures and, the cloud of the world being dispersed, emerged into the light of spiritual wisdom; if there be any at which I was present, if there be any that I have learned about his earlier works (elsewhere it reads: if I have learned anything from those of earlier days), I shall tell; asking this pardon, however, that whatever I shall say too little of (and it is necessary that I say too little) may be set down to my ignorance rather than detract from his glory. Plainly conformable to these promises is the whole texture of the Life, which breathes a biographer holy, contemporary, and excellently informed about the matters he narrates, and often an eyewitness. He used in it a much-adorned and oratorical style, which commends the writer's eloquence; although this very thing will perhaps please some the less, in that he may seem to have written a panegyric rather than a Life.

[8] been held in high esteem. There exist besides twin Acts From what has been said it is no wonder that this Life was called an excellent volume by St. Jerome, certainly a skilled and fair appraiser of books, and seemed worthy for him to give its author a place among ecclesiastical writers. Deservedly therefore did the most eminent Baronius make the highest account of it in the Annals, and with Baronius have agreed Philippe Labbe, Henschen, Ruinart, Pagi, Tillemont, and all other learned moderns: all, I say; for Rigault's unjust and slanderous censure, which our Henschen in the treatment of St. Pontius, in volume 1 of March at the eighth day, has already refuted, is not to be regarded. Besides the praised Life there exist moreover the proconsular Acts, containing, as we have noted, St. Cyprian's twin confession and his martyrdom. These, taken from the public Acts by the care or at the cost of the faithful, and afterwards so combined that the things which happened between the two confessions were inserted as briefly as possible for the sake of continuing the history. In a like manner at the end of them are read certain things added about his consummated martyrdom and its circumstances, and about the holy Martyr's body being exposed and taken away and buried; in all of which it is therefore no wonder that the title of Blessed and Martyr occurs.

[9] proconsular Acts with additions, genuine To whom these additions are to be ascribed I have not ascertained: yet Henschen, praised in the preceding number, seems to have attributed those Acts to the same St. Pontius, or at least to have confounded them with the Life of St. Cyprian, when in the same place, at number 4, vindicating it from Rigault's calumnies, he cites St. Augustine's testimony from

the Annals of Cardinal Baronius, which is to be taken not of the Life but of the Acts, as will be plain from what is to be said. Further, as we can by no argument ascribe the said additions to St. Pontius, so neither can we deny them to him. The style indeed is different in the two; but this proves nothing, since the author could have used a simpler one in order to conform it to the phrasing of the Acts. Of the same Acts, as already then published and known to anyone, St. Pontius himself makes mention, as we observed of the first part of them at number 6. But that the other part of them also, which contains the Saint's last confession before Galerius Maximus, was already worn by the hands of the faithful when he was writing the Life, we gather from this, that in it he weighs certain words of the proconsul which are read in them, but passes over the rest as commonly known.

[10] and used by St. Augustine. Nay, there are some who not improbably judge that the first part of them was published even while St. Cyprian was still alive and living in exile at Curubis. So they gather from letter 78 among Cyprian's, in which SS. Nemesianus, Dativus, Felix and Victor, bishops condemned to the mines, replying to St. Cyprian's letter of consolation, say among other things: Like a good and true teacher, you first pronounced in the proconsul's acts what we, your disciples, following you, ought to say before the governor. Plainly the same Acts, both of them, and connected in the way we have said, St. Augustine had, and esteemed them so highly that he composed out of them his first Sermon on the Birthday of St. Cyprian, which in the latest Paris edition of his Works of the year 1683, volume 5, is the three hundred and ninth, as will be manifest to one comparing it, when we reprint them, with the praised Sermon. Meanwhile I subjoin one passage for example's sake. St. Augustine, after he had said that St. Cyprian was driven into exile, went on in this manner: But it now delights us to consider and commemorate what, after that exile which Cyprian did not feel, but which the enemy thought an exile, followed in the order of his Passion. "For when Cyprian, the holy Martyr chosen by God, had returned from the city of Curubis, into which he had been sent in exile by the order of Aspasius Paternus the proconsul, he was staying in his own gardens, and thence daily expected that men would come to him, as had been shown him." Now compare, if you please, the words marked with quotation marks with the Acts at number 3, and you will find a difference of only a few words.

[11] Various copies of the Acts Further, various men have published the praised Life and the Acts, and Thierry Ruinart, having revised them anew against several manuscript codices, inserted them in the Select and genuine Acts of the Martyrs. Jacques de Pamele, a canon of Bruges in Flanders, published in his edition of St. Cyprian's Works twin Acts of the same Saint, of which the earlier, received from the edition of Manutius and Morel, are prefixed with this title: The Acts of the passion of St. Cyprian, which Pontius himself mentions. Their beginning is: In the time of Valerian and Gallienus, when the glorious name of Christ, hated by the Gentiles, was being attacked with the greatest determination in order to take it away, and there was a persecution at the City of Rome, the most blessed Cornelius, endowed with the highest virtues, was then ruling the Pontificate of the aforesaid City, and, being arrested by the governor and afflicted with long torments, ended his temporal life by the sword. But it is beyond doubt that these Acts were never seen by St. Pontius. For besides the rest, that they are more recent is proved by the writer's error, whereby he lays down that St. Cornelius sat at Rome and was crowned with martyrdom while Valerian and Gallienus were reigning, whom we have shown at this very day, in the historical Commentary on his deeds, to have suffered under Gallus and Volusianus. Those Acts are therefore the work of some later man, who prefixed a prologue after his own fashion to older ones, and so used them that he even changed some things in them at his own pleasure. The other Acts given by Pamele are almost conformable to Ruinart's.

[12] Rigault, besides the two enumerated, brought forward moreover another copy of the Acts from a manuscript of St. Victor; published by various men, which, because they are very short, he judged also very ancient. But wrongly; for they are nothing else than the latter part of each confession, with those things cut away which we said were added to the proconsular Acts about the execution of the capital sentence and the Martyr's burial, nor yet are they free of every addition. This is manifest even from the very opening, which is of this kind: When Cyprian, the holy martyr, chosen by the Lord, had returned from the city of Curubis, into which he had been given over in exile by the order of Passus Paternus, then proconsul, a most illustrious man, by a sacred prescript issued specially and personally in this matter, he was staying in his own gardens \. But whoever compares this with the Acts to be published, at number 3, will confess that this opening was transcribed from them or from like ones, the name of Aspasius being deformed into Passus. The rest also in that copy of Rigault's is partly somewhat mutilated, partly changed; and there are lacking besides the last words of the proconsular Acts: Cyprian the bishop said: Thanks be to God*; which it is certain, from his first Sermon on St. Cyprian's birthday, stood in those which St. Augustine used: so that it is a wonder that that copy pleased Rigault above the rest.

[13] There is besides another Life of St. Cyprian published in the praised Pamele, as also of the Life, of which we follow Ruinart's edition. which he judged had once been wrongly ascribed to Pontius, and was more correctly attributed by Manutius and Morel to Paul the deacon. It begins: In the times of Valerian, that most iniquitous emperor, there was at Carthage, which is in Africa, a most glorious man, named Cyprian, etc. Of the same Life we have a somewhat mutilated copy from a manuscript of St. Mary of Bonnefontaine. At the end of both, mention is made of St. Cornelius's body translated into Gaul, and on that occasion we treated of the same in the Commentary on that holy Pontiff and martyr's deeds, §13, and said that St. Cornelius's translation happened after the times of Charlemagne, at whose command some would have it that that Life was written by Paul the deacon. But it matters little by whom it was written, since it is certainly too recent to deserve to be reprinted while we have Pontius's little Work. And so we shall give, after the Commentary, first the Life by St. Pontius, St. Cyprian's deacon, then the twin proconsular Acts combined by an uncertain collector, as we have said, both these and that from Ruinart's edition, which we judge more correct than the rest.

[14] The two Cyprians confounded by Nazianzen and Prudentius. The holy Fathers and the writers of venerable antiquity who wrote eulogies of St. Cyprian we shall record also in their own places. Of these, St. Gregory Nazianzen in Oration 18, which he delivered about our St. Cyprian, and Aurelius Prudentius in his poem about the same, confounded him with the Saint of the same name who is handed down to have suffered at Nicomedia together with St. Justina the virgin, and who is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at the twenty-sixth day of September, at which day their Acts, which stand in Martène and Durand, volume 3 of the Thesaurus Anecdotorum, from column [ ], will come to be examined. That the same was celebrated in excellent verses by the empress Eudocia, Photius testifies in the Bibliotheca, codex 184. Meanwhile it will be worth while to have exhibited here some things from the praised Bibliotheca and the cited Acts which demonstrate an undoubted distinction between the two Saints. That our St. Cyprian was born in Africa and probably at Carthage, we shall show: but Eudocia and the Acts make theirs an Antiochene. Our Cyprian, on Pontius's testimony in the Life, was brought to the faith by Caecilius the presbyter; the other by a certain man named Timothy. Ours was bishop of Carthage; but the other is said to have been of Antioch. The Bishop of Carthage was beheaded near Carthage under Valerian and Gallienus, having suffered neither prison nor torments before; the other, while Diocletian and Maximian were reigning, was seized at Antioch, and, after his sides had been scraped, after prison, and after enduring the frying-pan unharmed, was sent to Nicomedia to Diocletian, and there beheaded. Whoever wishes for more, let him read the praised Bibliotheca of Photius, Tillemont in volume 5 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, in the treatment of SS. Cyprian and Justina, and Maran, presently to be praised in § I, where he wrote a brief vindication of Eudocia's little Work against John Fell. About the Confession, or Penance, wrongly ascribed to the Saint, we shall treat elsewhere.

[15] The Life compiled by Maran: why the heretics praise the Saint. The moderns who have written about the Saint's deeds we shall name in the course of our work. Among them is a certain anonymous Benedictine of the Congregation of St. Maur, a learned man, whose excellent lucubration you have prefixed to the edition of St. Cyprian's Works prepared by Baluze. That he was called Prudentius Maran I have learned from Rémy Ceillier, volume 3 of the General History of Sacred Authors, article 7, in the treatment of St. Cyprian, by which name we shall therefore often praise him. For the rest, not only the holy Fathers and Catholic writers have followed the holy Bishop and Martyr with the highest and most worthy praises, but heretics also, and others to whom the supreme power in the Church, divinely granted to the Roman Pontiff, is grievous, have celebrated him in rivalry, but assuredly with a different mind and end. For these latter heap up so many praises upon him for no other cause than that from the Saint's famous contention with St. Stephen about the baptism of heretics they may procure themselves weapons against the Church; which contention none of the holy Fathers approves, and in excusing which St. Augustine labored much against the Donatists. But the confutation of writers of this kind belongs to the Theologians, various of whom have also performed it, to whom therefore I refer the reader. Among the rest, however, may be consulted the author of the Theological Dissertation on the famous dispute between SS. Stephen and Cyprian, published in French at Paris in the year 1725, and likewise another Dissertation, by an author likewise anonymous, printed at Avignon in the year 1749.

§ II. The Saint's fatherland Africa, perhaps Carthage: his profession of rhetoric, his eloquence, the life he led before baptism, and his conversion to the faith.

The Saint was an African by birth, That Africa fell to Cyprian as his fatherland is testified by St. Jerome in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 67, by St. Augustine in book 1 of the Unfinished Work, where he is called a Punic, and elsewhere, and by Aurelius Prudentius, singing thus about him:

The Punic land bore him, that whatever there is anywhere might shine, Cyprian, thence in his home, but the ornament and master of the world.

Nor is there anyone who dissents in this part. Not equally certain is whether he was born at Carthage, as Suidas in his Lexicon at the word Καρχηδών affirms, and as seemed to Tillemont, in article 1 on St. Cyprian, not improbable from a line of Prudentius, in which, he says, he is said to have undergone martyrdom in his native place. That line is without doubt this:

He is a Martyr proper to his fatherland, but ours by love and by our mouth.

But from this nothing else can be dug out than that he was born and suffered in Africa; for Prudentius in that place opposes Carthage not to the other places of Africa, but to Spain and to the remaining regions of the world, adding:

His blood lies in Libya; but everywhere his tongue is powerful.

[17] St. Pontius, however, favors Tillemont in the Life

at number 20, and probably was born at Carthage. where, speaking of Cyprian driven out of Carthage, he speaks in this manner, no otherwise than if this had been his fatherland: Let the world see to it, which reckons exile among punishments. To them their fatherland is too dear, and their name is shared with their parents: we abhor our very parents, if they should persuade us against the Lord. To them it is a grievous punishment to live outside their own city: to a Christian this whole world is one home… Add that he who serves God wholly is a stranger even in his own city: for while by the continence of the Holy Spirit he holds himself back from carnal desires, laying aside the manner of life of the former man, he is a stranger to earthly life even among his own fellow-citizens, or, I would almost say, among his very parents. It is added that, even if this might elsewhere seem a punishment, yet in causes of this kind … it is not a punishment, because it is Glory. Thus Pontius; which makes Tillemont's suspicion, otherwise weak, probable enough. That he was a Carthaginian by fatherland Jacques de Pamele likewise believed, in the Life which he compiled out of that Saint's writings and prefixed to his edition of the Works.

[18] born. On the contrary, Prudentius Maran, likewise in a Life of him, §1, thinks he came from elsewhere, relying on his letter 36. For since the holy Martyr, he says, does not set down this benefit (of birth) as received from Carthage, but only says in letter XXXVI: "For where could it be either better or happier for me than there, where God willed me to believe and to grow?" another fatherland seems to have brought him forth into the light. But from this nothing can be concluded against the Saint's Carthaginian fatherland: since those words seem rather to have been said of a Christian's increase in spirit. For in this letter the holy Bishop signifies to the Carthaginian clergy from his first retirement that he desires to come to them as soon as possible; but that, fearing lest his return should provoke the ill will of the gentiles and stir up new tumults, he thinks something must still be waited for. Then he adds: When therefore you shall have written that, matters being settled, I ought to come, or if the Lord shall before that deign to show it, then I shall come to you. For where could it be either better for me, etc. He gives, therefore, reasons why he is held by longing for Carthage; namely, because there he had been reborn through faith and had grown: but to allege a longing for his natural fatherland neither befitted so great a Bishop, nor was he a man to be captured by such a thing, as may be gathered from Pontius's words just reported, and as the Man's very virtue persuades.

[19] St. Gregory Nazianzen's opinion St. Gregory Nazianzen in Oration 18, which he delivered in praise of St. Cyprian, ascribes to him great wealth, power, and nobility of birth in these words: Cyprian, once a great name among the Carthaginians, but now of the whole world, conspicuous for wealth, illustrious in power, renowned in birth; since the greatest proof of nobility is to be a senator, and to hold a foremost seat in that order. St. Gregory did indeed confound two Cyprians in the praised Oration, namely our Bishop of Carthage with the other, the martyr of Nicomedia, who suffered with St. Justina the virgin and is venerated on the twenty-sixth day of September; but wealth and nobility of this kind are more probable of the former than of the latter, who is reported to have been a magician, and to have tried in vain by magic arts to entice St. Justina into love of a certain youth who was dying for love of her; which more rarely befalls men of such nobility and opulence, as Tillemont rightly observed in Note 1 on St. Cyprian.

[20] about his renowned birth and wealth. Add that St. Pontius in the Life, number 4, intimates that the Bishop of Carthage was by no means lacking in wealth, where he is said to have sold off his goods and estates immediately upon taking up the faith for the sustenance of the poor; and at number 30, where he is said to have received back by divine indulgence his gardens, which had been sold to the same end. And so, if St. Gregory's words are true of either Cyprian, they seem rather to be taken of our Saint; yet I gladly confess that this is uncertain, since we have nothing from other sources by which we might confirm so great a renown of family and a foremost place among the senators, and since the silence of others about a matter so memorable and of no small weight for commending St. Cyprian's conversion rather persuades the contrary. But certainly Gervaise, the author of the French Life, was divining when he called our Saint's father Thascius Cyprianus; praising in the margin the cited Oration of St. Gregory, in which nothing is to be found about his father.

[21] About the life St. Cyprian led before taking up the faith Pontius has handed down nothing, as we have already mentioned above, except that he cultivated his mind well with the liberal arts; While still a gentile he practiced as a rhetorician, saying: Though there were studies, and though the good arts imbued a devoted breast, yet I pass those over: for they did not yet pertain to any usefulness save that of the world. His eloquence too, and the glory which he had acquired for himself by the profession of the oratorical art, Lactantius praises at length in book 5 of the Divine Institutions, chapter 1, where he has this: One therefore stood forth chief and renowned, Cyprian, who both had sought great glory for himself from the profession of the oratorical art, and wrote very many things admirable in their kind. For he was of an easy, copious, sweet, and (which is the greatest virtue of speech) clear talent; so that you cannot discern whether he was more ornate in speaking, or easier in explaining, or more powerful in persuading. Thus Lactantius, but partly to be taken of St. Cyprian while still a gentile, partly of him when already a Christian.

[22] Of his oratorical arena St. Jerome likewise makes mention in the Ecclesiastical Writers, saying: famous for wondrous eloquence and learning. Cyprian the African first taught Rhetoric gloriously. Similarly St. Augustine, Sermons 197 and 312 to the people, calls him an orator before baptism. We have also a notable eulogy of St. Gregory Nazianzen, in the place cited above, on his gifts of intellect and his learning; for there, after the words given in number 19, he goes on thus: The flower of youth, an elaborated work of nature; the primacy of learning, both philosophical and of every other kind of discipline, and that in whatever part you wish to appraise him; so much so that in him the knowledge of various arts was more admirable than the exact and perfect science of each single one; and again, the exquisite and in all ways complete grasp of each single one had more of admiration than the collected knowledge of various arts: or, that I may explain these things with a plainer distinction, some he surpassed by his manifold knowledge of things, others because he had attained the highest degree of science, others in both praises — he surpassed all in all ways. And his learning indeed the very books testify, which he wrote for us, many and brilliant, after by the kindness of God, who makes all things and changes them for the better, he had transferred his learning, and had subjected folly to reason.

[23] The most eminent Baronius, volume 2 of the Annals, at the year of Christ 250, He does not seem ever to have been married, number 10, judged from a badly understood passage of St. Pontius that St. Cyprian, while still a gentile, was married, and that his wife and children were still living when he was initiated by baptism. Take that passage from the Life, number 9. He had indeed also, says the biographer, the intimate company of a just man and of praiseworthy memory, Caecilius, then a presbyter both in age and in honor, who had brought him back from the error of the world to the acknowledgment of the true Godhead. Him he loved with all honor and every observance, looking up to him with obsequious veneration, not now as a friend and equal of his soul, but as the parent of a new life. Finally he, softened by his services, was so far provoked by the boundless merit of his love that, when departing from the world, his summons now being close at hand, he commended to him his wife and children, so that him whom he had made a sharer in the fellowship of the sect he might afterwards make heir of his devotion. This wife and these children the praised Baronius believed to be Cyprian's, and commended by him to Caecilius, whereas from the very words it is evident that they were Caecilius's and were commended by Caecilius to St. Cyprian: for the latter did not bring Caecilius to the faith, but Caecilius Cyprian; and the same man who had made the other a sharer in the fellowship of his sect also made him heir of the devotion to be shown to his widow and children.

[24] as some have wrongly believed: No less unhappily did John Fell in his Annotations on the Life of St. Cyprian, and Pagi in the Critique of Baronius of the earlier edition at the year 248, number 4, wish to dig his marriage out of another passage of Pontius. Namely, the biographer in our text, at numbers 7 and 8 of the Life, says this about the Saint when already a presbyter: He had a customary discourse on this: that, if he had read of anyone proclaimed with God's praise, he would urge inquiry to be made for what deeds he had pleased God. If Job, glorious by God's testimony, was called a true worshipper of God, and one to whom no one on earth could be compared, he taught that whatever Job had done before must be done: so that, while we too do the like, we may call forth a like testimony of God upon ourselves. He, despising the losses of his household property, so far advanced by exercised virtue that he did not feel the temporal losses of his devotion. Neither did want break him, nor grief; nor did his wife's persuasion turn him aside; nor did the dire punishment of his own body shake him, etc.

[25] they believed: This wife's persuasion the said writers referred to St. Cyprian, but that it pertains to Job both the words just recited and those which are subjoined in the same place make manifest. For the biographer goes on to recount the works of mercy which Job in the sacred Scriptures commemorates of himself here and there; and at last he subjoins about St. Cyprian: These things they ought to do, he used to say, who desire to please God. Job, therefore, bravely rejecting his wife's perverse persuasions, is said by the biographer to have been set forth by the Saint as an example to others, not that he himself rejected his own wife's. Nor is it necessary to prove this at greater length, since both the matter is clear, and Pagi in the enlarged edition of his Work, at the same year, number 5, candidly acknowledged and corrected this error of his; which Ruinart observed that Fell also had done in his corrections, in annotation 16 on this Life. It therefore remains uncertain whether St. Cyprian was ever married; yet from the silence both of himself and of his biographer about a wife and children the opposite is far more probable, and it appears certain that, if he ever had a wife and children, he was a widower and childless when he embraced the Christian religion.

[26] but he certainly was not a magician; St. Gregory Nazianzen in Oration 18, praised elsewhere already, writes that St. Cyprian, before he gave his name to Christ, was given especially to magic, and was chiefly famous for that art; and he adds that, when he had tried in vain by tricks of that sort to entice St. Justina, a Christian virgin, into love of himself, he was seized and tormented by a demon, and at length turned his mind to the Christian religion. The crime of magic likewise, and its wicked use for arousing lust, Prudentius in the hymn cited above ascribed to him in these lines:

There was one youth most learned in sinister arts, To assail chastity by fraud, to think nothing sacred;

Often too to undertake a magical incantation among the tombs, Whereby he might loose the marriage-right of the couch while the bride burned. The rage of so great a lust Christ suddenly restrains.

But both writers were led into this error by the confusion of the two St. Cyprians, of which treatment was made in §1, and on which the learned agree. For the martyr of Nicomedia is reported to have been a magician before he took up the faith of Christ, and those things are narrated of him, both elsewhere and in the Confession or Penance which exists under his name in Greek and Latin, and which seems to be the very one which St. Gelasius I, Pope, rejected among the apocrypha in the Roman council.

[27] Further, as we affirm that our holy Bishop was free from the crime of magic, but he was nevertheless given to many vices. so we cannot deny that before baptism he bore a mind given to many vices, as he himself confesses in letter 1 to Donatus, in words to be cited below, nor is this to be wondered at in a gentile orator. Certainly St. Augustine in sermon 311, which is the third on St. Cyprian's birthday, says of him: He himself writes, he himself testifies, of what life he once was — how abominable, how impious, how blameworthy and detestable. Such was Thascius Cyprian, both in his faculty of eloquence and gifts of nature, and in the perverse affections of his soul, when the divine goodness, as St. Augustine says in sermon 312, by justifying through faith, rescued the soul of his Servant from the impious, and made it his own javelin, that is, a two-edged sword; that through that tongue the folly of the gentiles, laid bare, might be struck, through which formerly, covered and veiled, it seemed beautiful to the prudent; and that the instrument of so noble a speech, by which unworthy ornaments were being made for the ruinous doctrines of demons, might be turned to the building up of the Church, at whose growth those should fall; and that the trumpet of so great a voice, which was wont to sharpen the contests of forensic falsehoods, might rouse devoted martyrs, soldiering for Christ and glorying in him, to lay the devil low by the precious deaths of the Saints.

[28] St. Pontius in the Life, in our text at number 9, indicates the man whom God willed to use for so great a work. He is converted to the faith by St. Caecilius the presbyter, He had indeed also, he says, the intimate company of a just man and of praiseworthy memory, Caecilius, then a presbyter both in age and in honor, who had brought him back from worldly error to the acknowledgment of the true Godhead. The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 250, number 6, believed this Caecilius to be the same as the rhetorician of that name, called Caecilianus also by others, and once the teacher of Diadumenus Augustus; and thought that St. Cyprian succeeded him in the school of oratory: but at the year 211, number 2, he had judged that that rhetorician was also the same as the one who in Minucius Felix's Dialogue entitled Octavius is introduced vehemently attacking the Christian religion, and who afterwards seems to have embraced it. Tillemont in article 2 on St. Cyprian admits Baronius's opinion as very probable, insofar as it makes Minucius's Caecilius the one who led St. Cyprian to the faith; but in the same place, in Note 3, he blames him for having also made him Diadumenus's preceptor: which he thinks is destitute of solid foundation and cannot stand with the Cardinal's own statements. But Baronius had already himself retracted this very thing in volume XI, page 725, among the corrigenda at the year 211. For the rest, Caecilius of Cyprian is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at the third day of June, at which he has been briefly treated in our Work. About Caecilius the rhetorician, and perhaps the same man, Tillemont may also be seen, volume 3 of the Monuments, in the treatment of Minucius Felix.

[29] But how highly the Saint esteemed Caecilius for this benefit, to whom he returned grateful requital. we gather from the biographer, who to the words recited subjoins: Him (Caecilius) he loved with all honor and every observance, looking up to him with obsequious veneration, not now as a friend and equal of his soul, but as the parent of a new life. Finally he (Caecilius), softened by his services, was so far provoked by the merit of his boundless love that, when departing from the world, … he commended to him his wife and children. Nay, as a perpetual token of a grateful mind, St. Cyprian took to himself from him the surname of Caecilius, on St. Jerome's testimony in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 67. The Saint himself used the same surname in letter 1 to Donatus, beginning thus: Caecilius Cyprianus to Donatus, greeting. But also in letter 69 to Florentius Puppianus he testifies that it was read in the public instrument of his proscription: If anyone holds or possesses anything of the goods of Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop of the Christians, etc. Hence it is clear that, as he was publicly known by the surname of Thascius, which he had borne as a gentile, so also by the name of Caecilius after he took up the faith. Further, some moderns rightly observe that either St. Cyprian had not yet been initiated into sacred Orders when Caecilius committed to him the guardianship of his own, or at least that only a friendly commendation passed here; for that guardianship was then gravely forbidden to clerics, we shall show below from letter 66. In vain too does Pearson try to establish the marriage of presbyters from the passage of Pontius adduced, since he ought first to prove that the said Caecilius took that wife when in the presbyterate, or used her then.

[30] The Saint sets forth the struggle of his mind, But on what occasion the said presbyter brought Cyprian to the sacred rites of Christ, we do not know: but from his letter to Donatus just praised it is established that he for some time, and indeed for a long time, resisted the salutary admonitions, chiefly on this head, that he could not persuade himself that he could attain, through the laver of sacred baptism and divine grace, to that Christian integrity of morals from which he was so far removed. Hear him himself discoursing on this matter: Receive what is felt before it is learned, and is not gathered by long acquaintance through delays of time, but is drunk in by the shortcut of a ripening grace. When I lay in darkness and in blind night, and, wavering and doubtful in the surge of a tossing world, was fluctuating with straying steps, ignorant of my own life, a stranger to truth and light, I thought it altogether difficult and hard, given my ways at that time, what the divine indulgence was promising me for salvation: that anyone could be born again, and that, quickened into a new life by the laver of the water of salvation, he should lay aside what he had formerly been, and, though the frame of the body remained, should change the man in soul and mind.

[31] which he endured before baptism, How is so great a conversion possible, I said, that suddenly and swiftly there be put off what has hardened either as inborn by the deposit of natural matter, or, long usurped, has grown ingrained by the age of long standing? These things have settled with a deep and thoroughly profound root. When does he learn frugality who is accustomed to banqueting suppers and lavish feasts? And he who, conspicuous in a precious garment, has shone in gold and purple — when does he lay himself down to a plebeian and simple dress? That man, delighted with the fasces, cannot be deprived of honors and inglorious. This one, hemmed in by wedges of clients, honored with the more frequent escort of an obsequious throng, thinks it a punishment when he is alone. It is inevitable that, with ever-clinging enticements, as it was wont, drunkenness invite him, pride puff him up, wrath inflame him, rapacity disquiet him, cruelty goad him, ambition delight him, lust cast him headlong.

[32] to Donatus. These things I often said with myself: for, as I was held entangled by very many errors of my former life, from which I did not believe I could be stripped, so I was complying with my clinging vices, and, in despair of better things, I was favoring my own evils as though now my own and native to me. Thus Cyprian struggled with himself, before divine grace and the laver of the water of salvation had stripped his mind of its ingrained vices. There stood in the way without doubt also the Man's manifold learning, in which he greatly excelled among his own gentiles, and the pride that was born to arise thence, so opposed to Christian precepts. Hence St. Jerome on Jonah, chapter 3, comparing Caecilius to that prophet and Cyprian to the king of the Ninevites, says: Let us set before ourselves blessed Cyprian, who was formerly a champion of idolatry, and came to such glory of eloquence that he even taught oratory at Carthage, that he at last heard the discourse of Jonah, and, converted to penance, came to such virtue that he publicly preached Christ, and for him bent his neck to the sword: assuredly we understand that the king of Nineveh came down from his throne, and exchanged purple for sackcloth, ointments for mud, cleanliness for filth; not the filth of the senses, but of words. Thus St. Jerome: the rest that concerns St. Cyprian's conversion and baptism we shall set forth in the following paragraph.

\ hortis*

§ III. The time of his baptism uncertain: his marvelous change of manners, and his heroic virtues, more probably while still a catechumen.

The year of his baptism uncertain, The year in which St. Cyprian took up the faith neither Pontius nor the other ancients have handed down, nor can a certain one be assigned. Yet that we may not stray far from the truth we are prevented both by the praised Pontius in the Life, number 10, and by St. Cyprian himself in letter 55 to St. Cornelius, Roman Pontiff. In the former place one reads thus about the episcopate conferred upon him: For a proof of his good works I think this alone is enough, that by God's judgment and the people's favor he was chosen to the office of the priesthood and to the rank of the episcopate while still a neophyte and, as was thought, a novice. The same Pontius had at number 6 narrated as a thing plainly unusual that swift ascent of the Saint to sacred Orders, and had said: He at once received the presbyterate and the priesthood: for who would not have believed all the degrees of honor due to one who believed with such a mind? From these things it is clear that the Saint's baptism cannot be placed at a longer interval of time before he entered upon the episcopate than that within which he could still be reckoned a neophyte and a novice in the faith.

[34] But now St. Cyprian, on the testimony of his said letter, but not to be placed long before the year 249. had already been tested by his people in the episcopate for four years when he sent this to St. Cornelius in the year 252 in the month of June or July, as has already been said in the treatment of St. Cornelius on this very day; and therefore the beginning of his episcopate is to be placed at the year of Christ 248, if that four-year period is to be judged complete, or certainly at the year 249, if incomplete: which latter we shall show below to be more probable. But how much time is to be deducted from this is altogether uncertain, save that Pontius's authority does not allow it to exceed very few years. That most happy event could therefore have happened in the year 246, as John of Chester lays down in his Annals; but also a little earlier or later, and therefore I do not care to divine the year. The Paschal Cycle which the Oxford editor John Fell inserted among St. Cyprian's Works, and which, ending in the year 243, manifestly displays a Christian author, ought not to detain us, both because on account of the diversity of style it cannot be attributed to our holy Bishop, and because so early a conversion of Cyprian cannot be reconciled probably enough with Pontius's statements.

[35] Pearson's conjecture about the season of the year, Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year of Christ 246, number 3, thinks that between Easter and

Pentecost of that year he was baptized, relying on the testimony of Tertullian, who in book 2 On Baptism, chapter 19, says: Easter affords a day more solemn for baptism, since the Lord's passion, in which we are dipped, was then also fulfilled… Thereafter Pentecost is a most ample space for arranging the lavers, in which also the Lord's resurrection was frequented among the disciples. For from this passage Pearson infers that within this space of time it was appointed in the African church for the lavers to be arranged, and therefore he thinks it very credible that Cyprian was then solemnly baptized.

[36] in which he was baptized. Nor is that opinion improbable, yet it is not certain; since the praised Tertullian in the same place after a few words subjoins: But every day is the Lord's; every hour, every time is fit for baptism: if there is a difference as to solemnity, as to grace it matters nothing. Tertullian therefore means nothing else there than that the times of Easter and Pentecost were appointed for baptism to be conferred with greater solemnity on catechumens in great number; but this does not hinder one or another, already well instructed in Christian precepts, from being initiated by baptism outside those times, especially when a just cause existed — such as certainly was not lacking in joining Cyprian to the Church, whom, besides his authority, an unusual splendor of virtues in a Catechumen commended; just as neither was there lacking a cause on account of which, while still a Neophyte, he should be raised to the episcopate against the Apostle's admonition.

[37] Likewise uncertain is the age at which No less uncertain is the age at which he received the said Sacrament. Baronius at the year 250, number 7, from the Saint's words recited by us in number 31, in which he says that it seemed to him scarcely possible that suddenly and swiftly there be put off what has hardened either as inborn by the deposit of natural matter, or, long usurped, has grown ingrained by the age of long standing. These things have settled with a deep and thoroughly profound root: from these words of the Saint, I say, Baronius gathered that he was already growing old when he gave his name to Christ. But the said words do not prove this; for besides that St. Cyprian in that place speaks not only of himself but of any men whatever who are to be initiated by baptism, as is manifest from the whole context, vices to which anyone has grown accustomed even up to manly age can rightly be said in such a man to have grown ingrained by the age of long standing, and to settle with a deep and profound root.

[38] he received baptism. Add that the biographer nowhere mentions the Saint's old age, which nevertheless he does not pass over in silence about Caecilius, as may be seen above at number 28. Nay, he seems rather to intimate the contrary to me, when at number 4 of the Life he narrates, as though it were a kind of miracle, the vow or purpose of continence conceived by him at the very beginning of his conversion — which in a man already growing old would have been less to be admired, or certainly not so much so that Pontius should on that account have thought he must exclaim: Who ever recorded so great a miracle? Pontius's words we shall give at number 43, and there the reader will be able to judge whether these do not rather declare a robust youth or man than a man growing old. It must be confessed, however, that from the episcopate of the church of Carthage conferred upon him not long after baptism it is sufficiently gathered that he had by then already passed manly age; especially since the biographer observes nothing about this in that place, as he doubtless would have observed, if Cyprian, being a neophyte, had also been elected bishop while younger than usual. He does indeed say in the same place: He humbly withdrew, while, to be raised to that dignity, he was being sought by the people, yielding to those who were older, and thinking himself unworthy of the title of so great an honor; but if these words are not to be taken of those older in the faith, it only follows from them that he was not then of very advanced age, which coheres excellently with what has been said above.

[39] We saw at number 30 and following with how great a surge of thoughts St. Cyprian was agitated, The marvelous change wrought in him through baptism, while, doubtful in mind, he still fluctuated between hope of salvation and despair: now let us hear what marvelous effects of divine grace he felt in himself through the laver of baptism. The Saint himself in his letter to Donatus, after the words recounted in the passage cited, goes on thus: But after, by the help of the water of birth, the stain of my earlier life had been wiped away, and a serene and pure light poured itself from above into my expiated breast; after, having drunk in the Spirit from heaven, a second birth restored me into a new man: in a wondrous manner doubtful things at once began to confirm themselves, closed things to lie open, dark things to shine; what before seemed difficult began to give the means of being done, what was thought impossible began to be capable of accomplishment; so that it was possible to recognize that what had been born carnally and lived subject to offenses was earthly, and that what the Holy Spirit now quickened had begun to be God's. You yourself surely know, and you recognize with me alike, what this death of crimes has taken from us, and what this life of virtues has bestowed.

[40] You yourself know; and I do not proclaim it. In one's own praises boasting is odious: and the graces divinely granted him, although that cannot be a boast but a thanksgiving which is not ascribed to a man's virtue but is proclaimed of God's gift; so that now not to sin has begun to belong to faith, whereas the sin that went before belonged to human error. Of God it is, I say, of God it is entirely, whatever we can do: thence we live, thence we are strong, thence, having taken and conceived vigor, while still placed here, we foreknow the tokens of things to come. Thus St. Cyprian while still a neophyte. Tillemont in article 2 suspects from the latter words that he enjoyed even then the gift of prophecy in which he afterwards shone: which is very uncertain, since the Saint there seems, out of the highest peace of a mind excellently conscious to itself, and out of spiritual joy as a pledge, rather to congratulate himself, while still placed here, that is, on earth, upon his future beatitude in heaven, than to speak of a foreknowledge of future events among mortals.

[41] More probable is what the praised Tillemont supposes from the same letter about a faculty divinely granted him for healing the diseases both of body and of soul, The Saint as a neophyte himself and for driving out demons. For there indeed the Saint after a few words goes on thus: The Spirit flowing forth abundantly is confined by no bounds, nor bridled by restraining barriers within fixed spaces of limits: it flows continually, it overflows in affluence; let only our breast thirst and lie open. As much of a capacious faith as we bring thither, so much of an inundating grace do we drink in. Thence now there is given the power, with sober chastity, an entire mind, a pure voice, a sincere virtue, to be able, for the healing of the suffering, to extinguish the poison's venom, to purge by restored health the stains of foolish minds, to bid peace to the hostile, quiet to the violent, gentleness to the fierce; to force unclean and wandering spirits, who have plunged themselves into men to storm them, to confession by chiding threats, to press them with harsh blows to withdraw, to stretch them out struggling, howling, groaning, with the increase of a spreading punishment, to smite them with scourges, to burn them with fire. There the business is transacted, and is not seen; the wound is hidden, and the punishment manifest.

[42] So that which we have already begun to be, the Spirit received enjoys by its own liberty, in that we have not yet changed body and limbs, and the carnal sight is still blinded by the cloud of the world. sets forth to his friend Donatus. How great is this sovereignty of the soul, how great its power, not only itself to have been withdrawn from the pernicious contacts of the world, so that one, expiated and pure, be seized by no stain of the assailing enemy; but to become still greater and stronger in strength, so as to lord it with imperious right over the whole army of the raging adversary? From these words, I say, it becomes probable that St. Cyprian, even as a neophyte, was already divinely furnished with a faculty of this kind; nay, this must altogether be said, unless perhaps the Saint only wished to say that it had been promised by Christ the Lord in Mark, chapter 16, to the faithful, and had frequently been given.

[43] He embraces perpetual chastity, Pontius in the Life at number 4 narrates two truly memorable things about him, namely a vow or purpose of chastity, and the bestowal of his goods for the use of the poor. Of the former he has thus: Amid the first rudiments of his faith he believed nothing else worthy of God than that he should guard continence: for then, he thought, his breast could become fit, and his understanding attain to a capacity for the truth, if he trampled down the concupiscence of the flesh with a robust and entire vigor of holiness. Who ever recorded so great a miracle? Not yet had the second birth given eyes to the new Man with the whole splendor of the divine light, and already he was overcoming the old and former darkness by the mere preparation for light. The most eminent Baronius at the year 250, number 10, thought that the Saint, having left his most dear wife and most sweet children out of love of Christ with a most willing mind, and having commended them to Caecilius the presbyter, straightway seized the path of a more eminent life. But to this mistake of the most eminent one a sufficient reply has been made at number 23.

[44] and sells his estates for the sustenance of the poor: The other memorable deed of St. Cyprian amid the first rudiments of his faith St. Pontius subjoins to the words recounted above in this manner: Then, what is greater, when he had learned certain things from the divine reading, not according to the condition of his newness, but according to the haste of his faith, he at once seized what he found would profit for meriting well of God. Having sold his goods for the sustaining of the poor in their need, dispensing whole estates for a price, he joined two goods at once: both that he might spurn the ambition of the world, than which nothing is more pernicious; and that he might fulfil that mercy which God preferred even to his own sacrifices, which not even he did who had said that he had kept all the commandments of the Law: and therefore by the swiftness of his devotion he almost began to be perfect before he learned to be so.

[45] both of which as a catechumen Who, I ask, of the old ones did this? Who of the most ancient elders in the faith, whose minds and ears the divine words had beaten upon for very many years, expended anything such as a Man still raw in the faith, and one to whom perhaps credit would not yet be given, achieved by glorious and admirable works, surpassing the age of long standing? No one reaps as soon as he sows: no one has pressed a vintage from newly dug trenches: no one has ever yet sought ripe apples from newly planted saplings. In him all incredible things ran together. The threshing forestalled, if it may be said (for the matter admits not belief) — the threshing forestalled, I say, the sowing, the vintage the shoot, the fruit the root. Among the said estates, sold off for so pious a use, were his gardens near Carthage, into which — by what means I do not know, but they were restored to him by God's indulgence, on Pontius's testimony in the Life, number 31 — he had withdrawn when recalled from his exile at Curubis, as the proconsular Acts have at number 3, and from which he was led to the tribunal of the proconsul Galerius Maximus and thence to the arena of martyrdom. Pontius adds in the same place that Cyprian would certainly have sold the recovered gardens again to the same end, had he not been guarding himself against the ill will of the persecutors.

[46] It is difficult to say, nor do the moderns agree, whether those twin deeds of heroic virtue are to be ascribed to Cyprian as a catechumen or as newly baptized. Baronius at the year 250, number 10, places both after baptism; Tillemont in article 2 and in Note 4 doubts, and produces various reasons on both sides: but Jacques de Pamele, John Pearson, and most recently Prudentius Maran place both the vow of continence and the bestowal of his goods before baptism, and the latter, having discussed Tillemont's arguments, thinks this almost beyond doubt

. It will be worth while to have recounted the arguments fighting on both sides. In favor of the last opinion there tells the biographer's authority, who, having related the first illustrious deed, exclaims in wonder: Who ever recorded so great a miracle? Not yet had the second birth given eyes to the new Man with the whole splendor of the divine light, and already he was overcoming the old and former darkness by the mere preparation for light. For what else can the mere preparation for light here designate — which Pontius distinguishes from the second birth, that is, from baptism — what else, I say, than the preparation for that Sacrament? And accordingly, if he embraced chastity while the mere preparation was overcoming his former darkness, he must be said to have done so before baptism.

[47] Secondly, the same biographer tells in favor, when the Saint is said by him to have distributed his goods among the poor while a man still raw in the faith, seems more probably to have performed, appears more probable. and one to whom perhaps credit would not yet be given. For if he had already then been baptized, why, I ask, would credit not yet perhaps have been given him, or why would his sincere conversion have been doubted, since there is no doubt that only those well instructed and approved were admitted to that saving laver? Besides, the praised biographer in the Life, number 12, says of him when already a Bishop: But what would the Bishop do for the poor, whom as a catechumen he loved? By which words indeed he manifestly mentions the aforesaid distribution of his substance, and hands down that this was done by the Saint while still a catechumen. For indeed, if he had performed it when already a neophyte, he would without doubt have said: But what would the Bishop do for the poor, whom as a neophyte he loved: for by no argument could he have more effectively commended the Saint's mercy toward the needy than by that one. Nor does the closing exclamation which he subjoins in the same place indicate otherwise: The threshing forestalled, if it may be said (for the matter admits not belief) — the threshing forestalled, I say, the sowing, the vintage the shoot, the fruit the root.

[48] Tillemont weighed all these things, and confesses that Pontius seems to him to have ascribed both illustrious works to the Saint as a catechumen: The arguments are examined but he thinks that this very thing can scarcely be reconciled with St. Cyprian's own statements in the letter to Donatus. He places the difficulty in this, that the Saint in the praised letter, after saying in the words which we reported in number 30 and following that, while he lay in darkness and in blind night, … a stranger to truth and light, it had appeared incredible to him that anyone could be born again, and that, quickened into a new life by the laver of the water of salvation, he should lay aside what he had formerly been, and, though the frame of the body remained, should change the man in soul and mind; and, when he had set forth by various examples that, given the ways he then had, so great a change of life seemed to him impossible; presently subjoined the things which we gave at number 39 and following, and by which he seems to ascribe the whole change of his mind to baptism.

[49] Hence Tillemont argues roughly thus: The integrity of Christian life, and the change of his own morals, seemed to Cyprian before baptism incredible and almost impossible; brought against and accordingly he was far removed from a vow of continence and from the bestowal of his goods upon the poor, since these two touch upon the very perfection of the Christian religion. Besides, he weighs the following words in the same letter of Cyprian: You yourself know, … what this death of crimes has taken from us, and what this life of virtues has bestowed: you yourself know; and I do not proclaim it; in one's own praises boasting is odious: although that cannot be a boast but a thanksgiving which is not ascribed to a man's virtue but is proclaimed of God's gift. These things, I say, Tillemont weighs, and thinks that by them St. Cyprian records something great performed by him after receiving baptism, and that it can be explained of nothing more correctly than of the works praised. He judges that SS. Jerome and Pontius also favor this opinion; Jerome indeed, because in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 67, he says of St. Cyprian: Having become a Christian, he bestowed all his substance on the poor: but Pontius, because he premised at number 3 of the Life that he would begin to recount his deeds from no other point than from the time he was born to God.

[50] [it] The whole controversy of the matter therefore comes back to this, whether St. Cyprian places those excellent deeds after baptism more clearly than Pontius places them before it, and consequently whose words can and ought rather to be explained from the statements of the other: for the authority of both in this part is great. Tillemont, in order to reconcile both, proposes by way of conjecture whether those words of Pontius — Not yet had the second birth given eyes to the new Man with the whole splendor of the divine light — cannot be understood, not of baptism not yet conferred, but of the same recently conferred, which had not yet in the Neophyte diffused its whole light: for on this supposition he thinks the remaining statements of Pontius can easily be explained. But to me this exposition appears not probable enough; because on it baptism — to which St. Cyprian, on Tillemont's interpretation, would have set down as received the serene and pure light, the Spirit drunk in from above, and the marvelous change of himself — would have been called by Pontius the mere preparation for light.

[51] the contrary, Then the same interpretation cannot be reconciled well enough with the argument which Pontius uses in the same place to extol both of Cyprian's deeds, in this manner: No one reaps as soon as he sows: no one has pressed a vintage from newly dug trenches: no one has ever yet sought ripe apples from newly planted saplings. In him all incredible things ran together. The threshing forestalled, if it may be said (for the matter admits not belief) — the threshing forestalled, I say, the sowing, the vintage the shoot, the fruit the root. For here the biographer reasons thus: Although no one reaps as soon as he sows, etc.; yet Cyprian did more, in whom the threshing forestalled the very sowing, etc. Surely, if the Saint had already then been baptized, Pontius would more correctly have compared him to newly cast seed, to a new trench or shoot, and to a newly planted sapling. To these add the other things we brought forward above in favor of our opinion.

[52] by Tillemont, But Cyprian does not so clearly place his change after baptism but that it can easily be reconciled with Pontius's statements. For Tillemont himself confesses that it is not probable that the Saint asked to be baptized so long as not only the exercise of Christian virtues but even the flight from the basest vices seemed impossible to him. He must therefore likewise confess that Cyprian's statements in the cited passage must be explained, and cannot be so taken as though he had brought such thick darkness of mind to the very Sacrament of baptism. Nay, there is no doubt that it had already been for the greatest part dispelled when the Saint, already a catechumen, seriously turned his mind to embracing the faith. For who would believe that what he says there of himself as agitated by such thoughts is to be referred to him when already a catechumen; namely: When I lay in darkness and in blind night … ignorant of my own life, a stranger to truth and light. Likewise: For as I was held entangled by very many errors of my former life, from which I did not believe I could be stripped, so I was complying with my clinging vices, and, in despair of better things, I was favoring my own evils as though now my own and native to me. Who, I say, would refer these things to the Saint when already a catechumen, when he already believed in Christ and had determined to conform his life to his precepts? Who does not see that the Saint traces the matter further back, and sets forth what he once had been?

[53] On the contrary, says Tillemont, it is also little probable and a reply is made that St. Cyprian would have set down that notable change as received from the reception of baptism, if he had already committed to execution before it what is most difficult and most sublime in the Christian religion. But why could not Cyprian ascribe to baptism that change which he attained partly while he was disposing himself for the aforesaid Sacrament, and partly, and far more perfectly, when he was initiated by it? Thus he attributes to the light drunk in at baptism the driving out of errors and of black thoughts, which nevertheless — as Tillemont himself confesses, as we have just seen — he had not brought to baptism. Nor did Maran ineptly reply to the same objection in the Life, §2, that Cyprian spoke thus according to the received usage of the Church, according to which that renewal of the mind was ascribed to baptism, although men came to it furnished with virtues; and he adduces St. Cyril of Jerusalem, addressing the newly baptized in Catechesis 3: Dead in sins you went down, quickened you come up in justice. Thus the Saint himself in the book On the Dress of Virgins says: All indeed who come to the divine laver by the sanctification of baptism there lay aside the old man by the grace of the saving laver, and, renewed by the Holy Spirit, are purged by a repeated birth from the filth of the ancient contagion: yet who would deny that not a few of the catechumens, through the theological virtues and penance, put off the old man and were purged of the filth of the ancient contagion before they were regenerated by that saving laver? Thus in the very letter of which we are treating baptism is called by the same Saint the death of crimes, the life of virtues: but is he on that account to be judged to have been, when he came to it, also infected with crimes and destitute of virtues? It is wicked to think this of so fervent a Catechumen.

[54] Besides, the Saint could ascribe that change to baptism to those arguments; because what before seemed difficult afterwards seemed easy. He could, namely, though with a reluctant mind, as Tillemont rightly observes in the same place, embrace chastity and poverty, victor over himself, and be so confirmed by the grace of baptism in this purpose of his that he now found nothing further arduous in it. These things being laid down, the reply to Tillemont's other arguments is easy. For first indeed, when he gathers from St. Cyprian's words at number 49 that something great was performed by him after baptism, and that nothing else can more probably be assigned than those two things; I reply that it is plain from what has been said in what way Cyprian could speak thus; and that his words are not so clear but that they admit our exposition: whereas on the contrary the selling of his goods is much more manifestly attributed by Pontius to the Saint as a catechumen, and it is far less probable that any other work of charity than that one is designated by the biographer when he says: But what would the Bishop do for the poor, whom as a Catechumen he loved?

[55] and it is concluded. Much less does St. Jerome stand against us, when the Saint is said, having become a Christian, to have bestowed all his substance on the poor: for nothing hinders a Catechumen from being called in a broader way a Christian, namely in mind and faith, though not yet in Sacrament. But I marvel that it seemed to Tillemont that Pontius also favors the contrary opinion, because he says that he will not recount St. Cyprian's deeds save from the time he was born to God. As though indeed to that blessed birth in an adult there did not belong instruction, faith, and the other works of virtue which ought to precede the baptism of such a man. Hence Pontius himself had immediately premised in the same place: Whence shall I approach the beginning of his good deeds, save from the beginning of his faith and from his heavenly birth? — and to the beginning of faith there without doubt belongs also what he had done as a Catechumen. Tillemont therefore seeks a knot in a bulrush when he objects the biographer here.

§ IV. As a neophyte he applies himself to the study of the virtues and of the sacred Scriptures; he restrains his profane eloquence; he writes

a letter to Donatus, and a book on the Vanity of Idols.

He applies himself to the study of the virtues: About St. Cyprian's deeds from his baptism up to his presbyterate, and from that up to his episcopate, Pontius speaks only in a general phrase; saying: There are many things which he did while still one of the people, many which he did when already a presbyter; many which, pursuing them by a similar imitation according to the examples of the just of old, he performed by the service of all religion, so as to deserve well of the Lord. For he had a customary discourse on this: that, if he had read of anyone proclaimed with God's praise, he would urge inquiry to be made for what deeds he had pleased God. Thus he says that among the rest he set Job before himself for imitation, as was said at number 24, and at length he subjoins: And thus, running through the records of all good men, while he ever imitates the better, he made himself too a man to be imitated. From these things we indeed have that our holy Neophyte did many illustrious things, and made notable progress in the study of the virtues — which without doubt was not a little kindled by his intimacy with St. Caecilius the presbyter, his master in the faith; but what those deeds were, we do not know.

[57] he was not a sacristan. St. Gregory Nazianzen in Oration 18, praised elsewhere already, mentions the office of sacristan discharged by him soon after his conversion, in these words: He finds God, and is made a sacred sheep of the sacred flock, and also, as I have received from a certain person, a sacristan; and that too with many prayers employed by him, that he might exercise humility for the purging of his former arrogance. For sacristan the Greek has νεωκόρος, from νεὼς for ναὸς, temple, and κορέω, that is, I sweep clean, which certainly indicates a humble office. But since it is established that St. Cyprian of Antioch was confounded by Nazianzen with our Carthaginian, and Eudocia Augusta in Photius, Bibliotheca, codex 184, expressly says of the former that the keys of the church were entrusted to him, there is no doubt that the said office of sacristan was ascribed by error to St. Cyprian of Carthage, which belonged to the Antiochene.

[58] Among the beginnings of his Christian life the biographer records also the study of the sacred Scriptures, He learns the sacred Scriptures; he uses Tertullian in which how happily he labored his Works, which stand to the great profit of the whole Church, brilliantly make manifest. And that among ecclesiastical writers he took most delight in Tertullian is gathered from St. Jerome in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53; for there that holy doctor writes thus: I myself saw a certain Paul, an old man of Concordia, which is a town of Italy, who said that he, when he himself was quite a youth, had seen at Rome the notary of blessed Cyprian, then of great age; and that he was wont to relate to him that Cyprian never let one day pass without reading Tertullian, and often said to him: "Give me the master"; meaning, namely, Tertullian.

[59] Yet he read his Works in such a way as carefully to beware of his errors, prudently, and Minucius's Octavius. as the same St. Jerome rightly observed in letter 41, elsewhere 65, to Pammachius. Blessed Cyprian, he says, uses Tertullian as a master, as his writings prove: and although he is delighted by the talent of that learned and ardent man, he does not follow Montanus and Maximilla with him. But that St. Cyprian's writings prove, as St. Jerome says, that he used Tertullian as a master, is clear above all from the book On the Vanity of Idols, into which several things are inserted, sometimes in the very same words, from Tertullian. In the same book likewise many things are read as taken from Minucius Felix's Dialogue entitled Octavius; whence it is plain that the reading of this also pleased him: which indeed is not at all surprising, if Caecilius, whose coming to the faith is treated of in it, was that very Caecilius the presbyter by whose agency Cyprian embraced the same faith; which, however, I would not dare to affirm for certain.

[60] We saw above with how great an abundance of profane learning and eloquence the Saint entered the Church, His former eloquence namely by divine counsel, so that, on St. Augustine's testimony in sermon 312, through that tongue the folly of the gentiles, laid bare, might be struck, through which formerly, covered and veiled, it seemed beautiful to the prudent; and that the instrument of so noble a speech, by which unworthy ornaments were being made for the ruinous doctrines of demons, might be turned to the building up of the Church, etc. How excellently he performed this also in his writings, his Works declare, in which the gravity and copiousness of the thoughts, the knowledge of the divine Scriptures, and the most effective force for persuading born of these, shine forth. Yet he so used the eloquence which he had procured for himself among the gentiles that he thought it must be brought into accord with Christian gravity: of which indeed there is proof in his letter 1 to Donatus, of which we shall presently treat, most richly adorned with rhetorical flowerets, such as you would seek in vain in all his other letters and Opuscula.

[61] Hence St. Augustine in book 4 On Christian Doctrine, teaching he restrains by Christian gravity: what eloquence befits a Christian orator, says thus in chapter 14: But among a grave people, of which it is said, "Among a grave people I will praise thee," neither is that delightful sweetness pleasing by which things not indeed unjust are said, but slight and fragile goods are adorned with a foamy circuit of words, such as \ great and stable things would not fittingly and gravely be adorned. Then presently he subjoins, to our purpose: There is something of this kind in the letter of the most blessed Cyprian (to Donatus); which I think therefore either happened, or was done on purpose, that it might be known by posterity from what kind of tongue the soundness of Christian doctrine called it back from that redundancy, and restrained it to a graver and more modest eloquence; such as in his subsequent letters is safely loved, religiously sought after, but most difficultly fulfilled.*

[62] he is praised by St. Augustine, He says therefore in a certain place: "Let us seek this seat: the neighboring retreats afford seclusion; where, while the straying trailings of the shoots creep in pendulous entwinings along the bearing reeds, they have made a vine-portico with leafy roofs." These things are not said save with a wondrously most affluent fruitfulness of eloquence; but by their excessive profusion they displease gravity. But those who love these things assuredly think that those who do not speak so, but speak more chastely, cannot speak so, and do not avoid these things by judgment. Wherefore that holy Man both showed that he could speak so, because he did speak so somewhere; and that he was unwilling to, because thereafter nowhere. Thus far St. Augustine, disapproving in a Christian orator a luxuriance of words, which the Saint afterwards avoided, and which in the same letter to Donatus he himself professes to suit rather forensic causes than sacred discourses; saying: In the courts, in an assembly before the rostra, let opulent eloquence be flaunted with voluble circumlocution: but when the voice is about the Lord God, the pure sincerity of the voice relies for the proofs of the faith not upon the forces of eloquence, but upon facts.

[63] by Lactantius, and by SS. Gregory and Jerome; Do not, however, so take these things as though Cyprian entirely neglected all ornament of speech: since he must rather be said to have perfected it, using thenceforth a graver and more modest eloquence, such as, on St. Augustine's testimony, is safely loved, religiously sought after, but most difficultly fulfilled. Lactantius's judgment about his Works we have already reported at number 21, and we saw that he could not discern whether he was more ornate in speaking, or easier in explaining, or more powerful in persuading. How highly St. Gregory Nazianzen likewise esteemed them is clear from number 22, and above all from the fact that in the same Oration he did not hesitate to say that Cyprian excelled the rest in eloquence as much as men do the brutes. St. Jerome in letter 49, elsewhere 13, to Paulinus compares it to a fountain, writing thus: Blessed Cyprian, in the likeness of a most pure fountain, proceeds sweet and calm; and in letter 57, elsewhere 7, to Laeta, he commends the reading of them. It is not necessary to add more, since the Works themselves make their Author's eloquence manifest to anyone.

[64] he is mocked by the heathens on account of his doctrine. But not even the gentiles themselves, among whom he had procured himself a great name by his eloquence, ceased to admire his eloquence when he was now a Christian, although on account of his doctrine, which they either hated or did not grasp, they contemptuously kept calling him — as a man who was abusing an excelling talent to peddle trifles — Coprian, from the Greek word κόπρος or κοπρία, in Latin dung, as though "dungy". So we learn from Lactantius, book 5 of the Divine Institutions, chapter 2, where, after he had preferred St. Cyprian's Works to the writings of the rest who had defended the Christian religion, he went on thus: He, however, cannot please those who are ignorant of the mystery beyond the words (that is, the heathens); since the things he has spoken are mystical, and prepared for this, that they be heard by the faithful alone. In short, he is wont to be derided by the learned of this age, to whom perhaps his writings have become known. I myself heard a certain man, assuredly eloquent, who called him, with one letter changed, Coprian, as though he had applied an elegant talent, fit for better things, to old wives' tales.

[65] Further, of the various Opuscula by which he either defended or adorned the Christian religion, He writes the letter to Donatus, to the very year in which he was baptized there seems to belong his letter to Donatus, which we just mentioned. Pamele recounted it in the second place among Cyprian's letters, having, namely, prefixed one from Donatus to Cyprian which he found in the Cambron codex, and which he supposed to be rather a fragment of the letter at whose prompting the Saint wrote his own. And he so judged because St. Cyprian at the very opening of his letter mentions that he had been called upon by Donatus about a promised little Work; but to Donatus's letter in the praised codex there is prefixed this title: An Admonition of Donatus to Cyprian; and yet no mention is made in it of that promise. For it is of this kind: I believe you retain, most holy Cyprian, what talkativeness was ours among the orators, one sense, one thought, an undivided reading. Why are we not likewise strengthened in mind in the divine reading, or was not this always our thought, that we should believe together?

[66] But Rigault, Fell and Baluze, judging that letter, which is by no means found in other codices, spurious, when likewise a neophyte, passed it over, and therefore in the editions of the first and the last Cyprian's letter to Donatus holds the first place among Cyprian's. Fell preferred to call it the Book on the Grace of God, bringing forward among other petty reasons the Speyer edition, in which it is entitled The Book of Cyprian to Donatus, with very many manuscript codices agreeing, as he says. But it matters little to us by what name one has preferred to call it: yet we shall call it a letter, with the greater number. As regards Donatus, to whom it is addressed, he had likewise embraced the faith of Christ, and not long before, so far as appears from the words of the Saint exhorting him to the study of virtue. For he thus addresses him in the same place: Do you only, whom the heavenly warfare has now marked for the spiritual camp, keep the discipline uncorrupted, keep it sober with religious virtues, etc. He had also premised: If you keep the way of innocence, of justice, … if with all your strength and with your whole

heart you hang upon God, you are only this, that you have begun to be; so much is given you for freedom as of spiritual grace is increased.

[67] Pamele, Rigault and Pearson write that he was formerly the Saint's fellow in the oratorical art and afterwards also his companion in baptism; and perhaps his former fellow, and the first indeed alleges for this opinion Donatus's letter, which, as we have said, he believed genuine: but since others reject it, I do not see by what argument they prove it. It is likewise uncertain whether the same Donatus lived with St. Cyprian, which seemed so to Tillemont because the Saint converses with him in the praised letter as with a fellow present, and with one with whom he often exchanged discourses. But no one who knows the manner of dialogues fails to see how weak this argument is. Nor is Pamele's suspicion any more certain, that this Donatus is the same as the bishop of Cibaliana of that name, who is read to have given his opinion in favor of baptizing heretics in the famous Carthaginian synod.

[68] The cause and the time of the letter's writing St. Cyprian indicates thus at its very opening: You admonish me well, dearest Donatus: for I both remember that I promised, and this is altogether a seasonable time for making good my promise, when, the vintage being indulgent, the mind, released into quiet, obtains the solemn and appointed truce of the fainting year. at an autumn season, The place too suits the day, and the pleasant face of the gardens agrees for soothing and cherishing the senses in the soft breezes of a caressing autumn. Cyprian had therefore promised Donatus that he would write something to him about Christian philosophy; and he seems to have performed this in the autumn season by this letter. Yet from this manner of writing, and from the whole texture of the letter, which exhibits the Saint speaking with Donatus as though present, Rigault judged that they, while spending the autumn holidays together in the country, exchanged pious discourses, and that these were afterwards, at Donatus's request, reduced by him into this letter. But that conjectures of this kind drawn from dialogues are weak, we have already observed above.

[69] about contempt of the world, Further, although the letter is written in the manner of a dialogue, yet Cyprian alone speaks in it, while Donatus, led by him into the calm seclusion of a garden, listens. In the first part of it the Saint recalls to Donatus's memory, with a signification of a mind grateful to the divine goodness, what he once was and what he became through baptism: in the other, running through the various orders of men, he sets as it were before the eyes in elegant discourse the crimes, lusts, painted honors, empty pursuits, dangers, harmful anxieties, and other things of this kind, of worldly men, and at last concludes: There is therefore one calm and trustworthy tranquillity, one solid and firm and perpetual security, if a man, drawn out from these whirlwinds of a disquieting world and established in the station of a saving harbor, raise his eyes from earth to heaven, and, admitted to the Lord's gift, and near to his God in mind, glory that whatever among others seems lofty and great in human affairs lies beneath his own conscience. He can now crave nothing, desire nothing of the world, who is greater than the world.

[70] and about the goods of divine grace; which writing is shown These things he says, and more in the same place, from which one may gather in what account that Neophyte held all created things which others so ardently court, and which he himself, while still a gentile, reckoned it hard and almost impossible to be without. Finally, having exhorted his friend to the exercises of the virtues, he closes the letter in this manner: And since our rest is now a holiday, and the time is leisured, let us pass in gladness whatever of the day remains, now that the sun is sinking toward evening, and let not even the hour of the banquet be free of heavenly grace. Let the sober banquet sound with psalms; and since your memory is tenacious and your voice tuneful, undertake this task as usual. You will feed those dearest to you the better if there be for us a spiritual hearing, and a religious sweetness charm our ears. For the rest, that this letter seems to have been written in the very year in which its Author was baptized, as we said above, is persuaded by that florid style which savors of the rhetorical art which he had professed as a gentile, and which thereafter he nowhere used again. It is persuaded also by the whole subject of the letter, which embraces his conversion as not long since made, and shows how deservedly he despised worldly wealth and titles. It is persuaded finally by the absence in it of any use of the sacred texts, which is elsewhere so frequent, and which here too seemed otherwise opportune; whence it becomes probable that the Saint, when he wrote it, was not yet versed in the sacred Scriptures, and that therefore it is to be referred to the very beginnings of his Christian life.

[71] around the beginnings of his taking up the faith. This one thing can be objected here, that Pontius may seem to intimate that it was written in the retirement which falls in the year 250, when the Saint was already a bishop, or even after it, when at number 13 of the Life, setting forth the profit which the Church had derived from that retirement, he writes thus: For suppose that he had then (while he was withdrawing) been transferred by the favor of martyrdom: who would have shown the profit of grace advancing through faith? By which words the learned commonly believe that this very letter is designated, because they suit it excellently and no other, and because other Works of the Saint are presently recounted in the same place with similar phrases. But from what has been said, and from the whole subject of the letter, it is manifest that it cannot be deferred to his episcopate, and therefore the biographer must be said to have recounted this letter too on occasion of the other Works which the holy Bishop wrote either in his retirement or after it, and that the more gladly because from it it would be plain how precious to the Church was the life of that Man who for showing the profit of grace had no equal.

[72] To about the same time there seems to belong another little Work, The book on the Vanity of Idols which the Saint wrote in defense of the faith, and which in the common editions is entitled The Book on the vanity of idols. St. Augustine mentions it in the book On the one baptism against Petilian, chapter 4, and in book 6 On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 44. St. Jerome mentions it too in the letter to Magnus, where he commends its excellence with this brief eulogy: Cyprian — with what brevity, with what knowledge of all histories, with what splendor of words and thoughts did he touch upon the point that idols are not gods! Erasmus, on Baluze's testimony in the Notes, supposed that that little Work, as it now stands, is only a fragment of a greater Work, because it begins abruptly: That idols are not gods, and that God is one, and that through Christ salvation has been given to believers. But this is a weak reason, since nothing hinders the Saint from having been able to begin at once from the subject of his whole Work, or even to prefix those words in place of a title, which is a method of writing neither inept nor unusual.

[73] But the Author is wholly occupied in this, around the same time, that from the very Histories of the gentiles, especially the Romans, he may demonstrate the emptiness of idols and of their worship. Then he discourses about the one God and about the Jews' happy kingdom and dispersion; and at last he touches upon the chief mysteries of the Christian religion, and glories in the faith and imitation of Christ. This book therefore seems to be a kind of apology which the Saint published for approving the religion which he had embraced and for reproving the idolatry which he had cast off. Wherefore I cannot assent to Tillemont, who suspects that it was composed by St. Cyprian for his own rather than for the public benefit, namely that he might have at hand the chief heads of religion reduced to a compendium. I cannot, I say, assent to this suspicion: for besides that he produces no reason for it, if the Saint had proposed this to himself, he would not have discoursed so at length about the emptiness of idols with arguments drawn from profane history.

[74] Further, the moderns observe that many things in this Work are read as drawn from Tertullian and Minucius Felix; seems to have been written by him. which, since it occurs no more than the use of profane histories in his other lucubrations, they probably judge to smack of the beginnings of his conversion. They add also that some things are found in it said less accurately and rather after the manner of speaking of the gentiles than of Christians; as when he says: But kingdoms do not fall out by merit, but are varied by lot. Besides, he here adduces no sentences from the sacred Scripture, which he elsewhere used so familiarly and copiously, even when writing professedly against the heathen, who cared nothing for testimonies of this kind, as is established from his book to Demetrian, and for which he was reproved by Lactantius in book 5, chapter 4, of the Divine Institutions. Wherefore it is more probable that he abstained from them in this little Work not on purpose, but because he was as yet a beginner in the sacred Scriptures. Tillemont thinks that this also tells in the same direction, that Pontius, recounting the profits which the Church derived from the Saint's retirement, makes no mention of this Work: for hence it can be conjectured that it had already been written before that time. Which reason, although it is not improbable, yet I marvel that it seemed such to Tillemont, who admits that the letter to Donatus, which he lays down with us was sent before that same time, is nevertheless probably recounted in the same place among the said profits.

\ perhaps nec*

§ V. The Saint, as a Neophyte, is made a presbyter, and not long after bishop of Carthage, by a marvelous consent of the people; he treats his detractors kindly.

He is initiated into the presbyterate How long St. Cyprian lived among the laity in the Church is unknown: but that it was a short time the biographer expressly hands down. For, being about to treat of his presbyterate and episcopate, he first notes that the Apostle's admonition about not admitting neophytes to the episcopate was not observed in his case. The Apostle's letters say, he says, that neophytes ought to be passed over, lest, while the stupor of gentilism yet clings to senses not yet grounded, an unlearned newness should sin somewhat against God. He was the first, and, I think, the only example that one may be promoted more by faith than by time… He, coming from unskilled nations, began with as ripe a faith as few perhaps have finished with. In short, there was no delay about God's grace, no postponement. I have said too little: he at once received the presbyterate and the priesthood: for who would not have believed all the degrees of honor due to one who believed with such a mind?

[76] Of his swift promotion to the presbyterate St. Jerome also makes mention in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, not long after receiving baptism chapter 67, saying: After no long time (from receiving baptism) he was elected a presbyter, and was also appointed bishop of Carthage. About the other Orders which are wont to precede the presbyterate the biographer has nothing, unless perhaps he wished to intimate these when he says: For who would not have believed all the degrees of honor due to one who believed with such a mind? To Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 247, number 3, Pontius seemed to assert the Saint's diaconate in these words: He had indeed also the intimate company of a just man and of praiseworthy memory, Caecilius, etc. For he so interpreted these words

as though of us were the same as of our Order, that is, of the diaconate, into which Pontius had been initiated, and as though this were referred not to Caecilius, who was a presbyter, but to St. Cyprian, so that the sense is: He, being already a deacon, had the intimate company … of Caecilius. But this interpretation appears little probable; since Pontius seems there to indicate nothing else than that Caecilius, whose intimate company the Saint enjoyed, and by whose agency he was converted, was one of the Carthaginian clergy.

[77] That he discharged the office of exorcist may seem from his letter 1 to Donatus, in which he mentions the power received of expelling demons, after other Orders, probably. which belongs to exorcists, and that it was exercised by them in that same century is established from St. Cornelius the Pontiff's letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, where Novatian, when possessed, is said to have been handed over to the exorcists to be cured. Cyprian's words we gave above at number 41, and Cornelius's in the historical Commentary on his deeds at number 85, on this very day. I do not deny, however, that the Order of exorcist cannot thence be claimed for Cyprian with certainty, since a power of this kind over reprobate spirits could have been divinely granted him, as to many other Saints, who had not been initiated into that Order. Of the office of sacristan, which St. Gregory Nazianzen in Oration 18 thought he discharged out of humility, we treated at number 57.

[78] Maran after Pearson and Fell not improbably judges He writes the books of Testimonies that the Books of Testimonies against the Jews were written by the Saint in the time of his presbyterate, or at least in the beginnings of his episcopate. His reason is, first, that in this Work nothing occurs about those two heads which the holy Bishop afterwards treated with the greatest ardor; namely, that the lapsed are not to be received into the Church without penance, as Felicissimus contended; nor is every hope of peace to be shut off from them, as Novatian in his madness held. Secondly, that in book 3, chapter 28, it is said: That it cannot be remitted in the Church to him who has sinned against God; for although that manner of speaking admits a sound and Catholic sense, yet without doubt it would not have been employed by St. Cyprian at that time in which the Novatian heretics were denying remission of sins in the Church to those who lapsed after baptism. For the Fathers are wont to treat more warily those doctrines about which heresies are rife, lest they afford either scandal to the faithful or occasion of calumny to the heretics. Finally, from Fell he observes that the testimonies of sacred Scripture are not cited in these books in the same way as in the others, nor are the books of that same Scripture designated by the same names; from which it can be gathered that these were written before his other Works.

[79] That he was a presbyter or a deacon when he composed them to Quirinus, whose subject is persuaded by the very preface, in which the Saint calls Quirinus, to whom they are addressed, his most dear son, and says that he was asked by him to set forth the divine teachings in a compendium. For from these things it becomes altogether probable that Cyprian had already then been initiated into some sacred Order by which he was set above the laity as a father over sons. Now there are three books of this Work, of which the first two were written together and with a preface common to both, while the third was written with its own preface and separately. The subject of the first two he sets forth in the preface thus: I have comprised indeed two little books measured with equal balance. One, in which we have striven to show that the Jews, according to what had been foretold, had withdrawn from God and had lost the indulgence of the Lord which had long before been given them and promised for the future; and that Christians had succeeded into their place, deserving well of the Lord by faith, and coming from all nations and from the whole world. Likewise the other little book contains the mystery of Christ; that the same has come who was announced according to the Scriptures, and has done and completed all those things by which he was foretold that he could be understood and known: which meanwhile may profit readers for forming the first outlines of faith.

[80] To these two books he afterwards added a third, addressed likewise to the same Quirinus; is set forth, either because he had been again applied to by him, or because he had not yet fully satisfied his former request: for in the first two he had proved the mysteries of faith from Scripture, but in this he forms morals, and teaches the vices a Christian must avoid and the virtues he must exercise. Whence in the prologue he says: So far therefore as our mediocrity could comprise them, there have been collected by us certain precepts of the Lord and divine teachings, which may be easy and useful to readers, since, a few things being arranged into a summary, they are both quickly read through and frequently put into practice. For the rest, from what has been said, and from much in the same place, that Quirinus seems to have been a neophyte, perhaps brought to religion by the Saint's agency, or at least one whose instruction he had undertaken.

[81] and which are vindicated to the Saint. Further, this Work Pamele invincibly vindicated to St. Cyprian against Erasmus's censure, producing SS. Jerome and Augustine, by whom it is ascribed to him. Certainly St. Jerome in book 1 of the Dialogue against the Pelagians refutes Pelagius under the name of Critobulus out of it in these words: The hundredth heading (of Pelagius) is that a man can be without sin, and can easily keep God's commandments if he will, about which enough has been said. And although he confesses himself an imitator, nay a completer, of the Work of the blessed martyr Cyprian writing to Quirinus, he does not understand that he has said contrary things in the same Work. He in the fifty-fourth heading of the third book lays down that no one can be without stain and without sin, and at once subjoins testimonies in which it is written in Job: "For who is clean from stains?" etc.: which are taken word for word from the praised Work of Cyprian. Similarly St. Augustine in book 4 Against two letters of the Pelagians, chapter 8, expressly records Cyprian's book of Testimonies to Quirinus, and in chapter 9 praises the words of chapter 4 from book 3 of the same Work, and in chapter 10 the words of chapter 54. To these Pamele and Baluze add the testimonies of others, which I forbear to report, because from the two praised holy Doctors the matter is clear and needs no further proof.

[82] He is elected bishop of Carthage, succeeding, as it seems, Donatus, Not long after receiving the presbyterate — but it is uncertain how long after — the bishop of Carthage having died, St. Cyprian was raised to that metropolitan see. That his immediate predecessor was Donatus is probable from that Saint's letter 55 to Cornelius. For in it, when already a bishop, he has this to our purpose: But by Felicianus I signified to you, brother, that there had come to Carthage Privatus, an old heretic, condemned in the colony of Lambaesis many years ago for many and grievous offenses by the sentence of ninety bishops, and most severely censured also by the letters of our predecessors — which is not hidden from your knowledge either — Fabian and Donatus. It does not seem doubtful that, as he designated St. Cornelius's predecessor, so also his own; and that this man is also believed to have been Cyprian's immediate predecessor, as Fabian was Cornelius's, is persuaded by the circumstances, which sufficiently hint that the said letters of St. Fabian, who was put to death by martyrdom in the year 250, and of Donatus were not written altogether long before that letter 55, and accordingly it is most probable that that Donatus was St. Cyprian's immediate predecessor.

[83] as it seems, Nor does St. Augustine stand against us when in book 2 On Baptism, chapter 7, he calls Agrippinus his predecessor: for that he is not there treating of an immediate predecessor is clear from book 3, chapter 2, of the same Work, where, writing about the error of Agrippinus and of St. Cyprian concerning baptism conferred by heretics, he not obscurely places one or more between the two. We therefore, he says, … are secure in the communion of that Church, throughout whose universality that is now done which was similarly done throughout its universality both before Agrippinus, and between Agrippinus and Cyprian. But St. Cyprian too in letter 73 to Jubaianus, which St. Augustine praises in the former place, clearly signifies that Agrippinus sat at Carthage long before him. Take his words: But among us it is not a new or sudden matter that we should judge those to be baptized who come to the Church from heretics; since it is now many years, and a long space of time, since under Agrippinus, a man of good memory, very many bishops meeting in one place laid this down, and thereafter, up to this day, so many thousands of heretics in our provinces converted to the Church have not scorned … to obtain the grace of the life-giving laver and of saving baptism. Similarly in letter 71 he said of the same Agrippinus and of the bishops adhering to him: Who at that time were governing the Lord's Church in the province of Africa and in Numidia; all which set Agrippinus too far from St. Cyprian's episcopate for him to be believed, without a solid argument, to have been his immediate predecessor.

[84] The time at which the Saint succeeded Donatus is drawn out from his letter 55 to Cornelius, in the year 248 in which among other things he says this of himself: When a Bishop is substituted in the place of one deceased, when he is chosen in peace by the vote of the whole people, when he is protected by God's help in persecution, faithfully joined to all his colleagues, already tested by his own people for four years in the episcopate, serving discipline in quiet, proscribed in the storm, etc. Two things here the Saint affirms about his own episcopate, to our purpose: first, that he was elected in the Church's peace; the other, that he had already for four years been tested by his people in the episcopate when he wrote letter 55. Further, that it was written in the year 252, and indeed about Easter, which in that year fell on the ninth of April, will be established from what is to be said. Hence Pearson in the Annals, and after him Tillemont, subtracting four years from the year of Christ 252, placed the beginning of his episcopate at the year 248: but Pamele, because he wrongly thought St. Cornelius, in whose last year letter 55 was sent, was crowned with martyrdom in the year 253, judged it should be referred to the year 249, and Baronius finally, out of his own error about the two consulships, to 250.

[85] The opinion of the first would be certain if it were equally established that a completed four-year period is there mentioned by Cyprian, or 249, as it is established that letter 55 was written in the year 252. Maran certainly rightly observes in §4 of the Life that it was familiar to St. Cyprian to count years begun as completed; and he proves this from his letters 40 and 53, in the former of which he calls the time elapsed from the month of January or February of the year 250 up to the Easter of the year 251 two years; but in the latter he says that Ninus, Clementianus and Florus have not ceased from doing penance through these three years, which is likewise to be understood of a three-year period begun, as will be established from what is to be said. It is therefore not far from the truth that he speaks in the same way here also. Further, from his letter 24, written in his retirement, that is in the year 250 or 251,

we dig out that he was already a bishop at the Easter of the year 249: for he says that he gave to Saturus, whom he had ordained lector, a lesson to read before the Carthaginian clergy once and again on the day of Easter; which, since it cannot be understood of the Easter of the year 250, when he was absent from Carthage, that event cannot be placed later than the year 249, and accordingly he had by then already been ordained bishop.

[86] Let us suppose, then, that he entered upon the episcopate at the beginning of the year 249, as perhaps he did, since it is uncertain whether he had been consecrated recently or long before when he entrusted that lesson to Saturus to be read: as is shown. this being supposed, after the Easter of the year 252 he had already completed the third year of his episcopate and had begun the fourth when he sent letter 55 to St. Cornelius; and accordingly after his manner he could call that time a four-year period. In both years too — the first entirely, and the other for the greatest part — the Church enjoyed peace under the rule of both Philips, so that nothing hinders on this account the said ordination from being referred to the beginning of the year 249. It is therefore uncertain to which of the two years that ordination is to be attributed: but it must certainly be fixed to one or the other. Now let us pursue the manner of the election from the biographer.

[87] But he was elected by a marvelous consent of the people He, passing over his excellent deeds in the presbyterate, goes on thus to the episcopate conferred upon him: It is long to go through them one by one; it is burdensome to enumerate all his deeds. For a proof of his good works I think this alone is enough, that by God's judgment and the people's favor he was chosen to the office of the priesthood and to the rank of the episcopate while still a neophyte and, as was thought, a novice: although in the first days of his faith and in the raw age of his spiritual life so noble a disposition shone forth that, though resplendent not yet with the brightness of office but of hope, it promised the whole confidence of an imminent priesthood. From these things it is clear that St. Cyprian did not stand long in the rank of presbyter, since he could still be reckoned a neophyte when he was raised to the episcopate. Now the Apostle admonished in 1 Timothy 3 that a bishop to be elected should not be a neophyte, lest, lifted up in pride, he fall into the judgment of the devil; which admonition Pontius has observed above did not have place in this Saint's election.

[88] and after resisting somewhat, For indeed, as he was most fully furnished with all the virtues, so also he knew, with Christian humility, modestly to decline even sacred honors, and to reckon himself unworthy of them, and to flee them with no less ardor than that with which they were being conferred by the people. Hear again his holy biographer speaking. I shall not pass over, he says, that excellent thing too: how, when the whole people, at the Lord's inspiration, leapt forth into love and honor of him, he humbly withdrew, yielding to those who were older, and thinking himself unworthy of the title of so great an honor, that he might the more become worthy: for he is made the more worthy who excuses himself from what he deserves. But the more humbly the Saint refused the honors offered, the more ardently did the whole people demand him for their bishop. Hence again the biographer: With what ardor did the people then, seething, surge, longing with spiritual desire, as the outcome taught, not only for a bishop; for in him whom they then so demanded, by a hidden presage of the Godhead, they were seeking not only a priest, but also a future martyr.

[89] A copious brotherhood had beset the doors of the house, and anxious charity went about through all the entrances. compelled to take up the episcopate, Perhaps that Apostolic thing which he wished could then have befallen him, that he should be let down through a window; if he had been made like the Apostle in the honor of ordination also. From these words it appears that St. Cyprian, hidden in his house lest he be compelled to take up the episcopate, wished to flee even through a window, as the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 11 — but for an entirely different cause, namely lest he should be seized by the governor under Aretas the king — testifies that he was let down at Damascus through a window in a basket. It appears, I say, that our Saint wished in a like manner to withdraw himself from the people: for the words which he wished seem to be referred not to the Apostle but to him. But when he says that this could perhaps have befallen him if he had been made like the Apostle in the honor of ordination, he signifies that flight was cut off from the Saint by divine providence, which had destined the episcopate for him; whereas, if he had already been initiated into it, he would perhaps on any other occasion have escaped, just as St. Paul did.

[90] And so, when the holy Presbyter saw all the ways of flight blocked to him, being compelled, lest he should resist the divine will, complying with the most ardent prayers of the people, he at length took up the episcopate; as the biographer intimates in the same place in these few words: One might see all the rest awaiting his coming with suspended and anxious spirit, and receiving him when he came with exceeding joy. Of this ardor, by which he was compelled by the people to enter upon the episcopate, the Saint himself expressly makes mention in letter 40, sent to them from his retirement, when, addressing them, he says: Constant grief and groaning … tortures me alone without you with continual lamentation, … in that it does not yet fall to the Priest whom you made with so great love and ardor to greet you, nor yet to cling to your embraces. In letter 55 too he testifies that he was elected bishop by the vote of the whole people.

[91] Yet he was not so elected by the common wish of all but that some, though very few, resisted, a few who had wickedly interposed against his election and tried openly to hinder his ordination. So the biographer teaches, subjoining the following to the words reported above: I say it unwillingly, but say it I must: certain men resisted him, even that he might conquer; that is, lest the episcopate, which out of humility and modesty he was refusing, should be conferred on him. These were without doubt those five presbyters who afterwards, with Felicissimus, stirred up a schism against their holy Bishop, and about whom we shall often speak below, and about whom the Saint himself in letter 40 speaks thus, to our purpose: The malignity and perfidy of certain presbyters (whom he says in the same place were five) has brought it about that it was not permitted me to come to you before the day of Easter, while, mindful of their conspiracy and retaining those old poisons against my episcopate — nay, against your vote and God's judgment — they renew their old attack against us, and afresh renew their sacrilegious machinations with their accustomed snares.

[92] Tillemont in article 4 suspects that the people of Carthage demanded he afterwards that the aforesaid presbyters, on account of that wicked interposition, should be interdicted from their sacred office. So it seemed to him, because in the letter just praised the holy Bishop says this of them: By God's providence, though we neither willed nor desired it, nay while we forgave and kept silence, they have paid the penalties which they had deserved, so that, not cast out by us, they cast themselves out of their own accord, and gave sentence upon themselves according to their own conscience, and, conspirators and criminals according to your votes and God's, drove themselves of their own will from the Church. And again after much else: Let those alone undergo the penalties of their conspiracy who long since deserved, according to your votes, and now according to God's judgments, to undergo the sentence of their conspiracy and malignity. But from these words we have indeed that the said presbyters had long since deserved by the people's judgment to be expelled from the Church, and that the holy Bishop had perhaps even been asked to do it; but whether it was not for another crime than the aforesaid interposition is uncertain. Certainly in the same letter it is said of them: These long since supplied fomentations and encouragements to certain confessors, that they should not be in concord with their Bishop, that they should not keep ecclesiastical discipline with faith and quiet according to the Lord's precepts, that they should not preserve the glory of their confession by an uncorrupted and unstained manner of life. But these confessors could easily have been of the number of those who after the Church's long peace confessed Christ in the persecution of Decius; and therefore those machinations too, for which the said presbyters deserved to be condemned, are later than St. Cyprian's ordination, since he held the episcopate, if not for a whole year, certainly for the greater part of a year, before Decius's rule.

[93] treated most kindly. However these things may stand, this is certain, that the Saint used marvelous clemency and kindness toward those detractors of his; since he not only did not chastise them according to their deserts, as he himself confesses above, but even followed them with a certain singular benevolence beyond the rest. It will be worth while to have heard Pontius on this matter. Yet to these (he goes on after the words given at number 91) with what mildness, how patiently, how benevolently he showed indulgence, how clemently he pardoned: reckoning them afterwards most friendly, and among his intimates, to the wonder of many: for to whom could the forgetfulness of so retentive a mind not be a miracle? But this so excellent clemency of the Man and fatherly kindness did not so far move those rebels but that, turning afterwards to other machinations, they broke out into open schism, and thus of their own accord inflicted upon themselves the penalty of an excommunication long deserved, while he neither willed nor desired it, nay, while he forgave and kept silence about whatever had been committed up to that point, and did not reproach their ungrateful mind.

[94] The manner then observed Further, although St. Pontius makes no mention of the presence of bishops at St. Cyprian's election, yet it is by no means doubtful that some were present: for otherwise he would have been elected contrary to the custom of the African church, which Cyprian himself held to be after the manner of a divine tradition and an Apostolic observance. And this is clear from his letter 68 to the clergy and people settled in Spain, on the case of Basilides and Martialis, where he says: Wherefore, according to divine tradition and Apostolic observance, this must be diligently kept and held, which is held among us also and through almost all the provinces: that for celebrating ordinations rightly, all the nearest bishops of the same province should come together to that people over whom a prelate is ordained, and the bishop be chosen in the presence of the people, who most fully know the life of each and have looked into the conduct of each from his manner of life.

[95] Which we see was also done among you in the ordination of our colleague Sabinus, in electing a bishop. so that by the vote of the whole brotherhood, and by the judgment of the bishops who had assembled in person and who had written letters about him to you, the episcopate was conferred upon him, and a hand laid upon him in the place of Basilides. Thus he; and when he says, which is held among us also …, he sufficiently intimates that the same was observed in his own election too: for there is no reason why we should suspect the contrary, especially since he was elected in the Church's peace, by the opportunity of which access was very easy for the nearest bishops for celebrating an assembly of this kind. Nor does it matter that the biographer is silent about bishops; since neither does he mention those who ordained the Saint bishop, whom nevertheless no one will deny to have been bishops. He therefore makes mention only of the people, because it, according to the discipline of that time, though not alone, yet chiefly has the power either of choosing worthy priests or of refusing the unworthy, as St. Cyprian says in the same letter.

[96] It is proved that he was a presbyter, Before I set an end to this §, there comes here to be briefly refuted the inept impudence of David Blondel, a minister of the Calvinist heresy in France, by which in his Apology for the opinion of St. Jerome about bishops and presbyters — namely that opinion which he himself lyingly fastened upon the holy doctor — section 2, §17, he contends from Pontius that St. Cyprian was raised immediately from baptism to the episcopate without an intervening presbyterate, and that no other status of his in the Church is acknowledged by that same Pontius than that of layman and bishop. He does this, namely, in order to maintain with the heretics that the Order of presbyters and of bishops is by divine right undistinguished. It is not indeed the place here to refute the madness of that heterodox man barking against the Ecclesiastical hierarchy; but, as regards our point, it will suffice to have shown that quite the opposite is handed down here by Pontius, so that it may be plain how impudently that heretic tries to establish his bad cause.

[97] He at once received the presbyterate, says Pontius, and the priesthood: before for who would not have believed all the degrees of honor due to one who believed with such a mind? Now the students of sacred antiquity know that in those first centuries of the Church the lowest Order of the priesthood was commonly designated by presbyterium or presbyterate; but the highest equally by sacerdotium as by episcopate. And what, pray, degrees of honor does the biographer record as entrusted to him, if only one, namely the presbyterate — which on this view would be the same as the priesthood or episcopate — had been conferred upon him? But to say, as Blondel does, that the Saint attained all the degrees of honor in the presbyterate, is to trifle, and is not worthy of a further reply. Yet let us show that not merely a twofold but a threefold status of the Saint in the Church is handed down by the biographer. After the words just recited Pontius touches in these words upon his merits, by which he so quickly ascended to both those grades, and to those which he had more probably obtained before the presbyterate: There are many things which he did while still one of the people, many which he did when already a presbyter. Then he subjoins that, with the examples of the Saints set before him, he advanced marvelously in the study of the virtues, and enjoyed the intimate company of Caecilius the presbyter; then at length he says: It is long to go through them one by one; it is burdensome to enumerate all his deeds. For a proof of his good works I think this alone is enough, that by God's judgment and the people's favor he was chosen to the office of the priesthood and to the rank of the episcopate while still a neophyte and, as was thought, a novice.

[98] After these things he first begins to set forth his election to the episcopate with its circumstances. he was elected to the episcopate Who does not see that here a threefold status of the Saint is recounted by the biographer: the first that of one of the people, or a layman, in which he did many things by which he deserved the presbyterate: the other that of the presbyterate, whose notable merits he says are brilliantly proved from this, that while still a neophyte, such as he had been when promoted to the presbyterate, he was raised also to the episcopate by the people's favor. For indeed it is clearer than light that those many things which he did when already a presbyter were done before his episcopate; for otherwise the biographer would have said, no less ineptly than ridiculously, that the Carthaginian people were moved by Cyprian's merits acquired after entering upon the episcopate to confer that same episcopate upon him. But how far St. Pontius was from these absurdities is clear from the same Life at number 12, where, after narrating the Saint's election to the episcopate, he presently begins to write thus about his episcopal virtues, as far superior to the rest by which he had shone first as one of the people and then as a presbyter: Thereafter, how he bore himself, who could suffice to relate? What piety was his? What vigor? How great mercy? How great strictness? etc., which we shall report in the following §. Pontius therefore acknowledged Cyprian's presbyterate as distinct from and prior to his episcopate.

[99] and initiated into it. Nor did Eusebius of Caesarea think otherwise, in the Chronicle, in St. Jerome's translation, saying at the year of Christ 259: Cyprian, first a rhetorician, then a presbyter, and at last bishop of Carthage, is crowned with martyrdom. Plainly the same St. Jerome also has in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, where one reads: Cyprian … having become a Christian, bestowed all his substance on the poor; and after no long time, being elected a presbyter, he was also appointed bishop of Carthage. Thus St. Jerome, whom Blondel cites in vain on his own behalf. For the rest, since, as I have already noted, it is not the place here to refute the said minister's heretical opinion about the presbyterate and the episcopate, I forbear to say more here: yet the studious reader will be able, from the Commentary which we have published on this very day about the deeds of St. Cornelius the Pope, §6, to perceive from Novatian's action, clearer than light, the opinion of the Catholic Church in St. Cyprian's very age, opposed to Blondel's heretical dogma. For Novatian, as was there shown in St. Cornelius's words, although he had long since been ordained a presbyter, and had afterwards been elected Roman Pontiff by the schismatics, yet knew for certain that he was never to be held for a bishop unless he were consecrated bishop by the imposition of bishops' hands, and therefore he took care to have hands laid on him by three bishops summoned by guile, and to be sacrilegiously ordained by fraud and force.

§ VI. The Saint's episcopal virtues: the book on the discipline and dress of virgins, and letters 61, 62, 65 and 66 probably written for ecclesiastical discipline before the persecution.

Soon shining marvelously in virtues in his episcopate, The holy biographer, having narrated St. Cyprian's election to the see of Carthage, touches in these words upon the excellent virtues of the Man by which he thereafter shone in administering his episcopate: Thereafter, how he bore himself, who could suffice to relate? What piety was his? What vigor? How great mercy? How great strictness? But about the habit and dress of his body he speaks thus: So much of sanctity and grace shone from his countenance that it confounded the minds of beholders. His face was grave and cheerful; there was neither a sad severity nor an excessive affability; but a temper mixed of both, so that one might be in doubt whether he deserved more to be revered or to be loved; save that he deserved both to be revered and to be loved. But neither was his dress unlike his face, itself too tempered from the middle. Worldly pride had not puffed him up; nor yet had an affected penury made him squalid: because this kind of dress too is no less from boastfulness than a frugality thus ostentatiously ambitious.

[101] But what would the Bishop do for the poor, whom as a catechumen he loved? Let the bishops of piety see to it — whether those whom the discipline of their very Order has instructed to the duty of good work, or those whom the religion of the common sacrament has bound to the service of showing love: Cyprian the chair received such from his own store; it did not make him so. To these virtues he without doubt joined an assiduous zeal for prayer and reading, so far as the affairs of the episcopate allowed, according to that salutary counsel which he himself, while still a layman, had given to Donatus in letter 1: Let there be for you either assiduous prayer or reading: now speak with God, now let God speak with you: let him instruct you with his precepts, let him dispose you. Certainly how highly he valued prayer, and how assiduously he used it, one may gather both from his other Opuscula and especially from the book which he wrote On the Lord's Prayer, in which he both excellently set forth the necessity and usefulness of prayer, and inculcated that one must pray by day and by night. Nor was Cyprian the man to commend to others any virtue which he himself neglected.

[102] The biographer, after the words given in the preceding number, He prescribes for himself a manner of administering it. proceeds at once to the Saint's proscription and retirement, which, since they belong to the beginning of the year 250, we must learn from other sources what illustrious things were done by him in the year 249, and perhaps also in some part of the year 248. In the first place it comes to be observed that from the beginning of his episcopate he of his own accord set himself this law: that he would carry out nothing of any moment without the consent of his clergy and people. So we learn from his letter 5, in which he says this to his presbyters and deacons: But to that which our fellow-presbyters Donatus and Fortunatus, Novatus and Gordius have written to me, I could write back nothing alone, since from the beginning of my episcopate I have determined to do nothing by my own private opinion without your counsel and without the consent of the people. Now Tillemont is divining when in article 5 he asserts that Cyprian took this resolve so that whatever he did should be truly done by the church. I should prefer to ascribe this to that same Saint's humility and prudence, who, since he was raised to the see of Carthage — which was the metropolitan not only of the whole of proconsular Africa but also of Numidia and Mauretania — since, I say, he was raised to that see while still almost a neophyte, could, with the humility that was his, dread so great a burden, and prudently determine to use the counsel of his clergy and people, both that he might decree the more safely and that his decrees might be more effectively committed to execution. But what he once determined in this part we shall see that he perpetually observed, except when some singular reason pressed and persuaded that it be done otherwise, of which he then promptly informed his clergy and people, as we shall observe in the course of the Commentary.

[103] The Church of God at that time enjoyed a tranquil peace under the rule of both Philips, Being about to form the morals of his flock, and had long enjoyed it: but, as tranquillity often makes men careless, a long peace had corrupted the discipline … divinely handed down, as the Saint bitterly complains in the book On the Lapsed, and sets forth at length. Hence the holy Bishop's first care was to apply himself to the amendment of the morals of the flock committed to him: for this he himself seems to intimate in letter 55, when he says that he served discipline in quiet, and was proscribed in the storm. To this end certainly he must be believed to have brought all the forces of his eloquence, both in public and in private exhortations, from which he never afterwards ceased even in exile, when banished for the faith of Christ. Namely, so great, on Pontius's testimony in the Life, number 30, was his desire for sacred discourse, that he wished that his vows of suffering might so befall him that, while he was speaking of God, he might be slain in the very act of speaking.

[104] But as he was an excellent cultivator and a fair appraiser of the chastity which he had embraced amid the beginnings of his faith, he writes the book on the Discipline amid the beginnings of his episcopate he also turned his mind to the virgins, writing to them a book On the discipline and dress of virgins, in which he either restrained the empty ornaments of some and the manners unworthy of so holy a state that were creeping in, or forestalled them with anxious care. That this book was written in the Church's peace is agreed among the learned; because although he mentions martyrdom in it once and again, yet nowhere does any trace occur of a persecution then raging, where nevertheless occasion for mentioning it was by no means lacking. Pamele in his Annotations had ascribed it to the Saint when not yet a bishop but already a presbyter, relying on that passage of the same book where the Saint says: To these (virgins) we speak, these we exhort, by affection rather than by power; not that we, the lowest and least, and altogether conscious of our own lowliness, claim anything to the censure of license, but that, being more wary in our solicitude, we fear more from the devil's assault

. But he corrected this opinion of his in the Life prefixed to the Work, and likewise judged that the aforesaid book was written in the beginnings of his episcopate.

[105] and dress of virgins, which The objected words are not, however, free of all difficulty, sounding rather of a presbyter than of a bishop addressing the virgins of his church: yet when he says, These we exhort by affection rather than by power, he does not deny his power over them but asserts it; although he wishes his salutary admonitions to be taken as proceeding rather from his affection than from the use of his power. Then to these can be added other words also by which he seems to hint at his episcopal authority in the same place, saying: Hear me therefore, virgins, as a parent; hear, I beseech you, one who both fears for you and admonishes you. For when he wishes to be heard by the virgins as a parent, he not obscurely signifies himself a bishop. It seems, then, that St. Cyprian spoke thus in the earlier passage out of humility, and in order to show how highly he himself esteemed the virgins, whom just before he had addressed with these honorific titles: Now our discourse is to the virgins, whose glory, being the loftier, brings the greater care also. That is the flower of the ecclesiastical shoot, the ornament and adornment of spiritual grace, a joyful disposition, a work of praise and honor whole and uncorrupted, the image of God, answering to the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of the flock of Christ, etc.

[106] it is shown was written by him when already a bishop, before the persecution. Rigault in his Observations on the praised book contends that it was written indeed in peace and by the Saint when already a bishop, but only after the persecution — that of Decius, namely — that is, not before the end of the year 251. He relies on the authority of Pontius in the Life, in our text at number 13, where, in order to show the usefulness of Cyprian's retirement, which belongs to the beginning of the year 250, he recounts his Works in this manner: For suppose that he had then been transferred by the favor of martyrdom: who would have shown the profit of grace advancing through faith? Who would have restrained the virgins, as with certain reins of the Lord's reading, to a discipline befitting chastity and to a dress worthy of holiness? etc. For from these words, of the latter of which no one will deny that the book we are treating of is denoted, he deduces that it could not have been written before the retirement. But Rigault did not notice that by the former of the objected words the letter to Donatus is likewise recorded, which nevertheless we have proved at number 65 and following to have been sent by the Saint when not yet a presbyter, or at least not yet a bishop, and which Rigault himself acknowledges to be the work of one lately converted to Christ from the secular disciplines of the orators.

[107] it is shown. From that passage of the biographer alone, therefore, the time of the Work's writing cannot be determined: but that it should not be thrown back after Decius's persecution is opposed by its whole context, which sounds of a peace no less long-continued than present. Certainly St. Cyprian makes no more mention in it of a persecution lately quieted than of one then raging; who, as he would without doubt have recalled virgins of a freer life to their duty by the atrocity of a present persecution, if it had then been rife, so, taking an example from one recently past, he would have terrified them with the danger of a like one arising again. Besides, it is scarcely credible that some of the virgins were not in the Decian persecution either crowned with martyrdom or stained with idolatry: indeed it is established from the book On the Lapsed that many confessed Christ, the Saint saying there: There come also virgins with the glory of their warfare doubled. Why then does he not spur them on to the amendment of their morals either by the glory of these when he praises virgins, or by the lapse of those when he rebukes them? For no other cause assuredly than that he wrote this book before the said persecution. Likewise a long peace is displayed by the depraved customs which the Saint most of all wishes forbidden to the virgins. Of this kind are faces and hair painted with colors, frequenting of wedding banquets, and the promiscuous use of baths with men: for it is not probable that immediately after a persecution, while ecclesiastical discipline was sharply animadverting upon the lapsed, and the wailings of penitents were resounding everywhere, the sacred virgins used so great a license.

[108] As regards the letter itself, Pamele observes This book is praised by SS. Jerome and Augustine. that the Author imitated Tertullian's books On the veiling of virgins, On female dress, and especially On the adornment of women, which about the last is manifest to a reader. For the rest, of this notable Work, most worthy of its Author, besides Pontius, as we have said, St. Jerome makes mention in letter 18, elsewhere 22, On the guarding of virginity, to Eustochium, in which he thus commends the reading of it: If it please you to know with how many troubles a virgin is free, with how many a wife is bound, read Tertullian's To a philosopher friend, and other little books On Virginity, and blessed Cyprian's excellent volume. Similarly in letter 97, elsewhere 8, he calls the same book an excellent volume on Virginity. St. Augustine mentions it too in book 4 On Christian Doctrine, chapter 21, where he recites a passage from it, whose phrasing he calls of the moderate kind.

[109] To discipline likewise pertain letters 61, Other letters written in peace. 62, 65 and 66, which also were written in the Church's peace, and which Pearson likewise judged should be referred to this year 249. His general reason is that no mention is made in them of a persecution either present or past or foreseen, which their subject otherwise seems to require, or at least opportunely to admit. Pamele preferred to recount them among the Miscellaneous ones of uncertain time, but written in peace. But although they do not display such certain indications of the year 249 but that they, or some of them, could absolutely have been written after Decius's persecution, yet since they seem to belong to no time more probably than to the said year, it has seemed good to me too to treat of them in this place. The letter which for Pamele and Baluze is the sixty-first, but for Pearson, on account of that opinion, the second, was written to Euchratius, who had consulted St. Cyprian about a certain Christian actor.

[110] This Euchratius could have been the bishop of Thenae in the province of Byzacena, Consulted by Euchratius about an actor who is read as subscribing to the Council of Carthage on baptizing heretics as Euchratius of Thenae. Now he had consulted St. Cyprian whether a certain actor was to be admitted to communion, who, persevering still in the disgrace of that same art, was teaching it to others, a master and teacher not of boys to be instructed but of boys to be ruined. The Saint replies that it befits neither the divine majesty nor Evangelical discipline that the modesty and honor of the Church should be defiled by so base and infamous a contagion; nor can he be excused, though he has ceased from the theater, since he nevertheless teaches it to others. Then, lest he plead that that art is necessary for the sustenance of his life, he judges that he can be supported from the church's patrimony. But if, he says, such a one pleads want and the necessity of poverty, his need too can be helped among the others who are sustained by the church's alms; if only he be content with more frugal but innocent food. Nor let him think that he is to be bought off by a salary to cease from sins, since he does this not for us but for himself.

[111] he replies; Then he admonishes Euchratius to try to induce that actor to it; saying: For the rest, let him seek from it (from his base art) as much as he will; what kind of gain is that which snatches men from the banquet of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and, having fattened them evilly and perniciously in the world, leads them down to the punishments of eternal hunger and thirst! And therefore, so far as you can, recall him from this depravity and disgrace to the way of innocence and to the hope of eternal life, that he may be content with the church's provision, sparing indeed, but salutary. Finally, lest perhaps, through the poverty of the church over which Euchratius presided, that actor could not be maintained, he invites him to himself, to be supported at the expense of the church of Carthage. For he adds: But if the church there is not sufficient to provide food to those in need, he will be able to transfer himself to us, and here to receive what shall be necessary for his food and clothing, and not to teach others deadly things outside the Church, but himself to learn salutary things in the Church. Thus, namely, the holy Bishop strenuously provided for Ecclesiastical discipline, and at the same time looked to the salvation of the actor and of those who were to be ruined through him. For the rest, the profession of a histrionic art of this kind in a Christian man intimates rather a long peace — from which the Saint in the book On the Lapsed derives the corruption of morals — than the alternating turns of persecution and peace.

[112] likewise to Pomponius about virgins, The cause of letter 62 to Pomponius had pricked the pupil of St. Cyprian's eye, namely the violated discipline of virgins, which he had chiefly at heart through the whole time of his episcopate, and which even when arrested and about to be put to death on the morrow he did not cease to care for, as we shall report from Pontius. Nor was the crime of those virgins a light one; since they had been caught lying in the same bed with males, among whom was one deacon. And they indeed confessed that they had slept with them, but denied that they had been corrupted. Now this disgrace had happened in Pomponius's diocese, that is, in the episcopate of Dionysiana, as we gather from the subscriptions of the Council of Carthage, in which there occurs Pomponius of Dionysiana, which in the Notitia of the provinces and cities of Africa, in Thierry Ruinart's History of the Vandal persecution, is reckoned to the province of Byzacena.

[113] who had offended, Pomponius had meanwhile barred the guilty parties of the aforesaid outrage from communion, until he should have learned the judgment on this matter of St. Cyprian, whom he had consulted by a letter carried by Paconius. There happened then to be at Carthage the bishops Caecilius, Victor, Sedatus and Tertullus, with whom, together with the presbyters, the matter having been maturely examined, the holy Metropolitan replied by a letter common to all, that it was by no means to be borne that virgins consecrated to God should dwell, much less sleep, with males; and he admonished Pomponius to meet so great an evil without delay. He also approved whatever he had done up to that point in this case, especially in suspending the deacon, who, when he ought to have been a good example to the virgins, had himself been a stumbling-block. For the rest, he laid down that, if they have withdrawn from one another and have done penance, and if the virgins have really been found intact, they should, communion being received, be admitted to the Church; yet with this threat, that if they afterwards return to the same males, or if they dwell with them in one house and under the same roof, they should be cast out with a graver censure, and such women should not afterwards easily be received into the Church.

[114] But if any of them shall have been found corrupted, let her do full penance; some of whose simple vow of chastity because she who has committed this crime is an adulteress not of a husband but of Christ, and therefore, a just time having been reckoned, let her afterwards, having made her confession, return to the Church. He admonishes Pomponius, however, to strive by his salutary counsels to bring back both these women and those men to their duty; but if they refuse to obey his admonition, to expel them from the Church, and not to be deterred by human fear from defending Ecclesiastical discipline, mindful of that Apostolic saying: If I pleased men,

I should not be the servant of Christ. Further, that virgins are treated of here who were bound by a simple vow of chastity, as they say, Pamele rightly observes in his Annotations, and shows both from this letter and from other Opuscula of St. Cyprian. Hence it would be no wonder if the holy Prelate here relaxed that vow for those who were unwilling to keep their virginity unimpaired, or bore it too grievously, for the sake of avoiding a greater danger and scandal; as it seemed to Baronius at the year 253, number 46, from these words of the same letter: But if they have in faith dedicated themselves to Christ, let them persevere chaste and modest without any tale, and, being thus strong and steadfast, let them await the reward of virginity. But if they will not or cannot persevere, it is better that they marry than that they fall into the fire by their offenses.

[115] This, however, is not altogether certain, since not improbable is the interpretation of Francisco Torres and of Cardinal Hosius, whom the cited Pamele praises, according to which the sense of St. Cyprian's opinion will be this: Those who have once dedicated themselves to God must needs persevere chaste, and therefore, if any have been unwilling to do this, or have thought it too grievous to cultivate virginity perpetually, let them abstain from the vow, and not consecrate their virginity to Christ. According to this interpretation the first part of the sentence admonishes virgins already dedicated to God of their obligation and duty; the other takes care that any woman not bound by such a vow should not bind herself by it, unless she has maturely determined to keep her virginity perpetually and to avoid the dangers of incontinence; for otherwise it is better that such a free virgin marry than that, after a vow rashly made, she break the faith given to God and be condemned as an adulteress of Christ. For the rest, Rigault does not deserve a reply, nor after him John Fell, who deny that in St. Cyprian's age any virgins were wont to be dedicated to God by a vow of chastity. Certainly whoever reads both this letter and the sixtieth, and the book On the Discipline and dress of virgins, will manifestly detect the falsity of their assertion.

[116] A plainly similar vigor, and a clemency mixed with vigor, shines forth in letter 65, He writes a letter to Rogatianus, in which, being consulted by Rogatianus about an insolent deacon, he replied again by the common opinion of the bishops who were then with him. This Rogatianus could have been the bishop who in the Council of Carthage is read written as Rogatianus of Nova. Now Nova in the Notitia of the African church praised above is numbered among the episcopates of Mauretania Caesariensis. But the cause of writing was this. A certain deacon, scorning Rogatianus's old age, had loaded him with insults, and had taken to himself a certain other man as an associate in his audacity and pride. St. Cyprian therefore, being consulted on this matter, having praised the humility of Rogatianus, who had preferred to complain about his deacon rather than at once to punish him, replies that whatever he had laid down against such a rebel by his episcopal power ought to have been held ratified by all the bishops.

[117] about a contumacious deacon; After this he teaches from the sacred Scriptures the reverence owed to priests, and briefly sets forth the divine vengeance upon the contumacious. At length he orders the said deacon to do penance and to make satisfaction to his bishop with full humility; or, if he be contumacious, to be deposed or suspended, and his associate, and any others guilty of the same crime, to be restrained by a like penalty at Rogatianus's pleasure. Yet, mindful of his charity and clemency no less than of discipline, he presently adds: We exhort and admonish that they should rather understand that they have sinned and make satisfaction, and suffer us to keep our purpose: for we more wish and desire to conquer the insults and injuries of individuals by clement patience than to avenge them by sacerdotal license. For the rest, this letter can easily belong to another year than this, since it has nothing from which the time can be dug out.

[118] which perhaps belongs to this time; Nay, to Maran it seemed rather to have been written after the disturbances stirred up by Novatus; because the Saint in it thus mentions schismatics and heretics: For these are the beginnings of heretics, and the rise and attempts of schismatics, who think evilly, so as to please themselves, so as to despise their prelate with a proud swelling. Thus men withdraw from the Church, thus a profane altar is set up outside, thus rebellion is made against the peace of Christ and the ordinance and unity of God. I confess that Cyprian by these words could designate the machinations of Novatus and his followers, but I equally do not see why he could not speak so even if Novatus had as yet contrived nothing: for the Saint could deservedly fear lest the audacity of such a deacon, who had already joined to himself one, or perhaps even more, associates, should break out into schism and heresy, unless it were maturely and strongly crushed.

[119] likewise another to the people of Furni, in which There remains letter 66, for referring which to this year there is a somewhat greater probability, as we shall show below after we have set forth the letter's subject. The African bishops in a certain council, which St. Cyprian in this letter says was celebrated by his predecessors, now long since, now lately, had provided that no brother departing this life should name a cleric to a guardianship or trusteeship; and that, if anyone had done this, offering should not be made for him, nor should the Sacrifice be celebrated for his falling asleep. Which had been decreed to this end, lest clerics, hindered by secular cares, should be called away from the duties of their office; since each of them, as is premised in the same place, honored with the divine priesthood and appointed in the clerical ministry, ought to serve nothing but the altar and the Sacrifices, and to be free for prayers and orisons. Against this canon there had offended, in the city of Furni, which was an episcopal see in Proconsular Africa, a certain Geminius Victor, by naming Geminius Faustinus, a presbyter, guardian in his will.

[120] he sets an example of severity. The matter having been brought to Cyprian, and discussed before the bishops who were present and the presbyters, it was determined that Geminius Victor was altogether to be punished according to the rigor of the canon. This sentence therefore St. Cyprian wrote in the praised letter to the clergy and people of Furni, in which, when he had approved the equity of the canon, saying: For he does not deserve to be named at God's altar in the prayer of the priests who wished to call away priests and ministers from the altar; and therefore, he says, since Victor dared, against the form lately given by the priests in council, to appoint Geminius Faustinus, a presbyter, as guardian, there is no reason why offering should be made among you for his falling asleep, or any supplication frequented in the church in his name, so that the priests' decree, made religiously and necessarily, may be kept by us; and at the same time that an example may be given to the other brethren, that no one call away the priests and ministers of God, who are free for his altar and his church, to secular troubles. For it will be possible henceforth to see to it that this be not done further concerning the person of clerics, if what has now been done shall have been punished.

[121] That this example of severity is to be referred to the present year 249, Why we refer this letter in which Decius had not yet disturbed the Church's long peace, is persuaded by Geminius Victor's very act, who does not seem likely to have committed the guardianship of his own to a presbyter under Decius, or under those who next succeeded him, Gallus and Volusianus, and Valerian, in whose reigns presbyters above the rest were in continual peril of goods and life, and therefore to hand over anything to their guardianship at that time was to expose it to greater danger. It happened quite otherwise under the Philips, who, being attached to the Christian religion, allowed the Church to enjoy a tranquil peace. Yet Pamele in his Annotations proposes a conjecture not to be despised. He observes that in the Council of Carthage celebrated in favor of baptizing heretics there occurs Geminius of Furni, and probably thinks him the same as the Geminius Victor of whom we are now treating. He confirms this conjecture of his from the fact that the praised letter is addressed to the presbyters and deacons and people dwelling at Furni, no mention being made of a bishop; whence one may suspect that the episcopate of Furni was then vacant through Geminius Victor's death. According to this the said letter would have to be thrown back after that famous synod. But Pamele himself acknowledges that his conjecture is not altogether certain, because St. Cyprian calls Geminius Victor only brother, by which name, although he often calls bishops too in the addresses of letters, yet when he speaks of them he does not use it, but writes colleagues and bishops.

[122] He seems to have called Geminius Victor brother because he was a Christian; to this time. for which cause he calls the clergy and people of Furni in this very letter, and often elsewhere any Christians whatever, brethren. Add that the holy Prelate, if that Geminius had been a bishop, would not have omitted to aggravate the offense on this head, that he who ought most of all to have cared for the canons of the council had himself been the first to violate them: as we saw above at number 113 that he observed in the case of the deacon. Finally, since to Geminius in the said synod no other name is added, this man could equally have been Geminius Faustinus, who from a presbyter afterwards became bishop of Furni. But the letter could be addressed to the clergy and people of Furni on account of the bishop's absence; for that bishops in that long peace of the Church were too often away from their sees St. Cyprian complains in the book On the Lapsed. The most eminent Baronius referred this event to the first year of Pope Stephen, which for him is the year of Christ 257, but why he did so he did not declare, and therefore it need not detain us. Yet I wish the learned reader here again to be warned that the said four letters have been recounted by us at this year 249, not because they certainly do not belong to others, but because they can probably be referred to this one.

§ VII. The persecution having been stirred up by Decius, the Saint is demanded for the lion, withdraws, and is proscribed: this retirement is vindicated from every sinister suspicion.

Decius sets a persecution afoot, A horrible persecution succeeded the Church's long peace, at the instigation of Decius, who, the Philips having been slain at the end of the year 249, and the empire seized, scarcely made a beginning of reigning before he made a beginning of persecuting Christians, as has already been observed at this very day in the treatment of St. Cornelius, Pope and martyr. Hence Lactantius in the book On the Deaths of the persecutors, chapters 3 and 4, writes: But afterwards the long peace was broken. For after very many years there arose that execrable animal Decius, to harass the Church: for who but a bad man would persecute justice? And, as though he had been advanced to that princely summit for this very purpose, he straightway began to rage against God. But how great a slaughter, not only of bodies but also of souls, he stirred up everywhere on earth by edicts publicly posted through the Roman world, and by the force of monstrous torments, in that short space in which he reigned, one may gather from the same Commentary on St. Cornelius's deeds, and it will appear yet more from what is to be said.

[124] which St. Cyprian, on account of the offenses of the faithful, The cause of the persecution, so far as concerns divine providence, St. Cyprian in the book On the Lapsed derived from the corruption of morals, in these words: Yet account must be taken of the truth, most beloved brethren; nor ought the dark mist of a hostile persecution so to have blinded the mind and the understanding,

that there should have remained no light and brightness by which the divine precepts might be discerned. If the cause of the disaster is known, the remedy of the wound is also found. The Lord willed his household to be tested; and because a long peace had corrupted the discipline divinely handed down to us, the heavenly censure raised up our prostrate and, so to speak, almost sleeping faith: and although by our sins we deserved more, the most clement Lord so tempered all things that all that has been done should seem an examination rather than a persecution.

[125] Presently he sets forth in this manner the perverse morals of the faithful, which had crept in in the time of peace and needed divine chastisement: which he enumerates, Each was studying to increase his patrimony; and, forgetting what believers had either done before under the Apostles, or ought always to do, they brooded over enlarging their means with an insatiable ardor of covetousness. There was no devoted religion in the priests, no entire faith in the ministers, no mercy in works, no discipline in morals. The beard was spoilt in men, in women the form was painted: the eyes adulterated after God's hands had made them, the hair colored with a lie: crafty frauds for deceiving the hearts of the simple, guileful wills for circumventing the brethren. To join the bond of matrimony with unbelievers, to prostitute the members of Christ to gentiles. Not only to swear rashly, but even furthermore to forswear: to despise prelates with a proud swelling, to curse one another with a poisoned mouth, to fall out with each other in obstinate hatreds.

[126] Very many bishops, who ought to be both an encouragement and an example to the rest, despising the divine stewardship, inflicted divinely, became stewards of secular affairs, and, the chair abandoned and the people deserted, wandering through foreign provinces, went hunting the markets of gainful trading; while the brethren in the church were hungry, they wished to have silver in abundance, they seized estates by insidious frauds, they increased their interest with multiplying usuries. What ought we not, being such, to deserve to suffer for sins of this kind, when long since the divine censure had forewarned and said: "If they shall have forsaken my law and shall not have walked in my judgments, if they shall have profaned my justifications and shall not have observed my precepts, I will visit their crimes with a rod and their offenses with scourges"? These things were foretold and predicted to us: but we, unmindful of the law given and of its observance, brought it about by our sins that, while we despise the Lord's commandments, we should come to the correction of our offense and the testing of our faith by severer remedies. Thus far St. Cyprian, when the persecution had already been extinguished by Decius's death.

[127] He alleges the same cause likewise in letter 7, and revealed long before, sent to his clergy about praying to God, in which he also writes that this same persecution, then raging, had been divinely foretold by a marvelous vision. For this also, he says, was shown: that the Father of the household was sitting, with a young man sitting at his right hand; which young man, anxious and somewhat sad with a certain indignation, holding his cheek with his hand, was sitting with a mournful countenance. But another, standing on the left side, was carrying a net, which he was threatening to cast, to catch the people standing around. And when he who saw it wondered what this meant, it was said to him that the young man who was thus sitting at the right hand was saddened and grieved because his precepts were not observed; but that the one on the left was exulting because an occasion was being given him to take from the Father of the household the power of raging. This was shown long before the storm of this devastation arose. And we have seen fulfilled what had been shown: so that, while we despise the Lord's precepts, while we do not hold the salutary commandments of the law given, the enemy should receive the power of harming, and should cover with the cast of his net those less armed and less wary for resistance.

[128] To whom this revelation was made St. Cyprian does not indeed declare; he writes was made. yet it is probable that it fell to himself, although out of a zeal for humility he speaks as of a third person; for this manner of speaking in like matter is not unusual, and that visions of this kind were frequent enough with him is clear both from what he presently adds in the same place: Let us pray instantly, and groan with assiduous prayers: for know, most dear brethren, that this too was not long ago reproached to us through a vision, that we are drowsy in our prayers, and do not pray watchfully; and from letter 69 to Florentius Puppianus, where he likewise mentions similar revelations; adding: Although I know that dreams seem ridiculous and visions inept to certain persons; but assuredly to those who prefer to believe against the priests rather than the priest. Now let us return to the point from which we digressed.

[129] Decius therefore, having obtained the empire, and having begun the persecution, so far as appears, in the city of Rome, Decius's horrible edicts straightway took off St. Fabian the Pontiff by martyrdom, of whom treatment has been made in our Work at the twentieth day of January, on which he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology and venerated. But he also consigned to prison St. Moses the presbyter, afterwards likewise a martyr, and likewise Maximus the presbyter, Nicostratus and several others. Nor did he contain his hatred against the Christians within the walls of Rome, but by edicts sent in every direction extended it to all the provinces: how impious and how monstrous these were may be gathered from St. Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book 6 of the History, chapter 41, where he speaks thus of the one that was brought to Alexandria: And now the emperor's edict was at hand, that very one almost which was foretold by our Lord, showing itself horrific and terrible; so much so that even the elect themselves, if it could be, would suffer scandal.

[130] having been brought to Carthage, the Saint, demanded for the lion, Scarcely had the deadly edict been brought to Carthage when the fury of the people at once blazed out against St. Cyprian, whose virtues no less than his episcopal dignity were hateful to the gentiles, and, when the onset of the disturbance arose at once at first, and with violent clamor, as he himself says in letter 14, frequently demanded him for punishment. That he was then demanded for the lion we shall presently see from Pontius, and therefore letter 55 is likewise to be understood chiefly of this time, when the Saint is said in it to have been so often demanded for the lion in the circus, in the amphitheater, honored by the testimony of the Lord's favor. And that he was destined for punishment not only by the tumultuous clamor of the people, but was also often sought out, he testifies in letter 5. It does not seem, however, that from the words just recited there is to be dug out what Pamele in the Life suspected, that some specimen of confession for Christ was given by him before his retirement. The minds of the gentiles being therefore embittered in this way, the holy Bishop, thinking by a prudent counsel, as we shall see below, that he must yield to the storm, went out from Carthage and withdrew into a place known to few of his own.

[131] withdraws, and is proscribed, It is not to be doubted that the gentiles bent every effort that the Saint should not slip away: but when they had sought him in vain, they proscribed him by a public edict. So we learn from letter 69, in which the Saint himself mentions it thus: But (the persecution) weighed me down with the burden of proscription; when it was publicly read out: "If anyone holds or possesses anything of the goods of Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop of the Christians." Pontius in our text, chapter 2 of the Life, commemorates both the first disturbances of the people and the proscription in these words: Immediately, in short, for such merits he attained also the glory of proscription. For it was fitting that nothing else than that the fame of the gentiles, publicly celebrated, should give a title also to him who flourished within the hidden recess of his conscience with the whole honor of religion and of faith. He could indeed then, with the swiftness with which he attained all things, have hastened the crown of martyrdom due to him; especially since with often-repeated votes he was demanded for the lion; had it not been that he must pass through all the ranks of glories, and so come to the highest; and had not the impending ruin needed the help of so fruitful a breast.

[132] more probably after his retirement. From this passage of Pontius the praised Pamele placed the holy Bishop's public proscription before those seditious clamors of the people, and the cited words suggest this. But since the Saint himself in letter 14 to the Roman clergy, setting forth the reason of his retirement, which they had held suspect, makes no mention of a public proscription, and pleads only the people's hatred against him and the sedition arising thence, not without danger to the public tranquillity, it seems more probable to me that the holy Bishop was first demanded for the lion by the raging people; and that, when he had yielded to the storm for the common good's sake, and did not appear, he was publicly proscribed by the magistrates, and his goods made over to the treasury. I subjoin the Saint's words. As the Lord's commandments instruct, he says, when the onset of the disturbance arose at once at first, and the people had frequently demanded me with violent clamor, considering not so much my own safety as the public quiet of the brethren, I withdrew for the time, lest by our immodest presence the sedition which had begun should be further provoked. For the rest, the biographer could in his narrative place the proscription before the seditious demands of the people, because that was done by public authority.

[133] About the time at which these things were done there is some disagreement among the learned, but of slight moment. The aforesaid things happened in the year 250, Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 250 lays down that the holy Bishop was demanded for the lion at the very beginning of this year, and was proscribed about the middle of the month of January; nor yet does he allege any reason for either of his assertions. Tillemont, both in volume 3 of the Monuments, in the treatment of Decius's persecution, article 2, and in volume 4 in the treatment of St. Cyprian, article 7, supposes that the persecution, having arisen at Rome in the month of January, began at Carthage only in February, the edicts having perhaps been brought thither the later on account of the wintry season, after St. Fabian the Pope had already been crowned with martyrdom at Rome on the twentieth day of January, and after his slaying Moses and Maximus and other Roman confessors had been cast into prison. I assent to Tillemont so far as to think that, whatever was the cause of the delay, the persecution in Africa first began, if not in the month of February, certainly at the end of January. But hear why I think so.

[134] The primary Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs, published by our Henschen before volume 1 of April, at the end of January and by Papebroch in the Propylæum of May, has this in the treatment of St. Fabian: He (St. Fabian) suffered on the XIII Kalends of February… After his passion Moses and Maximus, priests, and Nicostratus, deacon, were arrested and sent to prison. Now to these confessors St. Cyprian in letter 25 speaks thus: You … having been made the foremost and the leaders for the battle of our time, have set moving the standards of the heavenly warfare. You have imbued with your virtues the spiritual contest which God has now willed to be waged. You have broken the first onsets of the rising war with immovable strength and unshaken steadfastness. Thence the happy beginnings of fighting arose: thence the auspices of conquering began. It has befallen here that martyrdoms be consummated through torments; but he who, going before in the encounter, has been made an example of virtue to the brethren, is a sharer in honor with the martyrs. You have handed on hence to this place crowns wreathed by your hand, and have pledged the brethren from the cup of salvation.

[135] But now from these things one may argue thus: St. Cyprian calls the aforesaid Roman confessors the foremost and the leaders of the sacred warfare and of the war of his time, or at the beginning of February from whom the happy beginnings of fighting

arose, because they were the first to confess Christ, and thus handed on to the Africans crowns wreathed by their own hand, and pledged them from the cup of salvation; that is, because they afforded an example of undaunted confession. They must therefore be said to have confessed Christ, and to have been consigned to prison, before the Carthaginians were called upon to deny Christ. Now they were first cast into prison after St. Fabian's martyrdom, that is, not before the twentieth day of January of that same year 250, as is established from what has been said; and accordingly the persecution too must be judged to have arisen at Carthage not earlier than the beginning of February, or the end of January.

[136] Maran, however, in the Life, §5, judges that from the words objected it does not follow more probably happened, that those confessors were shut up in prison before the persecution was set afoot at Carthage, but only that tortures and torments began earlier at Rome than at Carthage. His reason is that, since the Saint sets down those men, with no one excepted, as the foremost and the leaders for the battle of our time, and yet St. Fabian, with Tillemont agreeing, confessed and was killed before they were arrested, the recited words cannot be understood of their confession and imprisonment. And hence he concludes: It is therefore much better to take these words of the martyrs' constancy in bearing tortures, as the whole compass of the words demands. But it does not appear whence it seemed to that learned man that the whole compass of the words demands an interpretation of this kind: for neither in the text adduced nor in all the rest of the letter is any mention made of torments endured by them; while what is read in it about a crown handed on, and about the cup of salvation pledged to the brethren, could equally be said of the punishment of prison inflicted on them for the profession of the faith as of other tortures.

[137] is shown. Besides, those tortures would have been endured either by the confessors themselves whom he addresses, or by others: if the first, Maran himself does not remove the difficulty which he frames, since St. Fabian endured even the supreme punishment before their confession. If the other, St. Fabian was certainly to be numbered among these. But St. Cyprian does not reckon him among them, since he clearly signifies that those whose examples he treats of were also still living, saying: It has befallen here (at Carthage) that martyrdoms be consummated through torments: but he who, going before in the encounter, has been made an example of virtue to the brethren, is a sharer in honor with the martyrs. You have handed on hence (from Rome) to this place (to Carthage) crowns wreathed by your hand, etc. Certainly, if St. Cyprian's discourse here had been of the Roman martyrs, he would have derived their common honor with the martyrs from the example of virtue given to martyrs. Wherefore it seems to me it must rather be said that those confessors are called the foremost and the leaders of the sacred war, and are deservedly to be so judged, because, though not the first of all — that is, not on the same day as St. Fabian — yet in the very first onset of the persecution and at almost the same time as he, they undauntedly confessed Christ and were punished with the hardships of prison.

[138] The Saint's retirement is vindicated from a sinister suspicion; From what has been said, therefore, St. Cyprian withdrew into a secret place at the end of January, or rather when February had already begun, in the year 250. Now because it belongs to a bishop to protect his flock, especially in a calamitous time, this retirement of the Saint's displeased some, namely those to whom the purpose and reason of the deed was hidden. For the Roman clergy too in the second letter among Cyprian's wrote of it less honorably, as we shall say below; and St. Pontius, in order utterly to remove a like suspicion, if perchance any remained, in chapter 2 of the Life laboriously clears this act of all suspicion of empty fear, and shows it to be truly worthy of the holy Bishop and most useful to the Church of God; as may there be read. Nay, the Saint himself thought it necessary to clear himself in this part before the Roman clergy, and to set forth the reason of his counsel in letter 14, in the words alleged at number 132; of which matter mention will recur below also.

[139] it does not seem, however, The holy Bishop knew, namely, that admonition of Christ in Matthew, chapter 10: But when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another; and that Christ had taught this more than once not only by words but also by deeds, when his Father's glory and the salvation of the human race so required. He knew likewise with how great a hatred the Carthaginians raged against him, which he rightly judged would be further embittered by his presence and would overflow upon his people, unless he yielded and gave place to their anger. Nor was he unaware that he would profit his flock more by salutary counsels given from his retirement, and through the ministers left at Carthage, whom he would likewise instruct from thence, than if, having publicly professed Christ, he were crowned on the spot with a glorious martyrdom. Hence, although he was held by a vast desire of martyrdom, as he afterwards proved, he reckoned flight not only lawful for him but even necessary for his church's advantage, so that he could say with the Apostle in Philippians 1: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, this to me is the fruit of labor, and what I shall choose I know not. But I am straitened between two: having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better: but to abide still in the flesh is needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance. I do not think it necessary to add more here for approving that retirement, since the biographer has done it at sufficient length in the passage praised.

[140] Pearson in the Annals, Tillemont in article 7, that it was specially commanded him by God. and Maran in §7 of the Life judge besides that the Saint was specially admonished and commanded by God to withdraw; and they praise for this opinion Pontius, to whom the two latter add also letter 10, elsewhere 9, to the Carthaginian clergy, sent from that same retirement. St. Pontius, praised by them, has this in chapter 2: Do you wish to know that that retirement was not fear? To make no other excuse: he himself afterwards suffered; which suffering he would assuredly have avoided after his manner, if he had avoided it before as well. It was truly a fear, but a just one: a fear that dreaded to offend the Lord: a fear that preferred to obey God's precepts rather than thus to be crowned. For a mind dedicated in all things to God, and thus made over to divine admonitions, believed that it would sin even by the very suffering, unless it had obeyed God then urging concealment. The same in chapter 3, when he had said that it was urged upon the Saint by his friends, when he was on the point of being arrested, that he should again withdraw himself, goes on thus: He would perhaps have done then too what was asked by very many faithful men (namely, that he should flee) if he had been so commanded also by the divine bidding. But in the letter cited by the same writers St. Cyprian thus addresses his Carthaginians: You shall hear all things, when the Lord shall have made me return to you, who commanded me to withdraw. I do not indeed deny that a like command was perhaps given to St. Cyprian, to whom divine revelations were frequent, such as the one which St. Dionysius of Alexandria testifies in Eusebius, book 6 of the History, chapter 40, was divinely enjoined upon him and undertaken in the same persecution: yet the passages adduced by the praised writers do not prove it.

[141] For when St. Cyprian in letter 14, setting forth to the Roman clergy the reason of his departure, says: As the Lord's commandments instruct, … considering not so much my own safety as the public quiet, I withdrew for the time, etc., he designates by those commandments, with Tillemont and Maran agreeing, the Gospel, and mentions in it nothing besides about a divine precept given to himself; which nevertheless would alone have been for him the equivalent of every apology, unless one wishes to hold that, had he alleged it, credit would not have been given him by the Romans. Hence it is probable that he was treating of the same Evangelical commandments when in letter 9 he said that he had been commanded by the Lord to withdraw. In the same way likewise the biographer can be understood, since in neither place does he record an express precept given by name to the Saint; but from the vast profit which that retirement brought the Church he proves that it must be ascribed to divine providence. Nay, that very manner of speaking — For a mind dedicated in all things to God, and thus made over to divine admonitions, believed that it would sin even by the very suffering, unless it had obeyed God then urging concealment — that manner of speaking, I say, denotes a God-fearing man judging that flight must be undertaken by him in order to please God, rather than one obeying a manifest command. For it is manifest that whoever should offer himself to martyrdom against an express divine precept would sin. And so this command does not appear probable enough to me.

§ VIII. The progress and atrocity of the persecution: the various kinds of the lapsed in it: wherein the crime of the libellatici consisted.

At the beginning of the persecution Since, besides the ordinary episcopal cares, there demanded the vigilance and the mind intent upon all things of St. Cyprian lying hidden in his retirement, the persecution lately arisen and raging more and more from day to day, and — than which nothing more bitter could befall a Shepherd most loving of his flock — the foul lapse of many, and the untimely connivance of certain confessors at the lapsed, and, far worse still, the sacrilegious rashness of the schismatics in admitting those same lapsed to communion; it is necessary that, for a clearer knowledge of what was done, we premise this § about the progress of the persecution and the various kind of the lapsed in it. That there was not straightway from the beginning any savagery of torments against the confessors at Carthage, St. Cyprian not obscurely indicates in letter 14, in which, setting forth what he had done for his people in his retirement, he writes among other things: Neither exhortation to the confessors, nor rebuke to the exiles, when it was needful, … was lacking on our part… But after tortures too came, whether our brethren had already been tortured, or were still shut up to be tortured, our word penetrated to strengthen and comfort them.

[143] there was no dealing by torments; Nor does he speak less clearly in letter 7, where, ascribing that increase of the persecution to the offenses of certain confessors, he says: But what blows, what stripes do we not deserve, when not even the confessors, who ought by their example to have been an incitement to good morals for the rest, keep discipline? And so, while the swollen and immodest boasting of their confession insolently lifts up certain men, tortures have come. From other letters it is likewise clear that at the beginning of the persecution exile, prisons and mulcting of goods were inflicted on the confessors; but that up to that point tortures were abstained from. And hence it is gathered that it was out of the particular hatred of the gentile populace against St. Cyprian that he was demanded by them for the lion. Nor is Pearson's opinion improbable, that things were dealt with more mildly so long as, the proconsul being absent, the business was conducted by the magistrates; or at least so long as it was left to their care. In favor of this opinion — the former, namely, which he holds — he praises letter 33, in which Aurelius is said to have confessed twice, and, having been made an exile under the magistrates, to have conquered torments under the proconsul. Take St. Cyprian's words: He contended here in a twofold struggle, twice confessing, and twice glorious in the victory of his confession… It had been too little under the eyes of a few before, when

he was made an exile, that he had contended; he deserved to contend in the forum too with a more renowned virtue, so that after the magistrates he might overcome the proconsul also, and after exile might surmount torments. A like example Pearson likewise adduced from letter 56, in Baluze 53, in which Ninus, Clementianus and Florus are said, in the city of Capsa, which belonged to the province of Byzacena, in the same persecution to have been first seized … and, having confessed the name of the Lord, to have overcome the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people; but afterwards, when they were being tortured with grievous punishments before the proconsul, to have been overcome by the force of torments.

[144] But how savage were the torments employed against the Christians among the Africans, but afterwards by most grievous ones. gather from letter 7 just praised, in which the Saint goes on thus: Tortures came, and tortures with no end of the torturer, with no outcome of condemnation, with no solace of death; tortures which do not easily release to the crown, but torment so long as to cast down; unless someone, withdrawn by divine favor, has made his passage amid the very torments, having attained glory not by the ending of the punishment but by the swiftness of dying. Besides these things, the gentiles had devised a means by which all Christians should either be compelled to deny their religion, or, having professed Christ openly or tacitly, should be judged to have deserved the penalties decreed against confessors. For, on the testimony of the same St. Cyprian in the book On the Lapsed, days were appointed for each for the examination of his faith… When the day set for those denying has passed, whoever has not made profession within the day has confessed himself a Christian. Yet such a man escaped torments only by flight and by leaving his patrimony behind, as the Saint intimates in the same place, adding: The first title of victory is, when seized by the hands of the gentiles, to confess the Lord: the second step to glory is, having withdrawn by a wary retirement, to be preserved for the Lord. The former is a public, the latter a private confession.

[145] Further, as a great number of every age and sex made the African church illustrious at that time, both by excellent confession In this persecution very many and by glorious martyrdom, so very many also afflicted it by a lamentable lapse. There was, however, a great difference among the lapsed, and since St. Cyprian admonished that their various cases must be diligently distinguished, we must treat of these too. Some of them, driven by no tortures, but stricken by fear alone and almost of their own accord, denied Christ, or even defiled themselves with profane sacrifices and food offered to an idol; whom therefore the Saint chastised in the book On the Lapsed with a most vehement discourse. They did not even wait, he says, at least to go up when arrested, to deny when questioned. Many were conquered before the battle-line, laid low without an encounter: nor did they leave themselves even this, that they might seem to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. To run of their own accord to the forum, to hasten of their own will to death, as though they had long desired this, as though they were embracing an occasion given which they had always wished for.

[146] How many were put off there by the magistrates, as evening pressed on; how many even begged that their destruction should not be deferred? lapsed cravenly, Then, after setting forth the atrocity of the crime, and after a sharp rebuke, he goes on: For many their own destruction was not enough. By mutual encouragements the people was driven to ruin; death was pledged to one another in a deadly cup. And, lest anything should be wanting to the sum of the crime, infants too, either placed or dragged by their parents' hands, lost as little ones what they had obtained at the very outset of their nativity. Note, however, learned reader, that it was not St. Cyprian's mind to believe that little ones not yet using reason were despoiled through their parents' fault of the grace of baptism which they had earlier received; since he wished to say this one thing, that such parents, so far as in them lay, despoiled them of that grace, as St. Augustine observes in letter 98, elsewhere 23, to Boniface, chapter 2. Hence St. Cyprian himself presently adds in the same place: Will not they (the little ones), when the day of judgment comes, say: "We have done no evil, nor have we, forsaking the food and cup of the Lord, hastened of our own accord to profane contagions. Another's perfidy has ruined us; we found our parents parricides. They denied us the Church our mother, they denied us God our father, so that, while we, small and improvident and ignorant of so great a crime, were joined by others to a fellowship of crimes, we were taken by another's fraud." Thus he, casting the whole fault upon the parents, as St. Augustine observes in the praised letter, to which I refer the curious reader.

[147] and some of them were divinely punished. And that there were not lacking penalties divinely inflicted, by which so great a madness was restrained, St. Cyprian testifies in the same book in these words. If for certain unbelievers there is less faith in things to come, let them at least be terrified by things present. Behold, what punishments of those who have denied do we see, whose sad ends do we bewail? … The torments of a few are examples to all. One of these, who went up of his own accord to the Capitol to deny, after he had denied Christ became dumb. His punishment began there whence his crime had begun; so that he who had no words for the mercy of prayers could no longer even ask. Another woman, in the baths (for this was wanting to her crime and her evils, that she who had lost the grace of the life-giving laver should also go straightway to the baths), there, unclean, seized by an unclean spirit, tore with her teeth the tongue which had either impiously fed or spoken. After the wicked food was taken, the madness of her mouth was armed for her own destruction. She herself became her own executioner, nor could she long survive afterwards: tortured by pains of the belly and bowels, she died. He subjoins other examples too of divine vengeance upon like lapsed persons, but which happened afterwards, and which we shall report in their place.

[148] Others were conquered by torments; others became libellatici. Of others the sin was far less, and their lapse worthy of easier pardon and commiseration; namely of those who, after a contest strenuously begun, had yielded to long and repeated torments through human weakness, of whom the Saint again in the same Work says thus: But afterwards torments had come, and grievous tortures were hanging over those who resisted. He can complain of torments who was overcome through torments. He can put forward the excuse of pain who was conquered in pain… Such a case can quickly make its way to pardon. An excuse of this kind can be pitiable. For the rest, both these and the former were called sacrificati, thurificati, or deniers. A third class of the lapsed, less harmful than the aforesaid, yet not harmless, was that of the libellatici, in what their fault consisted is not sufficiently agreed among the learned, and therefore it will be worth while to have brought this controversy to the test of St. Cyprian's statements; since frequent mention must be made of those lapsed persons in the course of our work.

[149] What their offense was Therefore in letter 52 to Antonianus he has this about them: Since therefore among those very persons who sacrificed there is much diversity, what an inclemency it is, and what a bitter hardness, to join the libellatici with those who sacrificed; when he who has received a certificate may say: "I had read before, and had learned when the bishop discoursed, that one must not sacrifice to idols, and that a servant of God ought not to adore images. And therefore, lest I should do what was not lawful, when the opportunity of a certificate had been offered — which I would not myself have accepted, had not the opportunity been shown — I either came to the magistrate, or, when another was going, gave charge that I was a Christian, that it was not lawful for me to sacrifice, that I could not come to the devil's altars; that I was giving a reward on this account, that I might not do what was unlawful." Yet now even this man, who has been stained by a certificate, after he has learned from our admonitions that he ought not to have done this either — that, although his hand is pure, and his mouth has been polluted by no contagions of deadly food, yet his conscience is polluted — weeps when he has heard us, and laments, and is now admonished of what he has offended in, and, deceived not so much by a crime as by an error, testifies that he is now for the rest instructed and prepared.

[150] The same in the book On the Lapsed thus mentions them: is inquired into from St. Cyprian Nor let those flatter themselves so as to do less penance who, though they have not contaminated their hands with abominable sacrifices, have yet polluted their conscience with certificates. That profession of one denying is the testimony of a Christian disowning what he had been. He said that he had done whatever another has committed by doing it. And whereas it is written, "You cannot serve two masters," he served a worldly master who obeyed his edict; he obeyed a human command more than God. Let him see whether with less disgrace or crime before men he has published what he committed; yet he will not be able to flee and avoid God as judge. And again after some other matter: God cannot be derided and circumvented, nor mocked by any deceiving cunning… Christ in his precepts says: "He who shall have been ashamed of me, the Son of man shall be ashamed of him": and does he think himself a Christian who either is ashamed or afraid to be a Christian? How can he be with Christ who either blushes or fears to belong to Christ?

[151] He will plainly have sinned less by not seeing idols, and by not profaning the sanctity of faith under the eyes of a people standing round and insulting, and from the Roman clergy's letter by not polluting his hands with deadly sacrifices, nor staining his mouth with wicked food. This avails so far that his fault should be less, not that his conscience should be innocent. He can more easily attain pardon of his crime; yet he is not free from crime. With a somewhat severer censure the Roman clergy sets forth the fault of the libellatici in letter 31 to St. Cyprian, saying: That we do not say this falsely, our earlier letter has proved, in which we set forth our opinion to you with a lucid exposition, both against those who had betrayed themselves as unfaithful by the unlawful profession of abominable certificates, so that they might seem about to escape those ensnaring nooses of the devil, whereby they were held no less than if they had approached the abominable altars, by this very thing, that they had testified to it; but also against those who had had acts drawn up, although they were not present in person when they were made; since they had assuredly made their own presence by giving charge that they should be so written.

[152] For he is not free from crime who commanded that it should be done; is investigated. nor is he a stranger to guilt by whose consent, although the crime was not committed by himself, it is nevertheless publicly read; and since the whole sacrament of faith is understood to be set forth in the confession of Christ's name, he who seeks deceitful tricks in an excuse has denied; and he who wishes to seem to have satisfied the edicts or laws set forth against the Gospel has by this very thing already obeyed, in that he wished to seem to have obeyed. Thus they. Now from what has been said thus far the following are gathered. First, those certificates were employed in Africa by Christians in order that, not being compelled to a public profession of the faith, they might not endure the penalties enacted against confessors. Secondly, those about to obtain a certificate confessed Christ before the magistrates, either in person or through others, openly or tacitly, in private, and protested that the worship of idols was plainly unlawful and forbidden them; and therefore they procured a certificate of this kind by paying a price, lest they should be forced to so great a wickedness. Thirdly, yet such were either the certificate, or the manner of obtaining it, or finally the circumstances, that he who had received it could in some sense be judged to have denied the faith; yet in such a way

that he had done it deceived not so much by a crime as by an error, and flattered himself that he had escaped the ensnaring nooses of the devil by a certain cunning. Fourthly, the libellaticus's offense consisted in this, that he wished to seem to have obeyed the edicts, that he blushed or feared to confess Christ publicly, and said that he had done whatever another has committed by doing it against the confession of the faith. Fifthly and finally, certain acts were drawn up, in which the libellaticus's crime of denial, although not committed by him, was publicly read.

[153] It is proved that they did not deny the faith Hence St. Augustine (be it said with reverence for so great a doctor) seems less accurately, in book 4 On Baptism, number 6, to have interpreted the libellatici of Africa as those who in the time of persecution had professed by certificates that they would offer incense; for, on St. Cyprian's testimony, the libellaticus said that he had done (not that he would do) whatever another has committed by doing it. Unless perhaps there were also other libellatici who professed by a certificate that they would offer incense. Nor can the opinion of the most eminent Baronius, volume 2 of the Annals at the year of Christ 253, number 19, be admitted, who supposes that the case of the libellaticus was of this kind, that, although one did not offer sacrifice to the gods, yet by some profession made either by himself or by another he denied the faith: but that, lest he should be dragged ignominiously to the altar like the rest, he redeemed this, he says, as has been stated, with money. He went into this opinion in order to show that the libellatici were deservedly condemned by the Roman Church as well as by the African; but for another cause than that they had paid a price lest they should be compelled to deny the faith, or that they had redeemed with money the harassment which the gentiles were wont to inflict in persecution, which against Tertullian's error he had proved to be lawful.

[154] by an expressly made profession, But just as the most eminent annalist rightly taught that the libellatici's crime cannot be derived from a redemption of this kind, which wrongly displeased Tertullian, so also it must be derived from something other than a denial of the Christian faith in the way he said. For from what has been said the libellaticus professed Christ before the magistrate, in person or through others, in private at least tacitly: for he said: I either came to the magistrate, or, when another was going, gave charge that I was a Christian, that it was not lawful for me to sacrifice, that I could not come to the devil's altars; that I was giving a reward on this account, that I might not do what was unlawful. Then, whatever the libellaticus did, it was of such a kind that, deceived not so much by a crime as by an error, he persuaded himself that it was lawful for him, before he had learned the contrary from his holy Bishop: but who would believe that the Carthaginians were of so unhinged a mind as to think it lawful for them to deny Christ in private, and that St. Cyprian would have ascribed this to their error rather than to their crime?

[155] nor is this proved from the case of Martialis and Basilides. Add that the Saint does not object to them those words of Christ: He who shall have been ashamed of me, the Son of man shall be ashamed of him; and thence infer: And does he think himself a Christian who either is ashamed or afraid to be a Christian? How can he be with Christ who either blushes or fears to belong to Christ? He is reproaching them, namely, with a damnable shame or fear, by which they had either blushed or feared to profess Christ — publicly, namely; for he had premised that they had confessed in private. But on Baronius's opinion they would not only have blushed at Christ before the magistrate in private, but would have denied him; and, secure as to the rest, would have guarded by a price paid this one thing, that they should not, like the rest, be dragged ignominiously to the altars. Besides, if the libellatici had by word or writing expressly denied Christ, would St. Cyprian have acknowledged their mouths and hands to be pure and uncontaminated, and have blamed their conscience alone? Surely these would have been polluted, though not by impious incense or abominable food, yet by so base a denial, and the Saint could deservedly have said to them what he had objected to those who sacrificed in the same book On the Lapsed: Did not … their arms fall? Was not their sense stupefied, their tongue stuck fast, their speech fail? Could a servant of God stand there, and speak, and renounce Christ, who had already renounced the devil and the world!

[156] But so far is he from having objected these or like things to the libellatici, nor is this proved that he blamed the conscience alone, and, judging them deceived not so much by a crime as by an error, and worthy of pardon, admitted them to peace in the council celebrated at Carthage in the year 251, with the other bishops agreeing, although he decreed that to those who had sacrificed that grace should meanwhile be granted only after full penance, or in danger of life, as he himself testifies in letter 52 to Antonianus. Baronius thinks, however, at the year cited, number 24, that his opinion is solidly proved by the example of Martialis, a bishop in Spain, about whom the Saint writes this in letter 68: Since … Basilides and Martialis have been contaminated by the abominable certificate of idolatry; and Basilides moreover, besides the stain of the certificate, when he lay sick, blasphemed against God, … and Martialis too, besides the base and filthy banquets of the gentiles long frequented in a guild, and his sons laid in the same guild after the manner of foreign nations by profane sepulchres and buried with aliens, has also, by acts publicly drawn up before the ducenary procurator, testified that he had obeyed idolatry and denied Christ, … in vain do such men try to usurp the episcopate to themselves. Now Baronius takes this up thus: Therefore, in order that Martialis should be called a libellaticus, this went before, that he testified in public acts that he denied Christ; and for that cause he afterwards received from the proconsul, as has been demonstrated, a certificate of security, money having been given.

[157] So indeed the most eminent one; but I reply that Basilides and Martialis are said at the beginning of the letter not only to have been stained with certificates of idolatry, but also to have been bound by the consciousness of abominable deeds. from that case. The crime of the certificate therefore was common to both; but besides the stain of the certificate Basilides had committed blasphemy, and Martialis other deeds, which in the recited words are ascribed to each as his own; and among these could have been that impious testification of Martialis, of which Basilides, though a libellaticus, was not guilty, just as neither is he said to have been guilty of the other's other crimes. Certainly among Martialis's own crimes that testification is recounted in the same way as blasphemy among Basilides's offenses in the same place. Nor would it be a wonder if an impious man, who had not blushed to frequent the base and filthy banquets of the gentiles and to do other things after their manner, should have done something more than was necessary for obtaining a certificate. Besides, we shall show below in what way the objected words, if they are to be taken of a simple obtaining of a certificate, can be expounded without an express denial of the faith.

[158] Noël Alexandre, volume 5 of the Ecclesiastical History, Paris edition of the year 1714, Noël Alexandre's opinion Century 3, at the beginning of dissertation 5, seems to have confounded with the libellatici those whom Tertullian in the book On Flight in persecution, chapters 12 and 13, gravely arraigns for having redeemed danger and harassment from the heathen by paying a price, although for the rest they had by no means denied Christ in word or deed, nor wished to deny him. But wrongly: for it is established that this book was written by Tertullian, already befooled by the Montanists' pseudo-paraclete, against the doctrine of the Church, which permitted both flight in persecution and likewise the mere redemption of harassment. The same Alexandre besides lays down there two classes of libellatici: the one of those who, having confessed themselves Christians before the judge, obtained a certificate of security for a price, lest they should be compelled to sacrifice to idols or to profess the faith openly: the other of those who, having testified before the judge that they were not Christians, bought by a like gift a certificate in which they were said to have obeyed the edicts, and therefore that no further inquiry should be made against them.

[159] is partly rejected. The first part of his assertion he proves from St. Cyprian along with us: the second by the example of Martialis, to which we have just replied. This one thing I add here: if elsewhere there was a twofold kind of libellatici, one of which besides the stain of the certificate had contracted also the crime of an express abnegation, that had no place in Africa; since St. Cyprian, who admonishes that the cases of those who sacrificed must be diligently distinguished, lays down no other distinction among the libellatici than that some of them had gone to the judge themselves, others had sent others to him to obtain a certificate in their name. Whence also that all the libellatici were admitted in the Council of Carthage without any distinction the Saint testifies in letter 52, in these words: It has pleased us, dearest brother, that, the cases of individuals (of the lapsed) being examined, the libellatici be meanwhile admitted, and that help be given to those who sacrificed at their end.

[160] The crime of the libellatici Not to be longer, I pass over the opinions of others, which differ little from those recounted, and before all of which I am pleased with Maran's opinion, who thinks that the libellatici neither by voice nor by writing promised that they would do anything impious, nor declared that it had been done by them; but that their offense consisted in this, that they had received certificates of security from the magistrates on this condition, that it should be written in the public acts that they had sacrificed and denied Christ, although they had committed neither. On this opinion the offense of the libellatici was an impious and pernicious dissimulation, by which they wished to seem to have obeyed the edicts, that in this way they might provide for their own security and for that of the judges. That this is so, besides what has been said thus far, is proved by St. Cyprian's letter to Fortunatus On the Exhortation to martyrdom, chapter XI, where against the crime of the libellatici is set the deed of Eleazar from 2 Maccabees, chapter 6.

[161] seems to have consisted in this, And lest anyone, says the Saint, on the offering of an opportunity of a certificate or of anything else by which he might deceive, should embrace the evil gift of deceivers, Eleazar too must not be passed over in silence; who, when there was offered him by the king's servants the opportunity of taking flesh which it was lawful for him to eat, so that, to circumvent the king, he might pretend that he was eating those things which were being served from the sacrifices and from unlawful foods, refused to consent to this deceit, saying that it befitted neither his age nor his nobility to feign that by which others should be scandalized and led into error, thinking that Eleazar, ninety years old, had gone over to the manner of foreigners, God's Law being forsaken and betrayed; and that it was not worth so much to gain brief moments of life as to incur eternal punishments with God offended. Thus he; and since by the example of Eleazar, who preferred death to an impious dissimulation, he deters Christians from receiving certificates, he sufficiently indicates that the guilt of the libellatici lay in an unlawful dissimulation.

[162] that they consented that it should be This very thing is intimated by various sayings both of the same Saint and of the Roman clergy about them: as when the former says: He (the libellaticus) said that he had done whatever another has committed by doing it. And: God cannot be derided and circumvented, nor mocked by any deceiving cunning. And the Roman clergy: Nor is he a stranger to guilt by whose consent, although the crime was not committed by himself, it is nevertheless publicly read. And again: Since the whole sacrament of faith is understood to be set forth in the confession of Christ's name; he who seeks deceitful tricks in an excuse has denied; and he who wishes to seem to have satisfied the edicts or laws set forth against the Gospel has by this very thing already obeyed, in that he wished to seem to have obeyed. You note without doubt, learned reader, in the passages adduced

that fraud, cunning, dissimulation are continually mentioned, and that the libellatici are charged with having denied Christ, or obeyed the edicts, on no other ground than that they sought deceitful tricks and wished to seem to have obeyed. Hence gather what those writers mean when they speak of those same libellatici as though they had really obeyed the edicts and denied Christ; namely, they hold that this was done by them by an impious dissimulation, not by an express profession. And thus perhaps is to be understood the passage of St. Cyprian about Martialis, the libellaticus bishop, objected to us at number 156.

[163] On this opinion it is likewise rightly understood written down. that the libellatici, on St. Cyprian's testimony, kept their hands and mouths unpolluted, and stained the conscience alone. It is clear also why one lapsed in this way is said by him to have been deceived not so much by a crime as by an error; namely because he reckoned it lawful for himself to consent that it should be written that he had sacrificed, provided he had not really done so, thinking it enough for himself that he did not sacrifice, deceived by an error, as is repeated in the same letter. That error is indeed manifest, but not such but that an incautious people, especially struck with fear of the persecutors, could be seduced by it, and thus seem to themselves about to escape the ensnaring nooses of the devil, as the Roman clergy says; by an error almost like that by which Eleazar's friends had hoped he could be persuaded that, by eating lawful flesh, he might seem to have obeyed the impious edict.

§ IX. The Saint strenuously administers his episcopate from his retirement: he clears himself by letters before the Roman clergy: the time at which letters II, III and XIV were written.

The manner in which the holy Bishop St. Cyprian, having gone off to a place known to few, as we have already noted, and not indicated by the biographer, was absent from his own in body, not in mind, nor did he suffer any part of a most vigilant shepherd to be found wanting in him, no otherwise than if he had been present. Before we run through his illustrious deeds in the retirement one by one, it will be worth while to have observed some things in general about the manner of administering his episcopate from that place. That the church of Carthage might take the less harm from his absence, he ordered the presbyters and deacons, whose presence there was by no means invidious, and not so dangerous, as he says in letter 5, and who had been left at Carthage, to discharge strenuously both his office and their own. To these he commended by assiduous admonitions the care of the poor, of the confessors, and of the martyrs, the vigor of discipline, and whatever he himself, if present, would have performed.

[165] Among these are chiefly recorded in letter 40 Virtius or Briccius, administers his episcopate a most faithful and most upright presbyter, and Rogatianus and Numidicus, presbyters and confessors, illustrious with the glory of divine favor; of whom the two last are enrolled among the Martyrs in the Roman Martyrology at the sixth day of August and the twenty-sixth of October. The same two in letter 38, together with Caldonius and Herculanus, bishops, he calls vicars sent in his stead. Perhaps to these was added also a certain Victor, likewise a bishop; for he is read to have written letter 39 to St. Cyprian with the other four. Excellent service was rendered to the Saint also by Tertullus, a presbyter, as it appears, who in letter 37 is called by him our most faithful and most devoted brother, and is signally praised for the rest of his solicitude and care, which he imparts to the brethren in every service of work, and who advised his holy Bishop not to return to Carthage while things were not yet pacified, as is read in letter 5, and as we shall say below.

[166] strenuously from his retirement. Yet these men, with the rest, so fulfilled the parts of their absent Bishop that they did nothing without his counsel and nod, and that they rendered him an accurate account of what they had done; so that not so much they as he through them administered the episcopate. But he too, according to what he had before determined, did nothing without their knowledge; or, if the reason of the time and of affairs demanded otherwise, he promptly took care that they should be informed of it. He transmitted his letters by clerics as bearers, according to the custom then received among bishops; and therefore, since those whom he might send were not with him, and the small number of those living at Carthage scarcely sufficed for the daily duties, he had to ordain others for that office, as he testifies in letter 24. Of the other companions of his retirement he names only Victor; and that in letter 4 to his clergy, saying: Victor the deacon greets you, and those who are with me; and again in letter 6: Victor also, from a lector a deacon, who is with me, has sent you 175.

[167] He strenuously administers his episcopate. Yet the place of that retirement was not so unknown but that, besides the clerics appointed for carrying letters, some others also came to him from time to time. For in letters 33 and 34 he writes that Aurelius and Celerinus were ordained lectors by himself and by his colleagues who were present there, and in letter 15 to the Roman confessors he indicates that he sometimes offered sacrifice there before several persons; saying: And we indeed, mindful of you by day and by night, both when we make prayer in the sacrifices with many, and when in retirement we pray with private prayers, ask from the Lord full favor for your crowns and praises. These things having been noted beforehand, let us come to the Saint's deeds, which, since Pontius only touched briefly upon that retirement, must be dug out from his letters; and therefore this must first of all be taken care of, that each be referred, so far as can be done, to the time at which it was written.

[168] To the Roman clergy, The way is lit for the rest by letter 14, elsewhere 15, sent by St. Cyprian to the Roman clergy, in which the Saint records thirteen letters written by him up to that time for the administration of his see, of which we shall presently treat, after we have set forth the reason for which the fourteenth, or fifteenth, was written. While the Roman Chair of St. Peter was vacant through the martyrdom of St. Fabian, who had been crowned on the twentieth day of January, the clergy of that Church was strenuously administering it, when Crementius — called by others Clementius — a subdeacon, came from Carthage to Rome, it is uncertain for what cause, and informed them of St. Cyprian's retirement. The Romans, having learned the matter, and being either not instructed or wrongly instructed about the causes of his withdrawing, and ignorant with how great a solicitude the holy Bishop, even absent, was governing his flock, transmitted two letters into Africa by the same Crementius: one to St. Cyprian, by which they announced St. Fabian's martyrdom; the other to the Carthaginian clergy, by which they exhorted them to undertake the parts of their absent Bishop.

[169] The former of these does not survive; but St. Cyprian mentions it, about his retirement as we shall presently see. The latter Morel first published, and from him Pamele among the letters in the third place, warning, however, that it swarms with faults which he could not correct for lack of manuscript codices; whence it stands somewhat otherwise in Baluze's edition, which we follow, where it is printed in the second place from two manuscript codices. Its beginning is: We have learned, from Crementius the subdeacon, who came to us from you for a certain cause, that the blessed pope Cyprian has withdrawn: which indeed he may have done rightly, on this account, that he is a person of distinction. And this indeed honorably about St. Cyprian: but when they afterwards, from the example of the good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep, rouse the Carthaginian clergy to succor their flock, and warn that the cowardice of the hireling must be avoided, who, when he sees the wolf, flees, leaving the sheep; they not obscurely disapprove the Saint's retirement, about which it had been reported to them in a sinister way either by Crementius or by others, as we shall presently say from letter 15.

[170] Cyprian, having read both letters, was variously affected according to their various subject, suspecting sinisterly, and replied to the Romans by letter 3. And in the first part of this indeed he signified his joy at St. Fabian's glorious martyrdom, and congratulated them; but in the other part he intimated that the letter sent to his clergy had come as a trouble to him, and, as suspected by him of forgery or adulteration, he sent it back to them to be recognized. I have read also, he says, a letter in which neither who wrote it, nor to whom it was written, is expressly stated. And since in that same letter both the handwriting and the sense and the very paper moved me, lest anything have been either taken away or changed from the truth, I have sent back to you the same letter as authentic, that you may recognize whether it be the one which you gave to Crementius the subdeacon to carry: for it is a very grave matter if the truth of a clerical letter has been corrupted by any lie and fraud. That we may therefore be able to know this, recognize whether both the handwriting and the subscription be yours, and write back to us what the truth is. I wish you, most dear brethren, ever to fare well.

[171] The Saint seems to have used this counsel in order that the Romans should open their mind to him of their own accord, he writes back. and at the same time understand that that letter, contrary to what they had asked, was by no means to be transmitted to any others: but as to his saying neither who wrote it, nor to whom it was written, is expressly stated, it is true: for neither is the usual address read prefixed to it, nor is any express mention made in it of the Roman or Carthaginian clergy. But it turned out otherwise than the Saint had persuaded himself: for the Romans gave no reply to the letter; perhaps interpreting less favorably, as was easy to happen, Cyprian's deep silence in the praised letter about his retirement and the causes of withdrawing, and the return of their own letter to them.

[172] And so long afterwards, when he received no reply, he wrote another letter to them, which for Baluze is the fourteenth, He writes another letter to the same, which, since it sets forth compendiously the things done by the Saint up to that time, and is at the same time a kind of apology of his, I have thought it useful to recite here. Cyprian to the presbyters and deacons dwelling at Rome, brethren, greeting. Since I have found, most dear brethren, that what has been done and is being done here by us is being reported to you less simply and less faithfully, I have thought it necessary to make this letter to you, in which an account might be rendered to you of our action and of our discipline and diligence. For, as the Lord's commandments instruct, when the onset of the disturbance arose at once at first, and the people had frequently demanded me with violent clamor, considering not so much my own safety as the public quiet of the brethren, I withdrew for the time, lest by our immodest presence the sedition which had begun should be further provoked.

[173] in which he clears himself, and his Yet, absent in body, I was lacking neither in spirit nor in act nor in my admonitions, so as not to provide for our brethren according to the Lord's precepts, in what I could, with my mediocrity. And what I have done the letters sent out according to the occasions, thirteen in number, which I have transmitted to you, tell you; in which neither counsel to the clergy, nor exhortation to the confessors, nor rebuke to the exiles when it was needful, nor our address and persuasion to the whole brotherhood for beseeching God's mercy, was lacking, so far as, according to the law of faith and the fear of God, at the Lord's suggestion, our mediocrity was able to strive. But after

tortures too came, whether our brethren had already been tortured, or were still shut up to be tortured, our word penetrated to strengthen and comfort them.

[174] vigilance over his flock Likewise, when I had found that those who had stained their hands and mouths with sacrilegious contacts, or had nonetheless polluted their conscience with abominable certificates, were canvassing everywhere among the martyrs, and were corrupting the confessors too with importunate and ingratiating entreaty, so that thousands of certificates were being given daily without any discrimination and examination of individuals, against the law of the Gospel; I made letters by which I might recall the martyrs and confessors, so far as I could, by my counsel, to the Lord's precepts. Likewise there was not lacking to the presbyters and deacons the vigor of the priesthood, so that certain men less mindful of discipline and headlong in rash haste, who had already begun to communicate with the lapsed, should be restrained, we intervening. To the people also themselves, so far as we could, we composed their mind, and instructed them that ecclesiastical discipline should be kept.

[175] But afterwards, when certain of the lapsed, either of their own accord or at some instigator's prompting, broke out with a bold demand, so as to strive to extort by violent onset the peace promised them by the martyrs and confessors; about this too I twice made letters to the clergy, and gave charge that they be read to them, so that, to mitigate their violence for the time in whatever way, if any who had received a certificate from the martyrs should depart from the world, having made confession and having had a hand laid on them in penance, they should be sent to the Lord with the peace promised them by the martyrs. Nor in this did I give a law, or rashly set myself up as an authority: but since it seemed that both honor must be paid to the martyrs, and the onset of those who wished to throw everything into confusion must be restrained, and since besides I had read your writing which you had lately made to our clergy here by Crementius the subdeacon, that help should be given to those who after a lapse had been seized by sickness and, being penitent, desired communion; I thought I must stand with your opinion also, lest our action, which ought to be united and to agree about all things, should in anything disagree.

[176] he excellently proves. Plainly I gave charge that the cases of the rest, although a certificate had been received from the martyrs, be deferred and reserved for our presence, so that, when, peace being given us by the Lord, we prelates shall have begun to come together in one place in greater number, we may, our counsel being communicated with you too, be able to arrange and reform each matter. I wish you, most dear brethren, ever to fare well. Thus St. Cyprian; by which he modestly but effectively proved to the Roman clergy the most just causes of his withdrawing, and his perpetual vigilance from his retirement over his flock, and the care solicitously spent upon it. It may besides be observed that he here praises that very letter of the Romans which he had earlier sent back as suspect; nay, that he thought he must follow it in the cause of the lapsed; for what he says about the lapsed seized by sickness is read in it thus: If any who have fallen into this temptation begin to be seized with sickness, and do penance for their deed, and desire communion, they certainly ought to be helped. Further, by this letter of St. Cyprian's every sinister suspicion, if any there had been about him, was utterly erased from the minds of the Romans, and thenceforth there flourished between them and him a marvelous agreement and communication of counsels.

[177] Now the time must be investigated at which the Roman clergy sent the praised letters to St. Cyprian and to the Carthaginian clergy, That the Roman clergy's letter and at which the Saint replied by letter 14, elsewhere 15, so that hence we may be able to refer likewise to their own time the events of which he makes mention in it. In the first place, since Crementius was the first to announce his holy Bishop's retirement at Rome, he could not have sailed from Africa earlier than the month of February, or at most the end of January; for we have said above that St. Cyprian withdrew at one or the other of these times. And that Crementius's return to Carthage cannot be long deferred is persuaded by St. Cyprian in his earlier letter to the Romans, saying: When the report among us about the departure of that good man, my colleague (St. Fabian), was uncertain, most dear brethren, and a doubtful opinion wavered, I received a letter sent to me by you through Crementius the subdeacon, by which I might be most fully instructed about his glorious end. For these words do indeed intimate that some notable time passed between St. Fabian's martyrdom and the news of it brought by Crementius; but yet not an altogether long one; for otherwise before Crementius's arrival they would have learned more certain things in Africa about so celebrated a matter. Add that otherwise the Romans must, without a probable enough reason, be said to have deferred too long announcing their holy Pontiff's death to Cyprian.

[178] Besides, that Crementius returned into Africa before Easter, was written in the month of February which in the year 250 was to be celebrated according to Victorius's Cycle on the seventh day of April, or according to Hippolytus's on the thirty-first of March, as may be seen in Bucherius, is gathered from what I subjoin. Celerinus in his letter to Lucianus, which is the twentieth among Cyprian's, mentions sixty-five confessors who had come from Carthage to Rome and had already for some time been kindly supported there. But that that letter was written by him not long after the said Easter he himself signifies there in these words: For whose deeds (his sister's lapse in the faith) I on this day of the joy of Easter, weeping day and night, have passed my days in sackcloth and ashes in tears, and pass them up to this present day. And so those confessors arrived there not later than about Easter, that is, than the month of March or April. Nor were they without doubt ignorant of the retirement of St. Cyprian their bishop, and therefore it does not appear doubtful that they either first indicated it to the Roman clergy or confirmed it.

[179] And yet nevertheless the said clergy in their letter to the Carthaginians speak thus, or March, as though they had learned of that retirement from Crementius alone; saying: We have learned, from Crementius the subdeacon, who came to us from you for a certain cause, that the blessed pope Cyprian has withdrawn. It must therefore be said that the Romans had already given the said letters of theirs to Crementius to be carried into Africa before those confessors arrived at Rome; for no other probable reason occurs why the Romans should have mentioned not equally the testimony of those illustrious exiles for the faith as that of Crementius the subdeacon, who had arrived there for a certain cause. And so from what has been adduced thus far we judge that both letters of the Roman clergy were written not later than the month of March, not far advanced, or perhaps even at the end of February.

[180] is shown against Tillemont, To Tillemont, however, in article 12 and Note 12 on St. Cyprian, it seemed that the praised letter was written only about the month of May, and delivered to St. Cyprian toward the end of it. He gives as his reason that the Saint in letter 15 — for us 14 — recited above, says that he decreed that help should be given to the lapsed seized by sickness who had done penance, according to the writing which the Romans had lately made to the Carthaginian clergy, namely letter 2. Now, says Tillemont, he had granted that favor to the sick lapsed by letter 13, for us 12, when summer had already begun, and accordingly written not before the month of June. After this, and, as is believed, before 15, for us 14, he wrote besides another letter likewise to the clergy, which for Pamele is the fourteenth, for Baluze the thirteenth; and accordingly letter 15, for us 14, could have been written only in the month of July. Since therefore in this letter the Saint says that the praised letter of the Romans was written lately, Tillemont thought it should be referred to about the month of May.

[181] to whose objections But I reply that that lately proves nothing, which, as Maran rightly observed, admits some latitude according to varying circumstances. Thus St. Cyprian himself in letter 66 says that the decree about not committing a guardianship to clerics was framed now long since in a council of bishops and by his predecessors, now lately: wherefore it is no wonder if he called a letter written four months before lately made, especially since after it neither he nor the Carthaginian clergy had received any other from the Romans. But besides the other things which we brought forward above in favor of our opinion, there tells against Tillemont that it is not probable that the Roman clergy deferred from the twentieth day of January until the month of May the news about St. Fabian's glorious martyrdom, and that through all that time until May there was in Africa only an uncertain report about it, and a doubtful and wavering opinion, as the Saint says in letter 3. Nor does Tillemont deny that this may deservedly seem strange; but, to extricate himself, he has recourse likewise to winter and to the persecution, pleading that traffic between Italy and Africa was hindered by these. Then he brings back an argument like our own. When St. Cyprian, he says, wrote his earlier letter as soon as he had received the Romans', if he did this in February or March, it is very strange that he had received no reply at all from the Romans when he transmitted the fifteenth (for us the fourteenth) in the month of July.

[182] a reply is made. To this I reply that there is no need to have recourse to that hindered traffic between the two regions, devised by Tillemont without a solid foundation; since from what has been said not only does nothing compel us to defer the Romans' letter so late, but many things persuade us to place it not a little earlier. Nor do the things Tillemont subjoins press us at all: for it is no wonder that no reply was made by the Romans to that earlier letter, in which the Saint had only asked whether the letter which they had sent to the Carthaginian clergy, and which he was sending back to them, was theirs or not, no mention being made in the meantime of his retirement or of its causes. For a letter of that sort could not remove the Romans' preconceived suspicions, but could increase them, and bring it about that, if any interpreted his retirement sinisterly before them, they should the more easily find credit. Hence the holy Bishop, having scented what the matter was, at length wrote letter 14, in which, having premised that he had found that his deeds were being reported at Rome less simply and faithfully, he most brilliantly set forth and proved the account of what he had done; and, lest any soreness from his earlier letter should be left in their minds, he praised their letter to the Carthaginian clergy, which, as we have said, he had earlier sent back, and testified that he had determined about the causes of the lapsed according to it.

[183] Further, this last letter of St. Cyprian's Tillemont, The time of the writing of letter 14. and before him Pearson, altogether probably referred to the month of July. For the favor which he here says was granted by him to the sick lapsed he had really granted in letter 12, sent to his clergy, and that this was written in the summer and in great heats he himself there indicates thus: Yet since I see that the opportunity of coming to you does not yet exist, and that summer has already begun — a season which is infested with continual and grievous sicknesses — I think our brethren must be met, etc. Hence it is gathered that this letter was not sent earlier than the month of June. Then he wrote another also of the same

subject, which for Baluze is the thirteenth, in which, replying to his clergy, who had not sufficiently grasped his mind, he expressly mentions that earlier one. But he praises both also in letter 14, of which we are treating, saying: About this too I twice made letters to the clergy. And so, since this letter to the Roman clergy is later than the two praised, which were not written before June, it is deservedly tied to the month of July.

§ X. How many and which survive of the thirteen letters written by St. Cyprian from his retirement to his own people, and recorded by him in letter 14.

Among the 13 letters praised by the Saint There is no slight controversy among the learned whether those thirteen letters which, as we said in the preceding paragraph, were transmitted by St. Cyprian to the Roman clergy as witnesses of his pastoral vigilance, have all come down to us. In the first place it will be worth while to have observed with Maran that by the words of Cyprian there alleged only eleven, or rather ten, letters are designated, although thirteen are said to have been written and sent. For since one written after tortures had been employed, and five besides about the lapsed, are expressly recounted, it is necessary that the remaining seven, if all thirteen were designated, be comprised in these words: Neither counsel to the clergy, nor exhortation to the confessors, nor rebuke to the exiles when it was needful, nor our address and persuasion to the whole brotherhood for beseeching God's mercy, was lacking. But who could dig seven letters out of this?

[185] in letter 14 Wherefore it must be said that St. Cyprian either wrote more letters than one on the same subject, or did not touch upon the subjects of those three in this letter. But as long as this is doubtful, the praised thirteen letters cannot with certainty be assigned from the words adduced. Pearson, however, in his Annals thought that he had found them all; namely 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, XI, 12, 13, 36, 37, and 81, according to Baluze's order, which we follow. Pamele acknowledged only ten, namely the first of those just recounted, as certainly among those thirteen, and besides one as doubtful, which for him is the third, for us the second. Tillemont laid down that letters 5, 6, 7, and 36 of those enumerated were written later, and that therefore four of the thirteen have perished. Maran, agreeing with Tillemont in the rest, judged that 37 and 81 also should likewise be referred to another time, and accordingly that only seven of the thirteen survive. About letters 4, 8, 9, 10, XI, 12 and 13 alone, therefore, all agree, nor can there be doubt about them; but about the rest diligent inquiry must be made.

[186] it does not seem That we may do this more lucidly, we must begin with letter 7, on which the judgment about the rest largely depends. Those who number this among the thirteen would have it designated by these words of St. Cyprian: Nor was our address and persuasion to the whole brotherhood for beseeching God's mercy lacking. And indeed that whole letter answers so accurately to the praised words that, if we had to stand by these alone, I should not even doubt that it must be numbered among those thirteen letters. For what Maran says, that it was written not to the whole brotherhood but to the clergy, and that it is so cited also by St. Augustine in book 4 On Baptism, chapter 2, need not detain us; for although it is addressed to the clergy, yet it pertained no less to the people, whose discord in praying it arraigns, and to whom the Saint expressly orders that letter to be given to be read, saying: Nor do you finally keep this letter hidden, but suggest that it be read to the brethren: for to intercept what the Lord deigns to admonish and instruct us in belongs to one who does not wish his brother to be admonished and instructed.

[187] that letter 7 is to be recounted; But on the contrary in the same letter one reads thus about the use of torments: And so, while the swollen and immodest boasting of their confession insolently lifts up certain men, tortures have come, and tortures with no end of the torturer, with no outcome of condemnation, with no solace of death, etc.: but that address and persuasion for beseeching God's mercy, which is recorded in letter 14, is clearly placed before the torments; for there is subjoined: But after tortures too came, whether our brethren had already been tortured, or were still shut up to be tortured, our word penetrated to strengthen and comfort them, etc., which we recited at number 174. Further, since we shall show below that torments more probably began to be employed in Africa in the month of April, this letter, which the Saint testifies in the preceding number was written by him about praying to God, could have been written before April, not after that month; but the seventh, which is established to have been written after torments were employed, can be referred some months later.

[188] as is proved on various grounds To the reason alleged there is added another, already intimated above, which persuades that letter 7 was written later. St. Cyprian says in it about the persecution: It has laid waste our flock for the greatest part, and still up to now lays it waste. And again: But if, according to the peace which the Lord has given us, it were agreed among all the brethren, we should long since have obtained from the divine mercy what we ask; nor should we so long be tossing in this danger of our salvation and our faith. Then after much else he bids them hope that the Church's peace will shortly come, in these words: To his least servant, and one set amid offenses, though very many, and unworthy of his favor, yet he in his goodness toward us has deigned to give charge: "Tell him," he says, "let him be secure, for peace is coming; but that there is meanwhile a little delay, some still remain who are to be tested." It is manifest that by all these things it is indicated that the persecution had already long raged, and that much more of it had run its course than remained, when this letter 7 was written. For what else do these words mean: Peace is coming; but that there is meanwhile a little delay, some still remain who are to be tested. Would the greater part of the persecution — or even a part equal to that of which the Saint had said above, It has laid waste our flock for the greatest part, and still up to now lays it waste, and in whose course he laments that they had so long been tossing in danger of salvation and of faith — have been called a little delay for the testing of some? A revelation of this kind certainly would have to be called rather the threat of God angry with his people than the promise and consolation of one raising them in his goodness to a hope of peace.

[189] But now the aforesaid peace was not given to the Church in Africa earlier than the beginning of the year 251, against Pearson or the end of 250, so that it was not safe for St. Cyprian, by reason of it, to return to Carthage until about the Easter of the year 251, as will be established from what is to be said. Hence what Pearson says is not probable, that that letter was written in the month of April in the year 250: for thus that little delay, after which peace had been divinely promised to Cyprian, would have been a space of about eight or perhaps even more months, but the earlier part of the persecution only of three. Pearson without doubt felt this difficulty, and therefore, violently interpreting that promise of peace, expounded it not of a persecution extinguished but of one pressing more mildly; which he wished to be believed happened at Carthage in the month of May, when the proconsul, sated with the martyrs' blood, had departed elsewhere. To this we confess indeed that the persecution did not always rage at Carthage with the same heat and atrocity: but we deny that those relaxations of it, whatever they were, can probably be called by the name of the promised peace.

[190] Much more probably therefore we defer the praised letter to some months later in that same year 250, it is proved. and confess that that other letter, of which the Saint makes mention in letter 14 to the Roman clergy, has not come down to us. But that the subject of the seventh letter answers rightly in other respects to Cyprian's words set down in letter 14, only argues that St. Cyprian wrote twice to his own people about beseeching God's mercy; first before there was any savagery of torments, secondly after their use, and after the peace of the African church promised by God after a little delay: for this is not surprising, and what we have disputed thus far seems altogether to require it. And so we proceed to the other letters.

[191] That letter 5, which for Pamele is the sixth, was written after 7, of which we have just treated, Nor do we reckon among their number and that therefore it cannot be held in the number of the said thirteen, I likewise agree with Tillemont and Maran. So its whole context persuades, which intimates that the peace which we saw in letter 7 was divinely promised, the persecution being almost extinguished, had already begun to arise, so that only the fear lest by his presence he should disturb a pacified state of things seems to have delayed the holy Bishop's return to Carthage. That the confessors had then been released from prison the Saint testifies there thus: And although I know that very many of these (confessors) have been received by the brethren's goodwill and love, yet, if there be any who lack either clothing or maintenance, as I had also written to you long ago when they were still set in prison, let there be supplied to them whatever things are necessary; namely lest, as he had premised, what the storm did not do to those who stood firm, necessity should do to those who labor; that is, lest through want they should fall away from the faith which they had preserved in persecution.

[192] letter 5; But about his own return to the Carthaginians he speaks thus: And although the case would compel me that I ought myself to hasten and come to you, first from eagerness and longing for you, which thing is the chief of my wishes; and then that we might together handle those matters which the common good demands concerning the governance of the church, and might polish them when examined by the counsel of many; yet it has seemed better to keep for the time still to concealment and quiet, out of regard for other advantages which pertain to the peace and safety of us all, of which an account will be rendered to you by Tertullus, our most dear brother; who, in accordance with the rest of his care, which he lavishly imparts to divine works, was also the author of this counsel, that I should be cautious and moderate, and should not rashly commit myself to the public gaze, and especially in that place where I had so often been demanded and sought.

[193] letter 5; Thus he, sufficiently intimating that only the gentile people's hatred against him stood in the way of his making use of the leisure of a persecution now lulled and returning to Carthage. But since a longer absence at such a time could be less approved by some, he adds that the reason of this counsel of his was to be rendered to his clergy by Tertullus, who was also the author of it; which indeed would by no means have been necessary if the storm of persecution had then still raged. But neither would the holy Bishop have been thinking then about his return, the hastening of which he nevertheless not obscurely suggests as a hope, when, having exhorted the confessors, now free from prison, to the exercise of the virtues, he says: May the Lord grant that I may both see them again soon, and by a salutary exhortation compose their minds for preserving their own glory

; and when at the end of the letter he says that he will settle things done and to be done when by God's grace he shall have come to them.

[194] and more probably That letter 6, for Pamele the seventh, is to be judged in the same way is taught both by the letter's subject and by the mention made in it of letter 5. The subject indeed; for the Saint there is wholly occupied in exhorting the confessors released from prison to morals worthy of their confession; that, when in his mercy (God) shall have made peace, he says, which he promises he will make, we may return to the church new and almost changed, and that our brethren, or the gentiles, may receive us corrected in all things and reformed for the better, and that those who had earlier admired the glory in our virtues may now admire the discipline in our morals. But that mention is made in this letter of the fifth I show manifestly. The Saint in the sixth says thus: And although I have written to our clergy both lately, when you were still set in prison, but also now again most fully, that, if anything be necessary either for your clothing or for your food, it be supplied, etc. Now this he had done in letter 5 in these words: If there be any who lack either clothing or maintenance, as I had also written to you long ago when they were still set in prison, let there be supplied to them whatever things are necessary.

[195] nor the sixth, Further, Pearson numbered letter 6 among the aforesaid thirteen, because he judged that it was designated by St. Cyprian in letter 14 by these words: Nor was our rebuke to the exiles, when it was needful, … lacking; and in letter 6 the Saint in fact addresses the confessors thus: For with how great a shame to your name is offense committed, when someone lingers drunken and wanton; when another returns to that country whence he had been made an exile, so that, when seized, he perishes not now as a Christian but as a criminal. Nor do I deny that exiles are here rebuked by the holy Bishop, and that therefore the praised words of the same Saint from letter 14 could deservedly have been referred to the letter of which we are treating, had not the reasons alleged above stood in the way. Besides, since in all that letter no further mention is made of exiles, but the vices of the confessors are chastised, he seems to have spoken of them here only on that occasion, and to have earlier written another letter in which he rebuked their rashness, as he testifies in letter 14.

[196] The whole of letter 36 breathes a nearby — nay rather, an already begun — peace of the Church in Africa, nor the thirty-sixth and accordingly neither can this be recounted among those thirteen. To prove this it will be enough to have reported the Saint's words. I greet you, he says, most dear brethren, being safe by God's grace, and wishing to come to you quickly, that satisfaction may be made both to my longing and to yours and to that of all the brethren. Yet we ought to take counsel for the common peace, and for a while, though with weariness of our mind, to be absent from you, lest our presence provoke the ill will and violence of the gentiles, and lest we, who ought rather to take counsel for the quiet of all, become the authors of breaking the peace. When therefore you shall have written that, matters being settled, I ought to come, or if the Lord shall before that deign to show it, then I shall come to you. Only the fear of breaking the peace, arising from the singular hatred of the gentiles against the Saint, therefore held him back then from returning to Carthage; and accordingly peace had then already begun to be reconciled, or certainly the persecution was already almost wholly lulled, when he wrote this. Nor does the rest of the letter suggest otherwise, in which, no mention being made of persecution, he only commends the care of widows, of the sick, and of all the poor and the strangers.

[197] About letter 37 there is greater difficulty as to what certain thing can be laid down. nor the thirty-seventh, Pearson numbers it among the thirteen, and refers it to the month of May; Tillemont thinks it could have been written in the same month or even in April, led by this reason, that no mention is made in it of the tumults afterwards arisen about the lapsed. But Pamele believed that it should be placed much later, because its very opening indicates that various letters on the same subject had already then been written by St. Cyprian. For in it one reads thus: Although I know, most dear brethren, that you have been frequently admonished by my letters that all diligence be afforded to those who have confessed the Lord with a glorious voice and are set in prison, yet again and again I press upon you, that nothing be lacking to the care of those to whom nothing is lacking for glory. With Pamele Maran agrees, but relying on other reasons. In the first place he rightly observes that the Saint in this letter commended the care of the poor to the presbyters and deacons, and then exhorted that there be imparted a more attentive vigilance and care also to the bodies of all who, although they have not been tortured, yet depart in prison by a glorious outcome of death … and that the days on which they depart be noted down, that he might be able to celebrate their commemorations among the memorials of the martyrs.

[198] Then he bids the following words of the same Saint be considered: which seem to have been written later. Although Tertullus, our most faithful and most devoted brother, in accordance with the rest of his solicitude and care, which he imparts to the brethren in every service of work (who is not lacking there either about the care of the bodies), has written and does write, and signifies to me the days on which our blessed brethren in prison pass over to immortality by the outcome of a glorious death, and here there are celebrated by us oblations and Sacrifices for their commemorations, which shortly, with the Lord protecting, we shall celebrate with you. From these things at length he concludes that this letter was written when the persecution was already cooling and was suggesting some hope of an early return, rather than in the month of May, when there was savagery of torments against the martyrs; since the Saint announces that he will shortly celebrate their commemorations with his clergy, and signifies that the confessors, if any were dying, were now dying in prison not amid torments but without them, by a natural death. And hence he observes besides that, if that letter had been written in the month of May, it would rather have been the days of the martyrs pouring forth their souls amid tortures that were to be noted down and announced to the holy Bishop. These things, I confess, make Maran's opinion very probable to me; especially since nothing compels or persuades us to number this letter among the thirteen, or to say it was written so early. For what Tillemont objects, that no mention is made in it of the tumults stirred up in the cause of the lapsed, proves nothing; since it is not necessary that the Saint should mention these in all his letters written after them.

[199] The reasons which persuade There remains letter 81, which John Pearson in his Annals, John Fell in his edition of St. Cyprian's Works, and Tillemont refer among the often-mentioned letters, but Pamele, the most eminent Baronius, and after them Maran, will have to have been written later; the last, namely, in the persecution of Gallus, but the others in that of Valerian. The hinge of the controversy turns chiefly on this, whether Rogatianus the presbyter, who is chiefly praised in this letter together with Felicissimus, is also there said to have been crowned with martyrdom. For they agree that Rogatianus the presbyter was shut up in prison under Decius, and this is beyond doubt from letter 6 sent by St. Cyprian from his retirement to him and to other confessors. They lay down that this Rogatianus is also the same as the one whom the same Saint mentions as being outside prison toward the end of his retirement in letter 36, and to whom among others he addressed letter 38, and who together with Caldonius and others replied to it by letter 39. Hence they gather that Rogatianus the presbyter, restored to liberty after enduring prison, survived the Decian persecution, and accordingly that either the praised letter 81 could not have been written from the Saint's retirement, or that Rogatianus is not said in it to have consummated martyrdom.

[200] that letter 81 The latter opinion is favored first by the subject of the whole letter, which is nothing but an exhortation to bear martyrdom bravely, and therefore fits most exactly the letter which St. Cyprian designates in letter 14, saying: But after tortures too came, whether our brethren had already been tortured, or were still shut up to be tortured, our word penetrated to strengthen and comfort them. Secondly, there is favor in what the Saint has in the same letter 81 about his own desire to embrace them, if he were not prevented, in these words: I greet you … wishing myself also to enjoy the sight of you, if the condition of the place permitted me to come to you … But since the opportunity of being present at this joy is not given, I send this letter in my stead to your ears and eyes, etc. Which words indeed can most rightly be taken as said by an absent Bishop, either lying hidden in his retirement or in exile at Curubis.

[201] was written in his retirement; Fourthly, the letter's address is in favor, inscribed among others to Rogatianus himself. Finally, there is favor also in its closing, which is of this kind: Victor the deacon, and those who are with me, greet you. For that Victor was the holy Bishop's companion in his retirement is clear both from letter 6, sent thence to that same Rogatianus and to the other Carthaginians, in which the Saint says: Victor also, from a lector a deacon, who is with me, has sent you 175; and from letter 4 to the presbyters and deacons, written from the same place, in which a plainly similar closing is read: Victor the deacon greets you, and those who are with me. Farewell. All these things certainly make it altogether probable that letter 81 was written in the retirement, and is one of those thirteen which St. Cyprian praised in letter 14 to the Roman clergy.

[202] But Pamele and others, as I have said, judge as also the other reasons, that Rogatianus is said in the same letter to have already consummated his martyrdom, and therefore that it was written after Decius's persecution. Now the controverted passage is this. Which faith you too, retaining and meditating by day and by night, prompt toward God with all your heart, by contempt of things present think only of things to come, that you may be able to come to the fruit of the eternal kingdom and to the embrace and kiss and sight of the Lord, so that you may follow in all things Rogatianus the presbyter, that glorious old man, who by his religious virtue and by the divine favor makes a way for you to the glory of our time; who with Felicissimus our brother, ever quiet and sober, receiving the onset of a raging people, first prepared a lodging for you in prison; and, being in a manner your surveyor, now too goes before you.

[203] And that this may be consummated in you, we beseech the Lord with assiduous prayers, which on the other side that, as your beginnings press on to the highest, he who made you confess may make you also be crowned. I wish you, most dear and most blessed brethren, ever to fare well in the Lord, and to attain the crown of heavenly glory. By these words, I say, the praised writers would have it — and Maran above the rest in §26 of the Life strives to show at length — that Rogatianus is affirmed to have been already crowned with martyrdom, and therefore they say that the Rogatianus to whom among others the letter is addressed is a different man from the holy

presbyter and martyr, and therefore they call him the younger. It will be worth while to have set forth Maran's arguments. He takes up the text of St. Cyprian just given thus: There is scarcely a word in this passage which does not indicate that Rogatianus suffered for Christ. Cyprian calls him a glorious old man; which is a proof to him that he has attained glory. He praises the confessors because they think only of things to come, that they may come to the embrace of the Lord, that they may follow Rogatianus in all things, whom they had already imitated in many things. Rogatianus therefore had already come to the sight of the Lord, since to come to the sight of the Lord is the same as to follow Rogatianus in all things.

[204] Rogatianus had prepared for them a first lodging in prison. is to be fixed later, Where was he preparing a second, save in heaven, going before them as a kind of surveyor? Finally Cyprian prays God that that in which Rogatianus was going before them may be consummated in them, and that they may attain the crown. Therefore Rogatianus had already attained this crown; and since he did not attain it in Decius's persecution, but came out of prison before Cyprian came out of his retirement, this letter must needs be referred to another time. Thus far the learned man: but to me these things do not appear so certain as they seemed to him. For the Saint could call Rogatianus a glorious old man even if he had not yet been crowned with martyrdom: nay, if he had already then been crowned, why did he not call him a martyr? The confessors could think only of things to come, that they might come to the embrace of the Lord and follow Rogatianus in all things, although he had not yet consummated his martyrdom, but by words only and by example, and perhaps also by torments endured, was rousing the rest to desire the embrace of the Lord: on which ground he could also in a manner be called their surveyor, since he was going before them in torments as previously in prison. But that this might be consummated in them, why could not St. Cyprian pray God while Rogatianus was still alive?

[205] are weighed. Certainly this exposition of ours is plain, and it is favored by these words: That you may follow in all things Rogatianus … who by his religious virtue and by the divine favor makes a way for you to the glory of our time; who … being in a manner your surveyor, now too goes before you. Maran indeed replies that St. Cyprian used a present participle here from the poverty of the Latin tongue, and tries in the same place to confirm this by two examples drawn from Cyprian's letters: but certainly the poverty of that tongue did not prevent his writing has gone before for goes before. I would not, however, say that a manner of speaking of that kind is altogether unusual, but I note that it is plainly conformable to our interpretation. On the contrary, Maran is favored by what Tillemont observes in Note 8 on St. Cyprian, namely that in the address of that same letter the first place is given to Sergius, otherwise unknown, the second to Rogatianus, and that the title of presbyter is not assigned to him; whence one may suspect that the Rogatianus to whom the letter is addressed is a different man from Rogatianus the presbyter, who is praised in the same letter, since otherwise the first place would seem to have had to be conceded to the latter, and St. Cyprian is not wont to omit titles of this kind.

[206] they are weighed. But whatever be the reason of this address (for in Pamele one reads To Sergius Rogatianus, in Morel To Rogatianus and Seagrius), the more I weigh Cyprian's words, the more I stick in doubt, and I candidly confess that from them I can neither assert with certainty nor deny the consummated martyrdom of Rogatianus and Felicissimus. And hence, so far as I am concerned, it will be permitted to refer that letter either to St. Cyprian's retirement under Decius or to his exile under Valerian; because neither appears certain enough, although the former is more probable. Nor is Maran's opinion improbable either, who supposes that it was rather written in the persecution of Gallus; since the condition of the place, by which the Saint says he is prevented from approaching the confessors shut up in prison, could signify nothing else than his episcopal dignity, as he shows there from letters 9, 10, 63 and 65; yet that it could not have been written in his retirement the reasons which he alleges in that place do not prove. For the rest, SS. Rogatianus and Felicissimus are inscribed in the Little Martyrology of Rosweyde, in Ado's, in Usuard's and in Baronius's Roman one, at the twenty-sixth day of October, in the last of which they are said to have suffered in the persecution of Valerian and Gallienus, but in the two middle ones in the persecution of Decius and Valerian: in these same, as also in the Annotations on the praised Roman one of Baronius, the letter of which we speak is praised; but whether their martyrdom is established from other sources may be inquired at greater length at the said day.

§ XI. From his retirement he writes to his clergy about the care of the flock, the support of the poor, and about visiting the captives warily: he exhorts the martyrs and confessors.

In the first letter which we have, From what has been disputed thus far there survive only seven or eight letters of those thirteen which we said were written by St. Cyprian to his own people from his retirement, and afterwards transmitted to the Roman clergy as so many witnesses of his pastoral solicitude and vigilance. Now therefore let us set forth from them in order the things done at that time. St. Cyprian in the praised letter 14 recounts in the first place of all that in which counsel to the clergy was not lacking; for right reason demanded that he by whom the rest were to be instructed should first be admonished of his own duty. To these words there answers most exactly the letter which for Pamele is the fifth, but for Baluze, whom we follow, the fourth, and which was certainly written in the retirement and before any of the clergy had lapsed; and therefore it is deservedly thought the first of all written in the retirement. But Maran in §10 of the Life, although he readily admits that this is the first of those which have come down to us, cannot persuade himself that it is the first of all, and written as soon as the holy Bishop had withdrawn.

[208] He gives this as the reason of his opinion: that in the praised letter no mention at all is made of the lamentable fall of the Carthaginian people, written in his retirement which by forswearing the faith at the first words of the threatening enemy had vehemently afflicted the excellent Prelate's mind. Hence he judges that another letter went before, by which the Carthaginian clergy might be helped with counsel in so great a difficulty of affairs; or at least that in the Saint's first letter the grief which he had conceived from it ought to have been signified; which was manifestly not done in this letter. I should plainly assent to the learned man, if St. Cyprian's words about the Carthaginians' lapse had necessarily to be taken in the way in which he interpreted them. They are read in the book On the Lapsed, and are of this kind: Nor were we even late converted to the fear of the Lord, so as to undergo this correction of ours (that is, the persecution) and this divine testing patiently and bravely. At the very first words of the threatening enemy the greatest number of the brethren betrayed their faith; nor was it laid low by the onset of persecution, but it laid itself low by a voluntary lapse.

[209] There is no doubt that the cited words admit a twofold interpretation. the Saint commends to the clergy the care of his flock One indeed, that the first words of the threatening enemy be taken for the beginning of the persecution, and that the greatest number of the brethren be said to have fallen away from the faith already then: the other, that very many of them be referred to as having lapsed at the first threats of the gentiles, at whatever time these were leveled at them, as soon as they were called upon about their faith. Now nothing compels us to take them in the former sense with Maran; since the Saint here intends only to chastise the cowardice of very many who, terrified by threats alone, had denied Christ; wherefore, reproaching them with this, he says: Nor was it laid low by the onset of persecution, but it laid itself low by a voluntary lapse. And so, although I should not wish to deny that other letters, which have now perished, could have been written before the fourth from the retirement, yet from the passage objected it is not proved that they were really written. Further, from the praised letter 4 we learn the fatherly solicitude of the holy Prelate, suffering nothing necessary for the salvation either of soul or of body to be found wanting to his flock. For, having premised that he lives safe, and having likewise rejoiced at the safety of his clergy, Since, he says, the condition of the place does not now permit me to be present, I ask you by your faith and religion that you discharge there both your own parts and mine, that nothing be lacking either to discipline or to diligence.

[210] and the support of the poor, Presently, turning to the care of the poor, he orders that necessities be kindly supplied to them out of the money which he himself, as it appears, before he departed from Carthage, had there distributed among the clerics, that help might more easily be given to all. But it will be worth while to have recited his very words. But as regards supplying maintenance, he says, whether to those who, having confessed the Lord with a glorious voice, are set in prison, or to those who, being poor and needy, labor, and yet persevere in the Lord, I ask that nothing be lacking; since the whole little sum which was collected was there distributed among the clerics on account of cases of this kind, so that more might have wherewith to work for the necessities and pressures of individuals. That this care of the poor was perpetually at his heart will be manifest from what is often to be said. In this same letter likewise there shines forth the Saint's prudence, by which he anxiously takes care that the imprudent zeal of certain persons should not offend and block the way to helping the confessors. It had not yet come to torments at Carthage, and the confessors were punished only with exile or prison, and in such a way that free access to them lay open to anyone.

[211] and admonishes that they should visit the captives Using this connivance of the gentiles, both laymen and clerics not only frequently visited the captive brethren and consoled them with words and alms; but the presbyters with the deacons frequently, and perhaps daily, celebrated the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass in the very prison before them, and, as it is fair to believe, refreshed them with the divine Banquet. Lest therefore the ill-considered zeal of some, by stirring up the ill will of the gentiles, should block that free approach, he admonishes that so precious an opportunity be used as warily as possible, and prescribes the manner in which one must proceed in this part. For although, he says, the brethren in their love are eager to assemble and to visit the good confessors, whom the divine favor has already made illustrious with glorious beginnings; yet I think this must be done warily, and not in crowds, nor by a multitude joined together at once, lest from this very thing ill will be stirred up and the entrance be denied us; and lest, while insatiably we wish for the whole, we lose the whole.

[212] warily. Take counsel therefore and provide that with this tempering the matter may be conducted more safely, so that the presbyters also who offer there among the confessors may take turns one by one with the deacons one by one, since both the change of persons and the alternation of those assembling lessens ill will. For in all things, being mild and humble, as befits servants of God, we ought to serve the times, and to look to quiet, and to provide for the people. Thus far St. Cyprian, to which nothing need be added. Now from what has been said this letter was written in the month of February, when the persecution was proceeding more moderately. After it he wrote

others also, in which … neither exhortation to the confessors, nor rebuke to the exiles when it was needful, nor his address and persuasion to the whole brotherhood for beseeching God's mercy, was lacking; as he testifies in letter 14 to the Roman clergy: but that these do not survive was shown in §10; unless perhaps letter 81, of which we treated in the preceding §, is to be numbered among them.

[213] The fault of the exiles, for which the Saint judged that they must be rebuked, He rebukes the rashness of the exiles. seems to have been their rashness, whereby, returning into their own country whence they had been expelled for the confession of Christ, they gave the gentiles occasion of punishing them as despisers of the proconsul or of the magistrates, without any fruit and not without loss to the Christian name. Certainly a return of this kind, untimely, the Saint chastises in letter 6 in these words: For with how great a shame to your name is offense committed, when … another returns to that country whence he had been made an exile, so that, when seized, he perishes not now as a Christian but as a criminal. From this passage Pearson believed that this letter is one of the thirteen sent to the Romans; but we have shown in the preceding § that the contrary is truer, and therefore this letter, like the others written before torments were employed — that is, before April or the middle of that month — seems to have perished.

[214] Meanwhile the persecution, which up to that point had kept some measure, blazed out more vehemently Torments having begun to be employed, and made a beginning of torments; the cause of which St. Cyprian in letter 7 about praying to God ascribes both to the people's sins and especially to the immodest morals and arrogance of certain confessors. But what blows, he says, what stripes do we not deserve, when not even the confessors, who ought by their example to have been an incitement to good morals for the rest, keep discipline? And so, while the swollen and immodest boasting of their confession insolently lifts up certain men, tortures have come, and tortures with no end of the torturer, with no outcome of condemnation, with no solace of death; tortures which do not easily release to the crown, but torment so long as to cast down; unless someone, withdrawn by divine favor, has made his passage amid the very torments, having attained glory not by the ending of the punishment but by the swiftness of dying. These things we suffer by our offense and by our desert, as the divine censure forewarned, etc.

[215] The beginning of the use of tortures is usually referred to the month of April, The Saint congratulates the martyrs and confessors because St. Mappalicus, who suffered among the first, is inscribed in the ancient Martyrologies at the seventeenth day of this month, at which Henschen too has treated in our Work of him and his companions, where he also recited St. Cyprian's letter 9, for us 8, which contains a notable eulogy of them. Of the same likewise, as also perhaps of some others, Lucianus makes mention, himself too then shut up in prison, in letter 21 among Cyprian's, written not long after the Easter of the year 250, as is likewise agreed among the learned. The Prelate, most loving of his own, could not but exult vehemently at so excellent a virtue of the martyrs, and could not but confirm by his letters the rest, who, detained in the workhouse, were daily threatened with a like contest, and inflame them more and more to the glory of martyrdom by so illustrious an example.

[216] That this was done by him he testifies in the often-mentioned letter 14, by letter 8 when he says: But after tortures too came, whether our brethren had already been tortured, or were still shut up to be tortured, our word penetrated to strengthen and comfort them. That letter 8, which is addressed To the Martyrs and confessors, is here indicated, all agree, and the whole context of the letter proves it, whose subject I subjoin very briefly. In the first place he says that he exults in their faith and virtue, in which mother Church has gloried. Then he mentions the torments then first begun to be employed in these words: She (the Church) gloried lately indeed when, their confession standing firm, a penalty was undergone which made confessors of Christ exiles; yet the present confession, the braver it is in suffering, the more renowned and the greater it is in honor. The fight has grown, and the glory of the fighters has grown too.

[217] and rouses them Nor were you held back from the battle-line by fear of torments, but by the very torments you were more and more challenged to the line, and, strong and steadfast, you have returned with ready devotion to the battle of the greatest contest. Of whom I have already learned that some are crowned, and that some are now on the very point of the crown of victory, and that all whom the prison has shut in in a glorious column are animated with an equal and like warmth of virtue for waging the contest, etc. After this, greatly celebrating the unconquered constancy and fortitude of the martyrs, and by name of St. Mappalicus, in the most grievous torments, he spurs on the rest by their example to the glory of martyrdom, and asks that they wipe away by their gladness — that is, by their unshaken faith — the tears of mother Church, who bewails the ruins and deaths, that is, the lapses, of very many, and that they confirm the rest, steadfast in the faith, by their own example also.

[218] to constancy. Finally he admonishes that, if they be called out to the battle-line of martyrdom, they should fight bravely, relying on divine help; but if perhaps they should come unharmed to the Church's peace, they should not be saddened as though frustrated of their hope. For the Lord, he says, is the searcher of reins and heart, he beholds secrets and looks upon hidden things: for deserving a crown from him the testimony alone of him who is to judge suffices. Therefore both things, most dear brethren, are alike sublime and illustrious. The one is the safer: to hasten to the Lord by the consummation of victory; the other the gladder: having received a respite after glory, to flourish with praise in the Church. O blessed Church of ours, whom the honor of divine favor thus illumines, whom in our times the glorious blood of martyrs makes illustrious. She was before white in the works of the brethren: now she has been made purple in the blood of martyrs. Among her flowers neither lilies nor roses are lacking. Let each now contend for the most ample dignity of either honor: let them receive crowns, white from their work, or purple from their suffering. In the heavenly camp both peace and the battle-line have their own flowers, with which the soldier of Christ may be crowned for glory. I wish you, most brave and most blessed brethren, ever to fare well in the Lord and to be mindful of us. Farewell.

§ XII. He sharply rebukes in three letters the rashness of certain confessors and clerics in admitting the lapsed to peace.

Certain confessors grant certificates With no less sorrow had the cowardice of the lapsed, who, as has been said, had in great number basely betrayed their faith, afflicted St. Cyprian's mind, than the glory of the martyrs had refreshed it. This same sorrow was increased by another evil also, which, by rashly granting pardon to the lapsed, tended — by a truly pernicious example — to contempt of the ecclesiastical discipline of that time and of episcopal authority. Very many of those lapsed, detesting their former perfidy, were burning to be admitted to the Church's peace, that is, to pardon of their offense and to communion in the most holy Eucharist, and therefore, according to the custom then received, strove to obtain from the martyrs and confessors certificates by whose commendation they might the more quickly obtain it from the ministers of the Church. Nor was this anything new or unusual; since Tertullian testifies in the book To the martyrs, chapter 1, that this very thing was habitually done in his own times, in these words: Which peace indeed, not having it in the Church, they have been wont to entreat from the martyrs in prison. But St. Cyprian himself too in letter 10 indicates that this had once been customary in his diocese also.

[220] In favor therefore of lapsed persons of this kind some martyrs and confessors had written to St. Cyprian, for obtaining peace praying that, when, the persecution being extinguished, it should be permitted to meet with the clergy, he would deign, each one's case being examined, to impart peace to them: and the modesty of these men in writing the Saint himself greatly commends in letter 10. But some of the confessors granted certificates of this kind to all the lapsed without any discrimination, and arrogantly ordered that they should be admitted to peace. Among these the chief was a certain Lucianus, of whom St. Cyprian in letter 22 to the Roman clergy writes thus: Our brother Lucianus, himself too one of the confessors, warm indeed in faith and robust in virtue, but less grounded in the reading of the Lord, attempted certain things, setting himself up long since as an authority for an ignorant crowd, so that certificates written by his hand were given in flocks to many in the name of Paulus; whereas Mappalicus the martyr, wary and modest, mindful of the law and of discipline, made no letters against the Gospel, but only, moved by domestic devotion, had given charge that peace be given to his mother, who had lapsed: and Saturninus too, after torments, being still set in prison, sent out no letters of that kind.

[221] But Lucianus not only gave out everywhere certificates written by his own hand in the name of Paulus, while he was still set in prison, rashly to the lapsed but even after his departure persisted in doing the same in his name; saying that this had been charged on him by him; not knowing that the Lord is to be obeyed rather than a fellow-servant. In the name too of Aurelius, a youth who had endured torments, many certificates were given, written by the hand of the same Lucianus, because he did not know letters. Nay, from Lucianus's own letter, for Baluze the twenty-first, to Celerinus, it is plain how profuse he was in granting certificates of this kind. Celerinus, shut up in prison at Rome for the confession of Christ, had asked Lucianus to obtain pardon by the martyrs' suffrage for Numeria and Candida, who had lapsed in the same persecution. And he among other things replies to him: You ought to have known what has been done concerning us. When the blessed martyr Paulus was still in the body, he called me and said to me: "Lucianus, before Christ I say to you, that if anyone after my summons ask peace of you, give it in my name"; but also, to all whom the Lord in so great a tribulation has deigned to summon, we have all by agreement sent letters, we have all remitted peace.

[222] Hence, a few things intervening, he grants peace not only to those two for whom Celerinus had asked it, and in great number; but to others also, in these words: And therefore, brother, I ask that, as here, when the Lord shall have begun to give peace to the Church itself, according to Paulus's precept and our discussion, the case being set forth before the bishop and confession being made, they may have peace — not only these women, but also those whom you know to belong to our heart. Thus he, out of zeal indeed, but not according to knowledge; not knowing, namely, that the Lord, against the discipline of whose Church he was so prodigal, is to be obeyed rather than a fellow-servant, as St. Cyprian presently notes. And hence it came about that, on the testimony of the same Saint in letter 14, without any discrimination and examination of individuals, thousands of certificates were given daily against the law of the Gospel; and that some gave certificates of this kind, extorted even from the more modest confessors, to others at their own pleasure, and, what is more detestable, sold them by a simoniacal traffic, as the same Saint again complains in letter 10.

[223] with some of the clergy approving this, To this evil there was added another, still graver, arisen from the clergy itself: for some of these not only approved so prodigal an abundance of certificates

and fostered it, but even received into favor, without previous penance, the lapsed who had been presented with them — even against the will of the good confessors — and did not fear to impart to them the most sacred Body of Christ. And these things St. Cyprian concedes could in some way be borne in the lapsed, who were panting for peace: but about the clerics, the authors of so great an evil, he bitterly complains in the same letter 10 to the martyrs and confessors, in these words: I had indeed believed that the presbyters and deacons who are present there were admonishing and instructing you most fully about the law of the Gospel, as in the past was always done under my predecessors, so that the deacons going to the prison might govern the martyrs' wishes by their counsels and by the precepts of the Scriptures.

[224] and grant peace and communion But now with the greatest grief of mind I learn that not only are the divine precepts not suggested to you there, but that they are rather still hindered, so that those things which are done by you yourselves both warily toward God and honorably toward God's Priest are undone by certain presbyters, who, thinking neither of the fear of God nor of the Bishop's honor, when you had directed to me a letter in which you desired that your wishes be examined and asked that peace be given to certain of the lapsed — when, the persecution being ended, we should have begun to meet with the clergy and to be gathered together again — they, against the law of the Gospel, against your honorable petition also, before penance has been done, before confession has been made of the most grievous and extreme offense, before a hand has been laid on them in penance by the Bishop and clergy, dare to offer for them and to give the Eucharist, that is, to profane the holy Body of the Lord; whereas it is written: "He who shall eat the Bread or drink the Cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord."

[225] rashly to the lapsed. And to the lapsed indeed pardon can in this be granted. For who that is dead would not hasten to be made alive? Who would not make haste to come to his own salvation? But it is the part of prelates to hold the precept, and to instruct those who hasten or who are ignorant; lest those who ought to be shepherds of the sheep become butchers. For to grant those things which turn to ruin is to deceive; nor is the lapsed man so raised up, but is rather driven to ruin through offense against God. Thus far St. Cyprian. Yet it was not the whole Carthaginian clergy, but only certain of the presbyters and deacons, as the Saint himself writes in letter 14, who were introducing that rash indulgence; whose chief men and leaders were without doubt those five presbyters who, having from the beginning opposed the holy Bishop's ordination, afterwards created great troubles for him, and at last broke out into schism together with Felicissimus, as has been partly said already and will be partly reported below.

[226] Against these he writes 3 letters; Further, so foul a violation of ecclesiastical discipline could not be hidden from a most vigilant Prelate, intent upon all things, from its very beginning; yet he was long silent, trusting that it would be restrained by his silence alone. But after it began to creep more widely, and now took more pernicious forces from some of the clergy, by whom it ought to have been crushed, he determined that so great an evil must be met, lest it should at length utterly overthrow all the discipline of his church. And so he wrote three letters on this matter, one to the martyrs and confessors, another to the clergy, a third to his people, as he testified in letter 14, together with which he transmitted them also to the Romans to be read, in the words reported at number 174. These are, by Baluze's reckoning, the ninth, tenth and eleventh; all of the same subject and written at the same time to those three orders separately indeed, but in such a way that each is bidden to communicate his own to the other.

[227] The first of these, which he sent to the clergy, he began in this manner: one to the clergy, in which Long have I held my patience, most dear brethren, as though our modest silence would avail toward quiet. But since the immoderate and abrupt presumption of certain men attempts by its rashness to disturb both the honor of the martyrs, and the modesty of the confessors, and the tranquillity of the whole people; it is not fitting to be silent any longer, lest too great a taciturnity proceed to the danger both of the people and of ourselves alike. For what danger ought we not to fear from God's offense, when certain of the presbyters, mindful neither of the Gospel nor of their own place, but thinking neither of the Lord's future judgment nor of the Bishop now set over them, claim everything to themselves with contumely and contempt of their Prelate — a thing which was never at all done under my predecessors? And would that, without laying low our brethren's salvation, they claimed everything to themselves! I could dissemble and bear the contumely of our episcopate, as I have always dissembled and borne it: but there is now no place for dissembling, when our brotherhood is being deceived by certain of you, who, while they desire to be popular without reason for restoring salvation, rather harm the lapsed.

[228] After this he weighs the greatness of those clerics' offense from the outrage of blasphemy and idolatry, he sharply arraigns these rash men, of which they were so rashly admitting the guilty to peace and to the banquet of the Lord's Body; whereas nevertheless even in lesser sins sinners do penance for a just time, and according to the order of discipline come to confession; and through the imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of communion. He adds that they will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord, if the lapsed by their carelessness or agency approach that Sacrament against the express precept of the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 11. Then he complains that, whereas they ought to admonish the martyrs and confessors themselves if they asked anything beyond what they had modestly and piously requested, they on the contrary called those same men into ill will, sowed the seeds of dissension between them and their Bishop, and, despising God's law and taking away the honor they owed him, rashly communicated with the lapsed.

[229] Finally he terrifies them with certain visions, which he does not explain, and threatens the contumacious with suspension from sacred functions, and threatens the penalty of ecclesiastical suspension, unless they desist from what they had begun. The divine censure, he says, therefore ceases not to chastise us either by night or by day. For besides nocturnal visions, by day too the innocent age of boys is filled among us with the Holy Spirit, which in ecstasy sees with the eyes, and hears and speaks those things by which the Lord deigns to admonish and instruct us. And you shall hear all things when the Lord shall have made me return to you, who commanded me to withdraw. Meanwhile let certain rash and incautious and swollen men among you, who think not of man nor fear God, know that, if they shall persevere further in these things, I shall use that admonition which the Lord bids me use, that they be for the time forbidden to offer, and that they shall plead their cause both before us, and before the confessors themselves, and before the whole people, when, the Lord permitting, we shall have begun to be gathered together again into the bosom of mother Church. About this I have made letters to the martyrs and confessors and to the people, both of which I have charged to be read to you. Then follows the usual closing for ending a letter.

[230] not excommunication, About the penalty which the Saint in the words just recited threatens against the contumacious there is some disagreement among the learned. Pamele in his Annotations on this letter, which for him is the tenth, and after him others, judged that suspension from divine functions, as we now say, is designated. So it seemed likewise to Baronius at the year 253, number 56; where, however, he observes that it was not here inflicted, but only threatened, unless they should desist from what they had begun. Tillemont in article XI likewise interprets it as suspension; but doubts whether the Saint must not be said really to have inflicted it by the words recounted. But St. Cyprian's words so clearly display Baronius's opinion that it seems certain to me. Maran, however, in § XI of the Life believed that not suspension but excommunication is there threatened; and to prove this he cites both letter 28, in which the Saint praises his clergy for having been unwilling to communicate with Gaius, presbyter of Didda, and with his deacon, who had given communion to the lapsed; and letter 52, in which he says that he had at one time decreed that, if anyone before our counsel and before a sentence established by the counsel of all should have wished rashly to communicate with the lapsed, he himself should be excluded from communion. And he observes that to be excluded is wont to be used by St. Cyprian for to be excommunicated.

[231] although he afterwards, But with the good leave of the learned man, neither passage compels us to twist the so clear words of letter 9 into another sense; but it only proves that the holy Bishop approved the judgment of his clergy and of some bishops, and thought it should be followed thereafter. Let us hear him speaking in the praised letter 28. Uprightly and with discipline, most dear brethren, have you done, in that by the counsel of my colleagues who were present you judged that Gaius, presbyter of Didda, and his deacon were not to be communicated with, who, by communicating with the lapsed and by offering their oblations, have been frequently detected in their depraved errors, and, once and again, according to what you have written to me, being admonished by my colleagues not to do this, have obstinately persisted in their presumption and audacity, deceiving certain brethren of our people. From these words it is clear that Gaius and his deacon were cut off from communion for their obstinacy not by St. Cyprian's letter, of which no mention is made there, but by the judgment of some bishops and of the clergy, and that this was approved and confirmed by St. Cyprian.

[232] when they did not come to their senses even so, But, you will say, if the Saint threatened such stubborn men only with suspension, why did they excommunicate them? I reply that they could do this because they judged that so great a contumacy, after a repeated admonition, must necessarily be restrained by that penalty, lest it should grow still more grievously strong; nor did they think it would be displeasing to their Bishop and Primate. And rightly indeed: for he not only confirmed their sentence, but also commanded that it be followed henceforth, adding after some other matter: But read this same letter also to my colleagues, if any either be present or come in, so that, unanimous and in concord, we may hold a salutary counsel for cherishing and healing the wounds of the lapsed, being about to treat most fully of all things when by the Lord's mercy we shall have begun to come together into one place. Meanwhile, if anyone immoderate and headlong, whether of our presbyters or deacons, or of strangers, shall have dared before our sentence to communicate with the lapsed, let him be barred from our communion, etc.

[233] Hence the reply to the passage objected from letter 52 is plain: excommunicated them. namely, in it the Saint praises letter 28, in which he had really decreed and charged that whoever should have wished rashly to communicate with the lapsed before his counsel and the common sentence of all, should himself be excluded from communion. Lombert in the French version of St. Cyprian's Works, in Tillemont Note XI, rendered the controverted words of the Saint into French in such a way that it is only forbidden that the names of the lapsed be offered, or recited, at the altar: which interpretation indeed Cyprian's words by no means admit. Nor does the reason alleged by him for it prove anything, namely that no trace of such an ecclesiastical suspension is found elsewhere in Cyprian's Works. For, granting that this be true

, yet it is certainly found in this letter; nor is there any reason why that penalty should be said to have been unusual in St. Cyprian's time; for in letter 28 he himself inflicted a not dissimilar one on certain clerics; saying: Meanwhile let them refrain only from the monthly division; not that they may seem to be deprived of the ecclesiastical ministry, but that, all things being kept entire, they may be deferred until our presence.

[234] In letter 10, addressed to the martyrs and confessors, the same subject, as we have noted, is treated; For the same cause he writes to the martyrs and therefore we shall here recount only those things which besides serve to set forth the present matter. Having exhorted them that they who had been made an example of virtue and of the fear of God to the rest should also keep more exactly the discipline of the Church, and having chastised the rashness of the clerics of whom we have just treated, he teaches what must be observed in granting certificates of this kind. Let them (those presbyters and deacons) therefore learn even from you, he says, what they ought to have taught. Let them keep your petitions and desires for the Bishop, and await a ripe and peaceful time for giving peace at your request. It comes first that the mother (the Church) should receive peace from the Lord; then, according to your desires, let there be treatment about the peace of the sons.

[235] And since I hear, most brave and most dear brethren, and confessors, teaching what is to be observed in granting that you are being pressed by the impudence of certain persons, and that your modesty is suffering violence; I beg you with what prayers I can, that, mindful of the Gospel, and considering what and what sort of things your predecessors the martyrs granted in the past, how solicitous they were in all things, you too may solicitously and warily weigh the desires of petitioners, as being the Lord's friends, and about to judge afterwards with him; that you may inspect the acts and works and merits of individuals, and consider also the kinds and qualities of the offenses themselves; lest, if anything be abruptly and unworthily either promised by you or done by us, our church begin to blush before the gentiles themselves. Then, a few things intervening about the divine admonitions, which he writes are made at Carthage as well as in his retirement, and mention having been made of the letter sent to the clergy, which he had ordered to be given likewise to them to be read, he orders them to restrain those who, accepting persons, either show favor in the benefits (of the martyrs, that is, in the certificates) or go hunting the markets of an unlawful traffic.

[236] He admonishes besides that one thing be corrected in the martyrs; certificates. saying: But this too you ought to reduce to diligence and to amend, that you should designate by name those to whom you desire peace to be given. For I hear that certificates are made by certain persons in such a way that it is said: "Let so-and-so communicate with his own"; which was never at all done by the martyrs: so that an uncertain and blind petition afterwards heaps up ill will for us. For it extends widely when it is said "So-and-so with his own"; and there can be presented to us twenty and thirty and more who are affirmed to be relatives and connections and freedmen and household members of him who receives the certificate. And therefore I ask that you designate by name in the certificate those whom you yourselves see, whom you know, whose penance you perceive to be close to satisfaction, and that you thus direct to us letters agreeable to faith and discipline. From all these things it is clear that St. Cyprian by no means disapproved that certificates be given by martyrs and confessors in favor of the lapsed; but that he deservedly chastised the abuse of them, and wished that thereafter they should be brought into accord with the ecclesiastical laws and the former custom.

[237] He writes also to the people, whose help Of the same subject likewise is letter XI to the people, at whose opening he presently opens the feelings of his mind, and signifies how much he above the rest would prefer to receive the lapsed into favor at once, did not fear of divine offense persuade otherwise. For he writes thus: That you groan and grieve over the ruins of our brethren I know from myself, most dear brethren, who myself also groan and grieve alike with you for each one, and suffer and feel what the blessed Apostle said: "Who is weak," he says, "and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?" And again he set it down in his letter, saying: "If one member suffers, the other members suffer with it; and if one member rejoices, the other members rejoice with it." I suffer therefore and grieve with our brethren, who, having lapsed and been laid low by the assault of persecution, dragging with them a part of our own vitals, have inflicted an equal grief upon us by their wounds; to whom the divine mercy is able to give healing.

[238] he asks, and that it await the Church's peace, Yet I do not think we must hurry, nor must anything be done incautiously and hastily; lest, while peace is rashly usurped, the offense of the divine indignation be more gravely provoked. Thereafter he praises the modest letters of the martyrs sent to him on behalf of the lapsed, and reproves the rash daring of some presbyters. But about the people's quiet and pious fear he says that he would be secure, had it not been deceived by those who ought themselves to have instructed it. Wherefore, since they failed in their office, Do you therefore at least, he said, direct them one by one, and by your counsel and moderation temper the minds of the lapsed according to the divine precepts. And again after a few words in which he admonishes that there must not be too much haste, he goes on thus: Let them, I beseech, patiently hear our counsel, let them await our return; so that, when by God's mercy we shall have come to you, more fellow-bishops having been convoked, according to the Lord's discipline and the presence of the confessors, and your judgment too, we may be able to examine the letters and desires of the blessed martyrs.

[239] he exhorts. Finally he mentions the letters sent on this matter to the clergy and to the martyrs, saying: About this I have made letters both to the clergy and to the martyrs and confessors, both of which I have charged to be read to you. By a like reasoning he had wished, according to what has been said, that this letter should be communicated to the clergy and to the martyrs and confessors, and those which he had written to these to the people and to one another, without doubt with this purpose, that by the consent and unanimous effort of those three orders so foul a plague of his church might the more swiftly and effectively be removed: but that the outcome did not answer to these pious efforts of the excellent Prelate, through the contumacy of some, we shall see in the course of this Commentary.

§ XIII. He writes letters 12 and 13, in which he grants some favor to the lapsed, and reproves those hastening too much to pardon.

Marveling that the clergy had not replied to him, Since to the preceding and other letters which he had frequently sent to his Carthaginian clergy St. Cyprian received no reply, and had heard that some of the lapsed, either of their own accord or roused by another, had tried by a bold demand to extort the peace which the martyrs and confessors had promised them; and since, summer having now begun, heats hostile to the body were threatening the usual diseases in that region, the most prudent Bishop judged that some indulgence must be used by which both some honor should be paid to the martyrs and confessors, and provision made for the safety of those in danger, in such a way, however, that the vigor of discipline should remain unshaken and at the same time the onsets of the contumacious be restrained. And this he performed by two letters sent to his clergy, both of which he records in letter 14 to the Roman clergy in the words recited at number 175; where he also adds that he did this because from the letter of that clergy sent to the Carthaginian clergy he had learned that this was their opinion also, to which he judged he must conform himself.

[241] The former of these letters, which for Baluze is the twelfth, on account of the summer heats he grants some favor to the lapsed: since it is short and remarkable, I here subjoin entire. Cyprian to the presbyters and deacons, brethren, greeting. I marvel, most dear brethren, that you have written back nothing to me in reply to my many letters which I have frequently sent to you; whereas either the advantage or the necessity of our brotherhood is assuredly so governed, if, being instructed by you, we can polish our counsel about what is to be done. Yet since I see that the opportunity of coming to you does not yet exist, and that summer has already begun — a season which is infested with continual and grievous sicknesses — I think our brethren must be met; so that those who have received certificates from the martyrs, and can be helped before God by their prerogative, if they shall have been seized by some illness and by the danger of infirmity, may, without awaiting our presence, make confession of their offense before any presbyter who is present, or, if a presbyter be not found and the end begin to press, before a deacon also; so that, a hand being laid on them in penance, they may come to the Lord with the peace which the martyrs desired to be given them in the letters made to us.

[242] The remaining part of the people also, which has lapsed, cherish by your presence, he receives the clergy's reply and that they may not fall away from the faith and mercy of the Lord, revive them by your comfort. For neither will those be forsaken by the Lord's help and aid who, meek and humble and truly doing penance, shall have persevered in good works, so that provision should not be made for them too by a divine remedy. To the hearers too, if any shall have been overtaken by danger and set at their end, let not your vigilance be lacking, and let mercy not be denied to those imploring the divine grace. I wish you, most dear brethren, ever to fare well and to be mindful of us. Greet the whole brotherhood in my name, and admonish and ask it to be mindful of us. Farewell. This letter of St. Cyprian's having been received, the Carthaginian clergy sent a reply to their Bishop, which no longer survives; but whose subject we nevertheless learn from letter 13, by which St. Cyprian answered that same clergy. Those clerics therefore wrote back that their counsel was not lacking to the brethren, that, rash haste being laid aside, they should show a religious patience to God, and should wait until, the Church's peace being granted and their case examined, they too might deserve to obtain peace.

[243] and writes back to it They added, however, that some bore that delay impatiently, and immoderately insisted that, all delay being removed, communion should be granted them the sooner: in which matter they inquired in the same letter what they should do. Hence one may gather that the Carthaginian clerics had not sufficiently perceived the mind of their holy Bishop, which he had declared in letter 12; unless perhaps they wrote thus doubtfully for the sake of trying whether, besides the favor granted, something further could be obtained in favor of the lapsed. But the holy Bishop did not depart from his former opinion: Yet since, he says, you have signified that certain persons are immoderate and hastily press for communion to be received; and since you have desired that a rule be given you by me in this matter; I believe that I wrote fully enough on this matter in my last letter made to you: that those who have received a certificate from the martyrs, and can be helped by their aid before the Lord in their offenses, if they begin to be pressed by some infirmity and danger, having made confession and a hand having been laid on them by you in penance, be sent to the Lord with the peace promised them by the martyrs. But the rest, who, having received no certificate from the martyrs, stir up ill will; since this is the cause not of a few, nor of one church, or of one province, but of the whole world, let them await from the Lord's protection the public peace of the Church itself.

[244] about the same cause. He subjoins that it is fair that a cause of this kind should be treated by the prelates of the church and in the presence of the people who have not lapsed, by common counsel; but that it is unworthy that the lapsed should already wish to be admitted into the Church, while the glorious confessors, made exiles and driven from their country and despoiled of all their goods, have not yet returned to the church. Finally, if they truly and sincerely repent, and by the warmth of their faith endure no delay, he teaches the way in which they may fulfil their desire, namely by undergoing martyrdom. If they hasten too much, he says, they have in their own power what they demand, the very time granting them more than they demand. The battle-line is still being waged, and the contest is celebrated daily: if they truly and firmly repent of what they committed, and the warmth of their faith prevails; he who cannot be deferred can be crowned.

[245] A passage of the letter is explained Now some things must be observed concerning both these letters. Jean Morin in his Historical Commentary on the discipline in the administration of the Sacrament of Penance, book 8, chapter 23, contends from the former letter that to St. Cyprian the power of sacerdotal absolution, and its necessity for obtaining salvation from God, seemed so great that, the bishop and the presbyters being absent and the danger of death pressing, it was to be implored extraordinarily from the deacons, and that then by their ministry the same grace was divinely infused mercifully by God upon the dying man. He warns, however, that he does not think that St. Cyprian, and the others whom he afterwards praises, supposed that the power of the keys, which the Council of Trent and before it the holy Fathers teach was granted to bishops and presbyters alone, pertained in any way to deacons: for he affirms that the opposite is gathered from their own words by which they establish that practice of confessing before a deacon.

[246] And so, if Morin means only that it seemed to St. Cyprian about the confession that a dying man in the most immediate danger of death, when no bishop or presbyter was present and none could be had, could confess to a deacon; yet in such a way that the latter, as by no means furnished with the power of the keys, should not impart sacramental absolution — I shall readily assent to him. For St. Thomas in the Supplement, question 8, article 2, asking whether in any case it is lawful to confess to others than priests, grants that this can be done even to laymen, writing thus: As Baptism is a Sacrament of necessity, so also is Penance. But Baptism, because it is a Sacrament of necessity, has a twofold minister: one on whom it lies by office to baptize, namely the priest; another to whom by reason of necessity the dispensation of Baptism is committed. And so likewise the minister of Penance, to whom by office confession is to be made, is the priest; but in necessity a layman too supplies the priest's place, so that confession can be made to him.

[247] Then what he thinks about a confession of this kind he sets forth in the same place in the reply to the first, in these words: to be made before a deacon In the Sacrament of Penance there is not only something on the minister's part, namely absolution and the enjoining of satisfaction; but also something on the part of him who receives the Sacrament, which too is of the essence of the Sacrament, such as contrition and confession. But satisfaction already begins to be from the minister, insofar as he enjoins it, and from the penitent, insofar as he fulfils it: and for the fullness of the Sacrament both ought to concur, when it is possible. But when necessity presses, the penitent ought to do what is on his part, namely to be contrite and to confess to whom he can: who, although he cannot complete the Sacrament so as to do that which is on the priest's part, namely absolution, yet the highest Priest supplies the priest's defect. Nevertheless a confession made to a layman for lack of a priest is in a manner sacramental; although it is not a perfect Sacrament, because that which is on the priest's part is lacking.

[248] Yet, although a confession of this kind, so restricted, could have been granted by St. Cyprian to deacons, in danger of death; it is not necessary that we have recourse to that, since his words are to be taken variously according to the varying power of the minister. The perfect reconciliation and peace of the lapsed, of which he here treats, embraced, besides sacramental absolution, also the removal of the censure by which they were barred from the eucharistic Banquet; and finally the communion of the Eucharist itself, which at that time was wont to be granted at the same time. All these things the presbyters, delegated by their bishop, could perform, and St. Cyprian orders them to be performed for such dying persons by these. The first the deacons could not do; yet they could, being likewise delegated by the bishop, hear the canonical confession, that is, the humble confession of the penitent, and diligently inquire about his sincere penance and perfect contrition of heart, and, if they were prudently assured of it, absolve him canonically from the aforesaid censure, and, on account of the danger of imminent death and the absence of a presbyter who might absolve the dying man sacramentally, fortify him with the most holy Viaticum, to be afterwards absolved sacramentally, if he survived, when opportunity of a presbyter should be given.

[249] Since therefore St. Cyprian wished that provision should be excellently made for such dying persons, out of favor to the martyrs, and it is illustrated he granted what he could according to the varying power of the ministers, namely of a presbyter and of a deacon. For it cannot be denied that a deacon, to whom the power of excommunicating can be committed, could also be delegated to remove the same. But that the most sacred Viaticum, in that extreme necessity, when there is no opportunity of confessing to a presbyter, can be granted to a truly contrite sinner, the theologians teach, who reckon this case one of those in which the Council of Trent, Session 13, chapter 7, and canon XI, permits the most august Sacrament to be received without previous confession. Yet lest anyone doubt whether this was customary anywhere in the church in St. Cyprian's age, I subjoin an example from St. Dionysius of Alexandria, who flourished in Egypt at the same time as our Saint.

[250] by the example of Serapion He in Eusebius, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 44 of the Paris edition, in Valois's translation, writes among other things this to Fabius, bishop of Antioch: I will set before you one example which happened among us. There was in this city a certain old man Serapion, of the number of the faithful, who for the remaining time of his former life had been subject to no fault: but, having lapsed in the persecution, he had many times asked pardon; and no one attended to him, because he had sacrificed. The same afterwards, being seized with sickness, remained for three days without the use of voice and without all sense. On the fourth day at last, being a little revived, he calls to him his grandson by his daughter; and, "How long at last," he says, "do you detain me, my son? Hasten, I beg, and absolve me as quickly as possible. Fetch me one of the presbyters." When he had said this, his voice again failed him. The boy ran to the presbyter.

[251] from St. Dionysius of Alexandria It was now night: and the presbyter was ill. But since I had given orders that pardon should be granted to the dying if they asked it, and especially if they had earlier suppliantly requested it, so that they might depart this life full of good hope; he handed over to the boy a small part of the Eucharist, bidding him to dip it in water and drop it into the old man's mouth. The boy returns therefore, bringing the Morsel. And when he was drawing near, before he entered, the old man, revived again, says: "You have come, my son: and the presbyter indeed could not come; but do you quickly what has been commanded; and let me go." Presently the boy dipped the Morsel and poured it into the old man's mouth; who, having swallowed it little by little, straightway breathed out his soul. Does it not therefore clearly appear that he was preserved, and remained so long in life, until he should be reconciled, and, his crime being now blotted out, could be acknowledged and proclaimed by Christ for the many good works which he had done. These things Dionysius, says Eusebius.

[252] in Eusebius. But now, if the absent presbyter admitted Serapion, who had long asked pardon in vain, to communion in that utmost necessity, and took care that he should be fortified with the divine Viaticum, with St. Dionysius approving; why should not St. Cyprian have permitted the deacons in a like case to succor the lapsed penitents in the way they could; that is, to absolve them from the canonical censure and to impart to them the heavenly Viaticum? In the same way the cited passage of St. Cyprian was understood by Denys Petau in his Animadversions on St. Epiphanius, Heresy 59; by Fernando de Mendoza, On confirming the council of Elvira, book 2, chapter 65, in Labbe, volume 1 of the Councils, column [ ] and following; and by Noël Alexandre, Century 3, dissertation 4, of the Paris edition of the year 1714; and by others, in whom the reader will find more on this subject.

[253] Another observation It may also be asked here why St. Cyprian in the letter just praised, at number 244, permitted the lapsed, who bore too impatiently that their reconciliation should be longer deferred, to present themselves of their own accord to the magistrates and to wash away their stain by martyrdom: saying, If they hasten too much, they have in their own power what they demand, the very time granting them more than they demand. The battle-line is still being waged, and the contest is celebrated daily: if they truly and firmly repent of what they committed, and the warmth of their faith prevails; he who cannot be deferred can be crowned. And these words of his he afterwards approved in letter 52 to Antonianus, where he recites the same. It may be asked, I say, why the Saint permitted this, since he himself toward the end of his life in letter 83 urges the contrary upon his clergy and people, and says: Nor let any of you stir up any tumult among the brethren, or offer himself of his own accord to the gentiles: for when arrested and handed over, he ought to speak. Since the Lord, placed in us, may speak in that hour, who willed us rather to confess than to profess.

[254] Likewise in the proconsular Acts in our text, number 2, on letter 13. the Saint, being ordered by the proconsul Paternus to give up his presbyters, replied among other things: Since discipline forbids that anyone offer himself of his own accord, and this displeases your censure too, they cannot offer themselves; but when sought out by you they will be found. But to this I reply that, although a spontaneous profession of this kind is commonly neither advisable nor lawful, yet in certain circumstances it is sometimes lawful and worthy of praise; of which thing an example was given both by other Saints and by St. Cornelius the Pope with his Romans, as we have shown at this very day in the historical Commentary on his deeds, § X, from number 219, out of St. Cyprian's letter 57, in which this deed is much celebrated. Further, in the lapsed, of whom the holy Bishop speaks in letters 13 and 52, there was this peculiar reason, that the glory of Christ, which they had basely put after their own life, was to be repaired by that voluntary profession. I should believe, however, that St. Cyprian spoke thus here the more confidently because he well knew that those lapsed persons, who did not moderately bear even penance, would not easily use that liberty; as in fact it is not established that any of them used it.

§ XIV. Whether the Saint permitted peace to be given in danger of death only to those lapsed who had a certificate of the martyrs.

About the favor granted above to the lapsed There remains another difficulty and a more agitated controversy; namely whether that benefit of reconciliation of which we have just treated was granted only to those

lapsed who had been presented with certificates of the martyrs, by St. Cyprian in the praised letters, or whether he extended it to all penitent lapsed persons set in a like danger of death. Now by penitents I understand those who, having asked pardon before contracting the illness, had done penance and were persevering in it; for about the rest, who, having despised penance while they were in good health, first demanded it in illness, St. Cyprian himself writes thus in letter 52 to Antonianus: The Lord in the Gospel calls those blessed who mourn, because he who mourns provokes mercy; he who is stubborn and proud heaps up for himself wrath and the punishment of the coming judgment. And therefore, most dear brother, we have judged that those who do not do penance, nor testify with all their heart and by a manifest profession of their lamentation their grief for their offenses, are altogether to be barred from the hope of communion and peace, if they begin to entreat in infirmity and in danger; because it is not penance for an offense but the warning of pressing death that compels them to ask; nor is he worthy to receive solace in death who did not think that he would die.

[256] Petau's opinion Of those penitents therefore we treat who, while doing penance such as the Saint requires, were brought to the last of life before it was completed and the Church's peace restored, and demanded pardon. Petau, praised above, lays down that even these, unless they had obtained a certificate from a martyr or confessor, were excluded from the aforesaid benefit, because otherwise, he says, there would be no difference between them and the former, who had received certificates, who nevertheless ought to have enjoyed some better condition. Petau's opinion is favored by the words of both letters, in which for granting peace to the lapsed in danger of death he requires two things, namely a certificate of a martyr and penance for the offense: for in both places he grants that it be given to those who have received certificates from the martyrs, and can be helped before God by their prerogative.

[257] is set forth, and against it Of the certificate required by him for obtaining that favor he likewise expressly makes mention in letter 14 to the Roman clergy, writing thus about both those letters: But afterwards, when certain of the lapsed, either of their own accord or at some instigator's prompting, broke out with a bold demand, so as to strive to extort by violent onset the peace promised them by the martyrs and confessors; about this too I twice made letters to the clergy, and gave charge that they be read to them, so that, to mitigate their violence for the time in whatever way, if any, having received a certificate from the martyrs, should depart from the world, having made confession and having had a hand laid on them in penance, they should be sent to the Lord with the peace promised them by the martyrs. There is favor also when in this same letter he says that he used that indulgence toward them, since it seemed that both honor must be paid to the martyrs, and the onset of those who wished to throw everything into confusion must be restrained: by which words the Saint indicates that something singular was granted by him to the lapsed who were fortified with a certificate of the martyrs: for these alone were disturbing everything by their importunate and bold demand, and in admitting these to peace honor was paid to the martyrs.

[258] it is proved But these reasons do not appear to me so certain but that I judge the opposite opinion truer, together with the learned author of the Preface to the Venetian edition of St. Cyprian's Works after Baluze's recension, § XI: for there are not lacking weighty grounds of reason which persuade it, as I proceed to show. After St. Cyprian in letter 12 had provided for the safety of the lapsed in danger who had certificates of the martyrs, he presently subjoined: The remaining part of the people also, which has lapsed, cherish by your presence, and that they may not fall away from the faith and mercy of the Lord, revive them by your comfort. For neither will those be forsaken by the Lord's help and aid who, meek and humble and truly doing penance, shall have persevered in good works, so that provision should not be made for them too by a divine remedy. To the hearers too, if any shall have been overtaken by danger and set at their end, let not your vigilance be lacking; let the Lord's mercy not be denied to those imploring the divine grace.

[259] that the Saint in the aforesaid letters It is manifest that something is here promised by St. Cyprian to lapsed Christians who lacked a certificate, and to the hearers, that is, the catechumens: nor can it be doubted that the Lord's mercy, which he orders to be imparted to the catechumens, signifies baptism. Why therefore should we not judge that by the divine remedy, by which the Saint promises that provision shall be made for lapsed Christians also, pardon of sins and peace are designated: since these are no less the ordinary divine remedy for those who have lapsed after baptism than baptism is for catechumens? Nay, that those words are plainly to be so taken is persuaded by St. Cyprian's letter 14 to the Romans, in which, as we have noted elsewhere, having briefly but accurately set forth what was done by him in this part and written in both those letters, he teaches the reason of this counsel of his, and declares that it is altogether conformable to the Roman clergy's admonitions sent to the Carthaginian.

[260] Nor in this, he says, did I give a law, or rashly set myself up as an authority: not only to the lapsed but since it seemed that both honor must be paid to the martyrs, and the onset of those who wished to throw everything into confusion must be restrained, and since besides I had read your writing which you had lately made to our clergy here by Crementius the subdeacon, that help should be given to those who after a lapse had been seized by sickness and, being penitent, desired communion; I thought I must stand with your opinion also, lest our action, which ought to be united and to agree about all things, should in anything disagree. Plainly I gave charge that the cases of the rest, although a certificate had been received from the martyrs, be deferred and reserved for our presence, so that, when, peace being given us by the Lord, we prelates shall have begun to come together in one place, we may, our counsel being communicated with you too, be able to arrange and reform each matter.

[261] By these words St. Cyprian expressly testifies that he followed the Romans' opinion, who had certificates of the martyrs, which they had signified in letter 2, most exactly in all things in both his letters, lest, he says, our action, which ought to be united and to agree ABOUT ALL THINGS, should in anything disagree. Let us see therefore what was the Roman clergy's opinion in this part. They in letter 2, having exhorted the Carthaginian clergy by their own example to a strenuous care of the flock in the Bishop's absence, write thus to our purpose: You see therefore, brethren, that you also ought to do this, … so that, if any have fallen into this temptation (the desertion of the faith) and begin to be seized with sickness, and do penance for their deed, and desire communion, they certainly ought to be helped; whether widows, or clinomeni, or those who cannot present themselves, or those who are in prison, or those shut out from their own dwellings — they certainly ought to have persons to minister to them. But catechumens also, seized with sickness, ought not to be deceived, but to be helped.

[262] You see, reader, that no one truly penitent is here forbidden communion when danger of death presses, and yet no mention is made of a certificate received from the martyrs. That this further was the Romans' mind is clear also from letter 31 sent to St. Cyprian, in which, likewise saying nothing about certificates of the martyrs, they say among other things: We believe that the care of the lapsed must be moderately tempered; so that meanwhile, while it is being endured that a Bishop be given us by God, the case of those who can endure the delays of postponement should be held in suspense; but that those whose pressing end cannot bear a delay of their life's ending, when penance has been done and detestation of their deeds frequently professed, if by tears, by groans, by weeping they shall have shown the signs of a grieving and truly penitent mind, when no hope of living according to man remains, should then at last warily and solicitously be helped; God himself knowing what he does about such persons, and how he weighs the balances of his judgment; while we, however, take anxious care that wicked men should not praise our ready facility, nor the truly penitent accuse our cruelty as harsh.

[263] but also to the rest, The same therefore St. Cyprian must be said to have laid down in letters 12 and following; for otherwise he would not, contrary to what he himself testifies, have stood by the Romans' opinion, and his action, which ought to be united and to agree about all things, would have disagreed with theirs not merely in something but in the greater part, the benefit being restricted, namely, to those alone who were fortified with certificates of the martyrs, which the Romans had wished to be common to all such penitents brought to their last. Certainly the holy Bishop closely followed the Romans' footsteps in the rest. They had admonished in letter 2 that help must be given to catechumens seized by sickness: Cyprian plainly admonishes the same in letter 12: about the lapsed whose life was not in danger they had decreed nothing; Cyprian too lays down nothing, but bids them all wait until, the Church's peace being granted, something could be decreed about them by common counsel. Why then should we believe that he dissented from them in an article of the greatest moment, when he himself professes that he disagreed in nothing, and in the same letter promises that provision shall be made by a divine remedy for all the other lapsed also, provided they have done sincere penance; which can properly be taken of granting them peace, and, according to what has been said, ought to be so taken.

[264] about whose penance it was established, Besides, this opinion of Petau's seems less fair and less consonant with right reason. For on it St. Cyprian would have granted peace at the point of death to the lapsed presented with a certificate, who, impudently demanding by an importunate and immodest clamor that it be given them, were vehemently disturbing his church; and would have utterly denied it to fervent penitents who, from the very moment they committed the crime, had not ceased to wash it away with perpetual tears, and who, obedient to their prelates in all things, were patiently awaiting the Church's peace. This, namely, would these have got from their own modesty and sincere penance, that even when dying they should be barred from the Church, into which others, in like danger, were admitted through certificates extorted from the martyrs and after they had stirred up disturbances.

[265] in danger of death I certainly cannot be brought to believe that our holy Bishop was of so hard an opinion; especially since he himself afterwards arraigned Marcian of Arles, a follower of Novatian, for having cruelly permitted penitents of this kind to die without peace. For he writes thus in letter 67 to Pope St. Stephen: Let letters be directed by you into the province and to the people dwelling at Arles, by which, Marcian being excluded, another may be substituted in his place, and the flock of Christ, which up to this day, scattered and wounded by him, is despised, may be gathered together. Let it suffice that many of our brethren there have in these past years departed without peace. At least let help be given to the rest who survive, who both groan by day and by night, and, entreating the divine and fatherly mercy, demand the solace of our aid. Who would believe that St. Cyprian would have spoken thus, if he himself, against the express opinion of the Roman clergy, had forbidden peace to be given to like dying persons, and had laid down that they ought to depart without peace?

[266] granted it. Tillemont's Finally, the reasons by which the Saint in letter 13 tries to persuade of the equity of his opinion do not hold in the case of the dying. For he says that the Church's peace must first be awaited, so that the cases of the lapsed may be discussed by common counsel; that it is irreligious and pernicious that the lapsed should wish to be received into the church while many confessors, driven from their country, had not yet returned to their own church; and finally that, if to anyone that delay seem too long, the battle-line is still being waged, and peace can be obtained by blood poured out through martyrdom: he who cannot be deferred can be crowned. But all these things do not concern the dying, for whom every delay would not have deferred peace but would have utterly cut off all hope of it, and from whom death itself was taking away the occasion of martyrdom. But why then, you will say, does St. Cyprian in the passages reported above require a certificate of a martyr or confessor for obtaining the said indulgence, and affirm that he granted it out of favor to them? Tillemont in article 13 suspects that the Saint, since he knew that certain confessors, and especially Lucianus, were so prodigal in granting certificates that any lapsed person either had or could easily have one, wrote on purpose only about those who had obtained a certificate, in order by this benefit to lay the confessors under obligation to himself, and thus at the same time to provide well for all the lapsed in danger.

[267] This suspicion of Tillemont's does not please me: for thus the Saint himself would have loosened freer reins and Morin's opinion on this matter to that rash lavishing of certificates which he in very many places, both before and after letters 12 and 13, most sharply reproves. For which of the lapsed would not have canvassed with every effort for a certificate of that kind, by whose help alone, before the public peace of the African church — which could not be hoped near — he could have departed this life with peace? Or, if the Saint had reckoned that sufficient provision was made against this abuse by his letters, by the same act he would have shut off from obedient penitents the only access to pardon in danger of death, and accordingly no provision would have been made for their salvation. Jean Morin in his Commentary on the discipline in the administration of the Sacrament of Penance, book 9, chapters 24 and 27, judges that St. Cyprian here grants this out of favor to the martyrs: that those who had been presented with their certificates should, when dying, be admitted to peace, although they had refused to do penance while they were in good health: which was by no means granted to dying lapsed persons not fortified with such a certificate.

[268] But neither does this reply please me: is rejected. for St. Cyprian in the praised letter 52, in the words which we gave at number 255, plainly excludes from the hope of communion and peace all the lapsed who had neglected penance up to the very end of life; and that, as he says, because it is not penance for an offense but the warning of pressing death that compels them to ask; nor is he worthy to receive solace in death who did not think that he would die. Now this reason is general; nor could a martyr's certificate bring it about that such a dying man should be believed to be compelled to ask for peace by penance for his offense and not by the warning of pressing death. Hence the holy Bishop in both letters not obscurely requires previous penance even from those who had received a certificate, when in the former he grants that peace be given to such dying persons who have received certificates from the martyrs, and can be helped before God by their prerogative; and similarly in the second: Who have received a certificate from the martyrs, and can be helped by their aid before the Lord in their offenses. For what else does that second condition indicate than that penance without which in letter 52 he shuts off all hope from all the lapsed?

[269] I reply therefore that St. Cyprian in the praised letter 12 granted two things; St. Cyprian's one out of favor to the martyrs, the other moved by the example and authority of the Roman clergy — both of which he seems to me to have expressly indicated in the same letter compared with the fourteenth. For first indeed he orders that peace be given in danger of death to the lapsed who had certificates of the martyrs, out of favor to them, provided their sincere penance be established according to what has been said above. That this indulgence was granted by him out of favor to the martyrs he testifies in letter 14 to the Roman clergy, alleging as the reason that it seemed that both honor must be paid to the martyrs, and the onset of those who wished to throw everything into confusion must be restrained. The other benefit concerns the lapsed who lacked certificates, to whom in like danger, penance being likewise premised, he permits peace to be given in like manner; following in this the Romans' admonition, which they had given in their letter to the Carthaginian clergy, which in Baluze is the second among Cyprian's.

[270] opinion about this controversy. That this is so, the Saint himself again in letter 14 indicates thus: Since … besides I had read your writing which you had lately made to our clergy here by Crementius the subdeacon, that help should be given to those who after a lapse had been seized by sickness and, being penitent, desired communion; I thought I must stand with your opinion also, etc. He did not therefore use it toward the lapsed presented with certificates alone, nor out of favor to the martyrs alone; but, since he judged that honor must be paid to the martyrs, he laid down that peace must be granted to the dying who had received certificates from them; and since he had understood that this benefit was imparted by the Roman clergy to all truly penitent lapsed persons in danger of death, he wished it extended likewise to these, lest he should in any way disagree with the Romans. Between those two classes of penitents, however, and the benefit granted to each, this difference seems to have obtained, that to the former he orders peace to be given solely out of favor to the martyrs, although they had by their importunate and immodest demands rendered themselves up to that point unworthy of it; but the rest he bids only to hope for it, if they shall have deserved it by sincere penance and by the exercise of the virtues.

[271] opinion. For he writes thus about them in letter 12: The remaining part of the people also, which has lapsed, cherish by your presence, and that they may not fall away from the faith and mercy of the Lord, revive them by your comfort. For neither will those be forsaken by the Lord's help and aid who, meek and humble and doing penance, shall have persevered in good works, so that provision should not be made for them too by a divine remedy. Nor did the Roman clergy, whom the Saint here follows, demand less of their own lapsed, that they might enjoy that indulgence, as is established from their letter 2 to the Carthaginian clergy. Now this difference is sufficient for St. Cyprian to be judged to have granted something singular out of favor to the martyrs to lapsed persons furnished with such a certificate, especially since these, as I have noted, had by their audacity in demanding peace rendered themselves less worthy of pardon. For the rest, that St. Cyprian in letter 13 writes as though he ordered only the lapsed fortified with certificates to be admitted to peace ought not to detain us, both because he had been consulted by the clergy about these alone, who were too importunately demanding peace, and because he refers them back to the earlier letter; saying: I believe that I wrote fully enough on this matter in my last letter made to you; and therefore letter 13 must be interpreted from 12, not the contrary.

§ XV. He manfully opposes the arrogance of the confessors and of the lapsed: refreshed by the Romans' letter, he writes to them: he ordains a lector and a subdeacon.

Out of the confessors', chiefly These things having been thus excellently done, as we have said, St. Cyprian sent letter 14, elsewhere 15, to the Roman clergy, in which he briefly but forcibly set forth both the reason of his retirement and his unwearied vigilance in ruling his flock, and made this most fully attested by those thirteen letters of which we have treated thus far, and which he therefore transmitted to Rome along with it. This letter we recited in §9, nor is it necessary to add more about it here, and therefore we proceed to other matters. We have already intimated above that St. Cyprian's letters, which he had written about the cause of the lapsed to the Carthaginian clergy, to the martyrs and confessors, and to his people, did not obtain so happy a success as he could deservedly have hoped. For indeed, out of the audacity of some, whom neither their Bishop's admonitions nor his threats terrified, nor his indulgence moved, the evil even grew and broke out into a tumult.

[273] The author of the disturbance was that same Lucianus the confessor, Lucianus's arrogance of whose intemperate zeal in this part we treated in §12. For St. Cyprian in letter 22 to the Roman clergy, after the words given at number 220 and following, sets forth the cause and progress of the tumult thus: That this thing (the excessive prodigality of the confessors in giving out certificates in flocks) might in some measure be withstood, I made a letter to them, which I have transmitted to you under my earlier letter, in which I did not cease to ask and to urge that the reasoning of the Lord's law and of the Gospel be held. But after I sent them a letter, in order that something more moderate and more temperate might be done, that same Lucianus wrote a letter in the name of all the confessors, by which almost every bond of faith, and the fear of God, and the Lord's commandment, and the sanctity and firmness of the Gospel would be loosed. For he wrote in the name of all that they had given peace to all, and that he wished this rule to be made known through me to other bishops also; a copy of which letter I have transmitted to you.

[274] This letter of Lucianus, for Baluze the sixteenth among Cyprian's, the lapsed raise a tumult, is very short, and written in this manner: All the confessors to Cyprian the pope, greeting. Know that we have given peace to all concerning whom an account of what they have done since their offense shall be established before you; and we wished this rule to be made known through you to other bishops also. We desire that you have peace with the holy martyrs. In the presence of a member of the clergy, an exorcist and a lector, Lucianus wrote it. Now the holy Bishop observes that from that letter great ill will threatened him and his colleagues from the lapsed, and that a sedition had already then arisen. Let us hear him going on in the just-praised letter 22: There was plainly added: "Concerning whom an account of what they have done since their offense shall be established." Which thing stirs up greater ill will for us, so that we, when we begin to hear and to sift the cases of individuals, may seem to deny to many what they all now boast that they have received from the martyrs and confessors. In short, the origin of this sedition has already begun: for in our province through some cities an onset was made by the multitude against the prelates, and they compelled the peace which they all clamored had once for all been given by the martyrs and confessors to be immediately presented to them, their prelates being terrified and subdued, who were less strong in vigor of mind and in strength of faith to resist. Among us too certain turbulent men, who in the past were scarcely governed by us, and were being deferred until our presence, kindled by this letter as though by certain torches, began to burn more fiercely and to extort the peace given them. Of these I have sent you a copy of the sort of letter I made to our clergy.

[275] whom the Saint opposes. St. Cyprian therefore, having received Lucianus's letter, written in the name of all the confessors, could not but be moved

so as to fail to guard unimpaired the former discipline of the Church; but he directed letter 17 to his clergy, in which, after setting forth the confessors' rash demand, he laid down that he would decree nothing about the cause of the lapsed except by common counsel; and that therefore one must for the time stand by the letters which he had sent both to them and to his fellow-bishops, and which these too had approved with their own vote. The said letters are those five about the lapsed of which we have treated hitherto. Further, in order to recall the embittered minds to modesty, he transmitted with that same letter 17 to the same clergy a copy of the letter which he had received from Caldonius, and his own reply to it: All which, he says, I ask to be read to our brethren, that they may rather be composed to patience, and may not add yet another offense to their own offense; while they are willing to serve neither us nor the Gospel, nor permit their cases to be examined according to the letter of all the confessors.

[276] The case about which St. Cyprian had been consulted by Caldonius, To others, who had washed away their lapse a bishop of a see unknown to us under the metropolis of Carthage, Caldonius himself sets forth thus in letter 18, sent to the Saint and his clergy: I ought to write to you, since those who, after they had sacrificed, being seized a second time, have been made exiles. They seem therefore to me to have washed away their former offense, in that they leave their possessions and houses, and, doing penance, follow Christ. Therefore Felix, who administered the presbytery under Decimus, nearest to me by bonds \, (I have known that same Felix more fully); Victoria his wife, and Lucius his son, having been made exiles, left their possessions, which the treasury now holds. But also a woman by name Bona, who was dragged by her husband to sacrifice, who did not commit an act of conscience (elsewhere it reads: did not commit her conscience), but because those who held her hands themselves sacrificed, began to say against it: "I did not do it, you did it"; so she too was made an exile.*

[177] by confession and exile, Since therefore all were asking for peace, saying: "We have recovered the faith which we had lost, doing penance, and we have publicly confessed Christ"; although they seem to me bound to receive peace, yet I have referred them to your counsel, lest I seem to presume anything rashly. If therefore anything shall be resolved by common counsel, write to me, etc. To this St. Cyprian, replying to Caldonius by letter 19, having praised his religious prudence, says: But you have rightly judged about imparting peace to our brethren, which they themselves have restored to themselves by true penance and by the glory of the Lord's confession, being justified by those words by which they had earlier condemned themselves. Since therefore they have washed away every offense, and have blotted out their former stain by a better virtue, with the Lord assisting them, they ought no longer to lie as though prostrate under the devil, who, having been made exiles and despoiled of all their goods, have raised themselves up and have begun to stand with Christ.

[278] And would that, he adds, the rest also, doing penance after their lapse, might thus be restored to their former state; he grants peace. whom, as they now press and rashly and importunately extort peace — that you may know how we have disposed the matter, I have sent you a book with letters, five in number, which I made to the clergy and to the people, and to the martyrs also and confessors; which letters, having already been sent to very many of our colleagues, have pleased them; and they have written back that they too stand with us in the same counsel according to the Catholic faith. It is not established what book the Saint here says was sent by him to Caldonius. Pamele in his Annotations suspects that either a book is designated in which were contained the certificates of the martyrs written out, or — what pleases him better — the book On the Lapsed. Of the latter Baluze and Rigault too interpret it: but John Fell prefers to understand by book the bundle itself of the five letters, as if the Saint had said: I have sent you a book out of letters five in number; which interpretation appears more probable to me too. For we shall see that the book On the Lapsed was written much later; but Pamele's former suspicion is utterly destitute of all foundation, and does not appear probable; and finally, what that book on the cause of the lapsed, distinct from the book On the Lapsed and from the five aforesaid letters, would have been, is unknown.

[279] Things in Africa being thus disturbed, a letter from the Roman clergy to the Carthaginian presbyters and deacons, He is refreshed by a letter sent from the Romans to the Carthaginians and likewise another from St. Moses, Maximus, Nicostratus and the other confessors detained in prison at Rome, to Saturninus and Aurelius and the other confessors, were brought to Carthage, which likewise pleaded for the vigor of the Gospel and for ecclesiastical discipline to be kept in good repair. Both these letters have indeed perished, but St. Cyprian testifies in letter 22 that they came opportunely for him at so calamitous a time for his church, and were of great help. But opportunely there came in, he says, your letter, which I received, made to the clergy, and likewise that which the blessed confessors Moses and Maximus, Nicostratus and the rest, sent to Saturninus and Aurelius and the rest, in which the full vigor of the Gospel and the robust discipline of the Lord's law are contained. As we labored here, and resisted the onset of ill will with all the forces of faith, your word helped us much, so that a shortcut was divinely made, and, before the letter which I lately sent you should come to you, you declared to us that your opinion also concurs with us bravely and unanimously according to the law of the Gospel.

[280] For indeed nothing could have happened more desirable for the holy Bishop, for repelling ill will at that juncture of affairs, is refreshed: than those two letters, in one of which the authority of the Roman clergy set forth the same things which he himself had laid down, and in the other the Roman confessors likewise with equal vigor set forth the severity of Evangelical discipline, and called back unlawful petitions from the Church's modesty; as the Roman clergy testifies in letter 31 to St. Cyprian, adding: Unless they had done this, the ruins of Evangelical discipline would not easily be repaired. But lest anyone wonder why those two praised letters were written to the Carthaginian clergy rather than to their Bishop, it must be observed what the Saint himself notes in the preceding number; namely, that these were brought to Carthage before his letter, which for Baluze is the fourteenth, had reached Rome. For since that same Saint's letter, third in Baluze's order, of which treatment was made in §9, had by no means removed from the Romans the anxiety and suspicion which they had conceived about his retirement, they, ignorant with what counsel he had withdrawn and how much he was laboring for his people, thought that their letter should be directed not to him but to his clergy, lest, the Shepherd being absent, the flock should be scattered, or discipline be enfeebled.

[281] and he writes to the same, letters 22 and 25: St. Cyprian without doubt noticed this, and therefore wrote letter 22 to the same Roman clergy, and began it thus after the usual wish of health: After the letter made to you, most dear brethren, in which our action was set forth and the account of our discipline and diligence, such as it is, was declared, something else has come up, which ought not itself to be hidden from you. It is not needful to say more about the subject of this letter, since I have already treated it in this whole paragraph. This one thing I add: that the modesty of Celerinus the confessor is much praised in it, and that the rash letters of Lucianus and of the confessors, and also the religious letter of Caldonius, and those which he had written both in reply to this and to his own clergy about Lucianus's letter, were sent by him to the Romans by the same act, so that the account of all his doings might be thoroughly clear to them. He wrote another letter also, which for us is the twenty-fifth, to Moses, Maximus and the other Roman confessors, in which he extols with congratulation their unconquered constancy in the faith, and their vigor, worthy of confessors and martyrs, in guarding ecclesiastical discipline. But since the custom of that time was that the presidents of the churches should dispatch letters of this kind only by clerics, and since the fewness of these did not then permit it, he ordained Saturus a lector and Optatus a subdeacon, and used their service.

[282] about a Lector and a subdeacon ordained So the Saint himself testifies in letter 24, sent to his clergy, in which he so excuses himself for having done this without their knowledge that at the same time he shows that he did nothing in this part beyond custom without their consent, since both had long since been destined for those Orders by the common counsel of the whole clergy, when Saturus was permitted once and again to read in the church, and to Optatus among the lectors was committed the instruction of the catechumens. For he has thus in that place: But this too I ought to bring to you by my letter, that, the cause pressing, I sent a letter to the clergy dwelling in the City. And since it was fitting that I should write by clerics, but I know that very many of ours are absent, and that the few who are there scarcely suffice for the ministry of the daily work; it was necessary to appoint some new ones who might be sent. But know that I have made Saturus a lector, and Optatus the confessor a subdeacon, whom we had long since by common counsel made next to the clergy, when either we gave Saturus a lesson on the day of Easter once and again, or when, together with the presbyter-teachers, we were diligently testing the lectors and appointed Optatus among the lectors as a teacher of the hearers, examining whether all those things which ought to be in those who were being prepared for the clergy were suited to them. Nothing therefore new has been done by me in your absence; but what had long since begun by the common counsel of us all has, necessity pressing, been advanced.

[283] he informs his clergy. Thus he, anxiously taking care lest he should seem to have departed from his purpose, by which from the beginning of his episcopate he had determined to do nothing without the consent of his clergy. Now Baluze was mistaken when in his Notes he judged that St. Cyprian in this passage is treating of a letter transmitted not to the Roman clergy but to those of his own Carthaginian clergy who were then living at Rome. He was mistaken, I say; for, as Baluze himself confesses, he is treating of letter 22, which it is manifest to a reader was written to the Roman clergy. For the rest, since those two letters, namely 22 and 25, were composed before the Saint had received a reply from Rome to his letter 14, which from what has been said above seems to have been written in the month of July, they are to be referred to the end of that month or the beginning of the next.

\ elsewhere: vicinus*

§ XVI. Other things done by the Saint against the stubborn confessors and clerics and lapsed: letters to the Roman clergy, and from it and from the Roman confessors to him.

He praises the obedient lapsed; Meanwhile, while Optatus and Saturus were carrying their holy Bishop's letters to the Roman clergy and confessors, the humble penance of some of the lapsed, and their submissive will in all things, not a little refreshed his mind. It will be worth while to have reported this in the Saint's own words. In letter 27 to the lapsed he speaks thus: But certain of the lapsed have lately written to me, humble and meek, and trembling and

fearing God, and who have always worked gloriously and greatly in the Church, and have never charged their work to the Lord; knowing that he has said: "And when you shall have done all these things, say: We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we ought to do." Thinking on these things, and, although a certificate had been received from the martyrs, yet praying that their satisfaction might be admitted by the Lord, they wrote to me that they acknowledge their offense and are doing true penance, and are not hastening rashly or importunately to peace, but await our presence; saying that peace itself, too, if they receive it in our presence, will be the sweeter to them. How much I congratulated them the Lord is witness, who has deigned to show what such and so great servants earn from his kindness.

[285] But this joy of the excellent Shepherd was shortly after scattered by the intolerable audacity of other lapsed persons. the stubborn write arrogantly to him, For these, now not content to extort peace by importunate prayers or seditiously, as they had earlier done, began to keep saying that they already had it, as having been given them by Paulus the martyr. Nay, they came to such a pitch of audacity that they did not hesitate to signify this very thing to St. Cyprian by a common letter, written not with their names subscribed but in the name of the church, as though this were in the possession of the lapsed. This letter has perished, but both the Saint himself in his letter 27 just praised, and in 29 to the Roman clergy, and finally this clergy too in letter 30 to St. Cyprian, treat of it at length. And in the latter indeed the Romans complain that the immoderate petulance of the lapsed brethren, carried even to a dangerous rashness of words, was marked in their letter; and that at so unripe and bitter a time, in so vast and immense a crime and offense, they did not so much ask peace for themselves as claim it, nay, said that they already had it even in the heavens.

[286] And that they did not abstain from rather harsh words against their excellent Bishop, whom he sharply the same clergy testifies in the same place: saying: We know the faith of the Carthaginian church, we know its training, we know its humility. Whence we have also marveled that we should mark certain things flung against you in the letter rather harshly; since we had often found by many examples of reciprocal affection your mutual love and charity toward one another. That turbulent letter of the lapsed having been received, St. Cyprian, replying to them by letter 27, taught that the Church was so instituted by Christ the Lord that it should be governed by bishops, and that therefore he marveled at the audacity of the lapsed in making a letter in the name of the church; since the church is established in the bishop and clergy and in all who stand firm. Then how absurd this arrogance of theirs is he sets forth thus: But if certain lapsed persons wish to be the church, and if the church is with them and in them, what remains but that we should ask them to deign to admit us into the church? Submissive therefore and quiet and modest ought those to be who, mindful of their offense, ought to make satisfaction to God, and not to make a letter in the name of the church, when they should rather know that they are writing to the church. After this, having set before them the example of the modest penitents, of whose religious letter we treated at number 284, he admonishes that no certain reply is to be hoped for by them until they shall have written otherwise; and he exhorts them to modesty and quiet.

[287] and at the same time gently reproves. Which letter (of the truly penitent lapsed), he says, since I have lately received, and now have read that you have written otherwise, I ask that you distinguish your desires, and that whoever you are who have sent this letter, you subscribe your names to a certificate and transmit the certificate to me with the names of each. For it comes first to know to whom I have to write back. Then I shall write back to each thing you have written, according to the mediocrity of our place and action. I wish you, most dear brethren, ever to fare well, and to act quietly and tranquilly according to the Lord's discipline. Farewell. Thus the Saint: from which one may admire no less his unconquered fortitude in defending the discipline of the Church against turbulent men than his love toward the penitent and the marvelous meekness of his mind. Indeed, though he had already been so often provoked by them, and was now attacked by a new and even more wicked daring, he is moved neither by the number nor by the audacity of the seditious, but guards the rights of his church and the vigor of discipline no otherwise than before; but the harsher things which had been said against himself he passes over in silence, being intent on this alone, that he may recall to their duty minds unjustly embittered. In exactly the same way in letter 29, written on this matter to the Roman clergy, he complains of the violated law of penance, but is silent about the injury done to himself.

[288] He approves the excommunication pronounced by the clergy; From letter 29 we learn that about the same time another was written by him to the Carthaginian clergy, which is believed to be the twenty-eighth. In this the Saint praises his clergy because, by the common counsel both of his colleagues and of some bishops who happened to be present, they had barred from their communion Gaius, presbyter of Didda, and his deacon, who, by communicating with the lapsed and by offering their oblations, have been frequently detected in their depraved errors, and, once and again, … being admonished by their colleagues, that is, by bishops, not to do this, have obstinately persisted in their presumption and audacity. For to the flatteries and pernicious caresses of men of this kind — by which it comes about that the sick refuse the remedy — he observes that it must deservedly be ascribed that his salutary counsels had up to that point lacked the desired success. Hence he orders that thereafter whoever shall have communicated with the lapsed before his sentence be restrained by the same penalty, whether he be a presbyter or deacon of the church of Carthage or a stranger; and he orders this letter of his to be read out to the bishops then present or coming in, lest any discrepancy should arise among them in dealing with the lapsed.

[289] The same clergy had besides asked what was to be done about Philumenus and Fortunatus, subdeacons, he chastises the cowardly clerics and Favorinus, an acolyte, who, having withdrawn in the middle of the persecution, had then returned. These had without doubt fled from craven fear, against the will or without the knowledge of the prelates of the church of Carthage, when the confessors and the people most needed their service. St. Cyprian replies that he cannot act as sole judge in this matter, especially since besides those three many others also were absent, who had not yet thought they should resume their place. It must therefore be waited until, the Church's peace being restored and the cases of individuals examined, something might be decreed which should establish an example for the future concerning the ministers of the Church. Nor yet does he suffer them to be free from all penalty meanwhile; but, Meanwhile, he says, let them refrain only from the monthly division; not that they may seem to be deprived of the ecclesiastical ministry; but that, all things being kept entire, they may be deferred until our presence.

[290] Further, the word mensurnus, which Priscian claims for Cicero in book 1 of the Rhetorical Invention, with a penalty inflicted. is the same as menstruus, in which way some also have judged it should be read. The Saint uses the same word again in letter 34, where he says thus of Aurelius and Celerinus, ordained lectors: But know that we have already designated for them the honor of the presbytery, so that they may both be honored with the same allowances as the presbyters, and share the monthly divisions in equal amounts. The monthly division therefore was the monthly stipend customarily given to clerics out of the common treasury of each church, of which St. Cyprian wished those two subdeacons and the acolyte to be deprived meanwhile as a penalty for their unlawful departure, until it should be permitted, through the Church's peace, to determine something certain about their case and about that of the others who were guilty of the same offense.

[291] About all these things St. Cyprian, in order to lay the Roman clergy more and more under obligation to himself, He informs the Romans about what had been done informed them too by letter 29, borne by Fortunatus the subdeacon, as we learn from letter 30. Since Pearson disagrees about the time of this one, it will be worth while to have recited it here, especially since it is short. It is therefore of this kind: Both our common love and reason demand, most dear brethren, that nothing be withheld from your knowledge of those things which are done among us, so that we may have a common counsel about the advantage of the ecclesiastical administration. For after I made the letter to you which I sent by Saturus the lector and Optatus the subdeacon, the conspiring rashness of certain lapsed persons, who refuse to do penance and to make satisfaction to God, made a letter to me, not asking that peace be given them, but claiming it as though already given them; because they say that Paulus gave peace to all: as you will read in their letter, of which I have transmitted a copy to you; and at the same time what I have briefly written back to them for the time; but also what sort of letter I afterwards made to the clergy, that you might be able to know, I have sent you a copy of this matter too.

[292] But if their rashness shall be restrained neither by my letters nor by yours, and shall not obey salutary counsels, we shall do those things which according to the Gospel the Lord has commanded to be done. by letter 28, Pearson in his Annals, resting on no foundation, threw this letter back to the beginning of the month of October, and placed it after the Romans' reply to the Saint's letters 14 and 22; both of which I think foreign to the truth. For if he had already received from the Romans a reply to those two letters, that is, letter 31, when he himself was writing letter 29, he would beyond all doubt have mentioned it in this with a signification of a grateful mind. For nothing more desirable could have befallen him than that reply, in which he recognized his opinion praised and confirmed by the vote of the Roman clergy and of all the bishops who were present at Rome, and which he therefore esteemed so highly that he ordered a copy of it to be granted to all, both natives and comers; as we shall say below.

[293] which belongs to this time. Yet he makes no mention of that reply in this letter 29. Nay, he sufficiently intimates that he had even then received no reply, when he says: After I made the letter to you which I sent by Saturus the lector and Optatus the subdeacon, the conspiring rashness of certain lapsed persons … made a letter to me, etc. For just as in letter 22, which it is established was written before the Romans' reply, and which Pearson admits with us, giving the reason why, without awaiting it, he writes again, he thus prefaced: After the letter made to you … something else has come up, which ought not itself to be hidden from you; so here in a like manner he alleges an equal cause for writing again before receiving a reply to his earlier letter. Hence it does not seem doubtful to me that this letter 29 was written before the holy Bishop had received the Romans' reply to both his earlier letters, as the most eminent Baronius seems to have thought, and as Maran deservedly maintained. Further, that this letter was carried by Fortunatus the subdeacon we learn from letter 30, of which we shall presently treat, where we shall also observe something further about the time at which it was written.

[294] The Roman clergy, having read the Saint's letters, Meanwhile the Roman clergy, having read three

of those letters of St. Cyprian, namely 14, 15 and 22, of which we said in the preceding § that the first and the third were sent to that same clergy, but the second to Moses and the other Roman confessors, acknowledged the equity of that retirement, which up to that point it had held suspect, and his unwearied vigilance over his flock, and determined to help him, as he labored strenuously for the Church of God, with its counsel and authority. Therefore, an assembly having been gathered both of colleagues and also of bishops who partly held sees near Rome and partly had come thither, expelled from their own sees, it was long and much deliberated by them what seemed necessary to be done in so great a calamity of the Church. St. Cyprian's opinion pleased all, and was praised as altogether conformable to the discipline of the Roman Church: but since the Apostolic See was also vacant through the martyrdom of St. Fabian the Pontiff, it was decreed that nothing further be ordained until a new Pontiff should be substituted in the Chair of St. Peter.

[295] writes back to him, approving These things being thus determined, the said clergy, judging that there must be no further delay, replied to St. Cyprian in the common name of all by that most illustrious letter, truly worthy of an Apostolic Church, which is the thirty-first among Cyprian's. It is too long for me to think it should be inserted in this Commentary; and therefore it will suffice to have set it forth in a summary. In the first place they praise the most holy Bishop's humility and modesty, by which he did not hesitate to render them an account of all his counsels. Then they celebrate with worthy praises his salutary and just severity and vigor, and testify that the same discipline had always flourished in the Roman Church, and was not to be relaxed by them. They prove this from their earlier letter (now lost) which they had sent to the Carthaginian clergy, and in which they had both condemned the use of abominable certificates and detested the impiety of those who sacrificed. Hence that far from the Roman Church is that profane facility which, admitting the lapsed to peace without previous and just penance, loosens the sinews of severity, the majesty of faith being overthrown, and by which it comes about that … new wounds are impressed through a false mercy upon the old wounds of transgression, so that even penance is snatched away from the wretched to their greater overthrow… For this, they say, is not to cure; but, if we wish to speak the truth, to kill.

[296] That the mind of the confessors whom the Roman prison held for Christ's cause was plainly the same, whatever he had done thus far, they prove likewise from their letter, sent also to the Carthaginian clergy, but which is likewise lost. Having praised these, they give the greatest thanks to St. Cyprian for having deigned to console and refresh those illustrious confessors by his letter, which is the fifteenth among Cyprian's. Then, returning to the cause of the lapsed, they mention in a word the letter sent about it into Sicily, a copy of which they dispatch to him also; and, since they acknowledge that, the Roman See being vacant through St. Fabian's martyrdom, for whom the difficulty of affairs and times had not yet permitted another to be substituted, the decision of so great a matter must be deferred by them above the rest, they most highly approve St. Cyprian's opinion that nothing be laid down about an offense propagated through the whole Roman world without the common consent of the Church and a mature examination.

[297] Look, they say, upon almost the whole world laid waste, and see everywhere the remnants and the ruins of the fallen, and praises his opinion about the lapsed, and therefore so great a counsel is sought as the offense seems to have been widely spread. Let the medicine not be less than the wound, let the remedies not be less than the deaths; so that, as those who fell, fell because they were too incautious in blind rashness; so those who strive to arrange this should use all moderation of counsels, lest what has been done otherwise than it ought should be judged by all as invalid. That these things may obtain a happy end, having exhorted all to ask from God with continual prayers and weeping the common peace of the Church, they prescribe to the lapsed salutary precepts about doing penance fervently and constantly and about demanding peace patiently and modestly; and they bid them be always mindful no less of the divine justice than of the divine clemency: Since he who is entreated, they say, ought to be bent, not incited; and as the divine clemency ought to be regarded, so ought the divine censure also to be regarded; and as it is written: "I have forgiven you every debt, because you have asked me"; so it is written: "He who shall deny me before men, I too will deny him before my Father and before his angels."

[298] These same things they confirm by several other passages of sacred Scripture, praises, and at length subjoin in these words what they had meanwhile decreed about the cause of the lapsed: Of which tempering (of the divine clemency and justice) we, seeking here to hold the moderation, for a long time, and indeed many of us, and indeed with certain bishops near and neighboring to us, and with those whom the heat of that persecution had cast out from other provinces far distant, have thought that nothing should be innovated before the appointment of a Bishop; but we have believed that the care of the lapsed should be moderately tempered; so that meanwhile, while it is being endured that a Bishop be given us by God, the case of those who can endure the delays of postponement should be held in suspense; but that those whose pressing end cannot bear a delay of their life's ending, when penance has been done and detestation of their deeds frequently professed, if by tears, by groans, by weeping they shall have shown the signs of a grieving and truly penitent mind, when no hope of living according to man remains, should then at last warily and solicitously be helped, God himself knowing what he does about such persons, and how he weighs the balances of his judgment; while we, however, take anxious care that wicked men should not praise our ready facility, nor the truly penitent accuse our cruelty as harsh. We wish you, most blessed and most glorious Pope, ever to fare well in the Lord and to be mindful of us.

[299] with St. Moses and Novatian subscribing. That this letter was subscribed by St. Moses, then still shut up in prison, to which it therefore had to be carried, and was written by Novatian, who afterwards stirred up a dreadful schism and a cruel heresy against penance in the Church, St. Cyprian testifies in letter 52 to Antonianus, saying: It was added also (in the praised letter of the Roman clergy), Novatian then writing, and reciting with his own voice what he had written, and the presbyter Moses, then still a confessor, now already a martyr, subscribing, that peace should be given to the lapsed who were sick and set at their end. Hence also St. Pacian, bishop of Barcelona, in letter 3 against the Novatians' Tracts, proves Novatian's perfidy on this same head; since he, once agreeing with the Roman clergy and having written that excellent letter in favor of giving peace to the lapsed, afterwards, goaded by the stings of envy against St. Cornelius the Pontiff, wished the hope of peace to be shut off from all the lapsed. But about this schismatic we have already reported much in St. Cornelius's deeds, and shall report more in this very Commentary.

[300] Pamele from this letter seeks in vain another, It remains that we observe something about one passage of that same letter. The Romans in it speak thus: Although in so great a business it pleases us — which you yourself also have discussed — that first the Church's peace must be awaited, and then, a conference of counsels having thus been held with bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors and likewise laymen who stand firm, the account of the lapsed be treated. On this Pamele notes that, since the praised words nowhere exist in the earlier letters, it becomes probable that they were transcribed from a letter of St. Cyprian which has perished. The same he has on letter 26, in which the Roman confessors agree that the cases of the lapsed ought to be treated warily and moderately, all the bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors and the laymen themselves who stand firm being consulted; and they add, as in your letter you yourself also testify. Finally on letter 52, which is to Antonianus, he again warns that the letter in which he had written like things to the Romans has been lost.

[301] which has perished, in vain. But in vain does he try to hammer out from the passages adduced another letter to the Romans: for although in St. Cyprian's earlier letters the cited sentence is nowhere read expressed in the very same words, yet as to substance it stands in letter 13 to the clergy, which we have shown above to be one of the thirteen transmitted to the Romans. Now the Saint speaks thus in it: But the rest, who, having received no certificate from the martyrs, stir up ill will; since this is the cause not of a few, nor of the church of one province, but of the whole world, let them await from the Lord's protection the public peace of the Church itself. For this befits both the modesty and the discipline and the very life of us all, that the prelates, meeting with the clergy, in the presence too of the people who stand firm, to whom also honor must be paid for their faith and fear, may be able to arrange all things by the religious observance of a common counsel. These differ in words indeed, but not in substance, from the sentences praised, in which too some discrepancy of words occurs; and therefore the Romans could have designated this letter above; as also the eleventh, in which like things may be read: for that those periods were transcribed word for word from a letter of St. Cyprian no one will prove.

[302] To the letter of the Roman clergy reported above St. Moses and Maximus, presbyters, The Roman confessors write to him. and Nicostratus and Rufinus, deacons, and the other confessors, whom the Saint had consoled by letter 25, added their own also, sufficiently lengthy, from prison, which are reported among Cyprian's under the number 26. These, having first given thanks to St. Cyprian for his letter of consolation, by which they profess that they were marvelously refreshed in their workhouse and vehemently kindled to suffer anything whatsoever for the faith of Christ, ask his prayers, and commend his pastoral vigilance, however absent from his flock, and his unconquered vigor in preserving the Church's discipline. The rest which they subjoin is also of the same subject and opinion as the Roman clergy's letter; and therefore it is not necessary to repeat it here.

[303] Pearson in his Annals believed that the praised letters of the clergy and confessors were written at the end of the month of August, Pearson referred both letters but delivered to St. Cyprian in September; and that this delay ought not to seem strange to one considering what was done by the Romans before they replied. For this he alleges that saying of the Romans in letter 31: Seeking for a long time, and indeed many of us, and indeed with bishops near and neighboring to us, and with those whom the heat of that persecution had cast out from other provinces far distant, … we have thought that nothing should be innovated, etc. But Maran rightly observed that that reply is deferred by Pearson longer than is just; since the disturbance of the church of Carthage needed a swift medicine, and the excellent Bishop, laboring amid so many billows, had to be relieved of the vexation which their sinister suspicion had increased, and every delay of a reply could not but weigh upon him.

[304] Nor do the cited words of the Romans require so great a delay: later than is just. for since at Rome too some had lapsed, it is not to be doubted that the clergy had already treated their case before St. Cyprian's letter was received, so that they could say that they had deliberated for a long time, although they had spent only a few days after receiving

the said letter upon that same business. But the bishops who were called into counsel did not have to be summoned from afar; but these were either near Rome, or, expelled from other provinces, were already staying there; so that on this head either the reply need not have been so long deferred, but could already have been delivered to St. Cyprian in the month of August. Hence observe further that letter 29, which we showed in the preceding paragraph was written before the holy Bishop had received the said reply, is wrongly referred by Pearson to the beginning of October.

§ XVII. He takes care that the Romans' letter be published; he receives another from them: a nearby peace is revealed to him, and to hasten it he admonishes his people about praying to God.

He takes care that the letter received from the Romans With how great joy the aforesaid letter of the Romans affected the most holy Prelate may be gathered from the magnitude of the evil under which his church was laboring, and which, as he anxiously tried to cure it, had stirred up against him the ill will of some of his clergy, of very many confessors, and of almost all the lapsed, as though he were severer than was fair. But for this evil no remedy could be more immediate than the praised letter, in which, while by the authority of the Roman clergy and confessors whatever had been done by St. Cyprian was approved, the pernicious facility of the African confessors and of the rashly indulgent clerics, and the unjust complaints and effrontery of the lapsed about their Bishop, were at the same time beaten back. Nor did St. Cyprian suffer it long to lie hidden, but dispatched a copy of it to his clergy, anxiously taking care that it should come to the knowledge of all, both strangers and natives.

[306] be copied, and brought to the knowledge of all. This is clear from his letter 32, which he wrote on this matter to his clergy in these words: What sort of letter I made to the clergy acting at Rome, and what they wrote back to me; what also Moses and Maximus, presbyters, and Nicostratus and Rufinus, deacons, and the other confessors set with them in custody, likewise wrote back to my letter, that you might be able to know, most dear brethren, I have transmitted you copies to be read. Do you take care, so far as you can by your diligence, that our writings and their replies may become known to our brethren. But also if any strangers, bishops my colleagues, or presbyters, or deacons, be present or come in, let them hear all these things from you: and if they wish to transcribe copies of the letters and to carry them to their own people, let them receive the opportunity of transcribing.

[307] he takes care that it be carried. Although I have also charged Saturus the lector, our brother, to give to each one who desires it the power of copying, so that in composing in whatever way for the time the state of the churches, one faithful agreement may be preserved by all. But about the other things which will have to be done, as I have written also to very many of my colleagues, we shall treat more fully by common counsel, when, the Lord permitting, we shall have begun to come together in one place. The same letter likewise, for approving the equity of his opinion and for confuting Novatian, as has been said above, he praised in letter 52 to Antonianus, where he also says that it was transmitted in every direction; saying: Which letter was sent through the whole world, and was brought to the knowledge of all the churches and of all the brethren. Further, from the fact that the Saint here says that he had charged Saturus to give anyone the opportunity of copying the said letters, some gather that they had been brought from Rome by that same Saturus; which, though uncertain from the passage, yet, since it is established that he together with Optatus was the bearer of letter 22 to the Romans, it is also probable that he brought back the Romans' replies.

[308] Not very long afterwards another letter of the Roman clergy, He receives another letter from them, by which reply was made to Cyprian's twenty-ninth, which we exhibited at number 291, seems to have been brought into Africa. In this the Romans, after signifying the grief which they had conceived both from the excellent Bishop's affliction and from the arrogance of the lapsed, sharply chastise the petulance of these and the immodesty of Lucianus and of the other confessors who adhered to him, and try to bring the latter back to modesty, the former to humility and penance. But they praise Cyprian's constancy and Evangelical severity, and exhort him to persevere in it, and bid him hope that those who then were rejecting the medicine would afterwards rejoice that they had been deferred with respect to it.

[309] From the same letter we learn that St. Cyprian had signified something to them about Privatus, the heretic of Lambaesis, in which Privatus the heretic is mentioned. mention of whom will recur below; about whom, since nothing is read in letter 29, if this exists entire, he seems to have done this by a particular letter. For the Romans write thus: But as regards Privatus of Lambaesis, you have acted according to your custom, in wishing to announce the matter to us as one of anxiety. For it befits all of us to keep watch for the body of the whole Church, whose members are distributed through all the various provinces. But even before your letter the fraud of the crafty man could not be hidden from us: for when before this a certain standard-bearer of Privatus, Futurus, had come from the cohort of his own wickedness, and was taking care fraudulently to elicit a letter from us; neither was it hidden who he was, nor did he receive the letter which he wanted.

[310] Pamele believed that this letter was written before that longer one of which we treated in the preceding §, In what order the praised letters were written, thinking that by it a reply was made for the time by the Romans to St. Cyprian's various letters, until the longer one should be written by common and mature counsel. But to me it seems that from both letters the quite contrary must be said, and that the one which is the thirty-first should be put before the thirtieth. Take the reason. St. Cyprian, after letter 15, in which he rendered the Roman clergy an account of his retirement and of all he had done in it for his flock, wrote first letter 22, and then also 29 to the same clergy. But in letter 22, which we have from letter 24 was carried to Rome by Optatus the subdeacon and Saturus the lector, the Saint complained of the rashness of some confessors, and chiefly of Lucianus, and of the arrogance of the lapsed arising thence. But in the twenty-ninth he laid down other complaints about the lapsed, who, having become still bolder, had written to him, not asking that peace be given them, but claiming it as though already given them.

[311] To the subject of this last letter there answers most closely letter 30, namely the twenty-ninth, which the Roman clergy began thus: When we had read through, most dear Brother, your letter which you had sent by Fortunatus the subdeacon, we were stricken with a twofold grief and confounded with a double sorrow; both that no rest was afforded you amid such necessities of persecution, and that the immoderate petulance of the lapsed brethren, carried even to a dangerous rashness of words, was marked, etc. Then he goes on sharply to chastise the rashness of those lapsed persons and of the confessors who were instigating them, and finally mentions Privatus the heretic, about whom the Saint had announced something to them. This whole letter therefore is a reply to letter 29 alone, borne by Fortunatus, not to the others carried by others — if you except what is said about Privatus, of whom no mention exists even in the earlier letters, so that one may suspect that the Romans were informed about that heretic by St. Cyprian either by a particular letter or by Fortunatus himself.

[312] the thirtieth and the thirty-first. On the contrary, letter 31 contains a reply to all the rest in such a way that it is indeed plain that the rashness of the confessors and of the lapsed had become known to the Roman clergy from the earlier letters, yet so that that utmost audacity which is set forth in letter 29 seems to have been hidden from it. I judge therefore that letter 29 was written by St. Cyprian before he had received from the Romans a reply to his earlier ones, and was brought to Rome by Fortunatus when they had already dispatched their thirty-first into Africa, so that the bearers of the two could have met each other, while one of them was hastening into Africa, the other into Italy. Nor does it matter that the Romans in letter 31 say: That we do not say this falsely, our earlier letter has proved, in which we set forth our opinion to you. For they are here treating of a letter sent not to Cyprian but to the clergy, which has perished, and which the Saint had written in letter 22, in the words reported at number 279, had been read by him, and in which, on his testimony, the full vigor of the Gospel and the robust discipline were contained. That this is so is gathered from the fact that the Romans in the praised letter 31 say that in that earlier letter they had set forth their opinion against the libellatici, of whom in their earlier letter which we have there is absolutely no mention.

[313] A nearby peace is revealed to him, To the solace which the holy Bishop had received from the Romans' letter there was added another much greater, namely a divine promise about the Church's nearby peace, of which he speaks thus in letter 7, elsewhere 8, to his clergy: Finally, to his least Servant, and one set amid offenses, though very many, and unworthy of his favor, yet he in his goodness toward us has deigned to give charge: "Tell him," he says, "let him be secure; for peace is coming; but that there is meanwhile a little delay, some still remain who are to be tested." Nor did the Saint delay to make his flock a sharer in so glad a piece of news; especially since the hope of a near peace seemed likely to contribute not a little to composing the minds of the lapsed, who had borne the deferring of their cause the more grievously the further off they believed peace to be. Yet since the Saint, instructed both by the divine precepts of the Scriptures and by heavenly visions, well knew that that horrible storm had been sent to chastise the offenses of the faithful, and would not have lasted so long if these, seriously converted to penance, had implored God's mercy in the way that was fitting, he determined out of his pastoral solicitude to exhort his people again to remove at once the causes of so great an evil and the delays in the restoring of peace.

[314] which he announces to the clergy, admonishing them, He does this by the said letter, which we said in §10 is wrongly numbered by Pearson among the thirteen letters sent to the Romans together with the fourteenth. St. Augustine praises it in book 4 On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 2, saying that it was written to the clerics about praying to God, which is the subject and aim of the whole letter. For he does this one thing in it, that they, acknowledging that that persecution was inflicted for their offenses, may strive to hasten the divinely promised peace, entreating God not by voice alone but by fastings and tears and by every kind of supplication. But in order that they may obtain it the sooner, he bids them diligently avoid two things in prayer, by which he had learned, God revealing it, that they had vehemently displeased God; namely, that they should not pray with a discordant mind, nor drowsily. Let us ask, he says, and we shall receive; and if there be delay and slowness in receiving, since we have grievously offended, let us knock, because it shall be opened also to him who knocks, if only our prayers, groans and tears knock at the door, upon which we must persist and continue; and if the prayer be unanimous.

[315] For what more urged and compelled me to write this letter to you, you ought to know that they may by concordant (as the Lord has deigned to show and reveal): that it was said in a vision: "Ask, and you obtain"; then afterwards it was commanded to the people standing by that they should ask for certain persons designated to them: but in asking there were dissonant voices and unequal wills, and this vehemently displeased him who had said: "Ask, and you obtain"; because the people's inequality was at variance, and there was not among the brethren one and simple and joined agreement of concord. From this dissension he teaches that the cause of the peace hitherto denied is to be derived, and proves this from Matthew, chapter 18, thus: "But I say to you" (the words are Christ's) "that if two of you shall agree on earth about anything whatsoever you shall ask, it shall be done for you by my father who is in heaven." But if two who are unanimous can do so much, the holy Bishop goes on, what if unanimity were among all? But if, according to the peace which the Lord has given us, it were agreed among all the brethren, we should long since have obtained from the divine mercy what we ask; nor should we so long be tossing in this danger of our salvation and our faith. Nay indeed, these evils would not have come upon the brethren, if the brotherhood had been animated as one.

[316] He subjoins here another vision also, by which the persecution to be inflicted as a penalty for sins had been foretold long before, and by assiduous prayers and which we have already reported at number 127, and therefore pass over here. About the other thing which he had said must be avoided he has thus: Let us pray instantly, and groan with assiduous prayers. For know, most dear brethren, that this too was not long ago reproached to us through a vision, that we are drowsy in our prayers, and do not pray watchfully. From these things gather in passing, studious reader, how great must have been that most holy Bishop's union with God, how acceptable to him was his vigilance, whom he deigned to instruct with such frequent revelations. But since he knew that these things had been said to him for the instructing of his flock, he wished that they should come to the knowledge of all. I ought not, he said, to dissemble these several things and to hide them alone within my own conscience, by which each of us can both be instructed and be ruled. Nor do you finally keep this letter hidden among yourselves; but suggest that it be read to the brethren: for to intercept what the Lord deigns to admonish and instruct us in belongs to one who does not wish his brother to be admonished and instructed.

[317] Finally, with how great an ardor of mind, and to what end, he desired the Church's peace, obtain it more speedily; he signifies at the end of the letter in these words: Discipline has gone before, pardon will follow. Let us only, ceasing not to ask and receiving with faith, simple and unanimous, entreat the Lord, entreating with groaning and weeping alike, as those ought to entreat who are set among the ruins of the mourning and the remnants of the fearful, among the numerous slaughter of the languishing and the scanty firmness of those who stand. Let us ask that peace be restored the sooner, that our hiding-places and dangers be quickly succored, that those things be fulfilled which the Lord deigns to show to his servants: the reintegration of the Church, the security of our salvation, after rains fair weather, after darkness light, after storms and whirlwinds a calm gentleness, the loving aids of a father's love, the accustomed mighty works of the divine Majesty, by which both the blasphemy of the persecutors may be beaten back, and the penance of the lapsed be reshaped, and the strong and steadfast confidence of those persevering be glorified.

[318] for the persecution was raging; That the persecution, when he wrote these things, was still sharply raging, is manifest, both because he says of it in this letter: Which has laid waste our flock for the greatest part, and still up to now lays it waste; and because, when he had said: Tortures came, and tortures with no end of the torturer, with no outcome of condemnation, with no solace of death, tortures which do not easily release to the crown, but torment so long as to cast down; unless someone, withdrawn by divine favor, has made his passage amid the very torments, having attained glory not by the ending of the punishment but by the swiftness of dying — when, I say, he had said these things, he presently subjoins: These things we suffer by our offense and by our desert: which words brilliantly demonstrate the present atrocity of the persecution. Nor is Tillemont's and Maran's suspicion empty, that about this time some of the clergy, which up to then had stood whole, succumbed; whose lapse St. Cyprian bewails in letter 5, written about the end of this year; saying: The hostile storm, which has laid low our people for the greatest part, has added this heap also to our griefs, that it should touch a portion of the clergy too with its ruin. Of the same he makes mention also in letter 35, as we shall see in its place.

[319] But whether 5 leading men of the city But I do not see why it seemed to Maran in §15 of the Life that what St. Cyprian in letter 40, on occasion of the schism of the five presbyters, touches upon in plainly obscure words in this manner should be referred to this time rather than to some one of the earlier months: Those five presbyters are nothing else than those five leading men who were lately joined to the magistrates by an edict, to undermine our faith, to turn the slender hearts of the brethren aside to deadly snares by a prevarication of the truth. The same reasoning now, the same overthrow again through five presbyters joined to Felicissimus, is being brought in for the ruin of salvation, etc. About this schism we shall treat in §20; but as regards our point, not all interpret those words about the leading men in the same way. Pamele in his Annotations believed that not a true history but a vision is reported, in which the presbyters' schism was foresignified to the Saint by five leading men of the city joined to the magistrates for persecuting the Church.

[320] [then first joined themselves to the magistrate against the Christians is uncertain.] This opinion is favored by that manner of speaking: Those five presbyters are nothing else than those five leading men, etc.: but since no mention is made here of a vision, and it is treated as a matter commonly known, it will then have to be said that that vision had already earlier been indicated to the Carthaginian clergy by a letter which is now lost. The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 253, number 31, took the same words of five other presbyters, who, having become deserters of the faith, gave their service to the magistrates in persecuting the faithful. But this opinion lacks all foundation; nor does any reason persuade us to understand by five leading men as many presbyters. Add that on Baronius's opinion these things would have happened at the beginning of the persecution: which, if it were true, St. Cyprian would beyond all doubt have chastised so detestable a perfidy, especially in presbyters, according to its deserts in his earlier letters, which nevertheless he is nowhere read to have done. Nay, since he first mentions the lapse of some of the clergy toward the end of the persecution, namely in letters 5 and 35, what Baronius here reports about those five presbyters is not probable.

[321] Tillemont in Note 25, although he thinks Pamele's conjecture probable, adds nevertheless another; namely that the magistrates of Carthage, when they were promulgating some edict against the Christians, perhaps in fact ordered five of the leading men to stand by them or to subscribe the edict. Finally Maran does not doubt that no revelation is here recorded; but that five leading men of the city are said to have been really joined to the magistrates in promulgating or executing an edict of this kind; and that now the same danger to the Church was arising from the five schismatic presbyters which those leading men had created. Nor does this interpretation displease me: but why he places so late that effort contributed by those five leading men for undermining the faith, I do not perceive; unless perhaps because they are said to have done it lately. But that word can easily be extended to some months earlier, on Maran's own testimony in § XX of the Life, where he contends that it can be taken even of things done a year before.

§ XVIII. He commends to his clergy the care of the confessors and of the poor: he creates Aurelius and Celerinus lectors: he writes to the Roman confessors: he joins St. Numidicus the presbyter to that same clergy.

The Saint commends to his clergy the care To the same year 250 as it grew old there belong several letters in which St. Cyprian more than once signified the hope of his return, which he had conceived from a divine revelation, as was said above. I do not wish to reduce them to certain months, as some have done, without a certain argument; nor to contend which is to be put before which, since I find in them no marks from which this could be determined. In the first place, about this time there seems to have been written letter 37, which with Maran we have thought should be thrown back hither, against Pearson and Tillemont, who fixed it to the month of May. The reason is the one we have already touched upon, namely that he speaks in it of his early return to Carthage; which Tillemont does not seem to have observed, who for the same cause himself judged that one and another letter could not be recounted among the thirteen sent to the Romans.

[323] By this letter the holy Bishop admonished his clergy, as he had already often done elsewhere, of those dying in prison, about the care and honor to be zealously shown to the confessors, both living and dead, and also to the poor who had not fallen away from the faith, testifying that in this part he would yield to no one, if it were permitted him to be present. And would that, he says, the condition of my place and rank permitted that I myself might now be present: ready and glad, I would fulfil in solemn ministry all the services of love toward our most brave brethren. But let your diligence, I beseech, represent my office, and do all things which ought to be done concerning those whom the divine favor has made illustrious in such merits of their faith and virtue. But he chiefly does this in it, that there be imparted a more attentive vigilance and care also to the bodies of all who, although they have not been tortured, yet depart in prison by a glorious outcome of death; since confessors of this kind are to be recounted among the blessed martyrs, as he there proves at length.

[324] Hence he orders that their names and the days on which they die be transmitted to him, so that he might be able to celebrate their memory, whose names he asks for, no less than that of the other martyrs, as he had up to then done in his retirement, and as he hoped shortly to do with his clergy at Carthage. Finally, he says, note down also the days on which they depart; that we may be able to celebrate their commemorations among the memorials of the martyrs. Although Tertullus, our most faithful and most devoted brother, in accordance with the rest of his solicitude and care, which he imparts to the brethren in every service of work, who is not lacking there either about the care of the bodies, has written and does write, and signifies to me the days on which our blessed brethren in prison pass over to immortality by the outcome of a glorious death; and here there are celebrated by us oblations and Sacrifices for their commemorations, which shortly, with the Lord protecting, we shall celebrate with you.

[325] and of the poor. Finally he commends the zealous care of the poor who had stood firm in the faith, to whom indeed, he says, greater love and care must now be shown by us, in that, neither driven by poverty nor laid low by the storm of persecution, they faithfully serve with the Lord, and now to the other poor also

they have afforded an example of faith. Further, from these things one may gather, first, how highly the Saint esteemed the martyrs and confessors, and with how great solicitude he was zealous not only for relieving their want while they lived, but also for celebrating their glory after death; since, not content with Tertullus's service, however zealous, he wished the task of noting down their names and the days of their death to be commended to the whole clergy. Secondly, since in this letter no mention is made of martyrs openly killed by torments, but only of those who died in prison, we gather that the persecution, when these things were being written, was proceeding less savagely; which the hope of an early return signified, and what he adds about the poor as though the storm were now over, likewise confirms.

[326] Aurelius and Celerinus, young men To the same year as it ended are likewise to be referred what is read in letter 33 and the two following about Aurelius and Celerinus ordained lectors, and about Numidicus admitted into the Carthaginian clergy. Aurelius and Celerinus were a noble pair of young men, who, furnished no less with virtues than illustrious for their glorious confession of Christ and for the tortures endured for it, had by holiness of morals surpassed their age; both of them equal, as St. Cyprian says in letter 34, and both alike, as much humble in modesty as they are sublime in glory, as much submissive in their own quiet and tranquillity as they are advanced by divine favor, and affording to individuals examples alike of virtues and of morals, suited both to the encounter and to peace, praiseworthy there for strength, here for modesty. The first of them, Aurelius, having twice confessed Christ in Africa, had most bravely borne first exile and then torments; nor did the holy Prelate know which he ought rather to proclaim in him, the glory of his wounds or the modesty of his morals.

[327] illustrious for their virtues and confession, Celerinus counted his grandmother Celerina, and his uncle on the father's side and his uncle on the mother's side, Laurentius or Laurentinus, and Egnatius \, among the holy martyrs crowned by a glorious death, and himself, by no means degenerate, having bravely contended at Rome with Decius, the author of the persecution, had kept faith with Christ, and, released from prison — I know not for what cause — and returned into Africa, in his glorious body, that I may use St. Cyprian's words from the praised letter again, he kept the clear marks of his wounds … and the traces impressed on his sinews and limbs consumed by long wasting.* He is that very Celerinus whose modest letter, full of piety, to Lucianus stands among Cyprian's as the twentieth, and which the holy Bishop much praised in letter 22. Of the same, together with SS. Celerina, Ignatius and Laurentinus, treatment has been made in our Work at the third day of February, on which they are inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.

[328] But to return to St. Cyprian: he, intent on repairing the losses of his church, he destines for the presbyterate, and ordains lectors did not suffer such illustrious champions, whose ministry he knew would be for no less ornament than profit, to be numbered any longer among the laity; and because their age was not yet ripe for the presbytery, he ordained them lectors for the time, yet in such a way that from thenceforth they should enjoy some prerogatives of presbyters. Yet know, he says in letter 34, that these have for the time been appointed lectors, because it was fitting that a lamp be set upon a candlestick, whence it may shine to all, and that glorious faces be set in a higher place, where, being seen by the whole brotherhood standing round, they may afford an incitement to glory to those who see them. But know that we have already designated for them the honor of the presbytery, so that they may both be honored with the same allowances as the presbyters, and share the monthly divisions in equal amounts, being about to sit with us when their years are advanced and strengthened; although he can seem in nothing less by the character of his age who has consummated his age by the dignity of glory.

[329] That, however, both were not ordained on the same day, for the time; but Aurelius first and Celerinus a little later, is gathered from the two letters by which the Saint informed his clergy and people of the ordination of each — which otherwise he would have done by one and the same letter, just as by letter 24 he had announced that Saturus the lector and Optatus the subdeacon were created by him. And Celerinus indeed had at first, out of modesty, as it is fair to believe, somewhat resisted; but afterwards, being admonished by a heavenly vision, he suffered himself to be initiated, to the vast joy indeed of the holy Bishop. For in letter 34 he thus addresses his people: Exult therefore and rejoice with us at our letter, in which I and my colleagues who were present report to you that our brother Celerinus, glorious alike in virtues and in morals, has been joined to our clergy not by human favor but by divine favor. Who, when he hesitated to consent to the church, was compelled by its own admonition and exhortation in a vision by night, that he should not refuse us when we urged him. To whom more was permitted, and it compelled him; because it was neither lawful nor fitting that he should be without ecclesiastical honor whom the Lord had so honored with the dignity of heavenly glory.

[330] Further, because the ordination of both, without consulting clergy and people, had been made beyond custom, St. Cyprian by two letters, as I said above, of which the former, the thirty-third, is about Aurelius, the other, the thirty-fourth, about Celerinus, and announces this to clergy and people. admonished them of this matter, and taught why he had not thought their consent, which he was otherwise wont to await, should be waited for. In the earlier letter he writes thus: In the ordinations of clerics, most dear brethren, we are wont to consult you beforehand, and to weigh the morals and merits of individuals by common counsel: but human testimonies must not be awaited when divine ones go before. Then he follows Aurelius's illustrious confession and excellent virtues with a notable eulogy, and says that he was moved by these to promote him to the lectorate; which he did not doubt would be pleasing also to clergy and people. The same reason for Celerinus's ordination he hands down in letter 34, whose unconquered constancy in the faith and other excellent Christian endowments he celebrates with an equal eulogy.

[331] The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 253, number 88, ties these things to the month of December; A few things concerning both letters because he believed that this had already then been established, after the manner of the ancestors, for holding sacred ordinations. But whether that reckoning of time was then observed in Africa I would not dare to affirm; yet nothing hinders their having really happened in the said month. But Pearson's opinion certainly lacks all foundation, who, because in letter 33 about Aurelius it is said: And since joy always hastens, and gladness cannot bear delays, he has read for us for the time on the Lord's day, lays down that he was initiated on the very Kalends of December, on which in the year 250 the Lord's day had fallen. It lacks all foundation, I say: for although it were established about the month of December, by what — I ask — even probable reason will he persuade us that the Lord's day designated by the Saint was the first rather than any other of that same month?

[332] are observed. It is likewise uncertain what St. Cyprian meant when he presently subjoined to the cited words: That is, he has taken the auspices of peace, while he dedicates the reading. Not inept, however, is the interpretation of those who would have this said of the Church's dawning peace; as if the Saint had said that Aurelius by a happy omen began to discharge the office of lector while the Church was being refreshed by the first rays of a near peace. For this opinion is made probable both by what we reported in the preceding § about peace divinely promised and to be granted after a little delay, and by what the Saint again subjoins in this same letter about the hope of his return, saying: Do you frequently persist in prayers, and help our prayers with your prayers, so that the Lord's mercy, favoring us, may quickly restore to his people both a Priest unharmed, and a martyr (Aurelius) with the Priest as a lector.

[333] Letter 15 to the Roman confessors, Further, the said Celerinus gave the Saint occasion for writing letter 15, elsewhere 16, to SS. Moses and Maximus, presbyters, which accordingly is recounted in Pamele's and Baluze's editions in the wrong place. Celerinus, released from the Roman prison which he had endured with the aforesaid confessors, and returned into Africa, as we have said, had frequently related to St. Cyprian how highly they esteemed him and how honorably they spoke of him; which was very pleasing to the excellent Bishop, laboring under the ill will of very many of his own. That he might therefore return them a grateful requital, he sent them the praised letter, in which, having briefly indicated the joy which he had conceived from such news, he followed their unconquered strength of mind and the glory of their long imprisonment with excellent praises, and demanded their prayers, likewise promising them his own, which nevertheless out of humility he acknowledged to be far unequal. It will be worth while to have recited some of his words.

[334] when was it written? And we indeed, he says, mindful of you by day and by night, both when we make prayer in the Sacrifices with many, and when in retirement we pray with private prayers, ask from the Lord full favor for your crowns and praises. But for returning you a requital our mediocrity is too small. You give more, when you remember us in prayer, etc. Now that this letter was written in the year 250 as it drew toward its close is proved by the fact that he celebrates in it their year-long imprisonment, into which they had been cast at the beginning of that same year, saying among other things: Behold, in you a heavenly dignity has been marked with the brightness of a yearly honor. Yet since he mentions neither the peace divinely promised nor Celerinus ordained lector, not even by a word, it seems to have been written before these things happened, and the Saint must be said to have spoken here after the manner of orators — nor unusual for him elsewhere — reckoning as already elapsed a year that was to elapse not very long after.

[335] About the same time — whether a little before or after the ordination of Aurelius and Celerinus is uncertain — He joins St. Numidicus the presbyter a like new ornament accrued to the Carthaginian church through St. Numidicus, of whom St. Cyprian informed the clergy and people by letter 35, which, because it sets forth the whole matter briefly, I transfer hither. It runs thus: It had to be announced to you, most dear brethren, what pertains both to our common gladness and to the greatest glory of our church. For know that we have been admonished and instructed by divine favor that Numidicus the presbyter be enrolled in the number of the Carthaginian presbyters, and sit with us among the clergy — illustrious with the most brilliant light of confession, and sublime with the honor of virtue and faith; who by his exhortation sent before him a copious number of martyrs slain by stones and flames, and who gladly beheld his wife, clinging to his side, burned together with the rest — preserved rather, I should say. He himself, half-burned and buried under stones and left for dead, while afterwards his daughter with the anxious service of devotion sought out her father's corpse, was found half-alive and drawn out and revived, and remained behind, unconquered \, from the companions whom he himself had sent before. But the cause of his remaining, as we see, was this, that the Lord might join him to our clergy, and might adorn with glorious priests the company made desolate by the lapse of some of our presbyters.*

[336] And he shall indeed be promoted, when God shall have permitted, to a more ample place of his own region (Pamele reads: of his own religion), to his clergy. when we shall have come into their presence, with the Lord protecting. Meanwhile,

let what is shown be done, that we may receive this gift of God with thanksgiving, hoping from the Lord's mercy for many ornaments of this kind, so that, the strength of his church being restored, he may make men so meek and humble flourish in the honor of our assembly. Of this St. Numidicus and of the very many companions praised — who were all passed over by the ancient martyrologists, but are inscribed in the Roman Martyrology at the ninth day of August — treatment has been made at that same day in our Work, in volume 2 of that month; and it was there observed that their martyrdom, from which St. Numidicus was drawn half-alive, happened not in the persecution of Valerian, as the Roman has it, but rather under Decius; which Baronius too judged in the Annals. The same most eminent one at the year of Christ 253, number 95, rightly noted, with our Sollier agreeing in the place just cited, that that holy martyr is not here said by St. Cyprian to have been then created a presbyter, as it seemed among others to Pamele in the argument of the letter; but that he, being already then a presbyter, was aggregated on account of his illustrious martyrdom to the clergy of the primatial see of all Africa.

[337] Yet Pearson at the year 246, number 2, tries in vain to raise from this a suspicion about the use of matrimony then permitted to presbyters: Pearson's empty animadversion. as though indeed he could not have been joined in matrimony and have begotten a daughter before the presbyterate, nor his wife have been burned at his side, unless it had been lawful for him to marry her or to use her when already a presbyter. This therefore ought first to have been proved by Pearson, in order that he might get anything from the cited passage for asserting the marriage of presbyters. But what both he and Pamele, Tillemont and Maran, following Pamele's reading, judged, is probable: namely that St. Cyprian, when he said that Numidicus was to be promoted to a more ample place of his own religion, destined the episcopate for him: but whether he afterwards conferred it upon him is unexplored, since no bishop of that name occurs in Cyprian's letters or in the Council of Carthage. Baluze on the authority of two ancient codices preferred to read of his own region, and to interpret that word of one of the regiones into which cities were once wont to be divided.

\* elsewhere: Ignatius

\ read: invitus*

§ XIX. The Church's peace dawning, he rebukes by letters the unruly confessors: he prudently defers his return: he again commends to the clergy the support of the poor.

The persecution being lulled, some confessors At the end of the year of Christ 250, or certainly at the beginning of 251, the church of Carthage began more and more from day to day to enjoy the benefit of the peace divinely promised to St. Cyprian. So we learn from letters 5 and 6, elsewhere 6 and 7, in which we see the confessors released from prison, the exiles returned to their country, and the holy Bishop himself now seriously thinking about his return to Carthage. How great a joy the Bishop, most loving of his flock, took from this, one may conjecture from what has been said above: but a new and again unforeseen rashness and petulance of some vehemently diminished it. Some of the number of those confessors, puffed up with the glory of their confession and unmindful of the Christian name, not only did not blush to contend with quarrels and revilings, but even to defile themselves with drunkenness and wantonness; as though they had been released from prison in order to dishonor by an infamous abuse of liberty the Church which they had made illustrious by their faith and constancy while in bonds.

[339] rush into vices: the Saint, not yet daring To this evil was added the rashness of the exiles, who, impatient of a longer delay, returned into their country before permission to come back had been given, and created a most immediate danger that the gentiles, provoked by this audacity, should punish them as despisers of their magistrates and laws, not without disgrace to the Church, and should revive the barely lulled persecution. These things did not long lie hidden from the most vigilant Prelate, who, to meet so foul and dangerous an evil, wrote letter 5, elsewhere 6, to his clergy, and 6, elsewhere 7, to Rogatianus the presbyter and to the other confessors, both of which we ought here to weigh for a knowledge of the affairs of that time. In the earlier letter the Saint, having briefly testified his grief at the lapse of some of the clergy, whom the persecution had added to the slaughter of the laity, and having exhorted the rest to constancy, writes thus about his return and the cause of deferring it: Although the case would compel me that I ought myself to hasten and come to you, first from eagerness and longing for you, which thing is the chief of my wishes; and then that we might together handle those matters which the common good demands concerning the governance of the church, and might polish them when examined by the counsel of many; yet it has seemed better to keep for the time still to concealment and quiet, out of regard for other advantages which pertain to the peace and safety of us all, of which an account will be rendered to you by Tertullus, our most dear Brother; who, in accordance with the rest of his care, which he lavishly imparts to divine works, was also the author of this counsel, that I should be cautious and moderate, and should not rashly commit myself to the public gaze, especially in that place where I had so often been demanded and sought.

[340] Hence he asks them that they, whose presence there was by no means invidious to come forth from his retirement, commends the care of the poor, and not so dangerous, should discharge his office. But he especially commends the care of the poor who were standing with unshaken faith, and orders that all necessities be provided for them, lest, he says, what the storm did not do to those who stood firm, necessity should do to those who labor; that is, lest, driven by want, they should betray the faith which they had preserved while the persecution raged. He was much more solicitous still about the confessors released from prison; for although he knew that the greatest part of them had been kindly received by the faithful, nay that very many brethren, as he says in letter 6, were vying with one another in coming together out of their love, and were helping their necessities with their consolations; yet if any of them perchance were in need, he orders that everything be liberally supplied to them, no otherwise than while they were in prison. For he speaks thus in the same letter 5: Let a more attentive care be imparted to the glorious confessors also. And although I know that very many of these have been received by the brethren's goodwill and love, yet, if there be any who lack either clothing or maintenance, as I had also written to you long ago when they were still set in prison, let there be supplied to them whatever things are necessary.

[341] For making these expenditures the Saint had once and again sent money, money having been sent, to the clergy, as he testifies to those same confessors in letter 6 in the words which I subjoin. Although I have written to our clergy both lately, when you were still set in prison, but also now again most fully, that, if anything be necessary either for your clothing or for your food, it be supplied; yet I myself also have sent you from my own small resources, which I carried with me, 250; but I had also lately sent another 250. Victor also, from a lector a deacon, who is with me, has sent you 175. Yet, lest the church should feed with its alms those unworthy of them, in the earlier letter 5 he expressly attached this condition: that those who wished to enjoy them should know that they ought to be humble and modest and quiet, and to guard the glory of their confession by worthy morals; to which he wished them to be zealously roused through his clergy.

[342] But to what end he orders this, he presently indicates in these words: and complains about the confessors, May the Lord grant that I may both see them again soon, and by a salutary exhortation compose their minds for preserving their own glory: for I grieve when I hear that certain men run about wickedly and insolently, and are at leisure for follies or for discords; that members of Christ, and members that have already confessed Christ, are defiled by unlawful couplings, and cannot be governed by the deacons or presbyters; but act so that by the depraved and evil morals of a few the honorable glory of many and good confessors may be stained; whom they ought to fear, lest, condemned by their testimony and judgment, they be deprived of their fellowship. For he at last is an illustrious and true confessor, of whom afterwards the Church does not blush, but glories. From the end of the letter it is clear that he was consulted by Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus and Gordius — it is uncertain on what matter — to whom he writes that he cannot reply alone, because from the beginning of his episcopate he had determined to do nothing by his own private opinion without the counsel of his clergy and the consent of the people.

[343] Not long afterwards he wrote the other letter, which for Pamele is the seventh, to whom he writes, but for Baluze the sixth, to Rogatianus the presbyter and to the other confessors, as we have said, by which he tried both to confirm the good and to recall the disobedient to their duty. And first, having congratulated with a signification of the highest joy the vast glory which they had won from the confession of Christ, he admonished them to sustain the dignity of their name by worthy morals and virtues, and to remember that, so long as they lived, they stood in the battle-line, and that so glorious beginnings would not profit them unless they kept up perseverance in right deeds; which very thing he confirmed by the example of Solomon and of Saul. And although zeal for humility and tranquillity and good morals ought to be common to all Christians, yet he shows that it must be cared for by confessors above the rest, since the morals of all the rest are to be composed after theirs.

[344] praising the upright, and reproving the unruly. After this he praises the upright confessors, and proceeds to rebuke the unruly: Which indeed, he says, the greatest part of you takes care of, to my joy, and, having been made better by the honor of the confession itself, guards and preserves its glory by tranquil and good morals. But I hear that certain men infect your number, and destroy the praise of an excellent name by their depraved manner of life; whom you too yourselves, as lovers and preservers of your own praise, ought to rebuke and restrain and amend. For with how great a shame to your name is offense committed, when someone lingers drunken and wanton, when another returns to that country whence he had been made an exile, so that, when seized, he perishes not now as a Christian but as a criminal? About the pride too of some he says: I hear that some are puffed up and swollen; and he beats it down by the fear of God and by the example of Christ the Lord himself, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, etc.

[345] reproving. But then he goes on about the wanton; saying: What then of this — how execrable ought it to seem, that with the deepest groaning and grief of our mind we have learned that there are not lacking men who defile still more with their base and infamous couplings the temples of God, and members sanctified and made illustrious after confession, joining their chambers promiscuously with women; when, even if defilement be absent from their conscience, by this very thing it is a great crime, that from their scandal examples arise for the ruin of others. From quarrels also, revilings and curses, which he shows to be both alien from Christian charity and plainly unworthy of a tongue which has confessed Christ, he bids them beware, and to exhort one another to the study of the virtues, so that, when in his mercy, he says, he (God) shall have made peace, which he promises he will make, we may return to the church new and almost changed, and

may receive us, whether our brethren or the gentiles, corrected in all things and reformed for the better, so that those who had before admired the glory in our virtues may now admire the discipline in our morals. Finally he adds those things which we have already recounted above concerning the moneys sent for the relief of their want.

[346] He informs the clergy of the postponement of his return, Meanwhile the peace of the Church was day by day more and more confirmed, so that only the fear of its being disturbed kept St. Cyprian in his retirement. For he burned, after so long an absence, to return to his own see, both that he might enjoy the long-desired sight of his dearest friends and of the upright confessors, and that he might himself, being present, bring healing to his flock, wretchedly wounded by the persecution, and set in order his church, which had in great part been scattered. All these things assuredly urged the excellent Bishop to a speedy return to his own people; but since he was strong in no less prudence than zeal, and knew well how great was the hatred in which he was held by the gentiles, he judged that nothing should be done precipitately, and that he must wait until, matters being wholly pacified, (unless nevertheless God should command otherwise) he might safely return; lest by a premature return he should rouse the lulled anger of the gentiles, and so harm his flock while he was striving only to profit it. Therefore, that he might commit nothing imprudent, he wrote Epistle 36 to his clergy: I greet you, he says, dearest brethren, being safe by the grace of God, desiring to come to you soon, that satisfaction may be given both to my own longing and to yours and to that of all the brethren.

[347] It behooves us nevertheless to consult for the common peace, and at times, and again admonishes them concerning the care of the poor. though with grief of our mind, to be absent from you, lest our presence provoke the ill-will and violence of the gentiles, and lest we become the authors of breaking the peace, we who ought rather to consult for the quiet of all. When therefore you shall have written to me that, matters being settled, I ought to come, or if before that the Lord shall have deigned to show it, then I will come to you. For where could it be better or happier for me than there, where God has willed both that I should believe and that I should grow? After this he turns aside to his accustomed solicitude concerning the needy, and commemorates in these words the alms sent for their sustenance: I ask that you diligently have care of the widows and the infirm and of all the poor. But also to strangers, if any of them be in need, supply expenses out of my own portion, which I left with Rogatianus our fellow-presbyter. And lest that portion should perchance have been entirely paid out, I have sent to the same man by Naricus the acolyte another portion, so that the work about those in distress may be done more liberally and more readily. These things he wrote with a truly fatherly mind, providing by continual alms not only for the need of his own people but also for that of strangers, and carefully taking heed lest any inconvenience should come to them from his absence.

[348] Pearson reckons this letter among the thirteen which the Saint sent, together with the fourteenth, to be read by the Romans for the sake of clearing himself, A difficulty is proposed as has been said above, and refers it to the beginning of the month of March in the year 250; which seems to me hardly probable. For in the month of March he would have had to speak, not of the fear of breaking the peace, which then did not exist at all, but of a persecution that had arisen and was daily growing hotter — the contrary of what the Saint here does; and therefore it can be referred to no time more fitly than to the close of the year 250, or the beginning of 251, when the persecution having subsided had given hope of the peace shortly to be granted by God, nay even some beginning of it, as has been shown above. Tillemont, who in this part agrees with us, raises against himself certain difficulties out of the words recited in the preceding number, and torments himself wretchedly to get free of them.

[349] For the words just praised, he says, suggest that St. Cyprian, about the time of this letter, when he was departing from Carthage, left with Rogatianus a certain sum of money for pious uses of this kind, and that he now doubted whether it had already been paid out. But this seems to him hard to grasp; because he is of the opinion that Rogatianus was the first of all at Carthage to confess the faith, and therefore was consigned to prison, at the time when the Saint was departing thence; or if he was first arrested afterwards, he fears that that money could not have been withdrawn from the hands of the gentiles. But if it be nevertheless admitted that it so happened, he does not sufficiently grasp how the Saint, after about ten months, which we place between his departure and the writing of the letter, could have doubted whether anything remained of the sum left with Rogatianus. He observes that this difficulty is indeed less on Pearson's view, who tied that letter to the beginning of March; but that on the same view it is also harder to understand that St. Cyprian sent another sum of money about March to Rogatianus, whom Pearson himself holds not to have been freed from prison before the end of April.

[350] Therefore, that he may extricate himself from these things, Tillemont suspects either that there were two Rogatiani; or, what pleases him more, and it is answered. that a corruption lurks in the text, and that where it reads: With the same man (rather, with Rogatianus) … I left, it should be read: to the same man … I sent, or: to him I sent long since. So he: but everyone sees that this correction, made without any authority of ancient codices, is nothing else than a fiction contrived to evade the difficulty raised. Nor does the twin Rogatianus solve it either, so long as we retain the space of ten months, or even a little more, between St. Cyprian's departure and Epistle 36. Much more rightly does Maran, in §16 of the Life, deny that it is proved from the aforesaid words of the Saint that he, when about to leave Carthage, entrusted any money to Rogatianus; since they can conveniently be taken of some sum of money which, being received either for the Bishop's usual stipend out of the goods of the church, or from elsewhere, and being due to be sent to him in his retirement, was by his own order left at Carthage and handed over to Rogatianus, to be paid out to the poor. Certainly this interpretation is plain and removes all difficulties. For since Rogatianus and the other confessors had come out of prison not long before St. Cyprian wrote these things, he could with reason doubt whether anything remained of the aforesaid money, since a huge number of confessors and of poor had to be fed.

§ XX. The beginning of the schism of Felicissimus, who together with some of his followers is excommunicated by St. Cyprian and his vicars.

He opposes himself to the Saint's vicars The year of Christ 251 had already begun, and St. Cyprian in his retirement was daily awaiting from his clergy the answer by which, being informed of the tranquil state of affairs, he might hasten to his flock so dear to him, when new disturbances, stirred up now not by the gentiles but by the Christians themselves, deferred his most joyful hopes. The holy Prelate had sent, besides Rogatianus the presbyter, also the bishops Caldonius and Herculanus, and likewise Numidicus the presbyter, as his vicars, that in his name they might distribute alms to the needy faithful, and pay their debts, and that if any of them wished to practice their accustomed trades, they might assist these, as far as was necessary, with a more liberal allowance. He had also given them in charge that at the same time they should diligently inquire into the age, condition, and merits of each, so that he might promote all who were worthy and humble and meek to the offices of ecclesiastical administration.

[352] Felicissimus, whom Baronius So great a charity of the excellent Bishop, and such solicitude about choosing worthy ministers for the Church, which ought to have won the hearts of all, drew upon itself the envy of the wicked, to whom his virtue was burdensome. There was at Carthage, or at any rate near that city, a certain Felicissimus, a Christian in profession but not in morals; who indeed was accused by most trustworthy witnesses of having added the crime of adultery also to the frauds and robberies of which the Saint was certainly assured, as the Saint affirms in Epistle 38; and that he was even convicted of it is clear from Epistle 50, where he is called a defrauder of money entrusted to him, … a debaucher of virgins, … a ravager and corrupter of many marriages. The most eminent Baronius in various places of the Annals believed this Felicissimus to have been a presbyter, and one of those who had opposed the episcopate of St. Cyprian from the very beginning.

[353] Now he was of this opinion because the Saint in Epistle 40 speaks thus of the faction of Felicissimus: believed to be a presbyter, For this the malignity and perfidy of certain presbyters has brought about, that I have not been permitted to come to you before the day of the Pasch, while, mindful of their conspiracy and retaining those old poisons against my episcopate, nay against your suffrage and the judgment of God, they renew their old assault upon us, and again refresh their sacrilegious machinations with their accustomed snares. Hence the same most eminent man, at the year 254, num. 60 and 61 and elsewhere, when he read in Epistle 49 that Felicissimus had been made a deacon by Novatus, thought that two men named Felicissimus must be admitted, of whom the one, already a presbyter, was the author of the African schism of which we are now treating, while the other, having been made a deacon, adhered to Novatus, the leader of another schism: which he thought to be confirmed by the opposite heresy of each schismatic; for the former Felicissimus contended that pardon should be given to all the lapsed without previous penance, which Novatus would have denied to all, however penitent.

[354] But to me it appears in no way doubtful that Felicissimus, but more probably the author of the African schism, is the same as the man whom Novatus a little later took care to have made a deacon. For, to answer Baronius's arguments, St. Cyprian nowhere calls Felicissimus a presbyter; and in the passage objected from Epistle 40 he is treating of the presbyters who had joined themselves to Felicissimus, and without whom he could have attempted, or at least accomplished, nothing. Hence a little after he says of them in the same place: Now it appears whence the faction of Felicissimus came, on what roots it stands. These men formerly supplied encouragements and exhortations to certain confessors, that they should not be in concord with their Bishop, that they should not keep ecclesiastical discipline with faith and quiet according to the Lord's precepts … And, as though it had been too little to have corrupted the minds of certain confessors, and to have wished to arm against the priesthood of God a portion of the broken brotherhood, now they have turned themselves with their poisoned deceit to the ruin of the lapsed, so that the sick and the wounded, and those less fit and less firm through the calamity of their fall for taking stronger counsels, they may call away from the healing of their wound, and, prayers and supplications being broken off, by which the Lord must be appeased with long and continual satisfaction, may invite them to a destructive rashness by the lie of a deceitful peace.

[355] Of these therefore he speaks, and signifies that these had opposed him from the beginning of his episcopate, but only a layman namely five presbyters, as he says a little below in the same place, joined to Felicissimus for the ruin of salvation. And that Novatus was one of these, and that by his agency this same Felicissimus seized the diaconate, Epistle 49 does not permit us to doubt, in which the Saint informs Pope Cornelius that Novatus, who had troubled the Roman Church, was the author of the African schism as well, and at the same time makes mention of Felicissimus as now made a deacon. It is the same Novatus, he says, who among us first sowed the fire of discord and schism, who separated some of the brethren there from their Bishop, who in the persecution itself, to overthrow the minds of the brethren, certain other things

the persecution was to our people. He it is who made Felicissimus, his satellite, a deacon, neither with my permission nor with my knowledge, by his own faction and ambition; and sailing with his own tempest to Rome also, to overthrow the Church, he contrived there like and equal things, tearing away from the clergy a portion of the people, rending the concord of a brotherhood well cohering with itself and mutually loving. Plainly, since Rome ought in proportion to her greatness to take precedence of Carthage, he committed there greater and graver things: he who here had made a deacon against the church, there made a bishop.

[356] was, It is clear that Novatus is called the chief kindler of both schisms, the African, that is, and the Roman, and that to him, so far as concerns the former, Felicissimus is joined, whom he had made a deacon against the African church, as against the Roman he had made Novatian a bishop, or pseudo-pontiff, as we shall see below. Nor is it an obstacle that the heresy of the Roman schism was directly opposed to the madness of Felicissimus, since the latter contended that peace should be rashly granted to all the lapsed without previous penance, while the former impiously contended that it should be denied even after penance however sincere and long-continued; for it is no wonder if Novatus, always eager for revolutions — as the same Saint testifies in the aforesaid Epistle 49 — having deserted his former error, gladly embraced at Rome another which under the specious mask of ecclesiastical rigor he thought better fitted to attach the Roman confessors to his party, and thus, by introducing a schism into the Roman Church under a pseudo-pontiff, to escape the penalties of his crimes, for fear of which he had abandoned Africa. Indeed Baronius himself, though not quite consistently with his own opinion, admits that Novatus first adhered to the faction of Felicissimus, when at the year 254, num. 39, he writes: From this same most unhappy workshop of Felicissimus came forth the impious Novatus, the first author of evils, who brought that same plague of dissension (as we shall demonstrate) into the City.

[357] it is shown, and he contrives a schism. Far more rightly therefore do others judge, who hold that Felicissimus was a layman when he began the schism, but a powerful man and notable among the Christians of that place for his condition and wealth. Now, to return to the thread of the history: Felicissimus, from the consciousness of his crimes fearing ill for himself at the hands of his Bishop, who would shortly return, and secretly instigated by Novatus, to whom a like danger was threatening, and by the four other presbyters, began to interfere so that the vicars sent by St. Cyprian should not distribute the alms according to his mind, nor inquire into the age, endowments, and merits of each. Moreover, with wicked power and violent terror, he added heavy threats against anyone who should obey his Bishop. Besides the five presbyters, who secretly adhered to Felicissimus, a certain Augendus openly followed his party, and many others, of whom he publicly and haughtily boasted himself the leader and chief against his holy Prelate. To his sedition he doubtless pretended Christian clemency toward the lapsed, and accused the Saint of excessive severity; thinking that he would easily bind their minds to himself if he contended that all ought at once to be admitted to peace and communion, whom St. Cyprian suffered to be received only with discrimination, and after each one's case had been examined and penance performed according to his deserts, in keeping with ecclesiastical discipline. Nevertheless far more obeyed their Bishop and the vicars sent by him.

[358] Against him the Saint Now St. Cyprian, being informed of this unlooked-for occurrence by his aforesaid vicars through a letter which we do not possess, lest the evil should creep more widely, wrote back to them Epistle 38, in which he separated Felicissimus from the communion of the faithful, and ordered the same penalty to be inflicted on Augendus, unless he should desert the schismatic party, and likewise on all the other associates of the same sedition. But let us subjoin the letter itself, from which we have learned all these things, and in which some things obscurely said occur. Cyprian to Caldonius and Herculanus his colleagues, likewise to Rogatianus and Numidicus his fellow-presbyters, greeting. I have been vehemently saddened, dearest brethren, on receiving your letter, in that, whereas my purpose and prayer has always been to keep our whole brotherhood unharmed, and to preserve the flock unimpaired, according as charity demands, you now announce that Felicissimus has wickedly and insidiously contrived many things, so that besides his old frauds and robberies, of which I had long since known, he has now also attempted to divide a portion of the people with the Bishop, that is, to separate the sheep from the shepherd and the sons from their parent, and to scatter the members of Christ.

[359] And whereas I sent you as my vicars in my stead, that you might meet the necessities of our brethren with supplies, writes Epistle 38, and, if any also wished to practice their trades, should assist their desires with an addition as much as should suffice, and at the same time also should discern their ages and conditions and merits, so that even now I, upon whom the care lies of knowing all most thoroughly, might promote all who are worthy and humble and meek to the offices of ecclesiastical administration; he has interfered, that no one might be provided for, nor those things which I had desired be discerned by diligent examination, and has even threatened our brethren, who first came forward to be provided for, with wicked power and violent terror, that they should not communicate with him in death * who had chosen to obey us. And when after all this, moved neither by the honor of my office nor broken by your authority and presence, disturbing at his own instigation the quiet of the brethren, he broke away with several others, attesting with rash fury that he was the leader of a faction and the chief of a sedition.

[360] Wherein indeed I rejoice that very many of the brethren have withdrawn from this audacity, and excommunicates him; and have preferred to acquiesce in your judgment, so as to remain with the Church their mother and to receive her stipends at the Bishop's dispensing; which indeed I know for certain that the rest also will do when peace comes, and that they will quickly withdraw from their rash error. Meanwhile, since Felicissimus has threatened that those who obeyed us, that is, who communicated with us, should not communicate with him in death *; let him receive the sentence which he first pronounced, and let him know that he is cut off from us, since to his frauds and robberies, which we have learned with clear truth, there is added also the crime of adultery, which our brethren, men of weight, have announced that they detected and have asserted that they will prove. All which we shall then take cognizance of, when, the Lord permitting, we shall have come together with several of our colleagues.

[361] But Augendus too, who, thinking neither of his Bishop nor of the Church, and threatens his followers with the same. Some things has likewise associated himself with him in conspiracy and faction, if he shall persevere further with him, let him bear the sentence which that factious and rash man has called down upon himself. And whoever shall have joined himself to his conspiracy and faction, let him know that he shall not communicate with us in the Church, who has of his own accord chosen to be separated from the Church. Read this my letter to our brethren, and transmit it also to Carthage to the clergy, with the names added of those who have joined themselves to Felicissimus. I desire, dearest brethren, that you always fare well and remember us. Farewell. Thus far the letter, upon which some things are now to be noted. In the first place, where Baluze, on the authority of his ancient codices, reads in death, Pamelius and others have on the mountain, which last reading the English editors also retained, and Rigault in his Observations prefers to the former, although he had noticed that in two Vatican copies in death is read. Baronius likewise followed Pamelius at the year 254, num. 35, where accordingly he judges that Felicissimus gathered his followers on a certain mountain, and pronounced outcasts all who did not communicate with him in that place. Pamelius holds that mountain to have been near Carthage; but John Fell, in his Annotation on this letter, asserts without any witness that there was a city called Mons near Carthage.

[362] in the aforesaid letter It is hard to say which reading is to be preferred; yet the Pamelian pleases me more, which is the common one and better suited to explaining the threats of Felicissimus. For since, from what has been said above, he was merely a layman, he would have threatened no less ridiculously than emptily that those who obeyed their Bishop should not communicate with him in death: certainly threats of this sort from a lay person would have availed rather to stir up laughter than to strike terror. But if we read on the mountain, they could have had some force. For Felicissimus could have had some church, or chapel, either on a mountain near Carthage or in a higher part of that same city, which he had built at his own expense or kept in repair, and in which he took care that divine things should be performed both for himself and for the other faithful; and he could have forbidden that place to all who did not consent to his madness. Which threats perhaps created the greater inconvenience for the faithful, in that that place, under the patronage of that powerful man, lay less open to the vexations of the unbelievers, and it was permitted to assemble there more safely.

[363] more obscurely said, Nor is it improbable, as Maran suspects in §16 of the Life, that Felicissimus threatened those who did not obey him with death as well as with excommunication. His reason is that excommunication, threatened by a lay person, would seem to him too inept for striking violent terror into the people, to whom it could not be at all grievous to lack the communion of a most wicked man, and who would rather have been terrified if Felicissimus had threatened that he would compel them into his own communion. Further, since it is evident from Epistle 55 that Felicissimus directed parricidal threats against St. Cyprian, he observes that it ought not to seem strange if with like audacity he terrified the common folk. Nevertheless, since neither in this Epistle 38 nor in 55, in which many other of his crimes are recounted, is any mention made of threats of this kind hurled at the people, this conjecture is not a little doubtful; for as crimes are wont to grow, he could easily have afterwards resolved upon something more atrocious against the holy Prelate, whom he could not bear as he manfully opposed his nefarious undertakings, than he had done against the people.

[364] and uncertain, I likewise do not know whether the most eminent Baronius has attained the truth when at the year 254, num. 35 he says that Felicissimus, having called in the secular magistrates to his aid, prohibited the Saint's vicars from carrying out the aforesaid commands. He doubtless gathered this from the fact that he is said to have done it with wicked power and violent terror. But these words seem to be taken of the band of his followers, by whom he was attended; for in Epistle 55 also St. Cornelius the Pope is related to have been approached at Rome by a man attended by a troop and faction of desperate men. Nay rather, since St. Cyprian in Epistle 40 compares the five presbyters joined to Felicissimus with the five chief men who had lately been joined to the magistrates by an edict, the secular magistrates do not appear to have protected the faction of Felicissimus. It is likewise a kind of riddle whether and why the Saint wished this same letter to be transmitted to the clergy of Carthage in these words: Read this my letter to our brethren, and transmit it also to Carthage to the clergy, with the names added of those who have joined themselves to Felicissimus. For to what end this? Were Caldonius and the other vicars then staying somewhere other than at Carthage? Were they distributing the alms commanded elsewhere, and examining the age and merits of those who might be promoted to sacred Orders? That certainly does not seem sufficiently probable

.

[365] John Fell in his Annotations on the same letter divines are weighed. that it was first given to Caldonius the bishop, who was already staying in his own diocese, and was then to be sent by him to Herculanus before it was delivered to the Carthaginians. Baluze in his Annotations, following the judgment of a certain learned man whom he does not name, preferred to believe that this passage is corrupt, and that for Carthage one should read Rome: which emendation he thought confirmed by the fact that Felicissimus was then contemplating his Roman journey, and that therefore it seemed worth while to forewarn the Roman clergy of the man's perfidy. But this opinion rests entirely on the Roman journey of Felicissimus, which he did not undertake until a whole year later, and probably even later still; and therefore who shall declare whether he was already contemplating it then, and whether this was then known to St. Cyprian? Add that nothing is read of letters of this kind transmitted to the Roman clergy in Epistle 55, which St. Cyprian afterwards wrote to St. Cornelius the Pope on the case of Felicissimus, and that to introduce such a correction against the authority of all the editions and of the ancient copies is to cut the knot, not to loose it. Tillemont confesses that he prefers to be ignorant of the untying of this difficulty rather than to attempt it. Yet I do not know whether it might not be said that the aforesaid vicars had gone out of Carthage, in order to yield a little to the first fury of the schismatics. But this too is mere conjecture, which I cannot establish from any other source.

[366] However these things may have stood, it is certain that the aforesaid vicars faithfully executed the orders of St. Cyprian, The vicars proclaim that Felicissimus and several Felicissimus and some of his followers, namely Augendus, Repostus, Sophronius, and Soliassus, and two women, Irene and Paula, being separated from the communion of the Church. So it is clear from a certain document which is reckoned in the thirty-ninth place among the Cyprianic epistles, and is of this sort: Caldonius with Herculanus and Victor his colleagues, likewise to Rogatianus with Numidicus, presbyters. We have withheld from communion Felicissimus and Augendus, likewise Repostus of the exiles, and Irene of the Rutili, and Paula the seamstress; which you ought to have known from my note. Likewise we have withheld Sophronius, he too of the exiles, and Soliassus the Budinarius. Thus far that: but among the learned there is no agreement at all whether this document is a letter, and to whom it was sent, or a promulgation of excommunication, that is, a placard publicly posted or read out to the faithful; but nothing certain is adduced, nor can be adduced, since it is doubtless mutilated, or vehemently corrupted. It will nevertheless be useful to have reported the judgments of various men about it.

[367] The most eminent Baronius, at the year 254, num. 37, judged others have been excommunicated that it is a sentence promulgated against Felicissimus and his followers, and written out by Caldonius the bishop alone to Herculanus, Victor, Rogatianus, and Numidicus. But this conjecture conflicts with the superscription, and with the word you ought. Rigault in his Observations prefers with Manutius to read: Caldonius, Herculanus and Victor, to their colleagues: likewise to Rogatianus with Numidicus, presbyters, G(reeting); and consequently to say you ought (plural) instead of you ought (singular). Pamelius has the same superscription which we have recounted from Baluze; but he adds greeting, and with Morel reads you ought (plural), and conjectured in his Annotations that for my (note) our should be substituted. But in the argument of the letter he judges that this is the ancient form of letters of excommunication, sent to the clergy of Carthage in accordance with the holy Bishop's rescript in the former letter. Baluze on the contrary in his Notes does not doubt that the letter is of Caldonius alone, rendering account to St. Cyprian in the name of all of what they had done against Felicissimus and his companions.

[368] by them; For this reading he cites the Bodleian Ms. codex 1, cited by John Fell, in which he thinks it is extant as inscribed to St. Cyprian. But if I rightly grasp Fell's mind, he did not find the word Cyprian in the said codex, but himself inserted it into the superscription from his own conjecture. To Tillemont it seemed better to strike out the letter G, or Greeting, and to believe that that document is not a letter but a certain placard, which for the sake of promulgation was publicly posted in the churches. Of these conjectures, although nothing certain, as has been said, can be established, the Pamelian pleases me most, according to which the aforesaid vicars seem by this letter to have executed what St. Cyprian had enjoined upon them in the former letter, namely that they should excommunicate Felicissimus, as also Augendus and the rest, who were unwilling to separate themselves from him; and that they should write out their names to the clergy of Carthage. For in the aforesaid Epistle 38 the Saint says: Read this my letter to our brethren, and transmit it also to Carthage to the clergy, with the names added of those who have joined themselves to Felicissimus. On this conjecture it is also understood why those vicars added nothing further about Felicissimus in their letter; namely because in St. Cyprian's letter, which they transmitted together with their own, his case was sufficiently explained.

[369] concerning whom a few things are observed. As to the persons named in the letter, no Victor is reckoned among the vicars in Epistle 38; and therefore, if the reading in both places is sound, he seems to have been added afterwards to the other four, and perhaps was one of the Victors who took part in the Council of Carthage. Augendus, who is here excommunicated in the first place after Felicissimus, is not to be confounded with Augendus the confessor, whose services St. Cyprian writes in Epistle 48 that he employed in carrying letters to St. Cornelius the Pope. Repostus of the exiles (for which Manutius has of the wanderers) is otherwise unknown: for Repostus of Suturnica, whom Pamelius believed to be the same as he, has nothing in common with him but the name, as will appear in its own place. Irene and Paula are women, to the first of whom the name of her clan or family, to the other her trade, as it seems, is attached. Likewise unknown are Sophronius and Soliassus Budinarius. Salmasius in his Annotations on the Historia Augusta, in Aurelian, judges that for Budinarius one should here restore Butinarius, that is, a maker of vinegar-cups, from the Greek word βουτίνον, a vinegar-cup. Fell less probably prefers Burdonarius, that is, a muleteer. Finally Rigault thinks that Budinarius is a proper name just as much as Soliassus, and that therefore both should be separated by punctuation, and that two persons should here be admitted.

* al. on the mountain

* al. on the mountain

§ XXI. Novatus with four presbyters openly adheres to Felicissimus: the Saint instructs his flock against them, but is compelled to postpone his return.

Novatus, the author of the schism, Not long after the excommunication of Felicissimus and of those his followers whom we have named above, the five presbyters, of whom we have likewise already made mention above, openly maintained the schismatic party which they had long secretly fostered, and separated themselves from the Church. That Novatus was their standard-bearer appears certain to me from Epistle 49, in which the Saint testifies that he was the first kindler of discord and schism, and that Felicissimus was his satellite. The most eminent Baronius, at the year 254, num. 59, believed that that Novatus was a bishop in Africa, and distinguished him from a presbyter of the same name, a like nefarious man, the supporter, as he thought, of another Felicissimus; because the former Novatus, on the testimony of St. Cyprian in the letter just cited, made Felicissimus, his satellite, a deacon … by his own faction and ambition. But Baronius did not notice that he did this by his own faction and ambition; that is, by procuring that he should be made a deacon; in the same way in which he is said in the same place to have made Novatian a bishop at Rome, in these words: He who here had made a deacon against the church, there made a bishop.

[371] Now from what has been said in the historical Commentary on St. Cornelius the Pope on this very day, §6, it is clear was only a presbyter: that Novatian was consecrated sacrilegiously not by Novatus, but at his instigation, by three Italian bishops. And as the aforesaid Epistle 49 is cited in vain for the episcopate of Novatus, so the same not obscurely teaches that he was merely a presbyter, since it is said below in it that Novatus feared lest on account of his crimes he should fall from the presbyterate. In Epistle 5, elsewhere 6, also, St. Cyprian names among his four fellow-presbyters, from whom he had received a letter, one Novatus, whom it is most probable to have been the same as the one we are treating of. Finally St. Pacian, bishop of Barcelona, who flourished in the fourth century, Eusebius in the Chronicle, and St. Jerome in his Catalogue of writers, expressly make him a presbyter, not a bishop. But that the reader may know the first kindler of the Roman as well as of the African schism, it will be useful to have heard St. Cyprian in Epistle 49 to St. Cornelius the Pope.

[372] Concerning Novatus, he says, nothing needed to be reported thence to us, his crimes since rather Novatus ought to be shown to you by us — always eager for revolutions, raging with the insatiable rapacity of avarice, puffed up with the arrogance and stupor of a haughty swelling, always ill known to the bishops there, always condemned by the voice of all the priests as a heretic and a traitor, always inquisitive that he may betray, flattering to this end that he may deceive, never faithful that he may love, a torch and a fire for kindling the flames of sedition, a whirlwind and a tempest for making shipwrecks of the faith, an enemy of quiet, an adversary of tranquillity, a foe of peace… It is the same Novatus who among us first sowed the fire of discord and schism, who separated some of the brethren there (at Carthage) from their Bishop, who in the persecution itself was another kind of persecution to our people, for the overthrowing of the brethren's minds. He it is who made Felicissimus, his satellite, a deacon, neither with my permission nor with my knowledge, by his own faction and ambition, and sailing with his own tempest to Rome also, to overthrow the Church, contrived there like and equal things, tearing away from the clergy a portion of the people, rending the concord of a brotherhood well cohering with itself and mutually loving. Plainly, since Rome ought in proportion to her greatness to take precedence of Carthage, he committed there greater and graver things. He who here (at Carthage) had made a deacon against the church, there (at Rome) made a bishop.

[373] are recounted by St. Cyprian. And a little after: Orphans despoiled by him, widows defrauded, moneys of the church also withheld, exact from him these penalties which we behold in his fury. His father too died of hunger in the street, and afterwards was not even buried by him in death: his wife's womb struck with a kick, and by a hastening abortion the offspring driven out unto parricide. Thus St. Cyprian, graphically setting forth the character and crimes of a most wicked man. Now Novatus would long since have paid the deserved penalties for such enormous crimes, had not the persecution that arose at the beginning of the year 250 stood in the way. For St. Cyprian in the same letter, a few things intervening, thus proceeds: He had long since feared this consciousness of his crimes. On this account he held for certain that he would not only be removed from the presbyterate but also forbidden communion; and, with the brethren pressing, the day of the inquiry was at hand on which his case would be tried among us, had not the persecution come first; which he received as with a kind of prayer for escaping and gaining by his condemnation, and committed and confounded all these things;

so that he who was to be cast out of the Church and excluded should forestall the judgment of the priests by a voluntary withdrawal; as though it were to have escaped the penalty, to have anticipated the sentence.

[374] An empty objection Pearson, referring these things concerning the day appointed for Novatus to the end of the year 249 — to which, or rather to the beginning of the year following, they are in truth to be referred — did not omit to cite this passage in favor of the use of marriage once conceded to presbyters; contending, against the assertors of the perpetual continence of clerics, whom however he does not name, that the deed of the stricken womb happened after the ordination of Novatus, and was made public before the origin of the schism. For my part I shall not deny the latter part of this assertion, which from St. Cyprian's words is manifestly true; but by what reasoning will Pearson prove the former, namely that the said deed was perpetrated by Novatus when he was already a presbyter? Is it that, because it broke out before the schism, it could not have been committed before Novatus's ordination? Nay rather, the further back you go in retrograde order from the rise of the schism, the more easily could it have happened before that ordination, since thus it would have had to lie hidden a shorter time before it became known.

[375] in favor of the marriage of presbyters. Nor is it necessary to have recourse to the schism, in order that we may say that on that occasion inquiry was made into the doings of Novatus and the said crime was detected. For, apart from the fact that graver outrages of this kind, even after they have long lain hidden, often become known at the divine nod, the contumacy, frauds, and robberies of Novatus against his holy Prelate from the very beginnings of his episcopate could have impelled the faithful to inquire diligently into the morals of the nefarious man, and on that occasion to uncover crimes committed even before his ordination but carefully concealed up to that time. Crimes, I say; for he was arraigned not only for the striking of his own wife's womb, as Pearson would have us believe, but also — to pass over his frauds and robberies — for a twofold impiety toward his own father. Besides, even if it were established that that crime against his wife's womb was perpetrated by Novatus when already a presbyter, whence will Pearson prove that she had not already conceived that offspring before he was initiated into sacred Orders; or that, if he afterwards used the wife whom he had married before the presbyterate, this was lawfully done by him, and was not one of the crimes of which he was accused? Certainly it ought to seem no wonder at all if so criminal a man had violated continence. These things therefore Pearson ought to have proved solidly, in order to prove his opinion about the marriage of presbyters from this passage. Now let us return to the point from which we digressed.

[376] Of the four other presbyters who fostered the schism of Felicissimus, Who were the other four presbyters, St. Cyprian expressly testifies in Epistle 55 that one was Fortunatus, afterwards a pseudo-bishop. To him are more probably to be added Donatus and Gordius also, who, it is clear from Epistle 5, elsewhere 6, wrote to St. Cyprian together with Fortunatus and Novatus not long before the schism. For there the Saint speaks thus: But to that which our fellow-presbyters Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus, and Gordius wrote to me, I could give no answer by myself, since from the beginning of my episcopate I resolved to do nothing without your counsel and without the consent of the people, on my own private judgment. But when by the grace of God I shall have come to you, then we shall treat in common, as mutual respect demands, of those things which either have been done or are to be done.

[377] What they demanded in their letter is unknown; the supporters of the schism? but whatever it was, it appears from the manner of the reply that it pleased the Saint little; wherefore it is not idle to suspect that they were again troublesome to him about the case of the lapsed. There are those who would have Caius of Didda, whom, together with his deacon, we said above in §16 to have been rejected from the communion of the Church by the sentence of the clergy of Carthage, confirmed by St. Cyprian in Epistle 28, to have been the fifth of them; which I do not know how they reconcile with Epistle 40, in which the aforesaid presbyters are said to have cast themselves out of the Church of their own accord, the holy Bishop neither willing it nor desiring it, nay pardoning and keeping silence, as we shall presently see. Others also reckon others among those five, but without solid foundation; nor is it worth while to linger longer over these things.

[378] Novatus therefore, being well conscious to himself of so many crimes, the penalties of which the persecution had deferred, The schism being openly stirred up, looked forward with anxious mind to the near return of his Bishop; and since he knew that he would by no means escape the sentence of condemnation once he returned, he strove by hidden machinations to keep him away from Carthage, and at length, openly professing the schism which he had secretly fostered, together with the aforesaid four presbyters, he separated himself from the communion of the Saint. Being informed of these things, St. Cyprian at once addressed his people by Epistle 40, that he might apply a present remedy to the new evil. And first indeed, after some preface, he notes that those five presbyters are the same who had formerly opposed his episcopate, and that they had, the divine providence so permitting, exacted from themselves the deserved penalties of their conspiracy, when of their own accord they deserted the Church of God. And indeed, he says, by the providence of God, we neither willing nor desiring it, nay pardoning and keeping silence, they have paid the penalties which they had deserved, so that, not cast out by us, they cast themselves out of their own accord, and themselves gave sentence against themselves according to their conscience, and, conspirators and criminals against your suffrages and the divine ones, drove themselves willingly from the Church.

[379] The Saint warns his people to beware of them, Then he shows that the schism of Felicissimus arose from the same authors: Now it appears, he says, whence the faction of Felicissimus came, on what roots it stands. These men formerly supplied encouragements and exhortations to certain confessors, that they should not be in concord with their Bishop, that they should not keep ecclesiastical discipline with faith and quiet according to the Lord's precepts, that they should not preserve the glory of their confession by an uncorrupted and unstained manner of life. And, as though it had been too little to have corrupted the minds of certain confessors, and to have wished to arm against the priesthood of God a portion of the broken brotherhood, now they have turned themselves with their poisoned deceit to the ruin of the lapsed, so that the sick and the wounded, and those less fit and less firm through the calamity of their fall for taking stronger counsels, they may call away from the healing of their wound, and, prayers and supplications being broken off, by which the Lord must be appeased with long and continual satisfaction, may invite them to a destructive rashness by the lie of a deceitful peace.

[380] under penalty of excommunication, Noting these and other things concerning their frauds, contumacy, and heresy, he exhorts his people at length not to be deceived by their fallacious words and take darkness for light, night for day, hunger for food, thirst for drink, poison for a remedy, death for salvation. And because the authority of those presbyters might perhaps seduce the less cautious: Let not their age, he says, nor their authority deceive you, who, answering to the ancient wickedness of the two presbyters, just as they attempted to corrupt and violate the chaste Susanna, so these too attempt with adulterous doctrines to corrupt the chastity of the Church and to violate Evangelical truth… They now offer peace who themselves have not peace. They promise to lead back and recall the lapsed into the Church, who have withdrawn from the Church. Hence he bids their discourses be shunned like a cancer and a plague, and themselves no otherwise than wolves and the tongue of the devil. Finally, after many things by which, out of his pastoral solicitude toward his flock, he strengthens and instructs both the lapsed and the unfallen against the deceitful perfidy of the schismatics, he also threatens anew at the end of the letter the sentence of excommunication upon all who shall have adhered to Felicissimus. But if anyone (these are St. Cyprian's words), refusing to do penance and to make satisfaction to God, shall go over to the party of Felicissimus and his satellites, and shall join himself to the heretical faction, let him know that he cannot afterwards return to the Church and communicate with the bishops and the people of Christ.

[381] and complains that by these same men Now this among other things vexed the Saint, that those new disturbances again delayed his return to Carthage, which he had so long desired; for although he had determined to return thither before the Pasch of that year 251, he was prevented from doing so by the machinations and snares of those schismatics; as he complains at the beginning of the same letter. For after he had praised Virtius, or, as others read, Briccius, a most upright presbyter, and Rogatianus and Numidicus, likewise presbyters and illustrious confessors, and also the deacons and the other ministers of his church, for their assiduous care in admonishing and confirming the people, he proceeds thus: Nevertheless I admonish you as much as I can, and as I can I visit you by my letters. By letters, I say, dearest brethren: for this the malignity and perfidy of certain presbyters has brought about, that I have not been permitted to come to you before the day of the Pasch; while, mindful of their conspiracy and retaining those old poisons against my episcopate, nay against your suffrage and the judgment of God, they renew their old assault upon us, and again refresh their sacrilegious machinations with their accustomed snares.

[382] But how bitterly this fell upon him he indicates in the same place, after some other matters, in these words: he is hindered from returning to Carthage, What penalties do I now suffer, dearest brethren, that I cannot myself come to you at present, cannot myself approach each one, cannot myself exhort you according to the teaching of the Lord and of his Gospel. Was it not enough — an exile now of two years, and a mournful separation from your faces and your eyes, a continual grief and groaning, which racks me, alone without you, with unceasing lamentation, tears flowing by day and by night, because it has not yet fallen to me, the Priest whom you made with so great love and ardor, to greet you, not yet to cling to your embraces. To our wasting mind there has been added this greater grief, that in such solicitude and necessity I cannot myself hasten to you, while through the threats and the snares of the treacherous we take care lest, on our arrival, a greater tumult should there arise; and lest, whereas a Bishop ought in all things to provide for peace and tranquillity, he should himself seem to have given matter for sedition and to have exasperated the persecution anew.

[383] Yet this sickness of mind was not a little alleviated by the sure hope of his approaching return, which nevertheless he hopes to make after the Pasch. concerning which he writes thus toward the end of the same letter: This is the last and final trial of that persecution, which itself also, under the Lord's protection, will quickly pass, so that I may present myself to you after the day of the Pasch with my colleagues; in whose presence, according to your judgment also and the common counsel of us all, as was once agreed, we shall be able alike to arrange and to put the finishing touch upon those things which are to be done. And that he might obtain this the more surely and the more quickly, he closes his letter by admonishing them not to cease to pray to God: I desire, he says, dearest brethren, that you always fare well, and that you persist with us in continual prayers for entreating the mercy of the Lord. As regards the time of these transactions, it is clear from the words recited that that letter was written not long before the Pasch, which in that year fell on the XXIII of March; since the Saint

says in it that he was prevented by the snares of the schismatics from returning to his see before the day of the Pasch; and at the same time gives sure hope that after the day of the Pasch it would be permitted. To the months of February and March therefore are to be referred the things which we have thus far set forth concerning the vicars sent by the Saint, and the schism first of Felicissimus and then of Novatus and the other four presbyters.

[384] At the same time likewise, or at any rate not much later, occurred the ordination of Felicissimus The ordination of Felicissimus, and the flight of Novatus. and the departure of Novatus from Africa, of which we made mention at num. 372 out of Epistle 49. Pearson placed that ordination before the public outbreak of the said schism; but resting on no foundation. Nay rather, Epistles 38, 39, and 40 persuade us that it is to be placed later, for although they treat solely of Felicissimus and his schismatic followers, they nevertheless make not even a word of mention of his ordination and diaconate. Further, we have already observed above that Felicissimus was not ordained by Novatus, who was only a presbyter, but was made a deacon by his faction and ambition, that is, by his procurement, being consecrated by some other bishop: yet who that bishop was I have not discovered, except that some conjecture, not improbably, that he was one of the lapsed. We should have more certain information about all these things if there were extant the letters which St. Cyprian, in Epistle 42 to St. Cornelius the Pope, records that he wrote on this matter to the clergy and the people, and in which he testifies that the ordination and the manner of the affair were set forth.

§ XXII. The Saint returns from his retirement to Carthage: he holds a synod concerning the lapsed: what was decreed in it about those who had sacrificed?

The Saint from his retirement The persecution being now sufficiently lulled, and affairs pacified in such a manner that nothing further was to be feared from the gentiles, St. Cyprian at length came forth from his retirement and returned to Carthage. That this was done after the feast of the Pasch, which, as we have said, in that year 251 fell on the XXIII day of March, is gathered from Epistle 40, in which the Saint promised that he would return after the day of the Pasch: but since this manner of speaking admits a latitude of several days, and since it is uncertain whether he was able soon to fulfil his promises, it is likewise uncertain whether this most joyful event is to be referred to the month of March, or to April, perhaps even to April well advanced. Certainly between this Epistle 40 and his return he seems to have written two others, one to the Clergy, the other to the people, of which he makes mention in Epistle 42, concerning the ordination of Felicissimus, whom Novatus in the meantime had taken care by his faction and ambition to have ordained deacon, before he set out for Rome.

[386] returns to Carthage. Hence it is further possible to determine approximately the time during which he lay hidden in his retirement; for since, from what has been said in §7, he withdrew at the end of January, or rather at the beginning of February, in the year 250, he must be said to have lain hidden fourteen months or a little more. Nor does it matter that in the aforesaid Epistle 40, which we have shown to have been written not long before the said Pasch, he says that he had been in exile for two years; Was it not enough, he says, an exile now of two years: for it is certain that this is to be taken of a second year begun; since otherwise his return would have to be deferred to the year 252, which can in no way be admitted. And so the holy Prelate here spoke out of the immense longing for his flock, from which every delay is wont to seem long; so that it is no wonder that fourteen months were called by him two years.

[387] What was then the state Now the varied aspect of his flock affected the returning Bishop in various ways; since on the one hand the long-desired sight of the confessors and martyrs, of every age and sex, struck him with incredible joy, and on the other the lamentable falls of very many struck him with no less grief. This state of his church, and the feeling of his mind with which he met it, the Saint himself, as it seems to me, has graphically set forth in the book which he afterwards wrote On the Lapsed, and therefore I transcribe some things from it here. The confessors, he says, illustrious with the heralding of a good name and glorious with the praises of virtue and faith, we behold with joyful gaze, clinging to them with holy kisses, and long desired we embrace them with insatiable eagerness. There is present the white cohort of Christ's soldiers, who by their steadfast encounter broke the turbulent ferocity of the pressing persecution, prepared for the endurance of prison, armed for the bearing of death …

[388] of the African church, How joyfully does mother Church receive you in her bosom as you return from the battle! How blessed, how rejoicing, she opens her gates, that you may enter in united ranks, bearing back trophies from the prostrate enemy! With the triumphing men come women also, who in fighting with the world have conquered their sex as well. There come also virgins, with the glory of their warfare doubled, and boys passing beyond their years in virtues. And moreover the rest of the multitude of those who stood follows your glory, and accompanies your footsteps with the nearest and almost equal badges of praise. In them too is the same sincerity of heart, the same integrity of tenacious faith. Resting upon the unshaken roots of the heavenly precepts and strengthened by the Evangelical traditions, neither prescribed exiles, nor appointed torments, nor losses of property, nor bodily punishments have terrified them.

[389] Having followed out their glory with these and many other words, and having testified to the joy which he took from it, and what was his own feeling about it, he goes on to explain what on the contrary he felt at the slaughter of the lapsed. These heavenly crowns of the martyrs, he says, these spiritual glories of the confessors, these greatest and most excellent virtues of the brethren who stood, one sadness saddens: that the violent enemy has cast down by the ruin of his ravaging a part torn away from our own bowels. What shall I do in this place, beloved brethren? Wavering with the various tide of my mind, what or how shall I speak? There is need of tears rather than of words to express the grief with which the wound of our body must be bewailed, with which the manifold loss of a people once numerous must be lamented. For who is so hard or so iron, who so forgetful of brotherly charity, that, set in the midst of the manifold ruins of his own people and their mournful remains disfigured with much squalor, he could prevail to keep his eyes dry, and would not, with weeping bursting forth at once, utter his groans by tears sooner than by his voice?

[390] I grieve, brethren, I grieve with you; nor does my own integrity and private soundness soothe me for the assuaging of my griefs, is gathered from the book On the Lapsed. since the shepherd is the more wounded in the wound of his flock. With each one I join my breast, I share the mournful burdens of grief and of death. With those who wail I wail, with those who weep I weep, with those who lie prostrate I believe myself to lie prostrate. By those darts of the raging enemy my limbs also were at the same time struck through, the savage swords passed through my bowels. The mind cannot have been immune and free from the assault of the persecution: in my prostrate brethren my affection prostrated me. Yet account must be taken of the truth, most beloved brethren, nor ought the dark gloom of a hostile persecution so to have blinded the mind and the understanding that no light and brightness remained by which the divine precepts might be discerned. If the cause of the disaster is recognized, the healing of the wound is also found. Thus far the Bishop most loving of his flock, in the aforesaid Opusculum; which although, against some, we think to have been first written after the slaying of Decius, nevertheless in the words cited manifestly sets forth the state of the church of Carthage at the time when he returned to it.

[391] It is certain that among the first cares of St. Cyprian on returning to his people was the case of the lapsed, He holds a synod concerning the lapsed, which had disturbed the African church in a pitiable manner: both because their calamity so demanded, and because upon this head the public quiet of that church chiefly depended; and finally because he had promised that he would treat of it at the first opportunity given, many even clamoring and taking it ill that there should be even the least delay. Hence it cannot be doubted that, as soon as it was possible for a council to be gathered, serious deliberation was held concerning the reconciliation of the lapsed and the manner in which it should be handled, lest a longer delay should provoke the complaints of the lapsed, however unjust, and the healing salutary to their wounds should be longer deferred. Nevertheless, because this case was not of a few, nor of one church, nor of one province, but of the whole world, as the Saint says in Epistle 13, elsewhere 14, nothing was to be done rashly; and since the bishops of the proconsular province of Africa, which, on the same testimony in Epistle 45, was more widely spread and had Numidia and Mauretania adjoining it, had to be summoned, and at the same time care had to be taken lest excessive confidence should irritate the gentiles, it could easily have come about that the synod was not begun before May was well advanced, or about the end of that same month.

[392] in which the cases of individuals Moreover that besides a copious number of bishops there also assembled not only presbyters and deacons, but also confessors and martyrs, and the rest of the portion of the people of unimpaired faith, we gather from Epistles XI, 13, and 40, in which the Saint himself had promised that all these should be invited to that synod. This too was carefully observed in it, that — as he had also often admonished elsewhere — the cases of the individual lapsed should be diligently examined, and thus a penance should be imposed on each in equity and goodness according to the gravity of their crimes. Several kinds of these the holy Prelate enumerates in Epistle 52 to Antonianus, written after the aforesaid synod, in these words: Nor do you think, dearest brother, as it seems to some, that the libellatics ought to be put on a level with those who sacrificed, since even among those who sacrificed both the condition and the cause is frequently diverse.

[393] are to be diligently discussed, For those are not to be equated: the man who leapt forward at once of his own will to the abominable sacrifice, and the man who, after long struggling and contending, came to this deadly deed by necessity; the man who betrayed both himself and all his own, and the man who, himself going to the peril on behalf of all, protected his wife and children and his whole house by undergoing the danger himself; the man who compelled his tenants or his friends to the crime, and the man who spared his tenants and his farmers, and also received into his own roofs and lodgings very many brethren who were withdrawing as exiles and fugitives, showing and offering to the Lord many souls alive and safe, to plead for one that is wounded. Since therefore among those who sacrificed there is much diversity, what inclemency is it, and what bitter hardness, to join the libellatics with those who sacrificed? etc. Finally, some had done penance immediately after their fall, and, humble and meek and trembling and fearing God, as is read in Epistle 27, had patiently awaited the peace of the Church and the return of their Bishop; others, abusing the certificates of the martyrs, had, with penance neglected and contrary to ecclesiastical discipline, not so much asked peace for themselves as claimed it.

[394] and that peace is not to be rashly given, is determined. What further was done in this synod, St. Cyprian indicates in the aforesaid Epistle 52 to Antonianus in these words: Yet according to what had been previously determined, the persecution being lulled, when the opportunity of assembling together was given, a copious number of bishops, whom their own integrity and safety

and the Lord's protection had preserved, we came together into one place, and, the divine Scriptures being brought forward on both sides, we weighed a temperament with wholesome moderation, so that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they should fail the more through despair, and, because the Church was closed to them, should follow the world and live as gentiles; nor yet again should the Evangelical censure be relaxed, so that they should rashly leap forward to communion; but that penance should be long drawn out, and paternal clemency be sorrowfully entreated, and the causes and the wills and the necessities of individuals be examined, according to what is contained in the pamphlet, which I trust has reached you, where the several heads of the decisions are written out.

[395] The most eminent Baronius, at the year of Christ 254, A pamphlet on this matter was written by the synod, num. 89, suspects that the aforesaid pamphlet was written by the synod, and that the heads of the decisions are those same which antiquity also named under another title the Penitential canons. But whether the ancients called this or another book by that name, it seems to me altogether probable that canons of this kind were reported in the pamphlet or letter issued by the aforesaid synod: for this is plainly consonant with St. Cyprian's words, and it was necessary for determining the penance for the lapsed according to the variety of their offenses, for the healing of whom that synod had assembled. Certainly that a letter of this kind once existed, written not by our Saint alone but by all the bishops who were present at the said synod, Eusebius testifies in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 43, where he has this: There certainly reached us … besides, other letters written in the Latin tongue, of Cyprian and of the bishops (gathered) together with him in Africa, by which it was shown that it had pleased them too that help should be given to those who had fallen into temptation.

[396] These letters therefore I judge to be those designated by St. Cyprian, which has perished. when, explaining to Antonianus what had been decreed in the synod, he said: According to what is contained in the pamphlet, which I trust has reached you, where the several heads of the decisions are written out. Hence John Fell himself seems to me to have dreamed, when in his Annotations on this letter, which for him is 55, reckoning Baronius's opinion a dream, he would have the book On the Lapsed to be the one here indicated by the Saint, and for the several heads of the decisions referred the reader to Epistles 18 and 19, which for Baluze are 12 and 13, written long before the aforesaid synod. Concerning the book On the Lapsed we shall prove the contrary in its own place; but the letters cited by him are of St. Cyprian alone, sent from his retirement to the clergy, and they do not contain the several heads of the decisions afterwards sanctioned in the synod. Much more rightly therefore do Baronius, Pamelius, and other learned men confess that the pamphlet cited by St. Cyprian, which would doubtless have contributed much to the illustration of the ecclesiastical discipline of that time, has now perished.

[397] Nevertheless the writings of St. Cyprian lighten this loss not a little, What was decreed in it? To those who had sacrificed in which the principal decrees concerning the lapsed are recorded here and there. And first indeed we learn from Epistle 55 that it was enacted, against the error of Felicissimus, that peace and communion should be granted to none of the lapsed without previous penance. In a council, says the Saint there, frequently held, we have decreed, not only with our consent but also with a threat, that the brethren should do penance, and that no one should rashly give peace to those not doing penance. And as the fathers of the synod condemned the sacrilegious easiness of the followers of Felicissimus in admitting the lapsed to peace, so they carefully took heed lest by excessive hardness they should drive the same into despair, as we saw at num. 394 from Epistle 52 to Antonianus. And what, avoiding both impieties, they decreed, the Saint teaches in the aforesaid Epistle 52 in these words: It has pleased us, dearest brother, the causes of individuals having been examined, that the libellatics be meanwhile admitted, and that those who sacrificed be helped at their departure; because there is no exomologesis among the dead, nor can anyone be compelled by us to penance if the fruit of penance be withdrawn.

[398] Who were called libellatics, and who those who had sacrificed, we have set forth in §8. peace was not deferred for all But as regards the words just recited, if anyone consider them apart from others, he will easily judge that the reconciliation of those who had sacrificed was deferred to the very end of life, as in fact it has seemed to some; and hence he will further doubt to what time that meanwhile concerning the libellatics is to be referred. But if we compare other passages of the same Saint with this, it will seem altogether to be said that the libellatics — who, having been deceived not so much by crime as by error, on being admonished of their sin had soon after their fall done penance — were by the decree of the synod at once admitted to peace; but those who had sacrificed only after a certain time spent in penance according to the gravity of the offense; yet with this proviso, that if, before it was completed, they should fall dangerously ill, they should nonetheless enjoy the same benefit. Concerning those who had sacrificed this must be shown first; because about these there is the greater difficulty, on the solution of which the other question concerning the libellatics also greatly depends.

[399] until the danger of death; St. Cyprian, on account of the persecution threatening from Gallus, the successor of Decius, when with many of his colleagues he judged that peace should be given to all who from the first day of their fall had not ceased to do penance, speaks thus in Epistle 54 to St. Cornelius the Pope of the decrees of the earlier council: We had indeed long since determined, dearest brother, taking counsel mutually with one another, that those who in the assault of the persecution had been tripped up by the adversary and had fallen, and had stained themselves with unlawful sacrifices, should do full penance for a long time, and, if the danger of sickness pressed, should receive peace under the stroke of death. Thus he with his colleagues; upon which it must be observed what full penance is, which he says had to be done for a long time by those who had sacrificed. That it was not perpetual, that is, prolonged even until death, however long anyone lived, but was circumscribed by a certain time, we learn from Epistle 62, in which St. Cyprian, with several colleagues and presbyters, being consulted by Pomponius about virgins who had cast a stain upon their chastity, as we saw in §6, made reply.

[400] as is proved by examples For in it among other things he wrote this: If they shall have done penance for this unlawful cohabitation of theirs, … and if they be found virgins, let them be admitted to the Church, communion being received … But if any of them be detected to have been corrupted, let her do full penance; because she who has committed this crime is an adulteress not of a husband but of Christ; and therefore, a just time having been reckoned, afterwards, exomologesis having been made, let her return to the church. According to these things therefore, one who was doing full penance was, after a certain time reckoned according to the greatness of the crime, and exomologesis having been made, admitted to the peace of the Church. And that it was not otherwise done with those who had sacrificed is clear from the case of Victor, concerning which St. Cyprian with 66 bishops assembled in the year 252 wrote back to Fidus by Epistle 59 in this manner: We have read your letter, dearest brother, in which you signified concerning Victor, formerly a presbyter, that before he had done full penance and made satisfaction to the Lord God, against whom he had offended, our colleague Therapius gave him peace at an unripe time and with over-hasty haste.

[401] drawn from St. Cyprian's epistles Which matter moved us not a little, that there had been a departure from the authority of our decree, in that peace was granted to him before the lawful and full time of satisfaction, and without the request and knowledge of the people, no infirmity pressing and no necessity compelling. But, counsel having been long weighed among us, it was enough to rebuke our colleague Therapius, that he had rashly done this; and to have instructed him not to do anything of the kind for the future. Yet we did not think that peace, once given in whatever manner by a priest of God, should be taken away; and on this account we permitted Victor to make use of the communion granted to him. Let us diligently weigh this passage, which sheds great light on the present controversy. Therapius is here blamed, not for having given peace to Victor, but for having given it before he had done full penance and made satisfaction to the Lord God; and therefore at an unripe time and with over-hasty haste; or, what is the same, before the lawful and full time of satisfaction, when no sufficiently urgent reason persuaded that this should be anticipated; indeed without the request and knowledge of the people, no infirmity pressing and no necessity compelling.

[402] Manifestly therefore the Saint here suggests that a certain time of penance had been fixed for Victor, set forth after which he would have had to be judged to have made satisfaction to the Lord God and to be admitted to peace, and before which was completed he could not be admitted to it, unless a dangerous infirmity, or a just favor of the people, or any other necessity had compelled it so to be done. It is besides to be observed that Therapius is said by that unripe clemency to have departed from the authority of the decree. Now what other decree is this than the one which is recorded in Epistle 54, and by which it had been enacted that lapsed of this kind should do full penance for a long time; and if the danger of sickness pressed, should receive peace under the stroke of death? Indeed whoever will compare these words with those which we lately recited from Epistle 66 will not doubt that in both places the same decree is treated of, and that therefore the former letter is in this part to be explained by the latter. For the rest, just as the lapsed who recovered continued to enjoy the peace which they had received in danger of death before the time of penance was completed, so Victor too was permitted to make use of the communion granted to him, though over-hastily.

[403] There is extant also another example in Epistle 53, by which it is clearer than light it is proved; that penance was not to be done by all the lapsed until death; and the things we have thus far discussed on this matter are solidly confirmed. The case was this: Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus, having been seized by the persecutors, when they had at first bravely borne the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people, afterwards yielded before the proconsul to the force of torments and to long-continued tortures; and soon after their fall, turning to penance, they had already prolonged it for three years. St. Cyprian, being consulted about these men, whether it was now lawful to admit them to communion, replied that so it altogether seemed to him; for he judged that it could suffice for entreating the clemency of the Lord that for three years continually and sorrowfully … they had mourned with the utmost lamentation of penance. Certainly I do not think, he says, that peace is incautiously and rashly entrusted to those whom we see, by the fortitude of their warfare, not to have failed the battle before, and who, if the battle-line should come again, can repair their glory. Nevertheless, because he had been asked to refer this case to his colleagues, he adds that after their counsel had been taken he would afterwards write back something more certain about it.

[404] Fortunatus, Ahymmus, and the rest, by whom the Saint was here consulted, did not doubt — did not doubt, I say — but these, after full penance, that peace could be given to the lapsed outside the danger of death; but whether a penance already continued for three years sufficed to grant it to those who, overcome by torments, from

weakness had fallen; and St. Cyprian judged that it did suffice: a plain indication indeed that it had by no means been decreed in the synod of Carthage that all who had sacrificed should do penance until death, and should not be admitted to peace except when extreme infirmity pressed. For to what end would this twofold consultation have been, if a canon of this sort had been recently framed? But on our view the reason for consulting is by no means obscure: since, whereas the aforesaid synod had determined that, the causes of individuals being diligently examined, penance should be imposed according to the gravity of the offense, it could be doubted whether that which Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus had done was long enough — men whose fall was worthy of the greater commiseration in that, having first bravely contended, they had through the weakness of the flesh lost the crown of their confession, as the Saint says in the same letter.

[405] unless in the meantime their life were in danger, To what end also does the same holy Bishop write in Epistle 52 to Antonianus that it was decreed in the council that the causes and the wills and the necessities of individuals, even of those who had sacrificed, should be examined; and there proves so laboriously that this was rightly done? To what end, I say, all these things, if a perpetual penance until death had been imposed on all who had sacrificed? Finally, since it seemed to St. Cyprian an inclemency and a bitter hardness to join the libellatics with those who had sacrificed, would he have judged it fair to visit the rest with an equal penalty, since, on his own testimony in the same place, among those who sacrificed there is much difference? Nay rather, he himself in the book On the Lapsed, speaking of those who had been overcome by torments, expressly says: Such a case can quickly avail toward pardon. An excuse of this kind can be worthy of pity. It does not seem, therefore, that it can prudently be doubted that peace was promised to those who had sacrificed, but was not to be granted before the completion of the penance, reckoned according to each one's offense, unless a grave infirmity pressed. For it was not lawful, as the Saint says in Epistle 54, nor did paternal piety and divine clemency permit, that the Church should be closed to those who knocked, and that the support of saving hope should be denied to those who grieved and entreated, so that, departing from the world, they should be dismissed to the Lord without communion and peace; since He himself, who gave the law, permitted that what was bound on earth should be bound also in heaven, but that those things could be loosed there which were here first loosed in the Church.

[406] they were admitted to peace and communion. But someone will say: if these things are so, why does St. Cyprian in Epistle 52 to Antonianus write thus about giving peace to sick persons who had sacrificed, as though nothing further had been decreed in the council about these lapsed? I answer that this was done because Novatian and his followers, to whose party Antonianus had begun to incline, chiefly accused SS. Cornelius and Cyprian on this head. For since it frequently happened that lapsed persons of this sort recovered from sickness, and it seemed unjust to the holy Bishops to deprive them, without new fault, of the communion which they had received in sickness, though before the completion of their penance, hence the schismatics did not cease to accuse them of communicating with those who had sacrificed: which calumny the Saint intends in the aforesaid letter to overthrow. But that I may not seem to have asserted this gratuitously, let us hear St. Cyprian himself in the aforesaid letter to Antonianus.

[407] But as to what is everywhere reported, he says, and was announced to you, that Cornelius communicates with those who sacrificed, this too springs from the fabricated rumors of the apostates. For those who withdraw from us cannot praise us, nor ought we to expect to please those who, displeasing us and rebellious against the Church, violently persist in soliciting the brethren away from the Church. Wherefore whatever is bandied about both concerning Cornelius and concerning us, do not lightly hear or believe, dearest brother. For if any are seized by sickness, help is given to them in their peril, as was decided. Yet after help has been given, and peace granted to those in peril, they cannot be smothered by us, or crushed, or driven by our force and hand to the issue of death; as though, because peace is given to the dying, it were necessary that those who have received peace should die: whereas rather in this the judgment of divine piety and of paternal leniency appears, that those who receive the pledge of life in the peace given to them are here too, having received peace, kept for life. And therefore, if after peace has been received a respite is granted by God, no one ought to blame this in the priests, since it was once decided that help should be given to the brethren in peril. For the rest, it was not necessary for him to recount the several decrees of the synod, since he trusted that the pamphlet, in which the several heads of the decisions were written out, had already reached Antonianus.

§ XXIII. Peace is soon granted by the synod to penitent libellatics: Felicissimus, Novatus, and others are condemned; other matters pertaining to this synod.

To the libellatics, who had already done penance, From what we have argued in the preceding § about those who had sacrificed, it follows what the Saint meant to say about the libellatics, when in the letter to Antonianus he says: It has pleased us, dearest brother, the causes of individuals having been examined, that the libellatics be meanwhile admitted, and that those who sacrificed be helped at their departure. For since the last part of this sentence is to be so understood that help is said to be given to those who had sacrificed if their life were in danger before they had completed full penance — after which they would also, outside all danger of life, have been admitted to peace — that meanwhile does not seem to be referred to anything other than the present time; and thus it was determined that to the libellatics, who, having been untaught of the error from which they had fallen, had not ceased to do sincere penance, peace and communion should be granted without a notably longer penance. This very thing can be solidly confirmed from the aforesaid letter to Antonianus, in which St. Cyprian so refutes the communion with those who had sacrificed and with the libellatics that was objected to him by the Novatians, that he not obscurely admits and approves the latter; as I now undertake to show.

[409] In it the Saint writes thus: And indeed first, since you seem to be moved also about my own conduct, peace and communion my person and my case must be cleared before you, lest anyone should think that I have lightly departed from my purpose, and that, having at first and in the beginnings defended Evangelical vigor, I should afterwards seem to have bent my mind from my former discipline and censure, so as to have thought that peace should be relaxed to those who have stained their conscience with certificates, or have committed abominable sacrifices: both of which were done by me not without a long-weighed and pondered reason. Then, when he had shown how cautiously he had proceeded in this case, he added: Concerning which it was now necessary to write to you, that you may know that I have done nothing lightly, … and that indeed I communicated with none of the lapsed before, while there was still opportunity for the lapsed to receive not only indulgence but even a crown (that is, so long as the persecution was in force); but that afterwards, as the concord of the college and the advantage of gathering the brotherhood and of healing the wound demanded, I yielded to the necessity of the times, and thought that provision must be made for the salvation of many, and that I do not now depart from those things which were once decided in our council by common conference, although many things are tossed about by the voices of many, and lies against the priests of God, uttered from the mouth of the devil, are everywhere flung about to break the concord of Catholic unity.

[410] not long after the synod Then after many things concerning St. Cornelius the Pope, whom the schismatics were tearing with like lies, he turns to dissolving the accusation made against both himself and him. And first indeed, as regards those who had sacrificed, he confesses that by the decrees of the council he communicates with them before the completion of penance in one case only. For if any, he says, are seized by sickness, help is given to them in their peril, as was decided. Yet after help has been given, and peace granted to those in peril, they cannot be smothered by us, or crushed, or driven by our force and hand to the issue of death, as though, because peace is given to the dying, it were necessary that those who have received peace should die, etc. But to the other accusation, concerning communion with the libellatics, he answers far otherwise; for he does not deny it, but is wholly intent on showing that between the crime of these and that of those who sacrificed there is a very great difference: Nor do you think, he says, dearest brother, as it seems to some, that the libellatics ought to be put on a level with those who sacrificed, since even among those who sacrificed both the condition and the cause is frequently diverse. Then he laboriously proves this in the same place, and excuses the libellatics as far as he can, as having fallen through error, in the words recited by us at num. 149.

[411] was granted by its decree. He seems not obscurely to have admitted the same communion with the libellatics when in the aforesaid Epistle 52 he beat back Novatian, who had condemned it, in this manner. If he (Novatian) sets himself up as searcher and judge of heart and reins, let him judge equally in all things; and, since he knows it is written: "Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall thee," let him separate defrauders and adulterers from his side and from his company; since the case of an adulterer is much both graver and worse than that of a libellatic; for the latter sinned by necessity, the former by will; the latter, thinking it enough for him that he had not sacrificed, was deceived by an error, the former, a stormer of another's marriage, or having entered a brothel to the sewer and the miry gulf of the crowd, has violated a sanctified body and a temple of God with a detestable defilement. This argument is, as we commonly say, ad hominem, by which the Saint proves that communion with the libellatics is objected to him in vain by Novatian, while he himself retains defrauders and adulterers in his own communion and company, whom, if he acted as a fair judge, he ought much more to keep away from himself, as being ever so much worse than the libellatics.

[412] An answer is given Against this opinion, however, the author of the Observations on the Ecclesiastical Library of Elias Du Pin, tom. 1, chap. 4, §4, brings forward certain arguments from St. Cyprian himself, which we shall now examine. In the first place he observes that in the aforesaid Epistle 52 the Saint greatly commends that temperament by which it had been provided in the synod that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they should fail the more through despair, and, because the Church was closed to them, should follow the world and live as gentiles; nor yet again should the Evangelical censure be relaxed, so that they should rashly leap forward to communion; but that penance should be long drawn out, etc. And that this temperament pertains also to the libellatics the same author infers from the same letter, in which it is said of them: Whose penance if we reject, when they have some confidence of a tolerable conscience, they are at once, at the devil's invitation, hurried away with their wife and children, whom they had preserved unharmed, into heresy or schism, etc.

[413] And yet, he says, it would not have been a just temperament between too severe and too remiss a discipline, to certain arguments, to absolve at once the libellatics, whom Antonianus held in the same place with those who had sacrificed; nor was it to be feared that these, on account of a penance of a few years imposed on them, would be driven to despair. To this I answer that in the same synod

it was no less provided that the causes and the wills and the necessities of individuals should be examined; namely that penance should be exacted according to the gravity of the offense. But since the sin of the libellatics, who had offended deceived not so much by crime as by error, stood very far from the wickedness of those who had sacrificed, why should it not seem a just temperament to admit the former to peace after the sincere penance which, being admonished, they had performed; but to impose upon those who had sacrificed a few years of penance according to the deserts of each? I confess indeed that this could have seemed less just to the author of the Observations, because he proceeded on that opinion which holds that peace was deferred for those who had sacrificed until the danger of death; nor did he attend to the fact that we are here treating of the libellatics, who, being instructed about their error, had embraced penance and persevered in it. And that the libellatics generally did this is gathered from the same letter in the words recited at num. 149; but that they had long since been untaught that error is likewise clear from Epistle 14, written in the preceding year in his retirement, in which the same men are said to have gone about canvassing for the certificates of the martyrs.

[414] Nor does it matter if Antonianus, as the author says, held the libellatics and those who had sacrificed in the same place: by which someone attempts to persuade us for St. Cyprian solidly overthrows this error in the same place, and warns that it proceeds from Stoic, not from Christian, discipline. Different, he says, is the reasoning of the philosophers and Stoics, dearest brother, who say that all sins are equal, and that a grave man ought not easily to be bent. But between Christians and philosophers there is a very great distance. And since the Apostle says: See that no man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit; those things are to be avoided by us which do not come from the clemency of God, but descend from the presumption of a harsher philosophy. Besides, the precaution employed by the fathers of the council, lest the lapsed should despair, and praised by the holy Bishop, strikes directly at the capital heresy of the Novatians, toward which Antonianus seemed to incline. For the disagreement between Catholics and Novatians was not about the length of time during which penance should be done, but about the granting of peace: for the latter denied that peace ought or could be given by the Church to one lapsed after baptism, even when he had performed penance however great; whereas the Catholics maintained that it was altogether to be given after a penance completed according to the gravity of each one's offense.

[415] Hence the Saint brands that error in the same place in these words: that peace was to be granted to them, And oh, the mockery of a brotherhood deceived! Oh, the fallacious deception of wretched and distracted mourners! Oh, the ineffectual and empty tradition of a heretical teaching! To exhort to the penance of satisfaction, and to withdraw the medicine of satisfaction; to say to our brethren: Mourn, and pour out tears, and groan by day and by night, and for the washing away and purging of your offense labor abundantly and frequently; but after all this you will die outside the Church: you will do whatever pertains to peace, but you will receive no peace, which you seek. Who would not at once perish? Who would not fail through despair itself? Who would not turn away his mind from the purpose of lamentation? Against this impious hardness of the Novatians therefore St. Cyprian says that provision was made in the synod, in the words objected; and since they excluded the libellatics no less than the other lapsed perpetually from peace, he rightly observes that by so great an inclemency they would above all others have been brought to despair, and that these same, when they saw the Church cruelly closed to them for an offense committed rather from error than from a depraved disposition of mind, would with wife and children go over to the schismatic party of Felicissimus, who received all the lapsed without previous penance.

[416] only after penance had been imposed, That this is so is manifest from what he presently subjoins after the words objected: It will be ascribed to us, he says, in the day of judgment that we did not care for the wounded sheep, and that on account of one wounded we lost many that were whole; and that, whereas the Lord, leaving the ninety and nine sound, sought the one that wandered and was weary, and, when he had found it, himself carried it on his shoulders; we not only do not seek the lapsed, but even keep away those who come; and that, while the pseudo-prophets do not cease now to lay waste and rend the flock of Christ, we give occasion to the dogs and the wolves, so that those whom a hostile persecution has not destroyed we destroy by our hardness and inhumanity. He says, keep away; not, let us defer their peace; because, that is, the Novatians were disputing against the Church not about the duration of the penance which the libellatics should undergo, but about the power and right of reconciling. In the same way must be answered the other argument of the same author, which he frames from the words reported at num. 411, contending that the Saint would there have argued ineptly if peace had soon been given to the libellatics. Observe however that we are treating of those who, admonished of their error, had long since done penance privately and were doing it while the synod was being held: for we do not say that they were admitted to peace without any previous penance, but that the penance which they had already undergone seemed to the fathers sufficient for their being restored to the communion of the Church. Nor do we deny that some public penance also was imposed upon them; but we believe that it was so brief that peace could be said to have been given them immediately after the synod.

[417] and a long penance completed, No more weight have the things which the aforesaid author further objects: namely that St. Cyprian in the book On the Lapsed, written after the synod, inculcated the necessity of penance upon the libellatics as much as upon those who had sacrificed: and further, that the fathers of the synod were so far from indulgence of this kind that even those who had merely thought of obtaining a certificate did not obtain peace except after a penance performed for a notable time; as he affirms is read in the aforesaid book. Finally, that in Epistle 68 to the Spaniards, on the occasion of the two libellatic prelates Basilides and Martial, it is said that from the time of St. Cornelius it was decreed, with the unanimous consent of the bishops of the whole world, that presbyters and bishops who had defiled themselves with certificates could indeed be admitted to penance, but were thenceforth to be excluded from the clergy. But in the two former passages St. Cyprian is treating of those libellatics who, either flattering themselves that they had not sacrificed, had refused to do penance, and either extenuated their offense before the people or carefully concealed it.

[418] was decreed in that synod. This is manifest to anyone inspecting the passage objected: for there the Saint proves three things: first, that the conscience is truly contaminated by a certificate of this kind; second, that a libellatic, even if he has cleared himself before men, cannot yet impose upon God the judge; and third, that God sees through all secret things and hearts, and that crimes will not go unpunished, though they have lain hidden from men. But we are not speaking of libellatics of this sort. Next, what the author objects in the second place is not read in the aforesaid book. Take the words: How much greater in faith and better in fear are they who, although bound by no crime of sacrifice or certificate, yet because they had even thought of this, confessing this very thing before the priests of God sorrowfully and simply, make the exomologesis of their conscience, lay bare the burden of their mind, and seek a saving remedy for wounds however small and slight, knowing that it is written: God is not mocked. Where, I ask, does the Saint here say what the author has objected? Certainly whoever will consider that whole passage together with what precedes and follows will confess that St. Cyprian there shows from the testimonies of sacred Scripture that sins, however hidden, must be expiated by penance and exomologesis, and illustrates this by the example of the devout, who wash away even lesser sins in this way. Hence he there presently subjoins: God cannot be mocked and circumvented, nor deluded by any deceiving cunning: nay he offends the more who, thinking of God after the manner of man, believes that he escapes the punishment of his crime, if the crime was not openly committed.

[419] In vain too does he cite Epistle 68 in his own favor; for Basilides and Martial had committed, besides the crime of the certificate, other grave crimes, as was shown above at num. 156, and after recounting these the Saint says in that letter: And since there are many other and grave offenses in which Basilides and Martial are held entangled, such men in vain attempt to usurp the episcopate; since it is manifest that men of this kind can neither preside over the Church of Christ nor ought to offer Sacrifices; especially since long since, with us and with absolutely all the bishops established throughout the whole world, our colleague Cornelius also … decreed that men of this kind can indeed be admitted to do penance, but are prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and from priestly honor. Besides, even if we were to grant gratuitously that the aforesaid decree pertains also to bishops contaminated by a certificate alone, would it be a wonder that that crime should have been chastised more severely in bishops than in laymen; since their example was far more pernicious, and their fall more foul; and since the error by which laymen were chiefly excused could not be judged or ought to be judged to have had place in bishops?

[420] Nor does it seem to be doubted that the same synod determined something in favor of the lapsed What in that synod who had received letters of commendation from martyrs and confessors; provided however that these had been given justly, moderately, and religiously. For those which Lucian and some others had given imprudently and indiscriminately were without doubt rejected. For St. Cyprian had promised this more than once, and in the book On the Lapsed he seems to suggest that it was actually done, when toward the end of it he says: To one who repents, who labors, who asks, He (God) can clemently pardon, He can set to his account whatever both the martyrs have asked and the priests have done for such men. Tillemont, art. 23, suspected that in the same council it was besides decreed that, if any persecution should meanwhile be stirred up, all the lapsed who had not deserted the Church and had not ceased after their fall to do sincere penance should be received into communion. Occasion for the suspicion was given by Epistle 52, in which the Saint writes thus among other things about the decrees of the same synod: Nor can anyone be compelled by us to penance, if the fruit of penance be withdrawn. If the battle come first, he will be found, strengthened by us, armed for the battle. But if before the battle infirmity press, he departs with the consolation of peace and communion.

[421] was besides determined. But Epistle 54 stands in the way of our taking these things so; by which the Saint, together with several bishops, a new persecution now threatening, signified to St. Cornelius that he judged that this favor should be granted to lapsed of this kind; and he strives to prove that decree of his to him not from any canon of the earlier synod, but by many reasons, and manifestly indicates that it had been recently framed by himself for the forestalling of the peril of souls; as will be plain to the reader, and as we too shall show in its own place. Hence Maran has rightly interpreted the words objected in such a way that the hope of obtaining pardon after penance is said to be useful for raising the spirits of the lapsed and for strengthening them for the fight, if perchance an occasion should return. For the holy Prelate had premised in the same place: Strength for virtue is armed out of penance, which could not be armed, if anyone

should fail through despair, if, being harshly and cruelly separated from the Church, he should turn to gentile ways and worldly works, or, rejected by the Church, should go over to heretics and schismatics; where, even if he should afterwards be slain for the Name, being set outside the Church and divided from unity and from charity, he will not be able to be crowned in death.

[422] Felicissimus and the others are condemned; Now Felicissimus, and the four presbyters who had adhered to him (for the fifth, Novatus, had already fled to Rome), were heard in the same council, and what had been determined about them was afterwards written out to St. Cornelius the Pope, as St. Cyprian testifies in Epistle 42 in the words which I subjoin. But as far as concerns here the case of certain presbyters and of Felicissimus, our colleagues have sent you a letter subscribed with their own hand, that you might be able to know what was here done; from their letter you will learn what they judged and what they pronounced, when these men had been heard. This letter, from which the matter might have been known more clearly, has perished; nevertheless it is beyond doubt from Epistle 55 that those schismatics were then again condemned. Novatus too, the chief torch of the schism, though then absent, was specially proceeded against, since in Epistle 49 he is said to have been always condemned by the voice of all the priests as a heretic and a traitor. But Jovinus and Maximus also, … condemned for abominable sacrifices and for crimes proved against them by the sentence of nine bishops our colleagues, says the Saint in the aforesaid Epistle 55, … were also a second time excluded by several of us in the council of the previous year (namely 251). These two were bishops of uncertain sees, who, being stripped of their diocese, embraced the party of Felicissimus, and, obstinate in the schism, ordained Fortunatus pseudo-bishop in Africa, as we shall say below.

[423] the acts of the synod are sent to Rome. And these are the things which we know to have been chiefly done in the said synod of Carthage. For the rest, the canons or decrees framed in it, especially those which pertained to the case of the lapsed, were afterwards transmitted to St. Cornelius the Pontiff, and by him approved in a Roman council, as the Saint himself testifies in Epistle 52. It runs thus: And if the number of bishops in Africa should seem less than sufficient, we have also written about this matter to Rome to our colleague Cornelius, who himself too, a council having been held with very many fellow-bishops, agreed with us in the same judgment with equal gravity and wholesome moderation. Similarly in Epistle 54 to the same holy Pontiff he records that the aforesaid decrees about receiving the lapsed were made by counsel taken mutually with one another. Of both synods, the Roman namely and the Carthaginian, Eusebius also makes mention in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 43, where he writes that sixty bishops were present at the former, besides far more presbyters and deacons, and cites some letters pertaining to this, which have now perished. Nevertheless he makes no mention of Felicissimus, but of Novatus, or more truly Novatian, who brought a far fouler schism into the Roman Church than Felicissimus had brought into that of Carthage; whence it seems to have come about that Eusebius passed over Felicissimus.

§ XXIV. What was done against the schism of the antipope Novatian: the Pontificate of St. Cornelius is acknowledged and promulgated in Africa.

Of St. Cornelius, the elected Pontiff, While these things were being done in Africa, Novatus stirred up at Rome another schism and a new heresy, which barred to those lapsed in the faith all access to pardon and to Ecclesiastical peace. Of this schism we have already treated at length in the historical Commentary on the acts of St. Cornelius the Pope, §5 and following, and therefore we shall here touch only briefly on those things which we there treated more fully. After a long interpontificate — namely from the XX day of January in the year 250, on which St. Fabian the Roman Pontiff had been taken away by martyrdom, until the IV of June in the following year, as in the aforesaid Commentary §4 we maintained as more probable — after that long interpontificate, I say, St. Cornelius was raised to the Chair of St. Peter to the greatest joy of all good men. But indeed this vexed Novatus, who, since under so great a Pontiff he could not hope for impunity for his crimes, fearing lest Italy as well as Africa should be closed to him, impelled Novatian, who had long been gaping after the Roman Chair, to claim it for himself, and, having joined to him some of the confessors, persuaded him to oppose the ordination of St. Cornelius.

[425] These things being thus settled, St. Cornelius, together with his presbyters, notified his ordination in modest and religious letters to St. Cyprian and of the Novatians who opposed it, and to the other African bishops, according to custom. But Novatian too, and those who adhered to his schism, likewise sent their own letters to Carthage — but far different, being stuffed with atrocious calumnies against St. Cornelius and his presbyters — and opposed his election. It was not difficult for St. Cyprian to recognize from both letters on which side equity and innocence stood: nevertheless, since he feared that if in so great a matter he should seem to have hurried too much, he would give a handle for new disturbances, he judged that it must be handled prudently, and devised a way by which he might make the integrity and lawful ordination of the holy Pontiff most fully attested, and utterly crush the impudence of the schismatics.

[426] He therefore read the letters of Cornelius publicly, and made his ordination known to all, the letters having been received, and, suppressing the turbulent letter of the schismatics, by the common consent of all his colleagues, who seem then to have held a council with him, he delegated the bishops Caldonius and Fortunatus to Rome with letters, that they might, as far as they could, compose the dissenting parties, and seek out sure testimonies concerning the election of St. Cornelius from the bishops who had been present: the whole case meanwhile being held in suspense throughout Africa until they should return. So it is clear from Epistles 41, 42, and 45, afterwards given to St. Cornelius himself. And in Epistle 42 indeed he thus sets forth the reason for this counsel: But in that we desired writings from our colleagues who had been present there at your ordination, we were not forgetful of the ancient custom nor seeking anything new; for it would have been enough that you should announce by letter that you had been made Bishop, were it not that there was on the other side a discrepant faction, which by its criminal and calumnious inventions disturbed the minds of colleagues as well as of very many brethren, and confounded their hearts. For the quieting of which matter we thought it necessary that the firm and solid authority of our colleagues writing to us from there should be procured.

[427] he sends legates to Rome, And of the legates sent he writes thus in the same place: As befitted the servants of God, and especially just and peaceable priests, dearest brother, we had lately sent our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, that they might strive and labor, as far as they could, not only by the persuasion of our letters but by their own presence and by the counsel of you all, to compose the members of the divided body into the unity of the Catholic Church, and to bind them together with the bond of Christian charity. Yet what he himself already then felt about his lawful election and about the accusations of the schismatics he indicated a few words later: Although, he says, our mind and purpose had already then been made manifest to the brethren and to the whole people there, when, letters having lately been received from both parties, we read your letter and imparted to the ears of each the ordination of your episcopate.

[428] the letters of the schismatics being suppressed, Mindful too of our common honor, and keeping regard for priestly gravity and sanctity, we rejected those things which on the other side had been heaped up with criminal bitternesses in the book transmitted to us; considering likewise and weighing that in so great a number of brethren, and in a religious assembly, with the priests of God sitting together and the altar set in place, they ought neither to be read nor heard. For those things are not easily to be brought forward, nor incautiously and rashly published, which, written in a discordant style, stir up scandal in the hearers and confound with uncertain opinion brethren placed far off and established across the sea. These and more things in the letters cited; from which it is evident that St. Cyprian employed a procedure of this kind, not because he doubted the integrity or the lawful election of St. Cornelius, but because he judged that it ought so to be done for the common good; which we shall see also turned out happily.

[429] the case being nevertheless held in suspense, Certainly the holy Prelate was so far from an unjust suspicion that those whom he knew to be about to sail from Africa to Rome he carefully admonished not to separate themselves, moved by false accusations, from the communion of St. Cornelius, as he not obscurely indicates in Epistle 45 given to the same holy Pontiff. Yet some, he said, sometimes disturb minds and spirits by their talk, when they report certain things otherwise than the truth stands. For we, giving to each of those sailing the reason why they should not sail with any scandal, know that we exhorted them to acknowledge and hold fast the root and the mother of the Catholic Church. For what else did he here recommend than that they should firmly adhere to Cornelius, whom he knew to have been elected Pontiff of the Roman Church, which is the root and mother of the Catholic Church, although for the aforesaid reasons he judged it more useful to defer a little the promulgation of that election throughout Africa, until the legates had returned from Rome.

[430] In the aforesaid council it had besides been determined that, matters being suspended in this way, until the legates should have returned. letters to be sent meanwhile to Rome should be addressed not to St. Cornelius but to the clergy of the City. Hence it came about that, when St. Cyprian had come to Hadrumetum together with Liberalis the bishop, and had informed the clergy of that city, whose bishop Polycarp was absent, of the decisions of the council, these too addressed their letters not to the Pontiff, as had previously been done in the name of Polycarp, but to the Roman clergy: about which matter St. Cornelius afterwards complained to Cyprian, and the latter cleared himself to him by Epistle 45. This decree however did not prevent St. Cyprian, who had a clear view of the lawful election of Cornelius, from transmitting to the same Pontiff, to be read, copies of the letters which he had written to his clergy and people about Felicissimus and his presbyter followers, by Caldonius and Fortunatus, the legates, as we have said, of the council; as he himself testifies in Epistle 42.

[431] Meanwhile Novatian, resolved to carry out his crime, which he had before concealed even with an oath interposed, he keeps the legates of the antipope Novatian had by force and guile procured that he should be ordained bishop by three Italian bishops whom he had fraudulently summoned, and, relying on the suffrage of his followers, was bearing himself as Roman Pontiff; all which things we have set forth at length in the aforesaid Commentary, §7; where we have also shown, against Tillemont, that that sacrilegious ordination of Novatian took place before the Pontificate of St. Cornelius had been promulgated and publicly acknowledged throughout Africa. Further, Novatian, having usurped the Pontificate in this manner, soon sent his legates to announce it to various churches, and to that of Carthage indeed Maximus the presbyter, Augendus the deacon, Machaeus and Longinus; doubtless impudently lying that he had been compelled to it against his will; for that he veiled his crime with this mask is evident from the letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria, reported in Eusebius, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 45.

[432] But the schismatics were far from imposing upon St. Cyprian by this or a like device: away from his communion, for since he in no way doubted the lawful election of St. Cornelius,

he could not without horror learn that that new monster, unknown until that time in the Roman Church — a schismatic, I say, and a pseudo-pontiff — had been created, nor could he but turn away from his legates. But let us hear the man himself in Epistle 41 to St. Cornelius. There came to us, he says, dearest brother, sent by Novatian, Maximus the presbyter and Augendus the deacon and a certain Machaeus and Longinus. But indeed, when from the letters which they carried with them, and from their speech and asseveration, we had learned that Novatian had been made a bishop, being moved by the depravity of an ordination unlawful and made against the Catholic Church, we judged that they must at once be restrained from our communion, having meanwhile refuted and beaten back the things which they obstinately and pertinaciously attempted to assert.

[433] Not long after, Caldonius and Fortunatus, returning to Africa from Rome, and by Caldonius and Fortunatus, and others brought letters from St. Cornelius and from the bishops who had been present at his ordination, in which both the integrity and lawful election of the holy Pontiff were so solidly and manifestly proved, and the impiety and frauds of Novatian and his followers were so brilliantly detected, that now not even to rivals and to those who delight in novelty or depravity was any scruple of doubting or dissenting left. There came also Pompey and Stephen, likewise African bishops, who had been at Rome while Cornelius was being elected; and they confirmed by their own testimonies the same things which the letters brought and Caldonius and Fortunatus had asserted; so that, on St. Cyprian's testimony in Epistle 41, it was not even necessary that those who had come sent by Novatian should be heard further.

[434] being thoroughly instructed in the case, These men however did not cease to tear the holy Pontiff with their accustomed calumnies, and impudently to demand that their accusations should be publicly weighed; but being repulsed by the fathers of the council, and convicted of heresy, when they understood that nothing was to be hoped for by them from the assembled bishops, they betook themselves elsewhere, to join the incautious to their own party. It will be useful to have heard St. Cyprian continuing in the letter just cited. Who (the legates from Novatian), when in the assembly they broke out also into invidious revilings and turbulent shoutings, and demanded that the crimes which they said they brought and could prove should be publicly examined by us and by the people; we denied that it befitted our gravity that we should suffer the reputation of our colleague, already chosen and ordained and approved by the praiseworthy judgment of many, to be further tossed about by a slanderous mouth and by the voice of rivals.

[435] he condemns as heretics, And because it would be long to heap into a letter the arguments by which they were refuted and crushed, and by which they were stripped bare as having made a heresy by their unlawful attempts; you will hear each thing most fully from Primitivus our fellow-presbyter, when he comes to you. And lest their raging audacity should ever cease, here too they strive to drag the members of Christ into the parties of a schism, and to cut and mangle the body of the Catholic Church; running from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, that they may seek for themselves companions of their obstinacy and of their error. To whom we have once given answer, and we do not cease to enjoin, that, their pernicious dissension and contention being laid aside, they should know that it is impiety to desert their mother; and should acknowledge and understand that, once a bishop has been made and approved by the testimony and judgment of colleagues and of the people, another can in no way be appointed; and accordingly, if they take counsel for themselves peaceably and faithfully, if they profess themselves assertors of the Gospel of Christ, let them first return to the Church.

[436] and repels them; From these things observe in passing that Novatian was already then acknowledged and rejected by the African fathers not only as a schismatic but also as a heretic: whence perhaps this pertains, which is read thus from the Greek Synodicon in Labbe, tom. 1 of the Councils, col. 719: A divine and sacred provincial Synod at Carthage, called the New city of Africa, gathered by the holy martyr Cyprian, who was its bishop, and by eighty-four other bishops; which deposed Novatus (that is, Novatian), as denying penance to the lapsed. From what source however the author of the Synodicon, which was written no earlier than the end of the ninth century, drew these things, is unexplored: nevertheless that Novatus, that is, Novatian, was condemned by St. Cyprian and the other African bishops, Eusebius also testifies in book 6 of the History, chap. 43, citing their letter, which has now perished.

[437] and he acknowledges the Pontificate of St. Cornelius, The ordination of St. Cornelius having been so solidly proved that no scruple about it could remain even to lovers of novelty, St. Cyprian sent Primitivus the presbyter to that holy Pontiff with a letter, by which he acknowledged his Pontificate, and briefly set forth what had been done at Carthage in rejecting Novatian and his legates, the task being committed to Primitivus of explaining the same more fully. This is the letter numbered 41, which we have recited at num. 432 and following. Care was also soon taken that letters should be sent throughout all the provinces suffragan to the metropolis of Carthage, from which the lawful Pontificate of the same Cornelius might be established among all, and the individual bishops be admonished that, detesting Novatian, they should adhere to Cornelius. So we learn from Epistles 42 and 45, in the former of which St. Cyprian, when he had said that his ordination had been approved in Africa by irrefragable testimonies, thus continued: According as the sanctity and likewise the truth of divine tradition and of Ecclesiastical institution demanded, we have directed our letters to you: but also, bringing these same things to the knowledge of our individual colleagues throughout our province, we have enjoined that our brethren should be directed by these also with letters.

[438] In the latter letter he speaks still more clearly: But since, and takes care that it be promulgated. Letters he says, our province is more widely spread — for it has Numidia and Mauretania adjoining it — lest the schism made in the City should confound the minds of the absent with an uncertain opinion, it seemed good that, through the bishops, the truth being retained by us and a greater authority made for approving your ordination, then at last, every scruple being shaken out of the breasts of each, letters should be made — as they are being made — to absolutely all placed in that province, so that all our colleagues might firmly approve and hold to you, and to your communion, that is, to the unity and likewise the charity of the Catholic Church. Nor did the assembled prelates fail in the duty of which they admonished others, but themselves first of all acknowledged the Pontificate of St. Cornelius by letters given to him, in which they at the same time informed him of the schism of Felicissimus and of his presbyters, as we have it from Epistle 42.

[439] And not long after, St. Cyprian transmitted the aforesaid Epistle 42 to the holy Pontiff by Mettius the subdeacon given on this matter and Nicephorus the acolyte, and set forth to him the reason for the counsel which he had prudently employed in a matter of such moment somewhat more fully than he had done in Epistle 41. On the same occasion he asked him to have read out to the brethren the letters which he had formerly written to his clergy and people about the ordination of Felicissimus and about the case of him and of the presbyters adhering to him, copies of which he had sent first by Caldonius and Fortunatus, and then by Mettius and Nicephorus, so that their schism too might be evident to all no less at Rome than at Carthage. Presently Primitivus the presbyter, by whom we said the Saint's Epistle 41 was carried to Cornelius, returned from Rome to Africa, and brought a letter in which the holy Pontiff signified that it had been vexatious to him that the people of Hadrumetum, having previously given him a letter in the name of Polycarp their bishop, had afterwards, on Cyprian's counsel, as was said above at num. 430, written to the Roman clergy.

[440] This letter of St. Cornelius has perished; but Cyprian answered it by Epistle 45, given. clearing himself, that he had done this from no levity or contumely; but that, since it had pleased the bishops in synod that all things should meanwhile be held intact and in suspense until Caldonius and Fortunatus had returned from Rome, the zeal for peace and concord had demanded that the people of Hadrumetum should observe the same as the rest, so that in nothing should the agreement of the churches established there be discrepant. For the rest he observes that this counsel turned out happily, his Pontificate being now confirmed by the most certain testimonies and acknowledged throughout all Africa. Finally he prays for a stable and firm governance both for him and for all the bishops, and peace and concord for the whole Catholic Church.

§ XXV. He strives, by letters and by sending the book On the Unity of the Church, to lead the Roman confessors back from the schism; he congratulates them when they have returned.

He attempts to recall to the Church Matters being thus composed throughout Africa, his charity and love of concord impelled our holy Prelate to attempt to lead back to the communion of St. Cornelius the Roman confessors also, whom we have said had gone over to the party of Novatian. To this end he wrote Epistle 44 to Maximus, Nicostratus, and the other confessors, in which, having recalled to their memory how highly he had always esteemed the glory of their confession, and having thereby won their goodwill, he set forth the grief which he had conceived from their schism, and adjured them to return to the Church their mother. For it weighs upon me, he said, and saddens me, and an intolerable sadness of a stricken * and almost prostrate breast grips me, since I had learned that you there had consented, against Ecclesiastical order, against the Evangelical law, against the unity of the Catholic institution, that another bishop should be made; that is — what is neither right nor lawful to be done — that another church should be established, that the members of Christ should be torn apart, that the one mind and body of the Lord's flock should be mangled by a divided rivalry.

[442] the Roman confessors, Wherefore, I beg, let this unlawful sundering of our brotherhood not persist at least in you; but, mindful both of your confession and of the divine tradition, return to the mother from whom you came forth, whence you came to the glory of confession with the exultation of that same mother, etc. He was unwilling however that this letter of his should be delivered to the confessors except with the knowledge and consent of St. Cornelius, lest perhaps some malevolent person should attribute to him sentiments other than those he had written; and therefore he charged Mettius the subdeacon, to whom he had given it to carry, to do nothing in this part without his judgment; and he informed the holy Pontiff of the whole matter by Epistle 43, which, because it is short, I subjoin here. I have judged it both religious and necessary, dearest brother, to write a short letter to the confessors who are there and who, seduced by the obstinacy and depravity of Novatian and Novatus, have withdrawn from the Church, by which I might address them out of mutual affection, that they may return to their mother, that is, to the Catholic Church. Which letter I have ordered to be read to you first by Mettius the subdeacon, lest anyone should pretend that I have written something other than what is contained in my letter. I have however charged the same Mettius, sent by me to you, to conduct the matter at your discretion, and, if you shall judge that the same letter ought to be delivered to the confessors, then to hand it over. I desire, dearest brother, that you always fare well.

[443] who had adhered to the schism. Now this Mettius is doubtless the very man whom we said above at num. 439 to have carried Epistle 42 to the same Cornelius together with Nicephorus the acolyte; and therefore those two letters seem, namely

43 and 44, to have been transmitted to Rome together with 42. Nor does it matter that on this view the Saint must be said to have written two letters to the same Pontiff at the same time: for this could have happened because, since Epistle 42 had by the custom then received to be read out to the clerics, no mention had to be made in it of 44, which was to be delivered to the confessors, or suppressed, at the sole discretion of Cornelius; and therefore it was necessary to inform the aforesaid Pontiff about it by a secret letter, as Tillemont has rightly observed. But from the fact that in Epistle 43 Mettius alone is mentioned, Nicephorus being passed over, only this can be deduced, that that matter was committed to Mettius alone to be secretly handled, not that he went to Rome at that time without him.

[444] About the same time St. Cyprian wrote the book or treatise On the Unity of the Church, He writes the book which we still have among his Works. This Opusculum the Saint himself commends in Epistle 51, saying: But our mediocrity has also, as far as it could, set forth the unity of the Catholic Church. St. Pontius too makes mention of it in the Life, num. 13, where, recounting his Works, he says that he taught the truth to heretics, unity to schismatics, peace to the sons of God. St. Augustine also commends it, book 2 against Cresconius, chap. 33, where it is called the Epistle … on Unity. But St. Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe in Africa, in book 1 to Euthymius, chap. 21, calls the same book On the Simplicity of Prelates, or rather, according to ancient copies, On the Unity of the Catholic Church. Remboldus also entitled it On the Simplicity of Prelates in his edition; which title seems to have arisen from nothing else than that at the very opening of the little book God is said to command that prelates be … simple unto innocence, and yet with simplicity prudent. But the former title, which the other editions also prefer, is the genuine one and is to be retained.

[445] As regards the argument of the Opusculum, St. Pontius has compendiously embraced it in the words just recited. On the Unity of the Church For St. Cyprian here treated of this alone: to show that the unity of the Catholic Church, founded upon St. Peter, was instituted by Christ as its author, and that to whoever, separated from it, whether by heresy or by schism, shall have met his death, all hope of salvation is utterly closed off, even if he has expired under torments in the confession of the Christian name. For though they burn, he said, in flames, and, delivered to fires or thrown to beasts, lay down their lives; that will not be the crown of faith but the penalty of perfidy, nor a glorious end of religious virtue, but the destruction of despair. Such a man can be slain, he cannot be crowned. Hence he carefully admonishes all the faithful to flee men of this kind no otherwise than a plague; but the rest he exhorts to return to the Church.

[446] But since a twofold schism and a twofold heresy, newly arisen, was then tearing the Church, against the schismatics, namely that of Novatian and that of Felicissimus, there is no doubt that he opposed this treatise to both as an antidote and a medicine. And Novatian indeed, who had sacrilegiously claimed for himself the Chair of St. Cornelius, he seems to strike when he says: These are they who of their own accord set themselves at the head of rash gatherings without divine appointment, who constitute themselves prelates without any law of ordination, who, with no one giving them the episcopate, assume the name of bishop. To the same man more probably these words also pertain: Nor let anyone wonder, most beloved brethren, that even some of the confessors proceed to such things, that some also from that quarter sin so abominably, so gravely: for confession does not make one immune from the snares of the devil, nor do they defend with perpetual security one still placed in the world against temptations and dangers and worldly assaults and onsets.

[447] To the same man, I say, these things pertain more probably, and what he there pursues at length concerning the confessors; and at the same time him for as we know that certain of the Roman confessors sustained the party of Novatian chiefly by their authority, so we do not know whether any of the African confessors adhered to Felicissimus. There is also in that Opusculum a notable passage concerning the primacy of St. Peter and of his successors in the Roman See, of which we shall treat more opportunely elsewhere. Further, St. Cyprian transmitted the aforesaid book On the Unity of the Church to Rome also, to the confessors who, as was said above, had adhered to Novatian, probably by the same Mettius the subdeacon, by whom he sent Epistle 44 to them. He added other little books also, which Tillemont and others judged to have been the book On the Lapsed; but, in my judgment at least, not rightly.

[448] with another little book, not however the one For the passage from which we have this is in Epistle 51, where the Saint, congratulating them as now returned to the Church, says: On which account we too, holding a temperament, and contemplating the balance of the Lord, and considering the piety and mercy of God the Father, after long and much discussion held among us, have weighed with just moderation the things that are to be done. All which you can thoroughly inspect, having read the little books which I had lately read here, and had also transmitted to you to be read, out of our common affection; where to the lapsed there is lacking neither the censure that rebukes, nor the medicine that heals. But our mediocrity has also, as far as it could, set forth the unity of the Catholic Church. Which little book I trust now pleases you more and more, since you now so read it that you both approve and love it: seeing that what we have written in words, you fulfil in deeds, since you return to the Church in the unity of charity and peace. That the latter words are to be taken of the book On the Unity of the Church is agreed among all without any doubt: but that by the former the book On the Lapsed cannot be designated, I show thus.

[449] which is entitled On the Lapsed, It is manifest that the little books which the Saint here commends were written after long and much discussion held among the bishops, and that into them were reported the things which they had weighed with just moderation as to be done. But nothing of this kind is read in the whole book On the Lapsed, in which all are so admonished to do penance with the hope of pardon that nevertheless no mention is made of the council or of its decrees concerning the lapsed, as Tillemont himself confesses in Note 32, who also holds that this book was written not after the Saint's return from his retirement, and before the canons sanctioned by the synod. How therefore could the Roman confessors, having read that book, thoroughly inspect what the fathers of the synod, holding a temperament, and contemplating the balance of the Lord, and considering the piety and mercy of God the Father, after long and much discussion held among themselves, had weighed? Yet these things partly hold good on Tillemont's view; for we shall say that this book was written some months after the said council, namely after the slaying of the Decii toward the end of the year 251; but on that account it could still less be designated in Epistle 51, and be transmitted before this letter to the aforesaid confessors, since these returned to the Church long before the destruction of the Decii.

[450] he sends to the Roman confessors; Wherefore I think it far more probable that the little book commended in the said letter is either like or the same as that of which he makes mention thus in Epistle 52 to Antonianus: The persecution being lulled, when the opportunity of assembling together was given, a copious number of bishops … we came together into one place, and, the divine Scriptures being brought forward on both sides, we weighed a temperament with wholesome moderation, so that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, … nor yet again should the Evangelical censure be relaxed, so that they should rashly leap forward to communion, … according to what is contained in the pamphlet, which I trust has reached you, where the several heads of the decisions are written out. Of a pamphlet of this kind, I say, I judge the Saint to be speaking in Epistle 51; namely one into which he himself had reported the canons and decisions of the synod, and which he had taken care to have read out to the assembled fathers and to the clergy and people of Carthage. Certainly on this view it is rightly understood that the Roman confessors, having read that pamphlet, could thoroughly inspect what the synod had determined; and of the same pamphlet it was rightly said: Where to the lapsed there is lacking neither the censure that rebukes, nor the medicine that heals.

[451] But with what happy outcome the holy Prelate gave to these confessors both Epistle 44 some of whom return to the Church, and the aforesaid little books, has already been intimated at num. 448, and set forth much more fully in the historical Commentary on St. Cornelius the Pope, §8, to which I refer the studious reader, and shall relate here only those things which properly pertain to our Saint. From the number of those confessors, Maximus the presbyter, and also Urban, Sidonius, and Macharius, the impiety of Novatian being at length detected, returned to the Church, and were clemently received by St. Cornelius amid the joys of the whole people. The holy Pontiff did not defer announcing to St. Cyprian a matter of such moment, on which he foresaw that the return of many others from the schism depended; nay, he did so in the same hour and at the same moment by Epistle 46, which he committed to be carried by Nicephorus the acolyte, by whom we said St. Cyprian's Epistle 42 was brought to Cornelius, and who was then at hand to cross over into Africa.

[452] To this St. Cyprian replied by Epistle 47, to the Saint's utmost joy in which he congratulatingly expressed the incredible joy which he had received from that most longed-for message. And we profess, he said, that we have given and give the greatest thanks without ceasing, dearest brother, to God the Father almighty, and to His Christ, our Lord and God the Savior, that the Church is so divinely protected that its unity and sanctity is not continually, nor wholly, corrupted by the obstinacy of perfidy and of heretical depravity. For we have read your letter, and with exultation received the most ample joy of our common prayer, that Maximus the presbyter and Urban the confessors, with Sidonius and Macharius, have returned to the Catholic Church. And after some things: Deservedly did the clergy and the people and the whole brotherhood receive them on their return with the utmost joy, as you write; since in confessors who preserve their glory and return to unity, everyone reckons himself an associate and a partaker of their glory.

[453] Besides the common joy which he had conceived from the prosperity of the Roman Church, of which he was most loving, and to the profit of the Church. he was moreover affected by a singular joy proper to himself, in that he confidently trusted that those who in his own diocese had been carried away by the authority of those confessors and had followed Novatian would by their example likewise return to the Church, and that the rest would not easily be deceived thereafter. For here, he says, an error had misled some of our brethren, in that they seemed to themselves to be following the communion of the confessors. That error being taken away, light has been poured into the breasts of all, and it has been shown that the Catholic Church is one, and can neither be cut nor divided. Nor will anyone now easily be able to be deceived by the loquacious words of a raging schismatic, since it has been proved that good and glorious soldiers of Christ could not long be kept outside the Church by another's fallacy and perfidy.

[454] The Saint to their letter About the same time the aforesaid confessors also gave their own letter on the same matter, which among the Cyprianic letters is the fiftieth, but very brief, such as I subjoin. To Cyprian their brother, Maximus, Urban, Sidonius, and Macharius, greeting. We are certain, dearest brother, that you too rejoice with us with equal prayer, that we, having held counsel and consulting rather for the advantages and the peace of the Church, all matters being passed over and reserved to the judgment of God, have made peace with Cornelius our Bishop, and likewise with the whole clergy. That this was done with the joy also of the whole Church, and with the ready charity of all, you ought most certainly to have known by this our letter. We pray, dearest brother, that you fare well for many years. Longer is the letter which the Saint wrote back to this, and which among the Cyprianic letters follows the one just given, and is commended by St. Augustine, book 2 against Cresconius, chap. 34. In it he greatly congratulates the confessors on their return to the Church, observing that it was just, and worthy of their faith, that they should return to the camp from which they had gone forth to subdue the enemy, and should bring back trophies from the battle-line to the place whence they had taken their arms.

[455] replies with congratulation. But with what gladness he received these things he sets forth thus: Let others see how much they congratulate you, or how much each glories within himself: I confess that I both congratulate you more, and glory more than the rest, in this peaceable return and charity of yours. For you ought simply to hear what has been in my heart. I grieved vehemently, and was gravely anguished, that I could not communicate with those whom I had once begun to love. After schismatic and heretical error received you as you came forth from prison, the matter was as though your glory had remained in the prison: for there the dignity of your name seemed to have settled, since the soldiers of Christ did not return from the prison to the Church, into which they had first come with the praise and congratulation of the Church. After this he overthrows the heresy, obstinate pride, and fury of Novatian, and briefly commends the judgment of himself and of the bishops in the synod of Carthage concerning the lapsed, as opposed to these and as conformable to the divine piety and mercy. Finally he makes mention of the little books sent to them, whose reading he gathers and trusts to have pleased them, and to be about to please them more and more, from their return to the Church, as we have shown at num. 448 by producing his words.

* Pam. adds &

§ XXVI. A second embassy and machinations of the Novatians in Africa: an apology written by the Saint for himself and for all Catholics to Antonianus.

Novatian, having ordained Nicostratus While all good men were congratulating the Church on the return of the Roman confessors, the Novatians with their party were stirring up new disturbances in Africa. For Novatian, having learned that Maximus, Longinus, and Machaeus, whom he had sent as his legates to Carthage, had there been rejected and condemned, sent thither Nicostratus, Novatus, Evaristus, Primus, and Dionysius, to repair, if it could be done, the defeat received. Of these he had appointed Nicostratus pseudo-bishop in Africa, on the testimony of the author of the most ancient Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs published by us before tom. 1 of April, and in the Propylaeum of May, in which is read: Novatus outside the Church ordained Novatian in the city of Rome, and Nicostratus in Africa. This being done, the confessors who had separated themselves from Cornelius, with Maximus the presbyter who was with Moses, returned to the Church. Of this new embassy we have treated more fully in §8 of the historical Commentary on St. Cornelius the Pope, and therefore it will suffice to have touched upon it here in a few words. Cornelius, being informed of their plan, soon warned St. Cyprian, first indeed by a letter sent through Augendus the deacon, which has perished, and then by Epistle 48, which Nicephorus the acolyte brought to Carthage together with the other, by which we said the return of the confessors was announced, on the day after they had landed there.

[457] The reason for writing was that the Bishop of Carthage might in haste inform the other prelates throughout Africa of their arrival, he sends legates their crimes, and their machinations; which was diligently seen to by him, as is evident from Epistle 49, by which he replied very briefly to 46, but at sufficient length to 48. And he began it thus after the usual greeting: You have acted both with diligence and with love, dearest brother, in sending to us in haste Nicephorus the acolyte, who should both announce to us the glorious gladness about the confessors returned, and most fully inform us against the new and pernicious engines of Novatian and Novatus for assailing the Church of Christ. For when the day before there had come there the harmful faction of heretical depravity, itself already ruined and about to ruin others who should consent to it, on the following day Nicephorus arrived with your letter; by which we both learned, and began to teach and instruct others, that Evaristus, from being a bishop, has not even remained a layman, etc.

[458] Then, having spoken from the aforesaid letter of St. Cornelius of the perfidy and frauds of Nicostratus also, into Africa again, he inveighs at length against the crimes of Novatus, of whom, as being most notorious in Africa, he says nothing needed to be reported to him; observing among other things that he is the same man who had stirred up schism both at Carthage and at Rome, and that when he had departed from that City, no otherwise than when a storm has been driven off, the disturbances also began to be quieted. But let us hear St. Cyprian: With Novatus, he says, withdrawing thence from you, that is, with the storm and whirlwind withdrawing, quiet was in part made there, and the glorious and good confessors, who had departed from the Church at his instigation, after he departed from the City returned to the Church. It is the same Novatus who among us first sowed the fire of discord and schism, etc. Finally after these and other things he indicates his hope of the other brethren, whom that heretic had seduced, being happily led back to the bosom of the Church.

[459] In the Commentary on the acts of St. Cornelius the Pope, § X, we have already observed and appoints other pseudo-bishops that it is not probable that the aforesaid legates of Novatian again tried the minds of St. Cyprian and of the other Catholic prelates who had held the synod with him, and who perhaps were then still continuing to hold it. For since the heresy of Novatian had already been detected and condemned by them, they could hope for nothing from them, especially while they had as a companion of their embassy Novatus, once a presbyter of the church of Carthage, and also the chief author of the schism of Felicissimus, and most notorious in Africa for many and grave crimes, and more than once condemned. Nevertheless those schismatics did not cease to seek out new followers for themselves by their accustomed lies and frauds, and to stir up new disturbances there. For, not content with one pseudo-bishop, Nicostratus, they likewise appointed as bishop Maximus the presbyter, whom we said to have been one of the earlier legates; which madness however St. Cyprian thought so contemptible that he did not judge that St. Cornelius should even be informed of that ordination. I subjoin his words from Epistle 55. For the party of Novatian too, he says, is said now to have made for itself there a pseudo-bishop, Maximus the presbyter, lately sent to us as a legate by Novatian and rejected from our communion: nor yet had I written to you about this, since all these things are despised by us.

[460] there. We shall show that this letter was written after the Ides of May in the year 252, and therefore that sacrilegious ordination of Maximus, which is there reported as recent, seems to belong to that year. Nevertheless from Epistle 52 to Antonianus, which could have been written toward the end of the year 251 or the beginning of 252, it appears that they had by no means abstained from ordinations of this kind up to that time. For thus our holy Bishop speaks in it: Unless indeed he (Novatian) seems to you a bishop, who, when a bishop (St. Cornelius) had been made in the Church by sixteen fellow-bishops, strives by canvassing to be made an adulterous and alien bishop by deserters; and, whereas by Christ there is one Church throughout the whole world divided into many members, and likewise one episcopate spread abroad in the harmonious multitude of many bishops, he, after God's tradition, after the connected and everywhere conjoined unity of the Catholic Church, attempts to make a human church, and sends his new apostles through very many cities, that he may establish certain fresh foundations of his own institution; and although long since throughout all the provinces and through the several cities bishops have been ordained, ancient in age, sound in faith, proved in tribulation, proscribed in persecution, he dares to create other pseudo-bishops over them!

[461] The Saint writes to Antonianus, Novatian also did not cease by his letters scattered through the world to solicit Catholic prelates to come over to his party. Among these a certain Antonianus, bishop of an uncertain see, perhaps in Numidia, being not a little moved, gave St. Cyprian occasion to write the aforesaid apologetic Epistle 52 on behalf of himself and of holy Cornelius and of all Catholics. He, at first following the counsel of the same Saint and of the other bishops who had at Carthage acknowledged the ordination of Cornelius, had, rejecting Novatian, likewise embraced the communion of the lawful Pontiff, and had testified this by a letter both given then to St. Cyprian and to be transmitted through him to St. Cornelius. But afterwards, impelled by the letters of Novatian and by the lies and accusations sprinkled through them, he began to waver, and sent Quintus the presbyter with a letter to the holy Bishop of Carthage, asking him to write back to him about certain doubts concerning St. Cornelius and Novatian.

[462] who was inclining toward the schism of Novatian, The holy Prelate, scenting how the matter stood, answered these things to him by the very long Epistle 52, in which, having premised that he had first received the letter by which he had signified his own communion with St. Cornelius, but that now from the later one brought by Quintus the presbyter he had noticed that his mind … had begun to waver, moved by the letters of Novatian; concerning the question proposed by him and the reason for asking, he proceeds in these words: For, although you had firmly fixed both your counsel and your consent beforehand, you desired in this letter that I should write back to you what heresy Novatian had introduced, or on what ground Cornelius communicates with Trophimus and with those who had offered incense. Which indeed, if you anxiously care about it out of solicitude for the faith, and solicitously explore the truth of a doubtful matter, the suspended solicitude of a mind seething in divine fear is not to be reprehended.

[463] Since however I see that, after the first sentence of your letter, and the reason for the things done by him being set forth you were afterwards moved by Novatian's letter, this, dearest brother, I place in the first place: that grave men, and those once founded upon the rock with solid stability, are moved — I do not say by a light breeze, but not even by wind or whirlwind; lest a doubtful and uncertain mind be frequently agitated by various opinions, as by certain blasts of rushing winds, and be changed from its purpose with a certain reproach of levity: and that Novatian's letter may not do this either with you or with anyone, as you desired, dearest brother, I will briefly set forth the reason to you. These admonitions being premised, he first begins to clear himself, and sets forth in the manner of an apology whatever he had done and determined in the case of the lapsed up to that time.

[464] And indeed first, he says, since you seem to be moved also about my own conduct; in the case of the lapsed my person and my case must be cleared before you, lest anyone should think that I have lightly departed from my purpose, and that, having at first and in the beginnings defended Evangelical vigor, I should afterwards seem to have bent my mind from my former discipline and censure, so as to have thought that peace should be relaxed to those who have stained their conscience with certificates, or have committed abominable sacrifices. Both of which were done by me not without a long-weighed and pondered reason. For while the battle-line was still at close quarters, and the fight of the glorious contest was hot in the persecution, the strength of the soldiers had to be roused with every exhortation and with full impetus, and above all the minds of the lapsed had to be bravely animated by a kind of trumpet-call of our voice, so that they should follow the way of penance not only by prayers and lamentations; but, since the opportunity was given of renewing the contest and of repairing their salvation, should rather be called forth by our rebuking voices to the ardor of confession and to the glory of martyrdom.

[465] Finally, when the presbyters and deacons had written to me about certain persons, in order that they were immoderate and were hastily urging that communion be received, replying to them in my letter, which is extant, I added this also: "Who, if they hurry too much, have in their own power what they demand, the very time bestowing on them more than what they demand. The battle-line is still being engaged, and the contest is celebrated daily. If they truly and firmly repent of what they have committed, and the warmth of faith prevails; he who cannot be deferred can be crowned." As to what should be determined about the case of the lapsed, however, I deferred it; so that, when quiet and tranquillity had been given, and divine indulgence permitted the bishops to come together into one place, then, counsel having been shared and weighed from the conference of all, we might determine what ought to be done; but that if anyone before our counsel and before the sentence determined by the counsel of all should have rashly wished to communicate with the lapsed, he himself should be withheld from communion.

[466] Which I also wrote most fully to Rome, to the clergy then still acting without a Bishop, and with equity, and to the confessor Maximus the presbyter, and to the others placed in custody, now joined in the Church with Cornelius; that I so wrote you will be able to know from their reply. For in their letter they put it thus: "Although it pleases us in so great a matter — what you yourself also have handled — that the peace of the Church must first be awaited, and then, a conference of counsels having been held with bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors, and likewise with laymen who stood firm, the reckoning of the lapsed be treated." It was added also — Novatian then writing, and reciting with his own voice what he had written, and the presbyter Moses, then still a confessor, now already a martyr, subscribing — that peace should be given to the lapsed who were sick and set at their departure. Which letters were sent through the whole world, and were brought to the knowledge of all the churches and of all the brethren.

[467] and of the Catholic prelates Yet according to what had been previously determined, the persecution being lulled, when the opportunity of assembling together was given, a copious number of bishops, whom their own faith and the Lord's protection had preserved whole and safe, we came together into one place, and, the divine Scriptures being brought forward on both sides, we weighed a temperament with wholesome moderation, so that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they should fail the more through despair, and, because the Church was closed to them, should follow the world and live as gentiles; nor yet again should the Evangelical censure be relaxed, so that they should rashly leap forward to communion; but that penance should be long drawn out, and paternal clemency be sorrowfully entreated, and the causes and the wills and the necessities of individuals be examined, according to what is contained in the pamphlet, which I trust has reached you, where the several heads of the decisions are written out.

[468] in the same case, by a prudent consent; And, if the number of bishops in Africa should seem less than sufficient, we have also written about this matter to Rome to our colleague Cornelius, who himself too, a council having been held with very many fellow-bishops, agreed with us in the same judgment with equal gravity and wholesome moderation. Concerning which it was now necessary to write to you, that you may know that I have done nothing lightly; but that, according to what I had before embraced in my letters, I deferred everything to the common counsel of our council, and that indeed I communicated with none of the lapsed before, while there was still opportunity for the lapsed to receive not only indulgence but even a crown; but that afterwards, as the concord of the college and the advantage of gathering the brotherhood and of healing the wound demanded, I yielded to the necessity of the times, and thought that provision must be made for the salvation of many, and that I do not now depart from those things which were once decided in our council by common conference, although many things are tossed about by the voices of many, and lies against the priests of God, uttered from the mouth of the devil, are everywhere flung about to break the concord of Catholic unity.

[469] He vindicates St. Cornelius and Catholics But it behooves you, as a good brother and a like-minded fellow-priest, not easily to take up what the malignant and the apostates say; but to weigh what your colleagues, modest and grave men, do, from an examination of our life and discipline. Hence, digressing to the praises of St. Cornelius, he weaves a notable eulogy for him, proves his lawful Pontificate, and, vindicating him from the calumnies of the heretics, testifies that he is guilty neither of the nefarious certificate nor of rash communion with the lapsed. He shows also that Trophimus, of whom we have treated at length in the acts of St. Cornelius, §9, was admitted by him into the Church with a great number of the brethren for just causes; yet in such a way that he communicated as a layman, and did not obtain the place of a priest, as the schismatics alleged. He observes however that these and lies of this kind are not to be wondered at in heretics: For they cannot, he says, praise us who withdraw from us, nor ought we to expect to please those who, displeasing us and rebellious against the Church, violently persist in soliciting the brethren away from the Church. Wherefore whatever is bandied about both concerning Cornelius and concerning us, neither lightly hear nor believe, dearest brother.

[470] He shows too that he and all Catholics are undeservedly charged with communion with the lapsed, from the calumnies of the heretics, because they continued to communicate with those who had recovered after receiving peace in the crisis of death; for, as he rightly admonishes: Yet after help has been given, and peace granted to those in peril, they cannot be smothered by us, or crushed, or driven by our force and hand to the issue of death, as though, because peace is given to the dying, it were necessary that those who have received peace should die; whereas rather in this the token of divine piety and of paternal leniency appears, that those who receive the pledge of life in the peace given to them are here too, having received peace, kept for life. After this, overthrowing the heresy of those who, following the Stoics, said that all sins are equal, and that a grave man ought not easily to be bent, he demonstrates that there are enormous differences among the various sins, and proves the equity of the canons by which the Catholic prelates had decreed that the lapsed should be admitted to peace after a penance completed according to the variety of their crimes.

[471] At length after many things, proceeding to the second question of Antonianus: But as regards, he says, the person of Novatian, dearest brother, about whom you desired to be written to as to what heresy he had introduced, know that we in the first place ought not even to be curious as to what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is, and of whatever sort he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ. Let him boast, and proclaim his philosophy or his eloquence with proud words; he who has held neither brotherly charity nor Ecclesiastical unity has lost even what he had been before. He then goes on to recount the crimes of that most wicked man: namely the Pontificate invaded against all right and lawfulness, pseudo-bishops substituted for living and upright bishops, the unity of the Church rent, arrogance in claiming power for himself, and finally an impious cruelty in denying all hope of pardon to the lapsed, whom he exhorted to penance; which heresy he there refutes at length.

[472] Finally, closing the letter, he amicably invites Antonianus, if he should desire more on the same subject, and he strives to keep in the communion of St. Cornelius. to a familiar conversation when opportunity shall allow. These few things meanwhile out of many, he says, dearest brother, I have run through as briefly as I could, that I might both satisfy your desire and join you more and more to the fellowship of our college and body. But if you shall have opportunity and means of coming to us, we shall be able to confer more things in common, and to treat more copiously and fully of those things which make for saving concord. This letter was written after the death of Decius, whom he says was conquered by arms and by war … (which happened as the year 251 was drawing to its close), and before peace had been granted to the lapsed who had not yet completed the whole of their penance, on account of the persecution threatening from Gallus; and therefore it could have been written as the said year was ending, or when 252 had already begun. It has seemed good however to report it here, because it pertains to the schism of Novatian and to his machinations in Africa. For the rest, it is uncertain whether Antonianus obeyed these admonitions of the Saint: it favors him however that he subscribed in a council of Carthage, as we have already observed in the Commentary on St. Cornelius, num. 198.

§ XXVII. The book On the Lapsed written by the Saint: certain punishments divinely inflicted in his presence: the book On the Lord's Prayer composed by him.

Peace being restored to the Church The Emperor Decius having been slain together with his son in a battle against the Goths in the month of November or December of the year 251, Gallus obtained the empire, and upon the Church, which, the persecution being lulled, had somewhat breathed again, a gladder and at length secure peace shone. On this occasion we think it more probable that the book On the Lapsed was written, and therefore toward the end of this year or the beginning of the following; nor can we agree with Tillemont, Maran, and others, who preferred to refer it to the first cares of the Saint on his return from his retirement to his own people, that is, to believe that it was composed not long after the Pasch of the previous year. The aforesaid writers however are not without weighty reasons, induced by which they thought they should depart from Pamelius and Baronius, whose opinion we follow; but whether rightly, the learned reader will judge.

[474] by the slaying of Decius, he writes The very beginning of the book is the foundation of our opinion; for it is of this sort: Behold, most beloved brethren, peace has been restored to the Church, and what lately seemed difficult to the unbelieving and impossible to the perfidious, our security has been repaired by divine help and vengeance. Our minds return to gladness, and, the tempest of tribulation and the cloud being dispelled, tranquillity and serenity have shone forth again. Praises must be given to God, and his benefits and gifts celebrated with thanksgiving; although our voice has not ceased to give thanks even in the persecution. For not so much can be permitted to the enemy that we, who love the Lord with our whole heart and soul and strength,

should not always and everywhere proclaim his blessings and his praises with glory. The day longed for by the prayers of all has come, and after the gloom of a long night the world has shone forth radiant with the light of the Lord.

[475] the book On the Lapsed, That by these words the peace given to the Church through the slaying of Decius is indicated, what follows persuades us. First, so it is rightly understood why the security of the Church is said to have been repaired by divine vengeance: for that this destruction of the Decii was long ago ascribed to God, exacting punishment for the Christian blood shed, is evident from St. Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book 7, chap. 1, from the Oration of Constantine the Great to the Assembly of the Saints, chap. 24, from Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, chap. 4, and from St. Jerome on chapter 2 of Nahum and 14 of Zechariah. But also that the beginning of the reign of Gallus, who had succeeded Decius, passed peacefully for the Church, is to be gathered from the aforesaid passage of St. Dionysius, when it is said: Who (Gallus), when his empire was in a prosperous state, and all things were succeeding according to his mind, persecuted the holy men who were offering prayers to God for his peace and safety. Together with them therefore he drove away also the prayers that were wont to be made for him. So he, not obscurely asserting that all things went prosperously for Gallus while he permitted the Church to enjoy peace, and that the same man, when peace was taken away, paid penalties divinely inflicted.

[476] which at this time But it is not necessary to prove this at greater length, since Tillemont himself in Note 32 confesses that those words of St. Cyprian are most rightly taken of the death of Decius and of the peace of the Church which followed under Gallus, and that they cannot easily be otherwise explained. Yet, in order somehow to answer this difficulty, he has recourse to some punishment of the proconsul of Africa, or to some other unknown unhappy occurrence, or with John Fell in his observations on this passage thinks it must be said that those words were added by the Saint himself, after he had learned of the slaying of Decius, to a Work long since composed; which seems to me indeed to be to evade the argument, not to solve it, or at least to weaken it by a probable reason. Maran however, in §18 of the Life, judges that the peace of which mention is made in the aforesaid book was procured not by the destruction of Decius, but by the fear cast upon him by Lucius Priscus, who, while he governed Macedonia, had seized the empire in that province and had joined his forces with the Goths against him.

[477] I do not deny that that rebellion of Lucius Priscus, as also the tyranny of Julius Valens, after the synod concerning the lapsed had been held about whom Aurelius Victor and Trebellius Pollio may be consulted, most probably gave occasion for the lulling of the persecution; but it does not seem sufficiently probable that this quiet of the Church, such as it was, is designated by the words of St. Cyprian adduced. For in Epistle 52 to Antonianus he says that the council of Carthage, before which Maran supposes the book On the Lapsed to have been written, was held not in the peace of the Church, but only when the persecution had been lulled. Next, he sufficiently indicates that the peace of which he speaks in the same book was common to the whole Roman world: The day longed for by the prayers of all, he says, has come, and after the gloom of a long night the world has shone forth radiant with the light of the Lord. But how far it was from being the case that peace was given to the whole Church on the occasion of the aforesaid rebellion, may be gathered from the aforesaid letter to Antonianus, in which he manifestly indicates that the Roman Church enjoyed anything but a peace of this kind until the death of Decius.

[478] For concerning St. Cornelius, whom Maran holds with us to have been ordained Pontiff amid the aforesaid disturbances of the rebellions, was published by him the Saint writes this in it: How great virtue in the very taking up of his Episcopate, how great strength of mind, what firmness … That he sat undaunted at Rome in the Priestly Chair at that time, when a tyrant hostile to the priests of God was threatening things speakable and unspeakable, when he would have heard with much more patience and endurance that a rival prince was being raised against him than that a Priest of God was being appointed at Rome. Is not this man, dearest brother, … to be reckoned among the glorious confessors and martyrs, who sat for so long a time, awaiting the butchers of his body, and the avengers of a raging tyrant, who should either assail with the sword, or crucify, or roast with fire, or with any unheard-of kind of punishments mangle the bowels and limbs of Cornelius, resisting the deadly edicts and trampling on threats and torments and tortures by the vigor of his faith?

[479] Even though the majesty and goodness of the Lord who protects protected the Priest it is proved against certain persons, whom he willed to be made, also after he was made; nevertheless Cornelius, as far as pertains to his devotion and fear, suffered whatever he could suffer, and the tyrant, afterwards conquered by arms and by war, he first conquered by his priesthood. Who, I ask, on the view of our adversaries, would reconcile these things with the earlier words of the Saint, and think it said of those deadly times: The day longed for by the prayers of all has come, and after the gloom of a long night the world has shone forth radiant with the light of the Lord? Besides, on the opposite opinion it would have to be said that St. Cyprian, on learning of a rebellion whose outcome was plainly uncertain, at once sang a triumph, so as to say: By divine help and vengeance our security has been repaired; which certainly, given the man's utmost prudence, is by no means to be suspected.

[480] whose arguments Let us see however by what reasons the assertors of the opposite opinion are moved to have that little book composed before the synod of Carthage, and therefore labor so greatly at wrenching that passage of Cyprian. St. Cyprian, they say, seems to have read that book in the same synod, and sent the same to the Roman confessors before they returned from the schism to the Church, which last event Pearson, against whom they here dispute, places in the same month in which Decius was slain, while we place it even much earlier: wherefore these things would press us even much more, if that book had really been read out in the synod and sent to the Roman confessors before they deserted the schism. But in §25, from num. 448, we have already shown that the passages in which they thought this was asserted are to be taken of another little book, and so these things ought to delay us no further. I proceed to their other arguments.

[481] are set forth, They observe that the decrees of the council are nowhere mentioned in that Opusculum; that peace had been granted in the council to the libellatics, and that nevertheless these, as much as the others, with no mention made of that favor, are in the same book stirred up to penance; and finally that from the very opening of the book it is understood to have been composed amid the first joys of peace, while both the holy Bishop himself and the glorious confessors were now returning in security to their church. From all these things they suspect that St. Cyprian wished by that little book to prepare the way for a council to be held as soon as possible, and to prepare the minds of the lapsed for religiously receiving the canons to be sanctioned in it. But to the first argument I answer that the aforesaid book is silent about a council to be celebrated no less than about one celebrated; whereas nevertheless both the end proposed by the writer, on the adversaries' view, and the condition of the lapsed, would have most demanded that express mention be made of the former. The end, indeed, as is manifest from what has been said; and the condition of the lapsed, because these had always borne it very ill that their case was deferred; and therefore the matter itself would have admonished the Saint to declare to them as now imminent what he had long since promised in various letters.

[482] and they are answered. The reason for commemorating a council already celebrated was not the same; since its decrees had already been published and were commonly most well known. Nevertheless from his very manner of writing it is sufficiently gathered that pardon for the lapsed after a completed penance had already then been decreed, and consequently that the council had been held. For he so exhorts all the lapsed in that book to penance that he does not now bid them patiently await the judgment of a synod to be gathered, as he had done in letters written before it, but promises pardon to be obtained through the priests. Let each confess his offense, he says, I beg you, most beloved brethren, while he who has offended is still in the world, while his confession can be admitted, while satisfaction and remission made through the priests is pleasing before the Lord. And again toward the end: To one who repents, who labors, who asks, He (God) can clemently pardon, He can set to his account whatever both the martyrs have asked and the priests have done for such men. But that he set forth the necessity of penance to the libellatics as much as to all the rest only proves that some of these had up to that time neglected to do penance, to which therefore he rightly stirred them up, as we have shown above at num. 417 and following.

[483] an answer is given. Finally, to the last argument, drawn from the fact that St. Cyprian speaks as though the confessors and martyrs had then first returned to his church; I answer that it is by no means unusual for orators to present past events as though present, in order to move the minds of hearers and readers. What wonder therefore if the holy Prelate presented as though present the return of the confessors and the exiles, which had happened not so long before, and whose security in their own churches the peace then established had confirmed, so that by their sight, as it were, he might more effectively rebuke the cowardice of the lapsed and strike them with a salutary shame? Add that perhaps even then some banished men and exiles were returning to their country, who, when the persecution was only lulled, had not dared to do so.

[484] Further, of the aforesaid book, besides Pontius in the Life, St. Augustine makes mention in various places, The argument of the book, praised by the ancients. namely in the book On Adulterous Marriages, chap. 25, book 2 against Cresconius, chap. 15, the book On Faith and Works, chap. 19 and 27, book 4 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 9, and elsewhere; St. Pacian in Epistle 3, St. Fulgentius, and other ancients. The purpose of writing, as I have already noted, was to admonish all the lapsed of the necessity of doing penance, to which, all fear of the persecutor being now removed, the peace itself invited them, and by this to rouse them to hope, lest, deceived by the frauds of the heretics, they should vainly flatter themselves that their offenses had been pardoned without previous penance. For the followers of Felicissimus were continuing to solicit the lapsed not to do penance in compliance with the salutary decrees of the council, and rather to come over to their own communion, which they freely offered. The style is elegant and oratorical; and as it sweetly celebrates the victories of the martyrs and confessors, so it sharply chastises the cowardice of the lapsed and sets forth the gravity of their crimes. It also compendiously weighs the cause of the persecution — namely the corrupted morals of his time — and its progress, and finally whatever had happened while it raged; from which we have already recited many things in the course of this Commentary.

[485] It must not however here be passed over what he records concerning the punishments divinely inflicted after his return, Certain instances of divine vengeance and sometimes in his own presence, for striking a salutary terror into the other lapsed. In my own presence and with myself as witness, he says, hear what happened. Parents, fleeing by chance (at the time of the persecution), while in their trepidation they took too little counsel, left a little daughter under the care of a nurse; the nurse carried the child, thus left, to the magistrates. They, before the idol to which the people were flocking, since by reason of her age she could not yet eat flesh, gave her bread mixed with wine, which itself too from the immolation of those perishing

was left over. Afterwards the mother received back her daughter (the persecution being lulled): but the girl could no more speak of and disclose the deed committed than she had been able before to understand it or to ward it off.

[486] It came about therefore by ignorance that the mother brought her in with her while we were sacrificing. examples upon the lapsed But indeed the girl, mingled with the saints, impatient of our prayer and supplication, began now to be shaken with weeping, now to be tossed and wavering with the seething of her mind; and, as though under a torturer's compulsion, by such signs as she could, the untaught soul in years still simple confessed the consciousness of the deed. But when the solemnities had been completed, and the deacon began to offer the cup to those present, and, the rest receiving it, her turn came, the little girl, by the instinct of the divine Majesty, turned away her face, pressed her mouth with closed lips, and refused the cup. The deacon persisted however, and, though she resisted, poured in of the Sacrament of the cup. Then follow sobbing and vomiting: in a body and mouth that were violated the Eucharist could not remain: the draught sanctified in the Lord's Blood burst forth from polluted bowels. So great is the Lord's power, so great his Majesty! The secrets of darkness were laid bare beneath his light; not even hidden crimes escaped the Priest of God. This concerning an infant, who had not yet the age to speak of another's crime committed upon her.

[487] receiving the Eucharist unworthily, But that woman, who, advanced in age and established in riper years, secretly stole in while we were sacrificing, taking to herself not food but a sword, and admitting as it were certain deadly poisons within her throat and breast, began to be choked and afterwards, her soul seething, to be shut in; and, suffering the pressure now not of persecution but of her own offense, she fell down palpitating and trembling. Not for long was the crime of a dissembled conscience unpunished or hidden: she who had deceived man felt God as avenger. And when a certain woman tried with unworthy hands to open her chest in which was the Holy Thing of the Lord, she was frightened off by fire rising thence, so that she did not dare to touch it. And a certain other man, because he too was stained, when the Sacrifice had been celebrated by the priest, dared to receive his portion secretly with the rest, and could not eat and handle the Holy Thing of the Lord, but found on opening his hands that he was carrying ashes. By the evidence of one man it was shown that the Lord withdraws when he is denied; and that what is received does not profit the undeserving unto salvation, when saving grace is changed into ashes, Sanctity fleeing away.

[488] or rejecting penance. Observe here in passing, Catholic reader, the ancient custom of the Church in distributing the most holy Eucharist, and of the faithful in keeping and receiving it in their own house; namely at that time when under Heathen princes the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass had to be celebrated secretly and in hiding-places, and there were no churches in which it could be fittingly and safely kept, and publicly given to the devout faithful as often as they wished. But let us resume St. Cyprian's narration. He thus continues: How many daily, not doing penance nor confessing the consciousness of their offense, are filled with unclean spirits; how many, out of their senses even to madness of mind, are shaken with the fury of dementia! Nor is it necessary to go through the ends of individuals, since throughout the manifold ruins of the world the punishment of offenses is as varied as the multitude of offenders is numerous. Let each one consider, not what another has suffered, but what he himself deserves to suffer; nor let him believe that he has escaped, if the punishment has for the time deferred him, since he ought the more to fear what the wrath of God the judge has reserved for him. Thus far the holy Bishop concerning the prodigies and punishments by which divine vengeance avenged the injuries brought upon it by the obstinate lapsed after his return to the people of Carthage.

[489] The book On the Lord's Prayer written, In this same year 252 St. Cyprian's book On the Lord's Prayer is also thought to have been written; which rests on this foundation, that Pontius recounts it after the book On the Unity of the Church, and that in it a good many things are said against the schismatics, whence it may be gathered that it was published after the schisms of Felicissimus and of Novatian. No mention is made in it either of the persecution which Gallus stirred up after the middle of that year; but the past one, namely the Decian, is not obscurely recalled, when the confessors are admonished that no one should proudly and arrogantly take anything upon himself, that no one should count the glory either of confession or of suffering his own. From these things therefore it becomes probable that this book belongs to the earlier months of the aforesaid year; although it could also have been written later. It is moreover a distinguished Work, and one commended by St. Augustine in various places, especially for vindicating divine grace against the Pelagians. There may be consulted book 4 to Boniface against the two letters of the Pelagians, chap. 9 and 10; book 2, chap. 3, against Julian; the book On Rebuke and Grace, chap. 6, etc. But also in the book On the Gift of Perseverance, chap. 2, he refers Prosper and Hilary to it in these words: Read somewhat more attentively the exposition of it (the Lord's Prayer) in the book of the blessed martyr Cyprian which he composed on this matter, whose title is: On the Lord's Prayer; and see, how many years beforehand, against the poisons of the Pelagians which were to come, what an antidote was prepared, etc.

[490] The same book likewise he read out to the monks of Hadrumetum and praised by St. Augustine and others. who had come to him, in order to instruct them against the Pelagians, as he testifies in Epistle 215, elsewhere 48: We read to them also, he says, the book of the most blessed martyr Cyprian On the Lord's Prayer, and showed how he taught that all things which pertain to our morals, by which we live rightly, are to be sought from our Father who is in heaven, lest, presuming upon free will, we fall away from grace … But this book of St. Cyprian, because they said that it is also there (at Hadrumetum) among you, we have not sent. How highly St. Hilary too esteemed it is clear from his Commentary on chap. 5 of Matthew, where he writes of it as of a Work perfect in every respect: But concerning the mystery of prayer Cyprian, a man of holy memory, has freed us from the necessity of commenting. But let these things suffice concerning the aforesaid book, especially since it more than sufficiently commends itself to those who read it.

§ XXVIII. He answers questions about the case of the lapsed: he holds a synod, in which Privatus the heretic is rejected, and in which the case of Therapius and of Victor, and the baptizing of infants, were dealt with.

Being consulted about the penance of three lapsed persons, About the feast of the Pasch, which in this year 252 had to be celebrated, according to the calculations of St. Hippolytus and of the Alexandrians, on the XI day of April, but according to Victorius in Bucherius, on the XVIII of the same month, a letter was brought to St. Cyprian from the bishops Fortunatus, Ahymmus, Optatus, Privatianus, Donatulus, and Felix, concerning the case of Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus. When the aforesaid bishops had come together at the city of Capsa — which Pamelius in his Annotations on Epistle 53 believed to be situated in Numidia, but which the Notitia of Africa in Thierry Ruinart's History of the Vandal persecution places in the province of Byzacena — when, I say, they had assembled at Capsa in order to ordain a bishop (who perhaps was Donatulus himself, who subscribed to the council of Carthage), they were likewise consulted by Superius, a bishop, whether Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus, who, having confessed Christ, had bravely borne the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people, but had then, overcome before the proconsul by grave punishments and torments, failed, could after a sincere penance, now drawn out into a third year, be admitted to pardon and peace.

[492] he answers by Epistle 53: Now these bishops, not daring to settle this case by their own judgment, thought that St. Cyprian their metropolitan should be consulted, and asked him to seek out the judgment of several bishops upon it. To their letter, which is not extant, the holy Prelate wrote back by his own, which is the fifty-third, that to lapsed of this kind, who had failed from weakness of the flesh, peace could in his own judgment be granted after the said penance; nevertheless, since they had also demanded the judgment of the other prelates, he would refer this doubt to them, as soon as they should have returned to Carthage after the solemnities of the Pasch, which each had gone off to celebrate in his own diocese. It is evident moreover that this letter is later than the council held after St. Cyprian's return from his retirement to his own people in the year 251, and earlier than that decree by which in this year 252, on account of the threatening persecution, it was sanctioned that peace should be given to all the lapsed who had soon after their sin embraced penance; for express mention is made in the same letter of the earlier council, and neither would St. Cyprian have had to be consulted by those bishops, nor the others by him, if the later decree had already then come forth.

[493] he holds a synod on the Ides of May, From what has been said it is also clear that it was written about the Pasch; and hence we conclude that that three-year period, in which Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus are said to have done penance, is to be taken not as completed but as begun; the beginning being drawn, that is, from the year 250, in which the persecution began. And hence it is further concluded that the aforesaid letter of Fortunatus and the rest is to be referred to the month of April of this year 252. The Paschal feasts having been celebrated, the bishops assembled at Carthage and held a synod on the Ides of May; as St. Cyprian testifies in Epistle 55 to St. Cornelius. That that council belongs to this year 252 is certain from the aforesaid letter: for since the Saint twice makes mention in it of the council celebrated in the previous year, and moreover says that Privatus was rejected in the council which we held on the Ides of May, which were the most recent, he distinguishes this one sufficiently manifestly, as lately held, from the earlier. Nor do the learned dissent in this part, if you except Lombert, who in the Preface which he prefixed to the Works of St. Cyprian translated into French thought it should be referred to the year 251, but without probable reason. Nor is it to be doubted that the case of Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus was discussed and settled in this synod, as St. Cyprian had promised.

[494] in which Privatus is repulsed, There too Privatus, formerly bishop of Lambaesis in Numidia, desired to appear and to defend his cause; but he was repulsed and not permitted to speak, as our same Saint testifies in Epistle 55 to St. Cornelius, where he has this: But I signified to you through Felicianus, brother, that there had come to Carthage Privatus, an old heretic, condemned in the colony of Lambaesis nearly many years ago by the sentence of ninety bishops for many and grave offenses, and most severely branded also, as is not hidden from your knowledge, by the letters of our predecessors Fabian and Donatus; who, when he said that he wished to plead his cause before us in the council which we held on the Ides of May, which were the most recent, and was not admitted, made that Fortunatus a pseudo-bishop for himself, worthy of his college.

[495] a heretic already condemned before. What heresy that Privatus introduced or followed I have nowhere found handed down to memory; but that he once appointed a certain Felix as pseudo-bishop outside the Church in heresy, and had as companions Jovinus and Maximus, condemned for abominable sacrifices and crimes, is said in the same place. He had also previously attempted the Roman Church's

communion, and to obtain letters; but here likewise he had been recognized and repulsed. For the clergy of the aforesaid Church, in Epistle 30 among the Cyprianic letters, given to St. Cyprian while the See was vacant through the slaying of St. Fabian, wrote thus about him: But even before your letter (by which they had been warned about Privatus) the fraud of the crafty man could not lie hidden from us: for when before this there had come a certain man from the cohort of his wickedness, Futurus, the standard-bearer of Privatus, and took care fraudulently to draw a letter out of us; neither did it lie hidden who he was, nor did he receive the letter which he wanted. Of Fortunatus, the pseudo-bishop appointed by him, we shall treat in §30.

[496] It is disputed whether the council of which we are treating This synod is different from that, is the same as that in which St. Cyprian with forty-one bishops, whose letter is extant as the fifty-fourth, decreed, on account of the persecution threatening from Gallus, that peace should be given to penitent lapsed who had not fallen away from the Church; or whether it is the same as that in which the same Saint with sixty-six bishops treated of the case of Therapius and of Victor, and of the baptism of infants; whose letter likewise holds the fifty-ninth place among the Cyprianic letters. The former opinion Pamelius, the most eminent Baronius and his critic Pagi, and Pearson have held; the last of whom relegated the aforesaid synod of sixty-seven bishops to the month of September of the year 253, when, Gallus and Volusianus having been slain, peace had again been restored to the Church.

[497] The chief foundation of this opinion is in which, on account of the threatening persecution of Gallus, that the aforesaid bishops in Epistle 59 seem to record a twofold synod concerning the lapsed, when they say: Which matter moved us not a little, that there had been a departure from the authority of our decree, in that peace was granted to him (Victor, one of the lapsed) before the lawful and full time of satisfaction, and without the request and knowledge of the people, no infirmity pressing and no necessity compelling. For Pearson judges that by those words in which mention is made of the lawful and full time of satisfaction, and of infirmity, the first synod concerning the case of the lapsed is indicated, but by those which mention a compelling necessity, the second; for the one thing had in fact been determined in the earlier synod, and the other in the second. And hence he concludes that this letter is later than both synods, and consequently that the council in which it was written could not have been celebrated on the Ides of May in the year 252, but is to be referred to another time; and finally that no other can more fitly be assigned than the month of September of the year 253, when, peace being now restored, the bishops could have come together to deliberate about ecclesiastical affairs.

[498] But Maran in §§24 and 25 of the Life produces other reasons which render the contrary far more probable. For first, in Epistle 55, where the Saint expressly mentions the synod held on the Ides of May, no word or trace is to be found of a new canon framed in favor of the lapsed on account of the threatening persecution; but only the earlier one is treated of, by which it had been determined that no one should be admitted to peace without penance. Secondly, from the same letter we learn that no synodical letter concerning the council celebrated on the Ides of May was sent to St. Cornelius; for since St. Cyprian says in it that he had deferred writing to him about Privatus having been repulsed and about the pseudo-bishop Fortunatus ordained by him, until he had obtained the opportunity of Felicianus the acolyte, whom the holy Pontiff had sent to him, he manifestly indicates that up to that time nothing had been written to Cornelius about the things done in the said council; for otherwise he could himself also have used the services of the man who had carried the synodical letter, nor need another opportunity have been awaited.

[499] that peace was to be granted to all the lapsed, Nor can it here be replied that an opportunity was likewise awaited for that synodical letter to be sent to Rome, and that this was done through Felicianus, whom St. Cyprian employed. This, I say, cannot be replied; for it is not credible that the holy Bishop with forty-one of his colleagues did not at once announce to the holy Pontiff by one of the clerics a matter of such moment as was the hastening of the reconciliation of the lapsed; but waited until some opportunity should present itself. Add that even in this case mention would have had to be made of that synodical letter in the letters of St. Cyprian, which nevertheless is no more found in these than in that concerning Privatus, who it is certain was repulsed in the council convened on the Ides of May.

[500] was decreed, To Pearson's argument, however, I answer that it is by no means necessary that we take what is recorded in Epistle 59 about a compelling necessity of the canon of the second council, which granted peace to the lapsed on account of the impending persecution; since those bishops could have meant to say only this: that they were rightly moved because Therapius, contrary to what had been decreed, had given peace to Victor, compelled by no prayers of the people or any other necessity which might have persuaded that that indulgence should be used. So St. Cyprian in Epistle 52 to Antonianus says of Trophimus, admitted to communion because a great number of brethren was returning with him to the Church: As our predecessors have often done, our dearest brother (St. Cornelius) yielded to necessity for the gathering of our brethren.

[501] and which was held in the same year. Finally the very context alleged by Pearson agrees much better with the year 252, in the month of May of which Victor could already have completed a great part of his public penance, than with September of the year 253, when, peace having just been restored, penalties of this kind had to be imposed on those newly lapsed under Gallus, and greater severity employed. For the bishops do not complain that peace had been given to Victor without previous penance; but that it had been given before the lawful and full time of satisfaction. These considerations therefore, with which also the sequence of events by no means conflicts, have led me to believe it more probable that the synod of sixty-seven bishops is that very one which St. Cyprian records in Epistle 55 to have been held on the Ides of May; but that the other, in which he with forty-one bishops decreed that peace for the lapsed should be hastened, was held in the same year indeed, but a month or two later.

[502] The fathers of the synod answer Fidus Now in the aforesaid synod of sixty-seven prelates a letter of Fidus, a bishop of an uncertain see, was read, in which a twofold doubt was proposed: one about Therapius and Victor, which we have already touched on, the other about the baptism of infants; to both of which the aforesaid bishops replied by Epistle 59. And the case of Therapius and Victor, and their judgment about it, they set forth thus: Cyprian and the rest of the colleagues who were present in the council, sixty-six in number, to Fidus their brother, greeting. We have read your letter, dearest brother, in which you signified concerning Victor, formerly a presbyter, that before he had done penance and made satisfaction to the Lord God, against whom he had offended, our colleague Therapius had given him peace at an unripe time and with over-hasty haste.

[503] about the case of Therapius and Victor, Which matter moved us not a little, that there had been a departure from the authority of our decree, in that peace was granted to him before the lawful and full time of satisfaction, and without the request and knowledge of the people, no infirmity pressing and no necessity compelling. But, counsel having been long weighed among us, it was enough to rebuke our colleague Therapius, that he had rashly done this, and to have instructed him not to do anything of the kind for the future: yet we did not think that peace, once given in whatever manner by a priest of God, should be taken away; and on this account we permitted Victor to make use of the communion granted to him. And this indeed St. Cyprian with the other bishops wrote back concerning the first matter proposed by Fidus. Now that Therapius seems to have been bishop of Bulla in the Proconsular province, since a certain Therapius of Bulla is read as having subscribed to the council of Carthage of the year 256.

[504] Far graver, and of much greater moment, was the second doubt proposed by the same Fidus; and about the baptizing of infants since upon it depended the eternal salvation of many infants. He judged that Baptism ought not to be conferred on infants before the eighth day from birth; both because in the old Law they were not circumcised before that time, and because he believed that the trace of an infant, set in the first days of his birth, was not clean, since everyone … still shrinks from kissing it. But this error of Fidus St. Cyprian and all the other bishops with him reproved with unanimous consent, and taught that newly born infants must be succored by the Sacrament of Baptism no less, nay even more, than adults. But let us hear them again. But as far as pertains to the case of infants, they say in the same Epistle 59, whom you said ought not to be baptized while they are within the second or third day from their birth; and that the law of ancient circumcision must be considered, so that you thought that one who has been born must not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day; a far different thing seemed good to all in our council.

[505] For in this which you thought ought to be done, no one consented; before the eighth day from birth: but we all rather judged that God's mercy and grace is to be denied to no human being born. For, since the Lord says in his Gospel: The Son of man came not to destroy men's souls, but to save them; as far as lies in us, if it can be done, no soul is to be lost. This judgment of theirs they prove there by solid arguments, and refute the reasons brought forward by Fidus to the contrary, and finally conclude in these words: And therefore, dearest brother, this was the judgment in our council, that no one should be prohibited by us from Baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and loving to all: which, as it is to be observed and held with regard to all, so we think it is the more to be observed with regard to infants themselves and the newly born, who by this very thing deserve more of our help and of the divine mercy, that at the very first beginning of their birth, wailing and weeping, they do nothing else than entreat. These things they sanctioned in council according to the doctrine of the Catholic Church about the baptizing of infants, who are liable to original sin alone; concerning which sin indeed they gave a manifest testimony in the same place, saying: A newly born child has committed no sin, save that, being born carnally according to Adam, he has contracted at his first nativity the contagion of the ancient death.

[506] St. Augustine made much of this letter, and used it in book 4 against the two letters of the Pelagians, this letter praised by SS. Augustine and Jerome. chap. 8, for asserting original sin and divine grace. But in the letter, he says, which he wrote to Fidus the bishop, with sixty-six of his fellow-bishops, by whom he had been consulted on account of the law of circumcision, whether it were lawful for an infant to be baptized before the eighth day, this cause is so handled as though by divine provision the Catholic Church were already refuting the Pelagian heretics who were to come so long afterwards. For he who had consulted him did not doubt on that ground whether those being born

contract original sin, which they would wash away by being born again; for far be it that the Christian faith should ever have doubted of this: but he doubted whether the laver of regeneration, by which he did not doubt that original sin was to be loosed, ought to be given before the eighth day. Answering this consultation, the most blessed Cyprian says: But as far as pertains to the case of infants, etc. Of the same letter he makes mention both elsewhere and in book 2 On Marriage and Concupiscence, chap. 29, where it is called the Book on the baptism of little ones. St. Jerome also praises the same in book 3 of the Dialogue against the Pelagians, toward the end, and from it likewise proves that Baptism is conferred upon little ones for the remission of original sin.

§ XXIX. He admonishes that Fortunatianus, who lapsed in the persecution, must be kept from his bishopric of Assuras: he writes against the abuse by which water without wine was offered in the Sacrifice.

By Epistle 64, about this time To this same time, which intervened between the end of the Decian persecution and the second synod concerning the lapsed — in which, on account of the new persecution threatening from Gallus, peace was granted to all the lapsed who had not withdrawn from the Church — there seems to be referred Epistle 64 to Epictetus concerning Fortunatianus, formerly bishop of Assuras. The reason is that St. Cyprian in it so exhorts all the lapsed to do penance that it is sufficiently clear that that second and favorable decree had not then yet been issued. For he speaks thus: But let the lapsed, recognizing the greatness of their offense, not withdraw from entreating the Lord, nor forsake the Catholic Church, which is one and alone established by the Lord; but, persisting in satisfactions and entreating the Lord's mercy, let them knock at the Church, that they may be received there where they were, and return to Christ from whom they withdrew.

[508] probably written, he admonishes that Fortunatianus, who had lapsed, Pamelius, in the argument of the same letter, believed it to have been written after the death of St. Cornelius, led by this reason, that St. Cyprian seems in it to praise to him that decree of his by which he had sanctioned that lapsed bishops should not be admitted to their former rank. But even if that decree were manifestly praised in it, Pamelius's argument would not follow; since we do not know at what precise time St. Cornelius decreed it. I would not however contend that it could not have been written later, say after the persecution of Gallus; but I suppose the former opinion more probable. The case moreover with which the letter deals is this. Fortunatianus, bishop of Assuras in the Proconsular province, having sacrificed to idols at the time of the persecution, had been deposed from his bishopric, and ordered to do penance among the laity. But he not only refused penance, but did not cease to claim the bishopric for himself, and by his pernicious example and words to lead other lapsed persons to a like impiety.

[509] Being informed of these things, St. Cyprian wrote Epistle 64 to Epictetus and the people of Assuras, that he might assist them by his counsels, must be kept from the bishopric of Assuras, and exhort them to keep the impious man from the bishopric and from the sacred ministries. Now because this letter is inscribed to Epictetus his brother and to the people dwelling at Assuras, learned men commonly judge that Epictetus was substituted in his see; and this opinion is favored by the fact that the holy Metropolitan makes no mention of another to be substituted for him. And if this is so, it must consequently be said that he presided over that church for a few years; since in the great synod of Carthage held by St. Cyprian concerning the rebaptizing of those whom heretics had baptized, another bishop of that place, namely Victor of Assuras, is read to have given his judgment. But to come to the matter, the holy Metropolitan, after the usual greeting, sets forth the case of Fortunatianus and the grief which he had conceived from it, in the words which I subjoin.

[510] I have been gravely and sorrowfully moved, dearest brethren, which he had held because I have learned that Fortunatianus, formerly bishop among you, after the grave fall of his ruin, now wishes to act as though unimpaired, and has begun to claim the bishopric for himself. Which matter has saddened me, first on his own account, who, wretched man, either wholly blinded by the darkness of the devil, or deceived by the sacrilegious persuasion of certain persons, when he ought to make satisfaction and to devote himself day and night with tears and prayers and supplications to entreating the Lord, dares still to claim for himself the priesthood which he betrayed; as though after the altars of the devil it were lawful to approach the altar of God, or as though he did not provoke against himself greater wrath and indignation of the Lord in the day of judgment, who, when he could not be a leader of faith and virtue to the brethren, stands forth as a master of perfidy and audacity and rashness; and who did not teach the brethren to stand bravely in the battle, teaches those who have been conquered and prostrated not to entreat, etc. He then proves from various passages of sacred Scripture the gravity of the crime, and finally adduces threats, that no one guilty even of a lesser crime should approach to offer the divine Sacrifices.

[511] He observes also that foul falls in bishops and their obstinate rashness proceed from covetousness of money and from gluttony, and was claiming for himself, in which they had long since been ensnared. Nor is it any wonder, he says, if those who have denied the Lord now refuse our counsels or the Lord's precepts. They desire the alms and the offerings and the gains upon which they formerly brooded insatiably; and even now they gape after suppers and banquets, whose surfeit they belched forth from day to day in a crudity that lately survived; now most manifestly proving that not even before did they serve religion, but rather their belly and their gain, with profane greed. Whence we perceive and believe that this very censure came from God's examination, that they should not persist in standing at the altar and in handling further — the unchaste, modesty; the perfidious, faith; the profane, religion; the earthly, divine things; the sacrilegious, holy things. Hence he admonishes that every effort must be made that men of this kind may come to their senses, and thenceforth abstain from the ministry of the altar.

[512] But threatening the obstinate also, he adds: he takes care that he be kept away. But if among the mad an incurable madness shall persist, and, the Holy Spirit withdrawing, the blindness which has begun shall remain in its own night, our counsel will be to separate the several brethren from their fallacy, and, lest anyone run into the snares of error, to sever them from their contagion. Finally he begs the help of Epictetus and the people of Assuras for keeping the rest in their duty, if perchance Fortunatianus should not acquiesce in his counsels: But if Fortunatianus, he says, either forgetful of his crime through the devil's blindness, or made a minister and slave of the devil for deceiving the brotherhood, shall remain in this his fury, do you labor as much as you can, and in this gloom of the raging devil call back the minds of the brethren from error, lest they easily consent to another's madness, lest they make themselves partakers in the offenses of desperate men; but let them hold, whole and entire, the perpetual tenor of their salvation and of the integrity preserved and guarded by them. He likewise admonishes the lapsed of their duty, and bids them beware of the fallacious and deadly seduction of men of this kind, who will have it laid to their charge in the day of judgment if, despising sound and unimpaired bishops, they go over to the lapsed. These things the Saint wrote for preserving the integrity and discipline of the Church: but whether Fortunatianus was by these things converted to better things, we do not know. It is credible however, since nothing further is read about him.

[513] Why is Epistle 63 reported here? Of even greater and of the gravest moment was the error which our holy Prelate refuted in Epistle 63, and took care should be utterly abolished. Of the time at which this letter was written nothing certain can be established, as we shall show below. Nothing however stands in the way of its having been composed about this time; and therefore we shall treat of it here after the letters reported in this and the preceding §, which likewise pertain to the discipline and doctrine of the Church. St. Augustine in book 4 On Christian Doctrine, chap. 21, calls it a book, and indicates its style and argument in these words: The blessed Cyprian uses the subdued kind of speech in that book where he disputes about the Sacrament of the Cup. For there is resolved there the question in which it is asked whether the Lord's cup ought to have water alone, or water mixed with wine. And this in fact is the summary of the whole Opusculum, in which the Saint at length proves by many arguments that both, namely wine and water, ought to be offered in that sacred cup. But let us set forth the occasion which impelled him to write that book or letter.

[514] Since certain persons were using water without wine There were some in Africa who in the morning Sacrifice employed water alone in the cup; either because they believed that it sufficed for confecting the Sacrament of Christ's Blood, or because they judged that this was lawful for them for some other reason. For that they did not act so because they shrank from wine, like the Encratites of whom St. Epiphanius speaks in Heresy 27, is manifest from this, that, on St. Cyprian's testimony in the aforesaid letter, when they came together for supper, they offered a cup mixed with wine and water. Hence he also excuses them as far as he can, saying that this was done by certain persons either in ignorance or in simplicity, as we shall presently see. He likewise indicates in the same place that that depraved custom then prevailed in more than one place: I wonder not a little, he says, whence this has been taken up, that, contrary to Evangelical and Apostolic discipline, in certain places water is offered in the Lord's cup, which alone cannot express the Blood of Christ.

[515] in the Sacrifice; He also suggests that that error was not altogether recently introduced, when he says: If any of our predecessors, either in ignorance or in simplicity, has not observed and held that which the Lord taught us to do by his example and teaching, pardon can be granted to his simplicity by the Lord's indulgence. But Pearson at the year 253, num. 3, does not rightly deduce from this that it once flowed from a certain bishop of Carthage, whom others then followed in simplicity and ignorance. For by predecessors the Saint designates not only the prelates of his own see, but also the predecessors of Caecilius, to whom he writes, and of any bishops whatever of his province. Nor is it sufficiently probable that so gross an error arose at Carthage, which was the metropolis of all Africa, to which the other bishops frequently assembled, and, with these silent or ignorant, was propagated elsewhere with impunity. Wherefore Maran judged more rightly that it crept in first neither into the church of Carthage nor into any other more notable church, but rather into a village or an ignoble town, and thence was introduced into similar lesser churches.

[516] It can be doubted whether our holy Metropolitan was divinely warned about eliminating this error from his province by some particular revelation, The Saint, whether divinely, or by the reading of the sacred Letters, and was bidden to write. Occasion for doubting is furnished by the very opening of the letter, which I therefore subjoin. Cyprian to Caecilius his brother, greeting. Although I know, dearest brother, that very many bishops set by divine condescension over the Lord's churches in the whole world hold to the rule of Evangelical truth and of the Lord's tradition, and do not depart by a human and novel institution from that which Christ the master both commanded and did; nevertheless,

since certain persons, either in ignorance or in simplicity, in sanctifying the Lord's cup and in ministering it to the people, do not do that which Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, the author and teacher of this Sacrifice, did and taught; I have judged it both religious and necessary to write this letter to you, so that, if anyone is still held in that error, he may, the light of truth being perceived, return to the root and origin of the Lord's tradition.

[517] And do not think, dearest brother, that we are writing our own and human things, or otherwise admonished, by Epistle 63, or boldly taking this upon ourselves of our own free will; since we always keep our mediocrity with humble and modest moderation. But when something is enjoined, God inspiring and commanding, it is necessary that a faithful servant obey the Lord, excused before all men, since he takes nothing arrogantly upon himself who is compelled to fear the Lord's offense unless he do what he is bidden. Know moreover that we have been admonished that in offering the cup the Lord's tradition be observed, and that nothing else be done by us than what the Lord first did for us, so that the cup which is offered in commemoration of him be offered mixed with wine. Similarly, not very far from the end, when he had said that if any had before done otherwise, this could be pardoned them on account of their simplicity, he adds: But it will not be able to be pardoned to us, who have now been admonished and instructed by the Lord to offer the Lord's cup mixed with wine, according as the Lord offered it, and to direct letters about this also to our colleagues, so that everywhere the Evangelical law and the Lord's tradition may be observed, and that there be no departure from what Christ both taught and did.

[518] These things certainly sound like some particular revelation and a divine precept given to Caecilius, specially given to him: and this opinion is also favored by the frequency of revelations which we have already observed above in our Saint. Nevertheless, since he afterwards produces many testimonies drawn from the sacred Scriptures; and since elsewhere too he speaks of his retirement as though he had been bidden by God to withdraw, which nevertheless we have shown at num. 140 and following is more probably to be taken of the Gospel's command, it is not altogether certain which of the two he here alleges. That a particular precept is alleged seems to me however far more probable; especially since in the second text alleged by us he also says that he had been admonished to direct letters about this also to his colleagues, and the very manner of writing not obscurely indicates it. Now this letter is inscribed to Caecilius, which name occurs often among the bishops in the Cyprianic letters, and he could have been Caecilius of Bilta, who in the council of Carthage on the baptizing of heretics gave his judgment first. From this inscription of the letter it seems to be gathered that that perverse custom flourished in his diocese.

[519] that error And so St. Cyprian, being admonished in the manner we have said, wrote the aforesaid letter for the removal of so foul an abuse, and took care that it should be transmitted to all the bishops of his province; proving invincibly by very many testimonies of sacred Scripture that the Blood of Christ cannot be confected without wine; but also that water must be mixed with the wine, so that the people joined with Christ may be signified. He likewise meets two objections, of which the first proceeds from an introduced custom, which he teaches must be utterly rejected as manifestly contrary to the deed and command of Christ the Lord, and also to the doctrine and tradition of the Apostles. The other objection he proposes in these words: But the whole discipline of religion and of truth is overthrown, unless that which is spiritually enjoined be faithfully preserved; unless perhaps in the morning Sacrifices someone fears this, that through the taste of the wine he may smell of the Blood of Christ. Thus therefore does the brotherhood begin to be held back from the passion of Christ in persecutions, while in the oblations it learns to be ashamed of his Blood and Gore.

[520] he invincibly refutes, But moreover the Lord says in the Gospel: "Whoever shall be ashamed of me, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed." And the Apostle also speaks, saying: "If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ." But how can we shed our blood for Christ, we who blush to drink the Blood of Christ? Or does anyone flatter himself with this consideration, that, although in the morning water alone seems to be offered, yet when we come to sup we offer a mixed cup? But when we sup, we cannot summon the people to our banquet, so as to celebrate the truth of the Sacrament with the whole brotherhood present. But indeed it was not in the morning but after supper that the Lord offered the mixed cup. Ought we therefore to celebrate the Lord's supper after supper, so as thus to offer a mixed cup at the frequenting of the Lord's assemblies? It behooved Christ to make his offering about the evening of the day, so that the very hour of the Sacrifice might show the setting and the evening of the world, as it is written in Exodus: "And all the multitude of the synagogue of the children of Israel shall kill it at evening."… But we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord in the morning: and because we make mention of his passion in all our Sacrifices (for the passion of the Lord is the Sacrifice which we offer), we ought to do nothing other than what he did, etc.

[521] and admonishes that it be abolished. It has seemed good to me to recount these things, partly because they are adduced by some for investigating the time at which the letter was written, partly because they pertain to the ancient discipline of the Church, as we shall presently see. For the rest, that whole letter is a notable monument of antiquity, in which the most sacred Sacrifice of the Mass, instituted by Christ the Lord, and handed down by the Apostles, and wont to be offered by the faithful in the third century, is so clearly asserted that he must needs be blind who, reading it, does not see it. It will be useful to have reported one passage from it here. But if it is not lawful, he says, to loose even the least of the Lord's commands, how much more is it not right to infringe things so great, so mighty, so pertaining to the very sacrament of the Lord's passion and of our redemption, or to change them by human tradition into something other than what was divinely instituted? For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is himself the high priest of God the Father, and first offered himself a sacrifice to the Father, and commanded that this be done in commemoration of him; assuredly that priest truly discharges the office in Christ's stead who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a true and full Sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, if he so begins to offer, according as he sees Christ himself to have offered.

[522] As regards the objection which the Saint proposes and rejects at num. 519, Certain things are observed from it Pearson judged that a time of persecution is there indicated, the faithful fearing lest, from the odor of the wine which persists in the Sacrament of the Blood, they should be detected by the heathen to be Christians and to have taken part in a divine rite against the emperors' edicts. And hence he gathered that this letter was written at the time of Gallus's persecution; which he believed also confirmed by the fact that mention is made in it of the second coming of Christ. On the contrary, Maran in §33 of the Life judges that the Christians by no means feared that the aforesaid odor would betray their faith, but that, if they really feared anything from it, it was that that morning odor should have a less becoming appearance, and one less worthy of a sober man; for the heathen were wholly ignorant of what took place in the mysteries of the Christians. Consequently he says that St. Cyprian's answer to the objections rather indicates peace, and interprets it as though the Saint had said that those become slower to shed their blood in persecutions who dread so slight an inconvenience from the communion of Christ's Blood. But what Pearson noted about the mention made of the second coming of Christ, he rightly observes proves nothing; since like things occur also in other Opuscula of the Saint written in peace.

[523] Nor is this interpretation of Maran's remote from the truth; since the Saint in the passage cited reprehends in them not the fear of the persecutor, about the time at which the letter was written but a shame unworthy of a Christian, and a depraved desire of pleasing men, as is manifest from the passages of sacred Scripture adduced there. Hence too the same Saint rightly infers that it is not to be hoped that one should shed his blood for Christ in persecution who in time of peace blushes to have drunk the Blood of Christ. But I do not like the conjecture of the same writer, from which he suspects that the controversy about the baptism of heretics is touched upon in the same letter, and that therefore it was written when that question had already arisen. The passage from which he conjectures this is this: And because his second coming now draws near to us, more and more does his kind and bounteous condescension illuminate our hearts with the light of truth. By these words he believed that the Saint made mention of his own error about the baptism of heretics, which he embraced as a truth divinely revealed.

[524] But that that passage pertains to the argument of the same letter, and the ancient usage of the Church. both its whole context and the words which he had immediately premised there undoubtedly declare. For he had premised: Wherefore, if we wish to walk in the light of Christ, let us not depart from his precepts and admonitions, giving thanks that, while he instructs us what we ought to do in the future, he pardons the past, in that we erred in simplicity. But these things manifestly pertain to the underlying matter of the Cup, and refer to those things which we reported above at num. 515 and 517. And so the time at which this letter was written remains uncertain, except that it seems to have been written after some persecution, on account of the mention made of it in the aforesaid objection. The other passage recounted at num. 520 exhibits the ancient custom in some churches of sacrificing in the evening also; which nevertheless St. Cyprian does not there approve. On the same usage St. Augustine may be seen, book 1 to the Inquiries of Januarius, or Epistle 54, elsewhere 98, chap. 5 and following.

§ XXX. Fortunatus is made pseudo-bishop: the Saint labors at reconciling the schismatics: Maximus is ordained pseudo-bishop: legates sent by Fortunatus are rejected at Rome.

Privatus with four others ordains Fortunatus Privatus the heretic, having been prohibited by the council of Carthage held on the Ides of May from pleading his cause, and rejected, as we said in §28, went over to the party of Felicissimus, and together with four other bishops of the same bran — Felix, Jovinus, Maximus, and Repostus — ordained at Carthage as pseudo-bishop one of the five presbyters who, being devoted to Felicissimus, had been excluded in the previous year, Fortunatus by name. The faction of Felicissimus had already desired this before, and, in order to commend so audacious a deed to the incautious by the authority of a greater number, had boasted that twenty-five bishops would come from Numidia to make a bishop for them, as St. Cyprian writes in Epistle 55 to St. Cornelius; from which it will also be useful to have reported the other things which pertain to this sacrilegious ordination and which followed upon it.

[526] as pseudo-bishop After he had said therefore that Privatus the heretic had come to Carthage, he added to the words reported at num. 494 the following: Who (Privatus), when he said that he wished to plead his cause before us in the council which we held on the Ides of May, which were the most recent, and was not admitted, made that Fortunatus a pseudo-bishop for himself, worthy of his college

. There had come with him also a certain Felix, whom he himself had formerly appointed pseudo-bishop outside the Church in heresy. But Jovinus and Maximus too were present as companions with Privatus, an approved heretic, men condemned for abominable sacrifices and for crimes proved against them by the sentence of nine bishops, our colleagues, and also a second time excluded by several of us in the council of the previous year. And with these four was joined Repostus of Suturnica, who not only himself fell in the persecution, but also cast down the greatest part of his people by his sacrilegious persuasion.

[527] of the faction of Felicissimus; These five, with a few either who had sacrificed or who were ill conscious to themselves, co-opted Fortunatus as pseudo-bishop for themselves, so that, their crimes coming together into one, such should be the ruler as are those who are ruled. Hence you can now know also the other lies, dearest brother, which desperate and abandoned men bandied about there (at Rome), so that, whereas of those who had sacrificed or of the heretics there were not more than five pseudo-bishops who came to Carthage and appointed Fortunatus as the companion of their madness, they nevertheless, like sons of the devil and full of lying, dared, as you write, to boast that twenty-five bishops were present. Which lie they were bandying about here (at Carthage) before among our brethren, saying that twenty-five bishops would come from Numidia to make a bishop for them.

[528] But this ordination of Fortunatus, by which they hoped their schism would be confirmed, turned out unhappily for them, which turned out badly for the schism, and was to many a reason for returning from their party to the Church. For first indeed the authors and leaders of the schism of Felicissimus were, in their lie, … only five castaways and men excluded by us coming together, says the holy Prelate, detected and confounded. Then these same men had promised that all would return together to the Church; which lie, as it had before detained many in their fellowship, so now, being openly recognized through the sacrilegious ordination of Fortunatus, disclosed the frauds of the schismatics to very many, and put better counsels into them. These St. Cyprian received after his manner kindly and cautiously, so as neither to repel the truly penitent, nor to admit to penance the crafty and unworthy, not without offense to his flock and disgrace to the Church. Yet he inclined rather to clemency, the people sometimes resisting and murmuring, especially since some of them, abusing that indulgence, not only had not come to their senses, but had even turned out worse.

[529] Of all these things our Saint speaks thus in the aforesaid letter: with many returning to the Church, For you ought to know, dearest brother, that he, after he was made pseudo-bishop by the heretics, has now been deserted by almost all: for those to whom in the past deceptions were held out, and to whom deceitful words were given, in that they were told that all would return together to the Church, after they saw a pseudo-bishop made there, learned that they had been frustrated and deceived, and they come back daily and knock at the Church; we however, from whom an account must be rendered to the Lord, anxiously weighing and solicitously examining who ought to be received and admitted to the Church. For with some, either their crimes stand in the way, or the brethren obstinately and firmly resist, so that they cannot be received at all without scandal and peril to very many. For neither are certain rotten things so to be gathered that what is whole and sound be wounded; nor is that a useful or prudent shepherd who so mixes diseased and infected sheep with the flock that he contaminates the whole flock by the affliction of the evil that cleaves to them.

[530] Do not attend to their number. For better is one who fears God in whose admission the Saint labors. than a thousand impious sons, as the Lord spoke through the prophet, saying: Son, rejoice not in impious sons, if they be multiplied to you, when the fear of God is not in them. O if you could, dearest brother, be present here with us, when these depraved and perverse men return from the schism. You would see what labor it is for me to persuade patience to our brethren, that, the grief of their mind being lulled, they may consent that the evil be received and healed. For as they rejoice and are glad when the tolerable and less blameworthy return; so on the contrary they murmur and resist as often as the incorrigible and impudent, and those contaminated either with adulteries or with sacrifices, and after these things still moreover proud, so return to the Church as to corrupt the good dispositions within. Scarcely do I persuade the people, nay rather extort from them, that they suffer such men to be admitted. And the grief of the brotherhood has been made the more just from the fact that one and another, though the people strove against it and contradicted, being received nevertheless through my easiness, turned out worse than they had been before, and could not keep faith with their penance, because they had not come with true penance either. Thus far St. Cyprian.

[531] The Novatians create Maximus pseudo-bishop. About the same time the followers of the Roman schism, the Novatians, likewise ordained for themselves a pseudo-bishop in Africa, namely Maximus the presbyter, of whom the Saint says thus in the same letter: The party of Novatian is said now to have made for itself there a pseudo-bishop, Maximus the presbyter, lately sent to us as a legate by Novatian and rejected from our communion. By the adverb there Tillemont and others understood Carthage; which we have shown to be uncertain in the historical Commentary on the acts of St. Cornelius, num. 196. If nevertheless it is so to be taken, it is credible that Nicostratus had then already died; for since he had been appointed pseudo-bishop in Africa in the previous year by Novatian, as was said at num. 456, it is probable that he had claimed the see of Carthage for himself.

[532] Felicissimus sails to Rome, Now St. Cyprian made so little of both ordinations, that of Fortunatus and that of Maximus, that he did not even think St. Cornelius should be at once informed of it: both because he knew that each was sufficiently known to him by his own wickedness; and because he judged that madnesses of this kind should be despised; and finally because he had lately sent him the names of all the Catholic prelates who were under the metropolis of Carthage, with this design, that, if anyone besides these should write to him, he might know that this man was one of those who had sacrificed, or of the libellatics, or of the heretics. Having however afterwards obtained the opportunity of Felicianus the acolyte, who had landed there from Rome, he announced among other things also the pseudo-episcopate of Fortunatus to St. Cornelius: but that delay in writing turned out less happily; for while Felicianus was still lingering at Carthage, Felicissimus, the standard-bearer of the schism, came with a troop of his followers to Rome, to extort from St. Cornelius, partly by lies, partly by threats, the communion of the Roman Church.

[533] that he might obtain the communion of that Church So the aforesaid letter teaches us again, in which St. Cyprian, after adducing the reasons for which he had deferred writing, continued in these words: Having however obtained the opportunity of a most intimate man and cleric through Felicianus the acolyte, whom you had sent with Perseus our colleague, among the other things which had to be brought hence to your knowledge, I wrote to you also about that Fortunatus. But while our brother Felicianus is either delayed here by the wind, or detained by us for the receiving of other letters, he has been forestalled by Felicissimus hastening to you: for so do crimes always hasten, as though by hastening they might prevail against innocence. The letter which he here records as sent through Felicianus has perished; but he writes that in it Privatus of Lambaesis also was dealt with, as we saw above.

[534] fraudulently; Felicissimus, having landed with his followers at Rome, presented the letters of the schismatics to St. Cornelius, and first assailed him with lies; asserting that Fortunatus, the bishop of his party, had been ordained by twenty-five bishops. For they had lately boasted at Carthage that as many bishops would come from Numidia for this purpose; in which lie of theirs, as St. Cyprian writes in the same place, after, only five castaways and men excluded by us coming together, they were detected and confounded, they sailed to Rome with the merchandise of their lies, as though truth could not sail after them, which would convict lying tongues by the proof of a certain fact. But it fell out very vexatiously for Cornelius that he had received no letter from the Bishop of Carthage about so audacious a deed, by which, being informed of the whole matter, he might refute the lies of the schismatics; he was not however the man upon whom Felicissimus, whose crimes he had long known, could impose by his cunning and frauds.

[535] but is rejected by St. Cornelius. The holy Pontiff indeed rejected the schismatics, and soon, by a letter given through Saturus the acolyte, admonished St. Cyprian; as has been shown at length from the often-cited letter in the Commentary on St. Cornelius, num. 207, and as we shall show below. Nevertheless their audacity did not stop here; nay, with even greater contumacy they approached the Pontiff a second time, threatening with the utmost desperation that, if he did not accept the letters which they had brought, they would recite them publicly, and would utter many base and shameful things, and worthy of their own mouth. But they added revilings and parricidal threats against St. Cyprian; by which St. Cornelius, being somewhat moved, and fearing not for himself but for him, subjoined a second letter to the former and sent it to the Saint, of which neither has reached us.

§ XXXI. The Saint replies to both letters of Cornelius, and pleads for the defense of the discipline and dignity of the Church against the heretics.

Writing back to the two letters of St. Cornelius, Cyprian, having read both letters through, was variously affected; and thinking that it should be deferred no longer, he wrote back the quite long Epistle 55, in which he both set forth the crimes, contumacy, and frauds of the schismatics, and proved his own integrity in administering the episcopate, and left above all tokens of an invincible constancy and greatness of mind; and therefore I have thought that a great part of it should be inserted into this Commentary. He began the letter thus: Cyprian to Cornelius his brother, greeting. I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by Saturus our brother the acolyte, full enough of brotherly love, of Ecclesiastical discipline, and of priestly censure; in which you signified that Felicissimus, an enemy of Christ not new, but long since excluded for his very many and most grave crimes, and condemned not only by my sentence but by that of very many fellow-bishops, was rejected by you there; and that, when he had come attended by a troop and faction of desperate men, he was driven out of the Church with the full vigor with which a Bishop ought to act — from which Church he was long since driven off with his like by the majesty of God and by the severity of Christ our Lord and Judge — lest, as an author of schism and division, as a defrauder of money entrusted to him, as a debaucher of virgins, as a ravager and corrupter of many marriages, he should still further violate the spouse of Christ, uncorrupted, holy, chaste, by the disgrace of his presence and by his unchaste and incestuous contagion.

[537] But indeed, having read your other letter, brother, which you subjoined to the first, he exhorts the Pontiff not, on his account, I wondered not a little when I noticed that you had been somewhat moved by the threats and terrors of those who had come; since, according to what you wrote, they had assailed you, threatening with the utmost desperation that, if you did not accept the letters which they had brought, they would recite them publicly, and would utter many base and

shameful things, and worthy of their own mouth. But if the matter is so, dearest brother, that the audacity of the most wicked is to be feared, and that what evil men cannot accomplish by right and equity they accomplish by rashness and desperation, it is all over with the vigor of the episcopate, and with the sublime and divine power of governing the Church; nor can we any longer either endure or be Christians, if it has come to this, that we dread the threats and snares of abandoned men.

[538] concede anything to the schismatics, For both gentiles and Jews threaten, and heretics, and all whose breasts and minds the devil has beset, testify daily with furious voice to their poisoned rage; nor yet on that account must we yield, because they threaten, nor is the adversary and enemy therefore greater than Christ, because he claims and assumes so much for himself in the world. There ought to remain in us, dearest brother, an immovable strength of faith, and a stable and unshaken virtue ought to withstand all the assaults and onsets of the barking waves, as by the strength and mass of a rock set against them. Nor does it matter whence terror or danger comes to a bishop, who lives subject to terrors and dangers, and yet is made glorious by those very terrors and dangers. This very thing — namely that it makes no difference to one's glory at whose hands one suffers for the sake of justice — he proves by the example of Christ the Lord himself, of Abel, of Jacob and of Joseph, and by the testimony of the Gospel, which foretold that the faithful would be betrayed by their own kinsmen. And hence he concludes: It makes no difference who betrays or rages; since God permits those to be betrayed whom he appoints to be crowned: for it is no ignominy to us to suffer from brethren what Christ suffered; nor is it glory to them to do what Judas did.

[539] whose threats he despises. But to what end he says all these things, and that he is not treating of threats aimed at St. Cornelius but of those aimed at himself before him, he sets forth immediately after in the same place: But what elevation of theirs (of Felicissimus and his followers) is it, what swelling and inflated and empty boasting of men threatening, to threaten one absent there (at Rome), when here they have me present in their power? We do not fear their revilings, with which they daily tear both themselves and their own life; we do not shudder at the clubs and stones and swords which they brandish with parricidal words. So far as lies in them, such men are murderers before God: yet they cannot kill, unless the Lord shall have permitted them to kill. And whereas we must die once, they nevertheless daily destroy themselves by their hatred and their words and their offenses. But not on that account, dearest brother, is Ecclesiastical discipline to be abandoned, or priestly censure to be relaxed, because we are assailed with revilings or shaken with terrors.

[540] He defends his own innocence; Presently, reprehending the pride and contumacy of Felicissimus, he observes that hence schisms and heresies are born, when certain rebels refuse to obey their bishops, whom he teaches to be venerable in the Church and to be appointed by divine providence. Soon returning to his own case, he proves, almost unwillingly and modestly, that the episcopate, which the heretics were assailing with revilings, was lawfully conferred upon him and most uprightly administered by him. But, he says (for I speak provoked, I speak grieving, I speak compelled), when a Bishop is substituted in the place of one deceased, when he is chosen in peace by the suffrage of the whole people, when he is protected by God's help in persecution, faithfully joined with all his colleagues, approved by his people in the episcopate now for four years, serving discipline in quiet, proscribed in the storm, with the name of his episcopate attached and appended, so often demanded for the lion in the circus, honored in the amphitheater by the testimony of the Lord's condescension; in these very days also in which I wrote this letter to you, on account of the sacrifices which by a published edict the people were bidden to celebrate, again demanded for the lion in the circus by the shout of the populace; when such a man, dearest brother, is seen to be assailed by certain desperate and abandoned men set outside the Church, it appears who is the assailant: not Christ, that is, who either appoints or protects priests; but he who, being the adversary of Christ and the enemy of his Church, pursues the prelate of the Church with his hostility for this end, that, the pilot being removed, he may rage more atrociously and violently amid the shipwrecks of the Church.

[541] Yet he admonishes that it is not to be wondered at that contumacious men of this kind are found; he excuses himself, that to him for it had been foretold by Christ and his Apostles that they would come; that for the rest they perish by their own fault, and that their destruction is not to be imputed to the bishops, if these have taken pains that they should not perish; and finally that bishops ought not to be moved by the revilings of the perfidious so as to fail to keep Ecclesiastical discipline whole and sound, lest, while they strive to please men, they cease to be servants of Christ. After this he excuses in these words his silence about the ordination of Fortunatus, of which St. Cornelius had complained: But that I did not at once write to you about that Fortunatus, a pseudo-bishop appointed by a few inveterate heretics, dearest brother, that was not a matter which ought to be brought to your knowledge at once in haste, as though something great or to be feared; especially since you already knew the name of Fortunatus well enough, who is one of the five presbyters long since fugitives from the Church, and lately excluded by the sentence of our fellow-bishops, many and most weighty men, who wrote you a letter about this matter in the previous year.

[542] Likewise you would recognize Felicissimus, the standard-bearer of the sedition, he did not write about them earlier, who is himself also contained in that same letter of our fellow-bishops made to you long since; who was not only excluded by them here, but was also lately driven out of the Church by you there. Since I trusted that these things were in your knowledge, and knew for certain that they clung to your memory and discipline, I did not think it necessary that the follies of the heretics should be swiftly and urgently announced to you. For neither ought it to pertain to the majesty and dignity alike of the Catholic Church what the audacity of heretics and schismatics may contrive among themselves. For the party of Novatian too is said now to have made for itself there a pseudo-bishop, Maximus the presbyter, lately sent to us as a legate by Novatian and rejected from our communion: nor yet had I written to you about this, since all these things are despised by us, and since I lately sent you the names of the bishops established here, who, sound and whole, preside over the brethren in the Catholic Church.

[543] Which indeed it pleased us, by the counsel of all our people, to write to you for this reason, and announces various things. that there might be a short way of dispelling error and of perceiving the truth, and that you and our colleagues might know to whom to write, and from whom mutually you ought to receive letters; but that if anyone besides those whom we have embraced in our letter should dare to write to you, you might know that he was stained either with sacrifice or with a certificate, or was one of the heretics, that is, perverse and profane. He then subjoins the things which we have already reported above about the letter sent, when the opportunity was offered, through Felicianus the acolyte, about Privatus rejected by the fathers of the synod, about Fortunatus ordained pseudo-bishop by him and four heretical or sacrificing bishops, and about the lie, boasted first at Carthage and then at Rome, of twenty-five ordaining bishops. And to show the absurdity of that lie: If you sought their names from them, he says, they would not have them, nor even any whom they might falsely name: so great is the scarcity even of bad men among them, that twenty-five cannot be gathered to them either from among those who sacrificed or from among the heretics.

[544] Nor does it behoove me (he proceeds a little later), dearest brother, He notes their impiety in admitting the lapsed now to do the like with them and to run through in my speech the things which they have committed and up to now commit; since we must consider what it behooves the priests of God to bring forth and to write; nor ought grief so much as shame to speak in us, and lest, being provoked, I should seem to be heaping up revilings rather than crimes and sins. I am silent therefore about the frauds committed against the Church; I pass over the conspiracies and adulteries and the various kinds of offenses. That one thing, in which the case is not mine, nor men's, but God's, I do not think should be kept silent about their misdeed: that from the very first day of the persecution, when the fresh misdeeds of the offenders were still hot, and not only the altars of the devil but the very hands and mouths of the lapsed were still smoking with abominable sacrifices, they had not ceased to communicate with the lapsed and to interfere with the doing of penance.

[545] and their evil speaking. The Saint, having inveighed as they deserved against this so damnable leniency, by which the lapsed were called away from doing penance, again notes their evil speaking; by which nevertheless he observes that they harm themselves, not Catholics. The lapsed are still further compelled, he says, to revile the priests with the tongues and mouth with which they had before offended in the Capitol, and to pursue with insults and evil-speaking voices the confessors and virgins, and all the just who are foremost in the praise of faith and glorious in the Church. By whom indeed the modesty and humility and shame of our people is not so much struck down as their own hope and life is mangled. For it is not he who suffers, but he who utters the reviling who is wretched; nor is it he who is beaten by his brother, but he who beats his brother who is a sinner in the law; and when the guilty do injury to the innocent, those suffer the injury who believe themselves to be doing it.

[546] Felicissimus and his followers, After this, having again chastised their pertinacity in their offenses and the blindness of their mind, from which they neither did penance themselves nor permitted it to be done by others, he returns to the embassy of Felicissimus. After these things, with a pseudo-bishop appointed for themselves by heretics into the bargain, they dare to sail and to carry letters from schismatics and profane men to the Chair of Peter and to the principal Church, whence priestly unity took its rise; and they do not consider that these are the Romans, whose faith, by the Apostle's preaching, was praised, to whom perfidy can have no access. But what is the reason for their coming, and for announcing that a pseudo-bishop has been made against the bishops? For either what they have done pleases them, and they persevere in their crime; or if it displeases them, and they withdraw, they know whither they should return.

[547] according to received custom, to his own tribunal For since it has been determined by all of us, and it is equally fair and just, that each one's case should be heard there where the crime was committed, and since to individual shepherds a portion of the flock has been assigned, which each is to rule and govern, about to render an account of his conduct to the Lord; it altogether behooves those over whom we preside not to run about, nor to shatter by their crafty and deceitful rashness the cohering concord of the bishops; but to plead their cause there where they can have both accusers and witnesses of their crime; unless perhaps to a few desperate and abandoned men the authority of the bishops established in Africa seems to be less, who have already judged concerning them, and have lately condemned by the weight of their judgment their conscience bound by many snares of offenses. From this passage certain adversaries of the Roman See draw an argument against the primacy of the Roman Pontiff; but to their

cavils we shall reply in §45, in which we shall treat of that same primacy as acknowledged by St. Cyprian.

[548] After this the holy Prelate warns that their case has already been discussed, he recalls, to experience his kindness, and sentence already pronounced against them, and that therefore it is unbecoming, and not worthy of priestly constancy, to handle it again. He adds also that Fortunatus, after he was made pseudo-bishop by the heretics, has now been deserted by almost all; and that he himself labors much in admitting these men to the Church, as has been shown above at num. 528 and following. Then, turning again to Felicissimus, he recalls him and the other companions of the embassy to his own tribunal, to experience likewise his kindness, if they shall come with sincere penance, without which he pronounces that the Church will always be closed to them. But of those men, he says, what shall I say, who have now sailed to you with Felicissimus, guilty of all crimes, sent as legates by Fortunatus the pseudo-bishop, bringing to you letters as false as is he himself whose letters they bear; as manifold is his consciousness of sins, as execrable his life, as base; so that, even if they were in the Church, such men ought to have been cast out of the Church. Finally, because they know their own conscience, they do not dare either to approach us or to come to the threshold of the church; but outside they wander through the province to circumvent and despoil the brethren; and being already well enough known to all, and everywhere shut out for their misdeeds, they sail even thither to you.

[549] For they cannot have the face to approach us, if they do penance; or to stand before us; since most bitter and most grave are the crimes which are brought against them by the brethren. If they should wish to make trial of our judgment, let them come. Finally, if there can be any excuse and defense for them, let us see what sense of satisfaction they have, what fruit of penance they bring. Nor is the Church here closed to anyone, nor is the Bishop denied to anyone: our patience and easiness and humanity is at hand for those who come. I desire that all return into the Church, I desire that all our fellow-soldiers be enclosed within the camp of Christ and the dwellings of God the Father. I remit everything, I overlook much in my zeal and prayer for gathering the brotherhood: even the things which have been committed against God I do not examine with the full judgment of religion. In remitting offenses more than I ought, I almost offend myself: I embrace with a ready and full affection those returning with penance, confessing their sin with a humble and simple satisfaction.

[550] But if there are any who think that they can return to the Church not by prayers but by threats, but that they must never be admitted into the Church, or judge that they may make an entrance for themselves not by lamentations and satisfactions but by terrors; let them hold for certain that against such men the Church of the Lord stands closed, and that the camp of Christ, unconquered and strong, fortified under the Lord's protection, does not yield to threats. A priest of God, holding the Gospel and keeping Christ's precepts, can be slain, he cannot be conquered. Zechariah the prelate of God supplies and furnishes us with examples of virtue and faith; who, when he could not be terrified by threats and stoning, was slain in the temple of God, crying out and repeatedly saying what we too cry out and say against the heretics: Thus says the Lord: You have forsaken the ways of the Lord, and the Lord will forsake you.

[551] By his example he teaches that the sacrilegious must be bravely resisted and in a manner worthy of priestly dignity; if they refuse to repent. for if they be yielded to: What remains, he says, but that the church should yield to the Capitol, and that, the priests withdrawing and removing the Lord's altar, images and idols with their altars should pass into the sacred and venerable assembly * of our clergy, and that a more copious and fuller matter of declaiming against us and of reproaching us should be furnished to Novatian, if those who have sacrificed and publicly denied Christ should begin not only to be entreated and admitted without penance performed, but even further to lord it by the power of their terror? If they demand peace, let them lay down their arms. If they make satisfaction, why do they threaten? Or if they threaten, let them know that they are not feared by the priests of God. For neither will antichrist, when he shall have begun to come, enter into the Church because he threatens; nor is his violence and arms yielded to, because he professes that he will destroy those who resist. The heretics arm us, while they think that we are terrified by their threatening; nor do they cast us down in peace, but rather raise us up and kindle us, while they make the very peace worse than persecution for the brethren.

[552] He despises their threats, And we indeed wish that they may not fulfil in crime what they utter in fury; that those who sin by perfidious and cruel words may not offend also in deeds. We pray and beseech God, whom they do not cease to provoke and exasperate, that their hearts may grow gentle; that, their fury being laid aside, they may return to soundness of mind; that breasts covered with the darkness of offenses may acknowledge the light of penance, and may rather ask that the prayers and supplications of the Prelate be poured out for them, than themselves pour out the blood of a Priest. But if they shall remain in their fury, and shall cruelly persevere in those snares and parricidal threats of theirs, no priest of God is so weak, so prostrate and abject, so feeble in the infirmity of human mediocrity, as not to be divinely raised up against the enemies and assailants of God; whose humility and infirmity is not animated by the vigor and strength of the Lord who protects. It matters nothing to us either by whom or when we are destroyed, since we shall receive from the Lord the reward of our death and blood. Their destruction is to be wept and lamented, whom the devil so blinds that, not considering the eternal punishments of gehenna, they attempt to imitate the coming of antichrist now drawing near.

[553] and he asks that this letter be read out to the brethren. Finally, about to close his letter, he asks St. Cornelius that — what he also did of his own accord on other occasions — he would not think it burdensome to read it out to the most flourishing clergy there … and to the most holy and most ample people; so that, if any contagion of poisoned speech and of pestiferous sowing had crept in there, all of it may be stripped from the ears and breasts of the brethren, and the whole and sincere affection of good men may be cleansed from all the filth of heretical detraction *. Lest however anyone should think from the context of the whole letter that St. Cornelius, or his clergy or people, had been circumvented by the frauds of the schismatics, he adds a little after in the same place: Although I know that our brotherhood there, fortified indeed by your providence, but also cautious enough by its own vigilance, cannot be caught or deceived by the poisons of the heretics, and that the divine teachings and precepts prevail among them as much as is their fear toward God; nevertheless out of abundance either our solicitude or our charity has persuaded us to write these things to you, etc.

[554] The time at which the letter was written. These and other things St. Cyprian says in the aforesaid letter, which it seemed good to report here at such length, because the Saint himself in it graphically depicted his own priestly endowments and virtues. For the rest, it is not to be doubted that St. Cornelius, when he had read the Saint's letter, repulsed those schismatics, as he had already done, even more strongly. That it was written in the year 252 is certain from what has been said above; but whether the four years for which he says he had already been approved by his people in the episcopate while he was writing this is to be taken as completed or as begun, we have left in doubt in §5, where the year of his entering upon the episcopate was treated.

* al. confession

* al. detraction.

XXXII. Being divinely admonished of the imminent persecution, he exhorts the people of Thibaris by letter to martyrdom: he decrees in council that peace should be given to the lapsed: he writes to St. Cornelius, and to his successor St. Lucius.

Being admonished of the imminent persecution, While St. Cyprian was so bravely opposing himself to the heretics and schismatics, and vindicating the dignity of the Church from their machinations and calumnies, the fear of a new tempest seized his mind. For divine providence, which had foretold to the solicitous Prelate that peace would succeed the Decian persecution, did not now cease to admonish him of another persecution threatening from Gallus. To this perhaps also pertained the edict by which the people of Carthage were bidden to sacrifice, as we saw from Epistle 55 above at num. 540. Nevertheless that the peace of the Church was not then yet broken is manifest both from the same letter and from 54, which we think was written later; whence it may be gathered that the sacrifices were commanded by that edict to the whole city, not to its individual inhabitants, and that the Christians had not yet been driven to that impiety, although the Saint on that occasion was demanded for the lion by the voice of the populace.

[556] And so the most vigilant Prelate, instructed by heavenly warnings of the imminent contest, he exhorts the people of Thibaris by letter held nothing more important than solicitously to provide for his flock, whose recent slaughter he had not yet ceased to bewail, and carefully to take heed lest the enemy should assail it unprepared and unwarlike. With the same solicitude he wrote Epistle 56 to the people of Thibaris on the exhortation to martyrdom. The people of Thibaris, whose bishop Vincentius took part in the council of Carthage on the baptizing of heretics, had asked their holy Metropolitan to turn aside to them at some time, and to exhort them in person by that discourse on divine matters in which he was very powerful. St. Cyprian had assented to these wishes; but, being distracted to that degree by the multitude of his affairs, he had not been able to satisfy them, and the imminent persecution made it even less possible now. He therefore addressed them by letter, and, having admonished them of the imminent peril, incited them to bring back the palm of martyrdom.

[557] He began the aforesaid letter thus: Cyprian to the people dwelling at Thibaris, greeting. I had indeed thought, most beloved brethren, and had it among my prayers, if the state of affairs and the condition of the time permitted, according to what you have frequently desired, to come to you myself, and, present there, to strengthen the brotherhood with such small mediocrity of exhortation as is ours. But since we are so detained by pressing affairs that there is no opportunity of hastening far from here, and of being long absent from the people over whom by divine indulgence we preside, I have meanwhile sent this letter to you in my stead. For since by the condescension of the Lord who instructs us we are more often urged and admonished, we ought to bring the solicitude of our admonition to your conscience also. For you ought to know, and to believe and hold for certain, that the day of tribulation has begun to be over our head, and that the end of the world and the time of antichrist has drawn near, so that we may all stand ready for the battle, and think of nothing but the glory of eternal life and the crown of the Lord's confession; nor let us think that the things which are coming are such as those which have passed. A graver and fiercer fight now threatens, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare themselves with uncorrupted faith and robust virtue, considering that for this reason they daily drink the cup of Christ's Blood, that they too may be able to shed their blood for Christ.

[558] and being solicitous about the lapsed, a council being convened, Having premised these things, he exhorted both the lapsed and the faithful of unimpaired faith to martyrdom, by the divine promises as well as by the divine threats, and equipped them for the contest with the best precepts; the reporting of which I forbear, and of all which this is the sum and end: Let the unfallen be armed, lest he lose

what he lately stood firm to keep. Let the lapsed also be armed, that the lapsed too may recover what he lost. Let honor call the unfallen, let grief call the lapsed, to the battle. Nor was it only by exhortations that he prepared the people, of his own diocese as well as of another whose chair was then perhaps vacant, to receive the persecution bravely; but he also anxiously turned his mind in every direction whence any graver danger might threaten. Among these things there especially distressed him the pitiable condition of the lapsed, who, since they had not yet completed full penance, were kept from the divine Eucharist, and, being destitute of that safeguard, seemed to be in peril beyond the rest. They indeed asked for peace, and gave sure hope that they would wash away their former stain with their own blood; but there stood in the way the recent decree of the preceding year, by which it had been forbidden in synod that any of those who had sacrificed should, outside the danger of death, be granted peace before the completion of full penance.

[559] he determines that peace should be given them, and St. Cornelius It pleased them therefore to gather a synod again, in which by the common judgment of St. Cyprian and forty-one bishops a new canon was framed, by which it was sanctioned that peace, and with it, according to custom, the divine banquet of the Eucharist, should be granted to all who after their fall had not withdrawn from the Church, nor ceased to do penance. These things being thus settled, the fathers of the council gave a synodical letter, which among the Cyprianic letters is published in the fifty-fourth place, to St. Cornelius the Pope, in which they proved the necessity of this new canon by solid arguments, confidently trusting that he too would go along with the same judgment. We had indeed determined long since, they said, (namely in the year just elapsed), dearest brother, taking counsel mutually with one another, that those who in the assault of the persecution had been tripped up by the adversary and had fallen, and had stained themselves with unlawful sacrifices, should do full penance for a long time, and, if the danger of sickness pressed, should receive peace under the stroke of death.

[560] into the same judgment For it was not lawful, nor did paternal piety and divine clemency permit, that the Church should be closed to those who knocked, and that the support of saving hope should be denied to those who grieved and entreated, so that, departing from the world, they should be dismissed to the Lord without communion and peace; since He himself, who gave the law, permitted that what was bound on earth should be bound also in heaven, but that those things could be loosed there which were here first loosed in the Church. But indeed, since we see that the day of another assault has begun to draw near, and are admonished by frequent and constant showings that we should be armed and prepared for the contest which the enemy proclaims against us; and since we are preparing by our exhortations the people also committed to us by the divine condescension, and are gathering absolutely all the soldiers of Christ who desire arms and demand battle within the Lord's camp; under the compulsion of necessity we have judged that to those who have not withdrawn from the Church of the Lord, but have not ceased from the first day of their fall to do penance and to lament and to entreat the Lord, peace must be given, and that they must be armed and equipped for the battle which threatens.

[561] For we must obey just showings and admonitions, by a synodical letter, so that the sheep may not be deserted by their shepherds in peril; but that the whole flock may be gathered into one, and the Lord's army be armed for the contest of the heavenly warfare. Now peace is necessary not for the weak but for the strong; nor is communion to be given by us to the dying but to the living; so that those whom we rouse and exhort to battle we may not leave unarmed and naked, but may fortify with the protection of the Blood and Body of Christ; and, since the Eucharist is made for this end, that it may be a safeguard to those who receive it, let us arm with the defense of the Lord's fullness those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary. For how do we teach or provoke them to shed their blood in the confession of the Name, if we deny the Blood of Christ to them as they are about to go to war? Or how do we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom, if we do not first admit them by the right of communion to drink the Cup of the Lord in the Church?

[562] They observe moreover that there ought to be a difference between those who had fallen away from the Church either to the gentiles or to the heretics, by most urgent reasons and those who, not having departed from her threshold, with continual tears demanded peace and professed that they were prepared to undergo the contest bravely: for to these peace was altogether to be granted. For at this time, they say, we give peace not to sleepers but to watchers, we give peace not for delights but for arms, we give peace not for rest but for the battle-line. Besides, they note that it will be exceedingly glorious for them to have given peace to penitents of this kind, if these, being so equipped, shall carry off the laurel of martyrdom, which they trust will certainly happen; nor yet can it be turned into a crime against them if any of these ask peace craftily, or fail in the battle-line; since they themselves cannot search their hearts, nor ought the bad to be an obstacle to the good being succored; but rather the bad ought to be helped by the good. But on the contrary it would certainly have to be imputed to the bishops, if by their hardness or negligence good soldiers of this kind should depart without peace.

[563] From these and other things they at length conclude: Lest therefore by our mouth, to adduce with which we deny peace, with which we set forth the hardness rather of human cruelty than of divine and paternal piety, the sheep committed to us be demanded back from us by the Lord; it has seemed good to us, the Holy Spirit suggesting it and the Lord admonishing through many and manifest visions, since the enemy is foretold and shown to be imminent, to gather the soldiers of Christ within the camp, the causes of individuals being examined, to give peace to the lapsed, nay rather to supply arms to those who are to fight: which we believe will please you also in the contemplation of paternal mercy. But if there shall be any of our colleagues who, with the contest pressing, thinks that peace ought not to be given to the brethren and sisters, he will render an account in the day of judgment to the Lord for his unseasonable censure or for his inhuman hardness.

[564] We, as befitted our faith and charity and solicitude, he strives. have brought forth what was in our conscience: that the day of the contest has drawn near, that a violent enemy is quickly rising against us, that a battle is coming, not such as was before, but far graver and sharper. This is frequently shown to us divinely, of this we are more often admonished by the providence and mercy of the Lord; of whose help and love we, who trust in him, can be secure: because he who in peace foretells the coming battle to his soldiers will give victory in the encounter to those who fight. Thus far the aforesaid synodical letter given to St. Cornelius, who without doubt consented to this new decree. For the rest, how happily that clemency turned out is gathered both from St. Cyprian's Epistle 57 to St. Cornelius and from the Work of an uncertain author against Novatian, in which very many who had been conquered in the Decian persecution are said to have stood unconquered under Gallus.

[565] To St. Cornelius in exile, and to the Romans Not long after these things St. Cyprian learned that, a persecution having suddenly arisen at Rome, the Romans had stood bravely, with St. Cornelius as their leader; and that he, after a confession worthy of a supreme Pontiff, had been driven into exile. The holy Prelate received this news as was fitting, and by Epistle 57 warmly congratulated the Pontiff, exiled at Centumcellae in Etruria, both on his own and on the Romans' glorious confession; which, since we have already given it in St. Cornelius, to whose acts it more closely pertains, § XI, we shall here report only a few things from it. First of all he set forth in the very opening of the letter, in these words, the joy which he with his people had received from their glory: We have learned, dearest brother, the glorious testimonies of your faith and virtue, and we have received the honor of your confession with such exultation that we reckon ourselves also partakers and associates in your merits and praises.

[566] he congratulates on their confession, For since we have both one Church, and a joined mind, and an undivided concord, what priest would not rejoice in the praises of his fellow-priest as in his own; or what brotherhood would not everywhere be glad in the joy of brethren? It cannot be sufficiently expressed how great was the exultation here, and how great the gladness, when we had learned prosperous and brave things about you; that you had stood forth there as the leader of confession for the brethren; but also that the confession of the leader had grown from the agreement of the brethren, etc. After this he pursued their confession with deserved praises; as the studious reader will find in the place cited. Toward the end of the letter he speaks as though he had judged that his own last contest was not far off, and therefore exhorts both himself and all others to prepare for it, and earnestly begs mutual prayers.

[567] and begs mutual prayers. We plainly exhort, he says, as much as we can, dearest brother, out of the mutual charity by which we cleave to one another, that, since we are instructed by the providence of the Lord who warns us, and are admonished by the salutary counsels of the divine mercy that the day of our contest and struggle now draws near, we may not cease to persist in fastings, vigils, and prayers with all the people. Let us devote ourselves to constant groanings and frequent supplications. For these are for us the heavenly arms which make us stand and persevere bravely. These are the spiritual defenses and the divine weapons which protect us. Let us be mindful of one another, concordant and unanimous; let us on both sides always pray for each other; let us relieve pressures and straits by mutual charity; and if any of us shall have gone before hence by the swiftness of the divine condescension, let our love persevere with the Lord, let prayer not cease for our brethren and sisters. Thus far there; from which we learn at the same time in what manner he himself was preparing for martyrdom.

[568] To St. Lucius, substituted in the place of St. Cornelius, St. Cornelius having been crowned with the laurel of martyrdom at Centumcellae in Etruria, where he was in exile, on the XIV day of September in this same year, as we have shown in his acts, St. Lucius succeeded him, of whom treatment has been made in our Work at the IV day of March. We cannot however approve that in the same place, §2, he is said to have been created Pontiff in the year 253, and to have suffered martyrdom in the year 255. For as regards the year of his creation, it is certain from the aforesaid acts of Cornelius and of Cyprian that it was 252 of the common era, as it also seemed to our Papebroch in the Propylaeum of May. But that the year of his death was the year of Christ 253, our Bosch likewise, in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of St. Stephen, who succeeded Lucius in the Pontificate, §2, establishes, along with the more received opinion of this time; which is also conformable to the acts both of the same St. Stephen and of St. Cyprian, and therefore we too think it must here be altogether retained.

[569] Now Gallus blazed out against the new Pontiff Lucius with no less hatred than that with which he had persecuted Cornelius, and in exile for Christ and likewise soon banished him, so that at the same, or at any rate at almost the same, time the news of his Pontificate and of his confession was brought into Africa. On hearing these things, St. Cyprian, together with the other bishops of Africa, gave a common letter to him, by which he congratulated him both on the summit of the Pontificate and on the glory of his confession

. This letter has perished, but in Epistle 58 to the same man, written as we shall presently say, the Saint himself with his colleagues makes mention of it thus: And lately indeed we congratulated you, dearest brother, when the divine condescension appointed you, with a doubled honor, both confessor and Priest alike in the administration of his Church. In what place this holy Pontiff was in exile is unknown; but that not long after he returned from his exile to Rome, we have from the same letter in the words presently to be cited.

[570] Equally unexplored is the occasion of his return, which neither St. Cyprian in the aforesaid letter and to him afterwards returning to Rome, nor the author of the primary Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs relates in the Propylaeum of May, p. 49, where for our purpose only this is read: This man was an exile, and afterwards by God's nod returned to the Church. However that may be, the holy Prelate of Carthage and the other African prelates, having learned of the Pontiff's return to his Church, again congratulated him by Epistle 58 on that happy event. For after the words given in the preceding number, they thus continued: But now too we congratulate no less you and your companions and the whole brotherhood, that the Lord's kind and bounteous protection has again made you return with the same glory and praise to your own people, so that a shepherd might be restored to the flock to be fed, and a pilot to the ship to be steered, and a ruler to the people to be governed; and that it might appear that your banishment was so divinely arranged, not that the Bishop, banished and driven out, should be wanting to the Church, but that he should return to the Church greater, etc. That the persecution was not then yet extinguished is certain, and the same bishops sufficiently suggest it when they say that he had by divine providence returned to his people, so that he might exhort the people to take up the arms of confession and to accomplish martyrdoms not by words but by deeds, and, with antichrist imminent, might prepare the soldiers for the battle, not only by the incitement of speech and voice, but by the example of faith and virtue.

[571] Nay, toward the end of the letter they even suspect that his martyrdom is at hand. he congratulates him. For after they had said that they desired to take part in the common joy which the Roman people received from the return and the sight of their shepherd, they subjoined: But in our stead I and my colleagues and the whole brotherhood send this letter to you, dearest brother, and, presenting our joy to you by letter, we set forth the faithful services of our charity; here too in our Sacrifices and in our prayers not ceasing to give thanks to God the Father and to Christ his Son, our Lord, and to pray and likewise to ask that he who is perfect and who perfects may guard and perfect in you the glorious crown of your confession; who perhaps recalled you for this end, that your glory should not be hidden, if the consummated martyrdoms of your confession were to be abroad. For a victim which offers the brotherhood an example both of virtue and of faith ought to be immolated with the brethren present.

[572] The death and cult of the same Lucius. And that their suspicion or presage was not vain, the event taught: for St. Lucius not long after, namely in the year 253, on the IV or V day of March, on which he is inscribed in the Martyrologies, passed to immortal life, called a blessed martyr by St. Cyprian in Epistle 67, and honored as such in the Church. Besides the congratulatory letters which we have said were given by St. Cyprian and his colleagues to the aforesaid Pontiff, we know of nothing that passed between them, except that he approved with his own vote also the Catholic judgment concerning the admitting of the lapsed to peace, as our Saint testifies in the aforesaid Epistle 67, saying: For they (SS. Cornelius and Lucius), full of the Spirit of God, and set in glorious martyrdom, judged that peace should be given to the lapsed, and signified by their letters that, penance having been performed, the fruit of communion and peace should not be denied. For the rest, Epistle 58 most probably belongs to the year 253; it has seemed good however to report it here, lest I should afterwards be compelled to interrupt the narrative.

§ XXXIII. Whether the persecution foretold above by St. Cyprian blazed out in Africa under Gallus?

Pagi's interpretation of the revelation, That a persecution was stirred up at Rome by Gallus is beyond doubt from what has been said, nor can it be disputed; but whether it was propagated to other provinces of the Roman empire as well, some doubt, among whom Antonius Pagi in his Critique of the most eminent Baronius, at this year 252, num. 17 and following, contends that it was only local, namely in the City of Rome, and did not penetrate into Africa. Consequently he establishes that a future persecution was indeed revealed to St. Cyprian, but not the time; nor whether it was to be decreed against the whole Church or only against some part of it. Pagi was preceded by Lombert in his French version of the Works of St. Cyprian, where in the Preface to the first part, num. 44, he interpreted those revelations in this way from Epistle 57, for us 58. But let us examine Pagi's reasons.

[574] and the arguments First of all he produces the text of St. Dionysius of Alexandria about Gallus reported by Eusebius in book 7 of the History, chap. 1, which in the translation of Henri de Valois is of this sort: He persecuted the holy men who were offering prayers to God for his peace and safety; but in Greek it runs thus: τοὺς

ἱεροὺς

ἄνδρας

τοὺς

περὶ

τῆς

εἰρήνης

αὐτοῦ

καὶ

τῆς

ὑγιείας

πρεσβεύοντας

πρὸς

τὸν

Θεὸν,

ἤλασεν. On this passage he observes with Pearson that ἤλασεν properly means he drove out, expelled from their seats, sent into exile; and that πρεσβεύειν πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν is properly said of the clergy; and that therefore these things are to be taken of SS. Cornelius and Lucius, driven into exile, as we have seen, with some of the Roman clergy; and hence he further conjectures that in St. Dionysius's judgment the persecution blazed out against these alone, or at least only at Rome, and that from this it came about that neither Eusebius in the Chronicle, nor St. Augustine in book 18 On the City of God, chap. 51, for us 52, nor Sulpicius Severus counted it, nor did Eusebius in the History record martyrs who suffered under Gallus and Volusianus.

[575] To these he adds Orosius, who, when in book 7 of his Histories against the Pagans by which he strives to prove he compares the ten persecutions by which the Church was afflicted with the ten plagues of Egypt, as he says, makes the seventh plague under Gallus and Volusianus a pestilence, and not torments inflicted on the faithful. In favor of this opinion he recites the following from chap. 14, elsewhere 21: Gallus Hostilianus, having obtained the kingdom, held it scarcely two years with his son Volusianus. There arises a vengeance for the violated Christian name; and as far as the edicts of Decius ran for the destroying of the churches, so far is extended the plague of incredible diseases … By this destruction alone were Gallus and Volusianus notable. Pagi notes however that Gallus is here confounded with Hostilianus, the son of Decius. He subjoins also another testimony of St. Dionysius of Alexandria from book 7, chap. 22, of the aforesaid History of Eusebius, where it is read: After these things war and famine followed; which indeed we endured jointly with the gentiles. And those evils by which they had worn us down we alone bore: but of those which they inflicted on and suffered from one another we bore a share.

[576] But again that peace delighted us which God granted to us alone: that the persecution revealed to the Saint, but when for a very short space of time both we and they had breathed again, suddenly that plague rushed in, etc. If we believe Pagi, those things are here narrated which happened while Volusianus was reigning with Gallus; and when St. Dionysius says: The evils by which they had worn us down we alone bore, he must be said to be speaking of the persecution stirred up against SS. Cornelius and Lucius and the Romans; but certainly on no other ground than that it so seemed to him. In the East therefore, he concludes from the aforesaid, the persecution does not seem to have raged. But he thinks it can also be proved from St. Cyprian's Epistle 58 that it did not penetrate into Africa: for in it it seems to him to be indicated that the persecution was stirred up only at Rome, because the Saint, congratulating Lucius the Pontiff on his return from exile, writes thus in the same place: We understand the saving and holy counsels of the divine Majesty, whence there (namely at Rome) a sudden persecution lately arose; whence the secular power suddenly broke out against the Church of Christ, and against Cornelius the blessed martyr, and against you all; so that the Lord might show, for the confounding of the heretics, which was the Church, who was its one Bishop, chosen by divine ordination; who were the presbyters joined with the Bishop in priestly honor, etc.

[577] But from this passage Pagi, following Lombert, reasons thus. was stirred up at Rome, not in Africa. The Saint ascribes to divine providence that a persecution suddenly arose at Rome against those two successive Pontiffs and the clergy, so that, while the persecutor, passing over the Novatians, afflicted them, it might be made plain to the world that the Church was with Cornelius and his successor Lucius, not with Novatian; since the devil is wont to stir up persecution against the servants of God, not against the heretics who are his own chattels. And hence Pagi infers that the persecution was set in motion against the Romans alone, and that it was not necessary that it should be extended to other provinces as well. Besides he observes that in the aforesaid letter of St. Cyprian to Lucius, as also in the other written to Cornelius before it, there exists no memory of any martyr who suffered at that time in Africa under Gallus; but also that his reign was so brief, and so agitated by so many incursions of barbarians into the Roman provinces, that their prefects must be said to have been intent rather upon the preservation of those provinces and the quiet of the people than upon the destruction of the Christians.

[578] it was stirred up. But the interpretation of the revelation made to St. Cyprian, reported at num. 573, he judges must be admitted, because the Saint foretold a persecution far graver and sharper than that which had been under Decius; which he denies can be taken of the persecution of Gallus, since this was far less violent than the Decian. And lest such an interpretation should seem strange to anyone, he illustrates it in the same place by a similar example. St. Pontius in the Life, in our edition at num. 24 and following, relates that his holy Prelate, on the first day on which he stayed in his exile at Curubis by Valerian's order, seemed to himself to be condemned to death by the proconsul, yet in such a way that he obtained one day for setting his affairs in order: and that the event taught that by that day one year was signified, at the end of which he was beheaded. As therefore his martyrdom and the kind of his punishment were so revealed to St. Cyprian that the time nevertheless remained uncertain; so Pagi judges that the persecution of which we are here treating was likewise foretold to him, but not at what time it would arise, or how many or which provinces it would afflict. To these I add another argument as well, namely Pontius's deep silence about the Gallian persecution and about the things done in it by his holy Bishop.

[579] Against these things I for my part shall readily believe that not of the

persecution of Gallus alone, but also of that which Valerian afterwards stirred up, are to be taken the things foretold to St. Cyprian on this subject: for no very long space intervened between the two, and in this way the things which the Saint foretold about its atrocity are more rightly understood. But that the persecution of Gallus blazed out only at Rome, and did not penetrate into Africa, I cannot grant to Pagi; nor do the reasons alleged by him prove it, to which I oppose others before I answer them. St. Cyprian, and the bishops who assembled with him, were from frequent divine revelations so certainly persuaded that a new persecution from Gallus was threatening the African church, that they judged it altogether necessary to frame a new canon by which peace and communion should be decreed to all penitent lapsed who had not withdrawn from the Church, lest the persecutor should assail unlooked-for those destitute of so powerful a safeguard, as is clearer than light from their Epistle 54.

[580] arguments are set forth Hence in the same letter they say: At this time we give peace not to sleepers but to watchers; we give peace not for delights but for arms; we give peace not for rest but for the battle-line. And again the same Saint in Epistle 56, by which on that occasion he exhorted the people of Thibaris to the laurel of martyrdom, wished no room to be left for doubting about the imminent persecution. For you ought to know, he says, and to believe and hold for certain, that the day of tribulation has begun to be over our head, … so that we may all stand ready for the battle, and think of nothing but the glory of eternal life and the crown of the Lord's confession. Who would not see that all these things were said of a near persecution, and one impending over Africa; and consequently that St. Cyprian and the other bishops of that province with him were vehemently deluded, if the revelations made to him were to be taken of a persecution to be stirred up against the Romans alone, or of that which Valerian first set in motion in the year 256 or 257, and if in the intervening time no persecution troubled Africa?

[581] But this error is the less to be admitted in our holy Prelate drawn from St. Cyprian's own in proportion as the reconciliation of the lapsed, which on account of the aforesaid revelations he took care should be decreed, was of greater moment, although in the council of the previous year it had been carefully provided that no lapsed person should, outside the danger of death, be admitted to communion before the completion of full penance. Nothing similar occurs in the example which Pagi produced at num. 578 from the Life: nor indeed does Pontius there assert that St. Cyprian or others persuaded themselves from that revelation that he would be put to death on the following day: but he says this one thing, that it was beyond doubt to all that their Prelate would be crowned with martyrdom; but that the day of the martyrdom was unknown. Truly, he says at num. 27 of the Life, no one knew why this had been shown to him, except that afterwards he was crowned on the same day on which he had seen it. Nevertheless in the intervening time his imminent passion was known for certain by all; yet the day of the passion was passed over in silence by all of them, as though they did not know it.

[582] Further, that the persecution which the Saint had foretold to be imminent penetrated into Africa while Gallus was reigning letters, is sufficiently clear from the book to Demetrian, one of Gallus's officials in that province, which Pagi himself grants with us to have been written at that time. In it St. Cyprian says this among other things about the torments which were then being applied to Christians: Behold what a thing this very matter is, about which we have most of all to speak with you, that you assail us who are harmless, that to the insult of God you attack and oppress the servants of God … you wear out with unjust persecutions the servants of God and those dedicated to his Majesty and name. It is not enough that you yourself do not worship God; you further persecute with sacrilegious hostility those who do worship him. You neither worship God, nor permit him to be worshiped at all; and whereas the rest please you, who venerate not only those inept idols and images made by the hand of man, but even certain portents and monsters, the worshiper of God alone displeases you. Everywhere in your temples the pyres of victims and the funeral piles of cattle smoke; and the altars of God either do not exist or are hidden. Crocodiles and dog-headed apes and stones and serpents are worshiped by you; and God alone on earth either is not worshiped, or, if he is worshiped, it is not with impunity.

[583] The harmless, the just, those dear to God, you deprive of home, which persuade us that the persecution, you despoil of patrimony, you press with chains, you shut up in prison, you punish with the sword, with beasts, with fires. Nor are you even content with a short cut to our pains, and with a simple and swift brevity of penalties. You apply long torments to the mangling of our bodies, you multiply numerous punishments for the lacerating of our bowels; nor can your ferocity and savagery be content with the accustomed torments: your ingenious cruelty devises new penalties. What is this insatiable rage of butchery, what this unappeasable lust of savagery? Having inveighed at length in the same place against this cruelty in an elegant but sharp style: Why, he says, do you turn to the weakness of the body? Why do you contend with the frailty of earthly flesh? Contend with the vigor of the mind, break the strength of the soul, destroy the faith; conquer, if you can, by disputation, conquer by reason: or, if your gods have any divinity and power, let them themselves rise for their own vengeance, let them themselves defend themselves by their own majesty: or what can they bestow on those who worship them, who cannot avenge themselves on those who do not worship them? Thus St. Cyprian against Demetrian, who did not cease to lay upon the Christian religion the cause of the plague and of other calamities, and to tear it with revilings and curses. And it is manifest that a persecution, and an atrocious one, is here recorded.

[584] foretold by the Saint, But Pagi, to get rid of this argument, replies that the Decian persecution which had preceded is there treated of; and that a manner of writing of this kind about matters of great moment, such as that had been, is not unusual. But although I cannot deny that it is not unusual for orators to present past things as present, nevertheless nothing compels us to assert that this was done here; nay, the contrary is persuaded both by the circumstances of the case and by the context itself. For first indeed, from what has been said above it is beyond doubt that St. Cyprian, instructed by divine revelations, held it for certain that a persecution was very near at hand, and not only foretold it to the Romans and the Africans, but also, a synod having been gathered on that account, solicitously took care to fortify no less the lapsed than the faithful of unimpaired faith against the imminent peril. But here we see that same Saint defending an oppressed religion, and reproaching Demetrian with atrocious torments against the Christians, with an ingenuity of cruelty in punishments, and with all these things as though present: with what probability therefore should we take the words of the holy Prelate against their own proper sense, and against his own express prediction, of the Decian persecution, and prefer to charge the Saint with a badly understood revelation rather than acknowledge him a true prophet?

[585] under Gallus penetrated into Africa. Secondly, if no persecution was then in force in Africa, on what ground does the Saint, reproaching Demetrian, say: It is not enough that you yourself do not worship God; you further persecute with sacrilegious hostility those who do worship him. You neither worship God, nor permit him to be worshiped at all … Everywhere in the temples the pyres of victims and the funeral piles of cattle smoke; and the altars of God either do not exist or are hidden? On what ground, I say, did St. Cyprian reproach Demetrian with these things, if it was then permitted among the Africans, at least by connivance and tacitly, to worship God and to have his altars? But as these things are to be taken of the present time at which he was writing, so also to the same time pertain the rest which he there subjoins about the torments, proving what he had said, that God was not worshiped by Demetrian, and was not permitted to be worshiped at all; and that those who did worship him were harassed with sacrilegious hostility. Hence too, among his salutary counsels, he presses this upon him, that he should at length cease to harass the faithful: Why, he says, do you cast yourself down into the fall of death with the serpent whom you worship? Why do you fall into the devil's ruin through him and with him?… Cease to injure by your persecutions the servants of God and of Christ, whom, when injured, the divine vengeance defends.

[586] An answer is given to the texts Now I come to Pagi's objections. To the first passage of Eusebius I reply that the verb ἐλαύνειν, from which comes the second aorist ἤλασεν, means to harass, to vex, to persecute, etc.; and therefore it is by no means necessary that we interpret it as to send into exile. Nor does the passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which after Pearson he cites in his own favor, prove anything else, because in it Coriolanus is said to be φυγῇ ἀἳδίῳ ἐλασθεὶς, punished with perpetual exile: for since φυγῇ is there expressly added, it is rather indicated that ἐλαύνειν set by itself is of wider signification. Laymen too can πρεσβεύειν πρὸς τον Θεὸν, that is, discharge an embassy before God by prayers. It would not however be strange if St. Dionysius of Alexandria in the passage objected had meant chiefly to denote the exile of SS. Cornelius and Lucius and of some of the Roman clergy; for these were to be recorded before the rest, both because the former two were eminent in the Pontifical dignity, and because the Romans and their clergy received the first onset of the persecutor Gallus so bravely and so unanimously that St. Cyprian in Epistle 57 did not hesitate to say: The whole Roman Church confessed.

[587] But that the reader may himself judge whether the text of St. Dionysius in Eusebius cited by Pagi is to be taken of the exile of SS. Cornelius and Lucius alone and reasonings and of some clerics, I report it here in full from the version of Valois. But neither did Gallus, he says, understand the fault of Decius, nor foresee what had ruined him. Rather he stumbled against the same stone set before his eyes: who, when his empire was in a prosperous state, and all things were succeeding according to his mind, persecuted the holy men who were offering prayers to God for his peace and safety; together with them therefore he drove away also the prayers that were wont to be made for him. Certainly nothing compels us to restrict these things to the Roman clergy alone; nay, that they should not be restricted, there stand in the way both St. Cyprian's words, The whole Roman Church confessed, and the martyrdom of SS. Censurinus and his companions, of various condition and of both sexes, whose Acts you have illustrated in our Work, tom. 2 of September, at the V day. Nor indeed does the same text of Dionysius contain anything on account of which we should interpret it of a persecution stirred up against the Romans alone.

[588] To Pagi's second argument, which is negative, in favor of the opposite opinion namely that the persecution of Gallus is recorded neither by Eusebius in the Chronicle, nor by St. Augustine in book 18 On the City of God, chap. 52, nor by Sulpicius Severus; nor finally that martyrs who suffered under that emperor are recounted by the same Eusebius in the History; I reply with St. Augustine himself, in the place cited, that the Church was afflicted with more than ten persecutions, although in his time only ten were wont to be counted, because ten persecutions of the Church seemed to some to have been prefigured by the ten plagues of Egypt, which the holy doctor does not approve. And so those who thought thus, the more atrocious

persecutions only they recounted, lest they should exceed the number of ten: and I shall readily grant that the persecution of Gallus was less atrocious than the rest, especially through the brevity of its time on account of the public calamities, namely the pestilence and the incursions of the barbarians into the Roman empire, which seem to have called away the minds of the persecutors elsewhere. But as these things did not stand in the way of a persecution being in force for some time at Rome under Gallus, so neither ought they to have stood in the way of its likewise raging for some while in Africa. In the same opinion about the ten persecutions signified by as many plagues of Egypt was Orosius, to whose authority answer has been made by the same labor. But when he says: By this destruction alone (the pestilence) were Gallus and Volusianus notable, he is speaking of the plagues inflicted, not of the cause of the plagues, that is, of persecutions; and therefore he there records the former, not the persecution. Yet even so he wrote less accurately; since even on Pagi's own testimony their reign was turbulent with many hostilities of the barbarians.

[589] Besides, that same persecution of Gallus, on account of the said brevity, so far as appears, by Pagi and of its nearness to the Decian and the Valerianic, has often been confounded with both of these. Thus St. Jerome in the Life of St. Paul the hermit writes: Under the persecutors Decius and Valerian, at which time Cornelius at Rome and Cyprian at Carthage were condemned with happy blood. Thus the Acts of the same St. Cornelius, and from these Ado, Usuard, and others, place his martyrdom under Decius, which we have shown on this very day to have happened under Gallus and Volusianus, and which St. Jerome himself acknowledges in the Catalogue of Writers, saying of Cornelius: He ruled the Church for two years under Gallus and Volusianus, and, when he had been crowned with martyrdom for Christ, Lucius succeeded him. Similar confusions of persecutions Baronius in his Annotations on the Roman Martyrology and in the Annals, and my Predecessors in our Work, have noted more than once. But that Eusebius did not record martyrs under Gallus matters little, since he acknowledged the persecution both by the words of St. Dionysius given above, and by what he has again at the end of the same chapter: After he (St. Dionysius), he says, had discoursed of the wickedness of Decius and of his successors (Gallus with Volusianus and Valerian), he makes mention of the peace which flourished in the principate of Gallienus.

[590] alleged above, As regards St. Cyprian's silence in his letters to SS. Cornelius and Lucius about a persecution among the Africans, that is not to be wondered at, since that persecution began at Rome, and might not yet have penetrated into Africa when the Saint wrote the former letter. How long afterwards the other was given to Lucius is uncertain; for the adverb lately, which occurs in it, admits some latitude: but the argument of the letter did not require that mention be made in it of African martyrs. Nor does Pagi's observation prove anything, as though St. Cyprian had suggested in the aforesaid letters that it came about by divine providence that, while the other churches throughout the world were enjoying a tranquil peace, the persecutor suddenly assailed the Roman faithful alone. For the Saint here does not compare the Roman church with the other churches, but opposes it to the Novatians; and he rightly ascribes it to divine providence that the persecution had lately so blazed out at Rome that, passing over the Novatians, it harassed only the Pontiff and his clergy and people, namely, so that the Lord might thus show which was the Church, who was its Bishop, … who were the presbyters joined with the Bishop in priestly honor, … who they were whom the enemy assailed; who on the contrary they were whom the devil spared as his own. Assuredly these things could be said, even though the persecution had been propagated to other provinces as well.

[591] and to St. Pontius's silence; Much more weight with me, for denying a persecution among the Africans under Gallus, would St. Pontius's silence about it have, had he not previously professed that he would pass over many of the deeds of his holy Prelate, and were it not known that he did in fact pass over deeds even of great moment. Thus of the revelation of the persecution made to him, of the lapsed on that account admitted to peace before the completion of penance, and of the very famous dispute about the baptizing of heretics, and of the synods held on that case, he makes not even a word of mention. The schisms and heresies too of Novatian and of Felicissimus, against which the Saint labored so greatly, he passed over in silence, so that we should now have nothing about these, had they not come to our knowledge from elsewhere. This one thing may be gathered from the said silence of Pontius: that St. Cyprian suffered nothing grave in the persecution of Gallus, but for the benefit of his flock, during the short time in which that storm raged, prudently and perhaps by divine counsel lay hidden; which his biographer could pass over the more easily, in proportion as he labored to remove from the minds of all the sinister suspicion which some had conceived from his retirement under Decius, and which at num. 14 of the Life he judged could be removed by no argument more effectively than by saying: Though I should excuse nothing else, he himself afterwards suffered.

[592] and it is concluded. And so, although that silence of Pontius renders the aforesaid persecution of Gallus in Africa somewhat doubtful, nevertheless from what has been said above it seems to me more probable that it did in fact blaze out there, as the Saint from the revelations made to him had thought it should be foretold; although I am unwilling to deny that the other, which was stirred up under Valerian a few years later, was graver than this, and that therefore it was likewise foretold by the same revelation. For the rest, from what we have argued in § X, it is not improbable that Epistle 81, which St. Cyprian wrote to confessors of both sexes and of various ages and orders detained in prison, belongs to the persecution of Gallus; and if this were certain, the present controversy would cease: see however the aforesaid §, num. 199 and following.

§ XXXIV. The Saint kindles his people by a notable address to succor those infected with the plague: he sends a great sum of money for redeeming the faithful from captivity among the barbarians.

The pestilence raging at Carthage, Meanwhile the plague, which more probably began under the Decii, and afflicted the Roman world for many years afterwards, began to rage in a horrible manner at Carthage, and supplied new matter of charity to the most holy Prelate. Eusebius in the Chronicle, Aurelius Victor in the Caesars, Orosius, and others first make mention of it under Gallus and Volusianus, because then, as I have said, it began to rage more violently. Of the same St. Dionysius also treats, in Eusebius, book 7 of the History, chap. 21 and 22, where as an eyewitness he bewails the atrocity with which it depopulated Alexandria. How widely it extended itself, the aforesaid Orosius in book 7 of the Histories, chap. 14, elsewhere 21, thus indicates: There was almost no Roman province, no city, no house, which was not seized and laid waste by that general pestilence. But what great slaughter it wrought at Carthage, St. Pontius, a cleric of that church and the deacon and biographer of holy Cyprian, has opportunely set forth at num. 17.

[594] There broke out, he says, afterwards a dire plague; and the excessive devastation of a detestable disease, snatching away innumerable peoples by day, each from his own seat, with abrupt onset, with the heathen fleeing, invaded house after house in order of the trembling populace. All shuddered, fled, avoided contagion, impiously exposed their own kin, as though with the man who was to die of that plague one could shut out death itself as well. Meanwhile there lay throughout the whole city not now bodies, but the corpses of very many, and by the contemplation of their own lot they demanded mercy for themselves from those who passed by. No one looked to anything else than cruel gains; no one trembled at the recollection of a like fate; no one did to another what he wished to have done to himself. Of the same hardness and impiety of the gentiles, whom Pontius here brands, toward the dying, St. Cyprian makes mention in the book to Demetrian, and reproaches them with it thus: You lay the blame on the plague and pestilence, when by that very plague and pestilence the crimes of individuals have either been uncovered or increased, while neither is mercy shown to the sick, and avarice and rapine gape after the dead.

[595] The same men, timid toward the service of piety, rash toward impious gains, The Saint exhorts the faithful gathered together fleeing the funerals of the dying and craving the spoils of the dead; so that it appears that the wretched were perhaps abandoned to these men even in their sickness, that they might not be able, while being tended, to escape: for he willed the sick man to perish who seized the property of one perishing. So great a terror of disasters cannot give a discipline of innocence, and amid a people dying in frequent slaughter no one considers that he himself is mortal. On all sides men run about, seize, take possession. There is no dissembling of plunder, no delay. Further, it is no wonder that the persecution begun in Africa against the faithful was lulled by so great a calamity, and gave St. Cyprian an occasion of deserving well of gentiles as much as of Christians. For the most devout Prelate could not but be moved by so great a calamity of his fellow citizens, nor but turn his solicitous mind to the fitting aids to be brought at once not only to his flock, but also to the heathen, by whom he had so often been demanded for the lion.

[596] to succor all, Therefore, having gathered the people, continues the biographer, he first in one place instructed them on the goods of mercy, teaching by the examples of the divine Reading how much the offices of piety avail for gaining God's favor. Then he subjoins that it is not wonderful if we cherish only our own with the due service of charity; that he can be made perfect who does something more than the publican or the heathen; who, overcoming evil with good, and practicing the likeness of divine clemency, loves his enemies also; who prays for the salvation of those who persecute him, as the Lord admonishes and exhorts. God makes his sun to rise continually, and from time to time bestows rains for the nourishing of the seeds, exhibiting all these things not only to his own but also to strangers; and he who professes himself to be even a son of God, why does he not imitate the example of his Father? It befits us, he says, to answer to our birth; and it is not fitting that those who are known to have been born again through God should be degenerate; but that rather there be proved in the offspring the strain of a good Father by the emulation of goodness.

[597] and persuades them. Many other things, and great ones indeed, I pass over, which the plan of keeping this volume within measure does not permit to be repeated in a longer discourse; concerning which it is enough to have said only this: that if the gentiles could have heard them from the rostra, they would perhaps have believed at once. But how effectively and how happily the Saint pleaded among his people, the biographer presently goes on to set forth: What, he says, would the Christian people do, who take their name from faith? Ministries therefore were at once distributed according to the quality of the persons and of their ranks. Many, who through the straitness of poverty could not bestow the benefits of expense, bestowed more than expense, making up by their own labor a recompense dearer than all riches. And who would not, under so great a Teacher, hasten to be found in some part of such a warfare, by which he might please both God the Father and Christ the judge, and meanwhile so good a Priest? And so it came about, by the bounty of overflowing works, that good was done to all, not to the household of the faith alone. Something more was done than what is recorded of the incomparable piety of Tobias. Let him pardon, and pardon again, and pardon frequently; or, to speak more truly, let him deservedly concede that, although very much was permitted before Christ, something more was permitted

after Christ, to whose times fullness is owed. He gathered up only those of his own race who had been killed by the king and cast out. Thus far the biographer, a spectator of the event and a partner in it.

[598] The Christians of Numidia being taken in great number Another occasion for exhibiting Christian piety and mercy was offered by the calamity of very many of the faithful, whom barbarians bursting into Numidia had carried off captive, and for whom accordingly there was a danger not only to their mortal life but also to their eternal salvation. Of this most sorrowful occurrence eight bishops — Januarius, Maximus, Proculus, Victor, Modianus, Nemesianus, Nampulus, and Honoratus — informed St. Cyprian their metropolitan; that these had their sees in Numidia we gather from Epistle 70, reported at 72. For since in this it is said that a letter about the baptizing of heretics was sent by St. Cyprian's colleagues to their fellow-bishops presiding in Numidia; and since in the inscription of Epistle 70, which is designated by the letter cited, the aforesaid bishops occur, there is no doubt that they resided in Numidia; and therefore that the aforesaid carrying-off of captives happened in the same province. But the reason for writing was the lack of money by which so great a number of wretched persons might be redeemed.

[599] Nor indeed did the holy Metropolitan permit so good an opportunity of deserving well of Christ to slip by; but both from his own private store captive by the invading barbarians, and from the alms of his clergy and people, and of some prelates also, he made up a huge sum, and transmitted it to the aforesaid bishops of Numidia as a ransom for the captives. All these things we have from Epistle 60, which the Saint gave in reply to the letter of those bishops, and which, because it displays sentiments worthy of so great a Bishop and his exceptional charity and mercy, I have thought not amiss to set forth here. He begins first with the grief which he had conceived from the captivity of the faithful: With the greatest groaning of our mind, he says, and not without tears, we read your letter, dearest brethren, which out of the solicitude of your love you wrote to us about the captivity of our brethren and sisters.

[600] He assigns the cause of his grief, that all the faithful are one body, he collects a great sum of money and that, while one member suffers, the rest ought to suffer with it, and that therefore the captivity of the brethren and the grief of those in peril must be held common to all. Then in the captive Christians he venerates the captive temples of God, nay Christ himself, and admonishes all of mutual love. For since the apostle Paul says, he says, As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ; in our captive brethren Christ must be contemplated, and he must be redeemed from the peril of captivity who redeemed us from the peril of death; so that he who rescued us from the jaws of the devil may now himself, who remains and dwells in us, be rescued from the hands of the barbarians, and be redeemed with a sum of money, who redeemed us by the cross and by his Blood; who therefore suffers these things to be done, that our faith may be tried, whether each one does for another what he would wish to be done for himself, if he were himself held captive among the barbarians. For who, mindful of humanity and admonished of mutual love, if he is a father, would not reckon that his own sons are now there; if he is a husband, would not judge with grief as well as with shame at the marriage bond that his own wife is held captive there.

[601] Yet he shows a special solicitude about the virgins dedicated to God, and for redeeming them whose chastity was in peril among those barbarians. Hence he says: But how great grief and torment is common to us all about the danger of the virgins who are held there; for whom the loss not only of liberty but also of modesty must be bewailed; nor are the chains of the barbarians so much to be wept over as the defilements of pimps and brothels, lest the members dedicated to Christ and consecrated by chaste virtue to the everlasting honor of continence be foully treated by the lust and contagion of those who mock them. By these and like arguments he had roused the minds of his people to a prompt subsidy of money; for he adds: Which things our brotherhood here, considering according to your letter and sorrowfully weighing them, all promptly and gladly and bountifully contributed money-subsidies to the brethren, being always indeed inclined to the work of God according to the sincerity of their faith, but now more kindled to saving works by the contemplation of so great a grief.

[602] But of the sum collected for so pious a use, some things intervening, he says this: We have moreover sent one hundred thousand sesterces *, to the bishops of Numidia he sends, which were collected here in the church of God over which by the Lord's indulgence we preside, by the contribution of the clergy and the people dwelling among us, which you will dispense there according to your diligence. How great this sum was is not agreed among the moderns, nor is there leisure here to inquire: Baronius may be consulted at the year 254, num. 110, and others who have treated of coinage. But not only the clergy and people of Carthage with their Bishop contributed so bountiful a subsidy, but also some bishops besides, who perhaps were then present, added something in their own name and in that of their people, as we shall presently see; but whether these are to be reckoned in with the above sum, or to be taken separately, becomes uncertain from the fact that the Saint above may seem to have said that those hundred thousand sesterces were collected by the contribution of the clergy and people of the church of Carthage, and therefore that what other bishops and churches had likewise contributed is not comprised in this sum.

[603] grateful for the occasion of deserving well, Further, the holy Prelate did not hesitate to give thanks, for the occasion of deserving well offered him, to those very men who had asked for alms. For he had premised: Finally we give you the greatest thanks, that you wished us to be partakers of your solicitude and of so good and necessary a work, so that you offered us fertile fields in which we might send forth the seeds of our hope, about to await a harvest from those most ample fruits which come from this heavenly and saving work. With the same charity, and with the same zeal for deserving well, he promises the prayers of his church, that they may not relapse into a similar calamity; but if they should relapse, he bids them have recourse to him again, and promises new help. It will be useful to have recited his words.

[604] he offers help in a like case, And we indeed wish, he says, that nothing of the kind may happen henceforth, and that our brethren, protected by the Lord's majesty, may be preserved unharmed from perils of this kind: if however anything of the sort should happen for the exploring of our mind's charity and the examining of our breast's faith, do not delay to announce these things to us by your letter, holding it for certain that our church and the whole brotherhood here prays with entreaties that these things may happen no more; and, if they shall have happened, gladly and bountifully supplies aid. Finally he commends in these words the remembrance of those whose alms and names he was transmitting, in their prayers and Sacrifices: But that you may hold in mind in your prayers our brethren and sisters who have promptly and gladly worked at this so necessary a work, that they may always work at it, and may render them a return for their good work in your Sacrifices and prayers, I have subjoined the names of each.

[605] and begs their prayers. But I have added also the names of our colleagues and fellow-priests, who themselves too, since they were present, contributed something according to their means both in their own name and in that of their people; and besides our own quantity I have indicated and sent their small sums also, of all of whom, according as faith and charity demand, you ought to make mention in your prayers and supplications. Thus far the aforesaid letter, which on the occasion of a like charity shown by the same Saint and his clergy and people in the pestilence it has seemed good to report in this place, because about the time both of the event and of the writing of the letter we can establish nothing certain, except that so beneficent a charity of the Carthaginians, and so great a readiness for the divine service, persuades us to fix it after the persecution of Decius — men who before the persecution were so soft, and were carried by so great an affection toward perishing riches, that St. Cyprian in the book On the Lapsed did not hesitate to assert that these and vices of this kind were the cause not only of the persecution but also of the fall of many.

* al. sestertium

§ XXXV. He defends the Christian religion by a book written against the accusations of Demetrian.

He writes the book against Demetrian, About this time, that is, about the end of the year 252, or in the year next following, there seems to have been written the Book against Demetrian, which St. Cyprian published on behalf of the Christian religion against the revilings of the heathen, and which St. Pontius designated at num. 14 of the Life in these words: By which the blaspheming gentiles might be conquered, the things which they hurl at us being flung back upon themselves? That it is to be referred to this time, two things chiefly persuade. First, that it was written in a persecution, as must be said from the words reported at num. 582 and following. Secondly, that St. Cyprian in it says among other things: To be silent about ancient memorials, and not to unroll with any heralding of the voice the vengeances often repeated on behalf of the worshipers of God; the evidence of a recent event is enough — that so swiftly, and in such swiftness so grandly, a defense lately followed, with ruins of affairs *, with losses of wealth, with the wasting of soldiers, with the diminution of camps: which can very well be taken of the unhappy battle and slaughter of both Decii against the Goths, and of the various irruptions of barbarians under Gallus and Volusianus. Thirdly, finally, that it was written during the pestilence; all which things agree excellently with this time. Add also that St. Pontius recounts it, in the place just cited, before other works which are known to have been written under Valerian.

[607] The cause of writing was given by the revilings of the heathen, who imputed to the Christians after their manner both the plague who does not seem to have been a proconsul, and the other calamities of the empire, and alleged that these were inflicted by their gods as a penalty for neglected worship. Beyond the rest, however, a certain Demetrian raved, who did not cease with slanderous mouth to tear the Christian religion, and openly to lay upon its worshipers the cause of all evils. That he was proconsul of Africa, Pamelius, Baronius, and others judged, because St. Cyprian in the aforesaid book reproaches him at length with his injustice in persecuting Christians, and, in torturing them, with the rage of an insatiable butchery and the lust of an unappeasable savagery, in the words which we recited at num. 582 and following.

[608] But others prefer to believe him one of the judges rather than the proconsul, nor merely a sophist, led by this reason, that in that book certain rather bitter expressions occur against Demetrian, which the Saint does not seem likely to have used against a proconsul; for he calls him a barker, and one clamoring with sacrilegious mouth and impious words, and a brute. This same reason moved Maran to hold that he was neither proconsul nor judge, but rather one of the sophists, which he judged sufficiently proved also from the disputations held with St. Cyprian. Hence he thought that the things which the holy Prelate reproaches, as we have said, about the Christians being harassed and tortured, pertain not properly to Demetrian, but generally to all the heathen; observing that it is not unusual in discourses of this kind that now the singular number,

now the plural, is employed.

[609] but one of the judges This opinion of Maran's does not please me, since it does violence to the words cited above, as will be plain to the reader. In vain too has he suspected that learned men, deceived by these words of the Saint — You who judge others, be at some time judge of yourself — went over to the opposite opinion. For the aforesaid learned men rest not on this single saying, but on that whole reproach of cruelty which directly attacks Demetrian, and which argues some judicial power in him. And hence too they could not undeservedly take the words just recounted of a judgment in a court of law, although these, considered by themselves, could signify the judgment of a private man. As regards the disputations, none passed between St. Cyprian and Demetrian; since the latter was wont to assail the Saint with shoutings and revilings alone, which he despised; and so these things suggest not a sophist rather than some biting magistrate.

[610] in Africa. In this book Nor does that rather bitter manner of writing persuade the contrary, which both Demetrian's unbridled evil-speaking and blasphemies, and zeal for the divine honor, could easily have wrung from St. Cyprian, a man of keen disposition. And so there is nothing which compels us to depart from the common opinion: yet, that we may concede something to the reasons alleged, we prefer to think with those who hold that Demetrian was not proconsul of Africa, but one of his judges or officers, whose services he chiefly employed for persecuting the faithful. For it seems less becoming, and less worthy of the holy Prelate, to assail the supreme magistrate of Africa, the proconsul, with so sharp a style. These things being premised, let us hear from St. Cyprian himself the reason for writing the book. Often, he says, when you were barking against me, Demetrian, and clamoring with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against God, who is one and true, I had despised you, judging it more modest and better to spurn in silence the ignorance of one erring, than by speaking to provoke the madness of a demented man…

[611] the Christian religion For since you often came to me with the zeal rather of contradicting than with the desire of learning, and, resounding with clamorous voices, preferred impudently to thrust forward your own than patiently to hear ours; it seemed inept to engage with you, since it would be easier and lighter to beat back with shoutings the stirred-up waves of a turbulent sea, than to restrain your rage with discussions. Certainly it is both an idle labor and of no effect to offer light to a blind man, speech to a deaf man, wisdom to a brute; since neither can a brute perceive, nor a blind man admit light, nor a deaf man hear. Considering these things, I have often kept silence, and conquered an impatient man by patience; since I could neither teach one unteachable, nor restrain an impious man by religion, nor check a raging man by gentleness. But indeed, since you say that very many complain that it is imputed to us that wars arise more frequently, that plague, that famine rages, and that long fair weather holds back the showers and the rains; we must be silent no longer, lest our silence should now begin to be, not of modesty, but of diffidence, and lest, while we scorn to refute false accusations, we should seem to acknowledge the charge.

[612] from his revilings I answer therefore both you, Demetrian, and likewise the rest whom you have perhaps stirred up, and by sowing hatreds against us with your slanderous words you have made for yourself many companions by the sprouting of your root and origin; whom nevertheless I believe will admit the reasoning of our discourse. So he began the book, and set forth the reason for writing. But lest anyone should ask how so frequent an access of Demetrian to St. Cyprian agrees with the persecution which we have said was set in motion by Gallus, it will be useful to have observed that those encounters could have been frequent before the persecution; namely while, after the slaying of the Decii, peace being restored to the Church, the faithful breathed for a while. Nor do the words recited require anything else, which make mention of past encounters. And the Saint was then indeed silent, because he perceived that he would profit nothing with a man of unhinged mind. But when that same Demetrian, after the plague and famine had arisen, openly imputed to the Christians both these and the other calamities by which the Roman empire was being afflicted by the invading barbarians, he judged that he must be silent no longer; both lest that man should grow more and more insolent at the Bishop's silence, and chiefly lest those revilings should find credit among the common people, not without loss to divine worship, and should here and there shake the less stable faith of some Christians.

[613] This therefore he excellently accomplished by the aforesaid book, which is a notable apology for the Christian religion against those hackneyed gibes of the gentiles, he strenuously vindicates, proving by various testimonies of sacred Scripture and by reasonings that those public calamities, to be inflicted as a penalty for crimes, had been foretold by God long before, and that therefore they are to be ascribed to the impiety of the heathen, and especially to their unappeasable lust of torturing Christians, which he there vehemently chastises; and not to the Christian religion, whose worshipers' gentleness, and their equanimity in all adversities, and their prayers for their very persecutors, he commends. Nor did he omit sharply to brand the emptiness of the idols, and, their impotence being set forth, to invite Demetrian to more wholesome counsels and to the rites of Christ. It would be long to recount each thing, all of which look to this, that the Saint may prove what he had said: For these things do not happen, as your false complaint and your inexperience ignorant of the truth boasts and cries, because your gods are not worshiped by us; but because God is not worshiped by you.

[614] I cannot however silently pass over what he has in the same place about the use of exorcisms in the Church, and invites him to the truth and about their wondrous command over the reprobate spirits which the heathen adored in the idols, calling Demetrian without hesitation to them, that he may acknowledge the truth even from unwilling demons. For thus he confidently addresses him: Let it shame you to worship those whom you yourself defend; let it shame you to hope for protection from those whom you yourself protect. O if you would hear them and see them, when they are adjured by us and tortured with spiritual scourges, and are cast out of the possessed bodies by the torments of words; when, wailing and groaning with a human voice, and by divine power feeling the lashes and the blows, they confess the judgment to come! Come, and learn that the things we say are true. And because you say that you worship the gods in this way, believe even those whom you worship; or if you shall be willing to believe yourself also, he who now besets your breast, who has now blinded your mind with the night of ignorance, will speak of you, with you hearing. You will see us entreated by those whom you entreat, feared by those whom you fear, whom you adore. You will see standing bound beneath our hand, and trembling as captives, those whom you look up to and venerate as lords.

[615] Certainly at least in this way you will be able to be confounded in those errors of yours, and to embrace penance. when you shall have beheld and heard your gods, at our questioning, at once betray what they are, and, though you are present, be unable to conceal those tricks and deceits of theirs. After this he delivers salutary admonitions to Demetrian, which he does again at the very end of the book, where, out of his accustomed charity, he commends to him the divine mercy, and exhorts him to do penance even at the very close of his life. Nor let anyone, he says, be held back either by his sins or by his years from coming to obtain salvation. To one still remaining in this world no penance is too late. The approach to God's indulgence lies open, and to those who seek and understand the truth the access is easy: though you should ask pardon for your offenses even under the very departure and setting of your temporal life, and should implore God, who is one and true, by the confession and faith of acknowledging him, pardon is given to one confessing, and saving indulgence is granted by the divine goodness to one believing, and under death itself there is a passage to immortality.

[616] To the censure of Lactantius This book, most worthy of all praise, nevertheless displeased Lactantius, who in book 5 of the divine Institutions, chap. 4, rendering the reason why he wrote against the gentiles, speaks of it thus: I did not shirk this labor, that I might fill out the matter which Cyprian did not carry through in that discourse in which he attempts to refute Demetrian, who was (as he himself says) barking and clamoring against the truth: which matter he did not use as he ought. For he had to be refuted not by the testimonies of Scripture, which that man certainly thought vain, feigned, and invented; but by arguments and reason. For since he was dealing against a man ignorant of the truth, he ought, the divine Readings being deferred a little, to have formed him from the beginning as one untrained, and to have shown him little by little the first beginnings of the light, lest, the whole light being cast upon him, he should be dazzled. For as an infant cannot take the force of solid and strong food because of the tenderness of his stomach, but is nourished with the liquid of milk and with softness, until, his strength being confirmed, he can feed on stronger things; so also for this man it was fitting, because he could not yet take divine things, that human testimonies should first be offered; that is, of the philosophers and historians; that he might be refuted above all by his own authors. Because he did not do this, being carried away by his exceptional erudition in the divine Letters, so as to be content with those alone on which faith rests, I have approached, God inspiring me, to do it myself. Thus Lactantius.

[617] an answer is given: But Baronius in the Annals at the year 256, num. 30, rightly rejected this censure of his, correctly observing that St. Cyprian's purpose in this Opusculum was not to instruct Demetrian, or any other gentiles whatever, in laying hold of the faith, nor to dissolve all their cavils; but only to refute those accusations which Demetrian impiously spread on the occasion of famine and plague and of other disasters. This was the aim of his writing; to this in the aforesaid Opusculum he took his aim, and happily hit it, when he so used the sentences and prophecies of the sacred Letters as to show that in them it had long before been foretold that calamities of this kind would be inflicted as a penalty for crimes, of which he proved from elsewhere that the gentiles were guilty; and thus he at once checked their unjust complaints and demonstrated the sanctity of the Christian religion, whose truthful prophecies they were so manifestly experiencing. Add that it is altogether probable that St. Cyprian by the same labor wished to confirm the Christians, whom the revilings of the gentiles had perhaps shaken, especially since those public calamities were common to all, and afflicted the Christians no less than the heathen.

[618] St. Jerome reported it, but did not on that account approve it. Tillemont, art. 34 in St. Cyprian, ascribes a similar censure of the same book to St. Jerome also; but in my judgment wrongly. The passage which he cites is in Epistle 83, elsewhere 84, where it is read: Cyprian, a man mighty in eloquence and in martyrdom, is bitten at by Firmianus's account, because, writing against Demetrian, he used the testimonies of the prophets and the Apostles, which that man said were feigned and invented; and not rather those of the philosophers and poets, whose authority as a heathen he could not gainsay. So indeed the holy doctor reported the censure of Lactantius; but he did not on that account approve it, nor did the argument of his own writing require that he should approve it. For Magnus had asked him why in his lucubrations he had inserted examples of secular matters among divine ones. He answers that this is by no means unusual for sacred writers, of whom he recounts very many; nay, that St. Cyprian too by Lactantius

is blamed, because he too had not used the testimonies of the gentiles alone against Demetrian. But St. Jerome could here report this censure, although he did not approve it; since it sufficed for him to have shown that that manner of writing, in which profane testimonies also were employed, did not displease the ancients.

* al. of kings

§ XXXVI. He writes the book On Mortality, and likewise another On Work and Almsgiving.

His flock, dismayed by the plague, The deadly pestilence, of which we have treated in §34, and which wore down the Roman world for many years, gave the holy Prelate an occasion of composing another Opusculum, which is entitled On Mortality, and which St. Pontius at num. 14 of the Life designated, after the book to Demetrian, in these words: By which Christians of softer feeling at the loss of their own, or, what is more, of smaller faith, might be consoled by the hope of things to come? St. Cyprian had noticed that some of his people, cast down from their former constancy and strength by so dire and so long-continued an evil, were bearing the pestilence sent by God not with that mind which befitted Christians; but were behaving cravenly, either from weakness of mind, or from desire of mortal life, or from the softness of their sex, or finally from the infirmity of their faith, and were not, as was fitting, acknowledging the divine gift in that very plague. There had come also revelations, by which it had frequently been enjoined upon the Saint to warn the faithful not to weep over the funerals of their own after the manner of the gentiles, nor to follow with black garments the memory of those whose souls white raiment already adorned in heaven; namely lest by a signification of mourning of this kind they should give the heathen a handle for accusing the Christians of not approving in their mind the faith which they professed in words, while they mourned as extinguished and lost those whom they said were living with God.

[620] In order therefore to raise and strengthen with salutary admonitions the wavering minds of his flock, and mourning the funerals of their own and at the same time to obey the divine nod, he published the book On Mortality, in whose opening he set forth the reason for writing in these words: Although in very many of you, most beloved brethren, there is a solid mind and a firm faith and a devoted soul, which is not moved by the abundance of the present mortality, but like a strong and stable rock rather breaks the turbid onsets and the violent waves of the world, and is not itself broken; and is not conquered by temptations but proved; nevertheless, because I notice that some among the people, either through weakness of mind, or through smallness of faith, or through the sweetness of secular life, or through the softness of their sex, or, what is greater, through error concerning the truth, stand less bravely, and do not put forth the divine and unconquered strength of their breast, the matter was not to be dissembled or kept silent, so that, as far as our mediocrity suffices, with full vigor and with a discourse conceived from the Lord's reading, the cowardice of a delicate mind may be repressed, and he who has now begun to be a man of God and of Christ may be held worthy of God and of Christ.

[621] The Saint, admonished by God, But about the heavenly admonitions by which he was likewise impelled to write, after many things he says: To us also, least and last, how often has it been revealed, how frequently and manifestly has it been enjoined by God's condescension, that I should testify continually and preach publicly that our brethren are not to be mourned, being freed from the world by the Lord's summons; since we know that they are not lost, but sent before; that in withdrawing they go before, as travelers, as voyagers are wont to do: that they ought to be longed for, not bewailed; and that black garments are not to be taken up here, when they there have already put on white raiment: that occasion is not to be given to the gentiles that they should deservedly and rightly reprehend us, in that we mourn as extinguished and lost those whom we say are living with God, and do not prove by the testimony of our heart and breast the faith which we utter with speech and voice. We are prevaricators of our hope and faith; the things we say seem to be simulated, feigned, painted. It profits nothing to know virtue in words and to destroy the truth by deeds.

[622] strengthens them by the book On Mortality, And as he teaches that the faithful who have departed this life are by no means to be bewailed, so also he shows that that pestilence and present death is not to be dreaded by the living; but rather to be desired and embraced as a divine gift; since indeed it sends over to eternal joys those withdrawn from innumerable calamities and perils. And this he carried out with such weight of arguments, with such gravity of speech and at the same time such sweetness, and with such sentences, that you would deservedly desire nothing further in this kind, nor would you admire the man's eloquence less than his piety and religion. It would be long to report each thing, nor is this the place for it: it will be useful however to have given some specimens, from which one may know his feeling of mind about this pestilence, which many so greatly dreaded, and his firm faith and hope, and the desire of eternal life and contempt of mortal life arising thence. The kingdom of God, he says, most beloved brethren, has begun to be at hand; the reward of life, and the joy of eternal salvation, and perpetual security, and the possession of paradise lately lost, are now coming as the world passes away; now heavenly things succeed to earthly, and great to small, and eternal to fleeting. What place is here for anxiety and solicitude? Who among these things is trembling and sad, unless it be one who lacks hope and faith?

[623] rebuking some for lack of faith For it belongs to him to fear death who is unwilling to go to Christ: it belongs to him to be unwilling to go to Christ who does not believe that he begins to reign with Christ. For it is written that the just man lives by faith. If you are just, and live by faith, if you truly believe in Christ, why do you not, being about to be with Christ and secure of the Lord's promise, embrace it that you are called to Christ, and rejoice that you are freed from the devil? And again, after he had reported Christ's promises of eternal joy: Since therefore, he continues, to see Christ is to rejoice, and our joy cannot be until we shall have seen Christ; what blindness of mind, or what dementia is it, to love the pressures and pains and tears of the world, and not rather to hasten to the joy which can never be taken away? But this happens, most beloved brethren, because faith is lacking; because no one believes that the things are true which God promises, who is truthful, whose word to believers is eternal and firm.

[624] rebuking some, If a grave and praiseworthy man promised you something, you would certainly have faith in the promiser, nor would you believe yourself to be cheated or deceived by one whom you knew to stand by his words and his acts. Now God speaks with you; and you, faithless with an unbelieving mind, waver; God promises you immortality and eternity as you depart from this world; and you doubt? This is not to know God at all; this is to offend Christ, the Lord and Master of believers, by the sin of unbelief; this is, being established in the Church, not to have faith in the house of faith. From these and other things he thus concludes: We ought rather to rejoice and to embrace the gift of the time, so that, while we bravely put forth our faith, and, labor being borne, go on to Christ by the narrow way of Christ, we may receive the reward of his life and faith, with himself as judge. Let him plainly fear to die, but let it be he who, not born again of water and the Spirit, is handed over to the fires of gehenna. Let him fear to die who is not reckoned by the cross and passion of Christ…

[625] Many of ours die in this mortality; and, from the miseries of mortal life, that is, many of ours are freed from the world. That mortality, as it is a plague to Jews and gentiles and enemies of Christ, so to the servants of God it is a salutary departure. As to this, that without any distinction of the human race the just die along with the unjust, there is no reason for you to think that destruction is common to good and bad. The just are called to refreshment, the unjust are snatched to punishment. Protection is given more swiftly to the trusting, punishment to the perfidious. This was the Saint's confidence in Christ, this his faith, and this his estimate of the plague which to others was so horrid. But hear what he himself thought of this life, love of which held many back: But what else is carried on in the world daily than a battle against the devil, what else than a fight with constant conflicts against his darts and weapons? With avarice we have an encounter, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; with carnal vices, with worldly allurements there is a constant and troublesome wrestling. The mind of man, besieged and hemmed in on all sides by the devil's hostility, scarcely meets each attack, scarcely resists.

[626] If avarice is laid low, lust rises up. If lust is repressed, which death removes, proving that the plague ambition succeeds. If ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy severs friendship. You are forced to curse, which the divine law forbids, you are compelled to swear, which is not lawful. So many persecutions does the mind daily suffer, with so many perils is the breast pressed; and does it delight to stand long here among the swords of the devil, when rather it should be coveted and desired to hasten to Christ, death coming to our aid more swiftly, etc. Besides these he recounts other advantages also from that pestilence, on account of which he demonstrates by solid reasons that it is to be embraced as a divine gift. And among other things indeed he says: We are improvident and ungrateful, most beloved brethren, toward the divine benefits; nor do we recognize what is conferred upon us. Behold, virgins depart in peace, safe with their own glory, not fearing the threats and corruptions and brothels of the coming antichrist; boys escape the danger of a slippery age, and happily arrive at the reward of continence and innocence.

[627] The delicate matron no longer fears torments, having gained by the swiftness of dying an escape from the fear of persecution and from the hand and tortures of the executioner. is to be embraced as a gift of God. By the dread of mortality and of the time the lukewarm are kindled, the remiss are braced, the cowardly are roused, deserters are compelled to return; gentiles are constrained to believe, the old people of the faithful are called to rest; a fresh and copious army is gathered for the battle-line with stronger strength, to fight without the fear of death when the battle shall come — he who comes to the warfare in a time of mortality. And then, most beloved brethren, what a thing is that, how necessary, that this plague and pestilence, which seems horrible and deadly, explores the justice of individuals and examines the minds of the human race; whether the sound serve the sick, whether kinsmen dutifully love their relatives, whether masters pity their languishing servants, whether physicians do not desert the sick who entreat them, whether the fierce repress their violence, whether the rapacious extinguish, even by fear of death, the ever-insatiable ardor of their raging avarice, whether the proud bend their neck, whether the wicked soften their audacity, whether, when their dear ones perish, the rich bestow at least something on the needy, and give when they are about to die without an heir. Even if that mortality had conferred nothing else, it has bestowed this most of all on Christians and servants of God, that we have begun gladly to seek martyrdom, while we learn not to fear death. These are exercises for us, not funerals; they give the soul the glory of fortitude, and by contempt of death prepare us for the crown.

[628] A certain bishop, through love of life, I should be longer than is fair, if I were to pursue each of the most holy Prelate's exceptional sentiments of this kind:

nevertheless I have thought it would not be ungrateful to the reader if I also recounted here the example of another bishop, by which the Saint rebuked the cowardice of some who complained now of the persecution, now of the plague; and which St. Possidius, from him, reported in the Life of St. Augustine of Hippo, chap. 5, num. 59, in our tom. VI of August, as known to that holy doctor. It runs then thus: Finally, that the tokens of divine providence might shine forth more manifestly — namely that the Lord, foreknowing what is to come, provides for his own unto true salvation — when a certain one of our colleagues and fellow-priests, worn out by infirmity and anxious as death was now drawing near, was praying for a respite (that is, for longer life and health) for himself, there stood by him as he prayed, and as he was now almost dying, a young man venerable in honor and majesty, lofty in stature and bright of aspect, and one whom, standing by him, human sight could scarcely have beheld with fleshly eyes, save that he could now see such a one, being about to depart from the world.

[629] was divinely rebuked. And he, not without a certain indignation of mind and of voice, roared and said: You fear to suffer, you do not wish to depart; what shall I do to you? It is the voice of one rebuking (our Saint continues) and admonishing, who, with men anxious about persecution and secure about the summons, does not consent to their present desire, but takes counsel for the future. Our brother and colleague, about to die, heard what he should say to the rest: for he who was about to die heard for this end, that he might tell it; he heard not for himself but for us; for what would he learn for himself, being now about to depart? He learned rather for us who remain, so that, when we learn that a priest who was asking a respite was rebuked, we might recognize what is expedient for us. As regards the time when the Work was written, from the things which we reported from it at num. 626 and the following, it is sufficiently clear that it was composed in the peace of the Church, or at least when the persecution was lulled. Hence some probably refer it to the reign of Valerian, who, when Gallus and Volusianus had been slain, by the more common opinion about the month of May of the year 253, and not long after Aemilian also, was created emperor, and under whom the Church for a few years enjoyed a sufficiently tranquil peace.

[630] This book praised by the ancients. Besides SS. Pontius and Possidius cited above, the aforesaid book On Mortality is likewise mentioned, and ascribed to St. Cyprian, by St. Jerome, or Eusebius, in the Chronicle, and by St. Augustine, who in various places produces testimonies drawn from it against the Pelagians and Semi-pelagians. It will suffice to have assigned one or two passages of the latter. In the book On the Predestination of the Saints, chap. 14 of the latest Paris edition, he has this: Cyprian wrote a book On Mortality, laudably known to many, and to almost all who love Ecclesiastical letters. But in Epistle 217 to Vitalis, chap. 6, he infers as absurd from the adversaries' principles that that book would have to be reprobated: And that whole book On Mortality, he says, of the most glorious martyr Cyprian must be reprobated and cast away, in which his whole intention is that we may know that good faithful people are to be congratulated when they die, since they are taken away from the temptations of this life, thereafter to remain in the most blessed security. For the rest, no answer is deserved by Christopher Sandius, an Arian of the century just past, who, on Pearson's testimony, led by a most trifling, nay by no argument, raved that that excellent Opusculum, as it now stands, is to be rejected among the spurious. The aforesaid Pearson may be consulted in the Annals at the year 252, num. 17, where he solidly refuted his empty objection.

[631] Another Work of St. Cyprian St. Pontius recounted after the one just mentioned in these words: He writes the book Whence should we thus learn mercy …? by which he without doubt designated the book On Work and Almsgiving. That this too was written in the peace of the Church is argued by its own conclusion, which suggests that there was then no persecution, and which runs thus: If the day either of our rendering up or of persecution shall find us unencumbered, swift, and running in this contest of good work, the Lord will nowhere be lacking to our merits for the reward. To those who conquer in peace he will give a white crown for their works; in persecution he will double it with purple for their suffering. Thus there; nor does any trace of a persecution then in force occur in it; whence we gather that this book too was probably composed under Valerian. The argument of the writing, which the very title of the book sufficiently indicates, St. Jerome in Epistle 54, elsewhere 26, to Pammachius briefly set forth thus: How great powers mercy has, and with what rewards it is to be endowed, the blessed Cyprian both pursues in a great volume, and approves the counsel of Daniel, who knows that a most impious king, if he had been willing to hear him, would have been saved by the sustaining of the poor.

[632] Of the same Work St. Augustine also makes mention in the book against the two letters of the Pelagians, On Work and Almsgiving: chap. 10, and in book 2 against Julian, chap. 8, in the former of which places it is called the Epistle On Work and Almsgivings, and in the latter likewise the Epistle On Almsgivings. It was moreover praised by the fathers of the general council of Ephesus, celebrated under Pope Celestine I, in whose Action 1, in Labbe, tom. 3 of the Councils, col. 511, its opening is extant translated into Greek under a title which in the same place, col. 512, runs thus in Latin: Of Cyprian, most blessed bishop and martyr, from the Treatise on Almsgiving. I add nothing further about this book, which is truly worthy of its Author and of his piety, except one passage, in which it is indicated that the ancient usage of bestowing alms in the churches, and of offering the bread which was to be consecrated in the Sacrifice, was then observed in the church of Carthage.

[633] For the Saint in it, rebuking the avarice of certain women, an ancient usage of the Church observed from it. says thus: You are wealthy and rich; and do you believe that you celebrate the Lord's rite, you who do not regard the corban at all; you who come to the Lord's rite without a sacrifice, you who take a part of the sacrifice which a poor person offered? Look in the Gospel on the widow, mindful of the heavenly precepts, working amid the very pressures and straits of want, casting into the treasury the two mites which alone she had… Let the rich be ashamed of their barrenness and unbelief. A widow, and a needy widow, is found rich in work: and whereas all things that are given are conferred on orphans and widows, she gives who ought to have received. For corban Pamelius and Fell read corbona, which is of the same signification, and is taken for the treasury of oblations, or for the alms themselves that are offered. The Lord's rite was used by the ancients now for the Lord's day, now for the Sacrifice, now also for the church, as appears from this passage too. But on the custom of bread being offered by lay faithful for the use of the Sacrifice, Pamelius among others may be consulted in his Annotations on this very passage.

* perhaps anxious

* perhaps secure

§ XXXVII. He asks St. Stephen the Pope to order the deposition of Marcian, bishop of Arles: he writes against Basilides and Martial, lapsed bishops in Spain: he refutes Florentius Pupianus, an accuser.

He asks St. Stephen by letter, We have said above in §32 that, St. Cornelius having been crowned with martyrdom at Centumcellae in Etruria, St. Lucius succeeded to the Roman Chair of St. Peter. Lucius likewise having been taken away by martyrdom, St. Stephen was substituted; which our Bosch, in tom. 1 of August, at the second day, §2, establishes with the more common opinion should be tied to the year 253, which we too follow. There is no doubt that St. Cyprian with the other bishops of his province transmitted a letter to this holy Pontiff, as he had done to the two preceding, to congratulate him on his election and to acknowledge his Pontificate: but this letter has not reached us. The first which is extant as written by our Saint to Stephen is the sixty-seventh among the Cyprianic letters, which our aforesaid Bosch, after Pearson, rightly judged to have been sent not before the year 254; because in it many of the lapsed are said to have departed in those preceding years without peace: to meet which evil for the future the aforesaid letter was written, as we shall now set forth.

[635] that Marcian of Arles, Marcian, bishop of Arles in Narbonensian Gaul, following the heresy of Novatian, had impiously denied peace to all the lapsed, however sincerely penitent and knocking at the Church with groaning and tears; nor would he have any hope of pardon remain to them here, although the Roman Pontiffs and all the Catholic prelates throughout the world had decreed the contrary. Hence it came about that in the preceding years many of those penitents departed without absolution and the peace of the Church, and that many were then also dying so. Nor did Marcian dissemble this impiety of his; but he openly gloried and boasted that he adhered to Novatian; and that he had not been excommunicated by the other bishops, but had of his own accord separated himself from their communion. The remaining bishops of the Gauls could not learn of so great a stubbornness of Marcian, and so great a slaughter of the Lord's flock, without grief; and therefore they gave a letter to St. Stephen, that by his supreme authority he might provide for the perishing Christians and restrain the author of the evil.

[636] But among the rest Faustinus, bishop of Lyons in Celtic Gaul, had on this matter written once and again to St. Cyprian also, a heretical bishop, and had begged his counsel, and what help he could bring. And he, moved by the indignity of the matter and the peril of so many penitents, had recourse by the aforesaid letter to St. Stephen, and asked him to send Apostolic letters into the Gauls with all speed, in which he should order Marcian to be deposed and another substituted in his see. The beginning of the letter runs thus: Cyprian to Stephen his brother, greeting. Faustinus our colleague, dwelling at Lyons, dearest brother, has written to me once and again, signifying those things which I know were certainly announced to you also both by him and by the rest of our fellow-bishops established in the same province: that Marcian, dwelling at Arles, has joined himself to Novatian, and has withdrawn from the unity of the Catholic Church and from the agreement of our body and priesthood, holding the most hardened depravity of a heretical presumption, so that to the servants of God, penitent and grieving and knocking at the Church with tears and groaning and grief, the consolations and helps of divine goodness and of paternal leniency are closed; and the wounded are not admitted for the cherishing of their wounds; but, left without hope of peace and communion, are cast out for the ravening of wolves and the prey of the devil.

[637] For which matter it is ours to take counsel and to bring aid, dearest brother, through whose impiety many who, considering the divine clemency and holding the balance of the Church to be governed, so exhibit the censure of vigor to sinners that nevertheless we do not deny the medicine of the divine goodness and mercy for the raising up of the lapsed and the healing of the wounded. Presently he adds what he judges needs to be done: Wherefore, he says, it behooves you to write a most full letter to our fellow-bishops established in the Gauls, that they may no longer suffer Marcian, obstinate and proud, and an enemy of divine goodness and of brotherly salvation, to insult our college, because he seems not yet to have been excluded by us, who has long since boasted and proclaimed that, being devoted to Novatian and following his obstinacy, he has

separated himself from our communion; whereas Novatian himself, whom he follows, was long since excluded and judged an enemy of the Church.

[638] And again, some things intervening, he thus continues: How vain it is, had died without peace, dearest brother, that, Novatian having been lately beaten back and refuted, and excluded by the priests of God throughout the whole world, we should now still suffer his flatterers to mock us and to pass judgment on the majesty and dignity of the Church. Let a letter be directed by you into the province and to the people dwelling at Arles, by which, Marcian being excluded, another may be substituted in his place, and the flock of Christ, which to this day is despised, scattered and wounded by him, may be gathered. Let it be enough that many of our brethren there have departed in these preceding years without peace; let help at least be brought to the rest who survive, who both groan day and night, and, entreating the divine and paternal mercy, demand the consolation of our help.

[639] He then goes on by various reasons and sentences drawn from sacred Scripture to persuade St. Stephen he should order to be deposed. that, Marcian being deposed, he should succor his imperiled flock. Among other things he also adduces the authority and honor of SS. Cornelius and Lucius, who, with all the Catholic bishops throughout the whole world applauding, decreed that peace should be given to the penitent lapsed, which that heretic so cruelly refused. Finally, as though now certain of the holy Pontiff's assent to his requests, he asks at the end of the letter: Signify plainly to us who has been substituted at Arles in the place of Marcian, that we may know to whom to direct our brethren and to whom we ought to write. What further St. Stephen did in this case is unknown; that Marcian was however cast down from his see by him, our aforesaid Bosch and others think is argued by the fact that his name is not read in the ancient diptychs of the church of Arles, published by Mabillon in tom. 3 of the Analecta, p. 432. To the objections of Jean de Launoy, by which he denied this letter to St. Cyprian, it is not necessary that I should reply: since they are deservedly rejected by the learned, and Pearson in the Annals at the year 254, Tillemont, and others have already answered them.

[640] Basilides and Martial, deposed bishops, To about the same time is usually referred the case of Martial and Basilides, about which some dissension arose between St. Stephen and holy Cyprian. One of them was bishop of León and Astorga, the other of Mérida in the Spains; but both were libellatics, and besides defiled with other crimes. For Basilides, lying sick, had blasphemed God; but Martial, besides base and filthy banquets frequented in a college of the gentiles, had there also buried his sons after the manner of foreign nations, and, public acts having been taken before the procurator ducenarius, had confessed that he had complied with idolatry and had denied Christ. For these and many other grave crimes they were cast down from their bishoprics by the people and by the neighboring bishops, and in their place Sabinus and perhaps also Felix were substituted and ordained. And Basilides indeed seems at first to have borne that deposition with a sufficiently even mind; since he, on St. Cyprian's testimony in Epistle 68, voluntarily laying down his bishopric on account of the wound of his conscience, turned to doing penance, entreating God, and quite content if it might fall to him to communicate even as a layman.

[641] striving to be restored to their sees, But whether he simulated that penance and humility, or afterwards changed his mind, he later had recourse to St. Stephen at Rome, and was restored by him to his see, which it is altogether probable that Martial also did and obtained; although St. Cyprian does not assert it so clearly, but only says that he used deceit for retaining his bishopric. That affair disturbed not a little the people of both dioceses and the neighboring bishops, and, as is usual in contentions of this kind, divided them into two parties, of which one shunned Martial and Basilides as rightly and deservedly deposed, the other received them as restored by Pontifical authority. Those who stood on the former side sent Felix and Sabinus — those very men perhaps whom we said were substituted in the place of the former ones — to Carthage to St. Cyprian, with a letter embracing the whole matter, to which another Felix, bishop of Zaragoza, as it appears, added his own also; and they asked that he would assist them either with his consolation or with his help.

[642] The Saint takes care that they be kept away from them, judging St. Cyprian was then celebrating a council, to which 36 bishops, suffragans of the see of Carthage, had assembled; in which, when the aforesaid letter had been read and the legates heard, it seemed to all that Martial and Basilides had been deservedly deposed on account of the aforesaid crimes, and that Sabinus and Felix had been lawfully substituted for them; and that therefore the latter were to be confirmed in their sees, but the former altogether to be kept away from them, and that there was to be no communion with them thereafter. This their judgment the holy Metropolitan and those thirty-six bishops sent back by Epistle 68, at whose head the names of all are prefixed, to Felix the presbyter and the peoples dwelling at León and Astorga, and likewise to Laelius the deacon and the people dwelling at Mérida. And they allege this reason: Since it is manifest that men of this kind can neither preside over the church of Christ nor ought to offer Sacrifices to God; especially since long since, with us and with absolutely all the bishops established throughout the whole world, our colleague Cornelius also, a peaceable and just priest, and honored also with martyrdom by the Lord's condescension, decreed that men of this kind can indeed be admitted to do penance, but are prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and from priestly honor.

[643] As regards St. Stephen, they answer that he was deceived; that St. Stephen had been imposed upon, and that their deceit ought not to profit the impostors. Nor can that rescind the ordination (of Sabinus) rightly accomplished, they say, that Basilides, after his crimes had been detected and his conscience laid bare even by his own confession, going to Rome, deceived Stephen our colleague, placed far off and ignorant of the transaction and of the truth, so as to canvass for being unjustly restored to the bishopric from which he had been rightly deposed. This tends to this, that Basilides's offenses are not so much abolished as heaped up; so that to his earlier sins there has been added also the crime of deceit and circumvention. For that man is not so much to be blamed, upon whom something was negligently foisted, as this man is to be execrated, who fraudulently foisted it. But if Basilides could impose upon men, he cannot upon God. Of Martial too they add: But neither can deceit have profited Martial, so that he too, being involved in grave offenses, should not fail to be forbidden to hold a bishopric, since the Apostle admonishes and says: A bishop must be without crime, as a steward of God. Now from the passages adduced the most eminent Baronius, Tillemont, and others admit without any scruple that the holy Pontiff Stephen was fraudulently imposed upon by Basilides and Martial, or at least by the former of them, and that the restoration of their sees was obtained by surreptitious means, as St. Cyprian clearly asserts.

[644] But on the contrary our Bosch, in the place cited above, attempts to remove from that holy Pontiff all suspicion of surreption and negligence, which is not altogether certain. and makes it doubtful which of the two Saints, Stephen or rather Cyprian, was imposed upon. But about these and other matters pertaining hereto he may himself be consulted in the place cited; I observe here only this one thing, that St. Cyprian acknowledged in this case too the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the other bishops, which he implored in the case of Marcian, bishop of Arles; since otherwise he need not have had recourse to surreption in order to prove that Basilides's bishopric had been undeservedly restored to him. For the rest, what end these Spanish disturbances had, none of the ancients has handed down; nor have I found anything certain about it among the moderns. See however, if you please, the aforesaid Bosch in St. Stephen, Cardinal Aguirre in tom. 1 of the greatest Collection of the Councils of Spain, dissert. 14, excursus 3 on the letter of St. Sixtus; and Pien in tom. 2 of August, at the VI day, §5, in the preliminary Commentary on the Martyrdom of the same St. Sixtus, Pontiff and martyr, where the authority of that letter is treated.

[645] To these two letters we subjoin another also, the sixty-ninth, Against the accusations of Pupianus, who seems to have been neither a bishop, which a just defense of his own reputation and of his own bishopric persuaded our holy Prelate to write. It is an apologetic against the calumnies of Florentius Pupianus, and that it was written in the year 254 or 255 appears from the fact that the Saint reckons in it the sixth year of his episcopate, which we proved in §5 he entered upon in the year 248 or 249. Whether that Florentius Pupianus was a bishop, Pamelius doubted, on account of the name of brother prefixed in the superscription; for it is read thus: Cyprian, who is also Thascius, to Florentius, who is also Pupianus, his brother, greeting. Pearson too believed him an African bishop, on no other argument, so far as appears. But the address of brother alone by no means suggests that dignity; nor does anything occur in the whole letter which claims it for him; nay rather, the Saint speaks in it as it befits a bishop to act with a rebellious and contemptible subject; and nothing stands in the way of his being believed to have been some layman, but of a more eminent condition or authority.

[646] nor a confessor, No more certain is what Pamelius and Pearson believed about the glory of his confession at the time of the persecution, holding those things to have been said seriously which others judge the Saint said ironically, when in the same letter he says to Pupianus: Lest perchance the dignity of your renown and of your martyrdom be stained by our communion, (I notice that you) inquire diligently into our morals. And again after many things: For the persecution that came advanced you to the highest sublimity of martyrdom. But that these things are to be taken ironically is made probable by what he presently subjoins in the latter place: But me, he says, it (the same persecution) weighed down with the burden of proscription; when it was publicly read: "If anyone holds or possesses of the goods of Caecilius Cyprian, bishop of the Christians:" so that even those who did not believe God appointing a Bishop might at least believe the devil proscribing a Bishop. Nor do I boast of these things, but bring them forward with grief, since you set yourself up as judge of God and of Christ. These things are surely those of one reproaching cowardice rather than of one praising a confession.

[647] he refutes This very thing he sufficiently indicates toward the end of the letter, when he says: But about the things which you did either in the persecution or in peace, it is foolish that I should wish to judge you, since you have rather set yourself up as our judge. Irony therefore, which we shall see was employed by him elsewhere in this same letter, the Saint seems to have used when he proclaimed the sublimity of Pupianus's martyrdom. Now, to come to the cause and argument of the writing: that Pupianus, before the persecution of Decius arose, had lived in St. Cyprian's communion, and had acknowledged his lawful episcopate; but afterwards, while he lent too ready ears to the Saint's detractors, he separated himself from him as from a profane and contaminated man. That those detractors were of the followers of Felicissimus, who rashly imparted peace to all the lapsed without previous penance, is gathered from what the Saint in the same place

has thus: But there prevailed with you, against the divine sentence and against our conscience resting on the strength of its own faith, the invention of enemies and of the malignant; as though among the lapsed and the profane and those set outside the Church, from whose breasts the Holy Spirit has departed, there could be anything else than a depraved mind, and a lying tongue, and poisoned hatreds, and sacrilegious lies.

[648] The Saint defends himself, But with what reproaches those schismatics tore their Bishop, the Saint does not declare, content to have said that they were unspeakable, base, and to be execrated even by the gentiles. Infatuated by these accusations, Pupianus held all who communicated with St. Cyprian to be excommunicated; and had come to such arrogance that he addressed the holy Prelate by letter about the crimes objected, and denied that he would acknowledge his episcopate unless he cleared himself of them before him. So great an audacity of a most impudent man, by which he had set himself up as judge of a Bishop, at length induced the Saint, who had long been silent under the accusations, to the defense of himself and of his episcopate. He wrote therefore the aforesaid Epistle 69, in which with a sharp style he so pleaded his cause that, mindful of his own dignity, he generally disdained to refute the crimes objected one by one, and produced against those slanderers nothing but the judgment of God and the suffrage of the Church for the proving of his integrity, and strove to recall them to their duty by divine threats.

[649] Yet he set himself to crush the pride of Pupianus, which he had among other things objected to him. and, spurning the proud man But as to what you said, he says, that priests ought to be humble, because both the Lord and his Apostles were humble; my humility both all the brethren and the gentiles too know very well and love, and you too knew and loved it, while you were still in the Church and communicated with me. But which of us is far from humility — I, who daily serve the brethren, and kindly and with desire and joy receive each one coming to the church, or you, who set yourself up as bishop of a Bishop and judge of a Judge given for a time by God; whereas the Lord God says in Deuteronomy: "And whatever man shall act in pride, so as not to hearken to the priest and the judge, whoever he shall be in those days, that man shall die," etc. He subjoins also sentences of sacred Scripture by which to beat back the arrogance of the mad man, and to admonish him of the reverence due to bishops.

[650] Then with an elegant but sharp irony he thus assails him: as he deserves, For what a swelling of pride is this, what arrogance of soul, what inflation of mind, to summon prelates and priests to your own cognizance; and unless we have been cleared before you and absolved by your sentence, behold, now for six years the brotherhood has had no Bishop, nor the people a prelate, nor the flock a shepherd, nor the church a governor, nor Christ a prelate, nor God a priest? Let Pupianus come to the rescue, and pronounce sentence, and set to his own account the judgment of God and of Christ, lest so great a number of the faithful, who were summoned under us, should seem to have departed without hope of salvation and peace; lest the new people of believers should be judged to have obtained through us no grace of baptism and of the Holy Spirit; lest the peace given to so many lapsed and penitent persons, and the communion granted upon our examination, be dissolved by the authority of your judgment. Consent at some time, and deign to pronounce about us, and to confirm our episcopate by the authority of your cognizance, that God and his Christ may be able to give you thanks, because through you a Prelate and Ruler has been restored alike to their altar and to their people.

[651] In a like manner Cyprian answered the scruple into which Pupianus had fallen about his episcopate, and sharply chastising him and which he had demanded to have removed. You said indeed, he says, that a scruple must be taken away from your mind, into which you have fallen. You have fallen into it, but by your irreligious credulity: you have fallen into it, but by your sacrilegious mind and will; while you readily hear, gladly believe, and defend as your own and private things unchaste, impious, and abominable against a Brother, against a Priest — lies that are another's. Nor does he reply anything else to this scruple than the consent of all the orders of the Church favoring him; and again using a new irony he subjoins: Unless perhaps all those who communicate with me, according to what you wrote, are polluted by our polluted mouth, and have lost the hope of eternal life by the contagion of our communion; and Pupianus alone, whole, inviolate, holy, chaste, who was unwilling to mingle with us, will dwell alone in paradise and in the kingdom of heaven.

[652] the conditions under which he might be admitted to his communion Pupianus had besides objected that the African church was laboring under schism by Cyprian's fault; which accusation likewise despising, he answers: You wrote also that the church now has a portion of itself in dispersion on my account; whereas the whole people of the Church has been both gathered and united, and joined to itself in undivided concord; those alone have remained outside who, even if they were within, would have had to be cast out. The studious reader will find more things in the letter itself, which, lest I be too long, I pass over. I cannot however omit what he has at the end of the letter, where to that proud man who had set himself up as his judge he proposes conditions on which he might be admitted to the communion of the Church, and at the same time records his own custom of consulting God and of sacrificing continually, and frequent visions and heavenly revelations.

[653] he proposes, So then it runs: Wherefore, brother, if you shall have considered the majesty of God, who ordains priests; if you shall at some time have regarded Christ, who by his judgment and nod and presence governs both the prelates themselves and the Church with the prelates; if you shall have believed about the innocence of priests not from human hatred but from the divine judgment; if you shall have begun even late to do penance for your rashness and pride and insolence; if you shall have most fully made satisfaction to God and to his Christ, whom I serve, and to whom with pure and unstained mouth I offer Sacrifices unceasingly both in persecution and in peace; we shall be able to take account of your communion — there remaining however with us regard and fear of the divine censure, so that I first consult my Lord, whether he permits by his showing and admonition that peace be given to you, and that you be admitted to the communion of his Church.

[654] and threatens heavenly punishments. For I remember what has already been shown to me, nay what has been enjoined by the Lord's and divine authority upon an obedient and fearing Servant; who among other things which he deigned to show and reveal added this also: And so he who does not believe Christ appointing a Priest, will afterwards begin to believe Christ avenging a Priest. Although I know that dreams seem ridiculous and visions inept to some; but certainly to those who prefer to believe against priests rather than a Priest. But it is no wonder; since of Joseph his brothers said: "Behold, that dreamer comes; now therefore come, let us kill him;" and the dreamer afterwards obtained what he had dreamed, and his slayers and sellers were confounded; so that those who had not before believed his words might afterwards believe his deeds. Finally he closes the letter with this threat: These things I have written back out of the pure conscience of my mind, and out of trust in my Lord and God: you have my letter, and I yours; in the day of judgment before the tribunal of Christ both will be recited. For the rest, what afterwards became of that Pupianus is unknown.

§ XXXVIII. The controversy about the baptism of heretics having arisen, the Saint holds two synods about it, and transmits his own judgment and that of his colleagues to St. Stephen the Roman Pontiff.

The controversy about the baptism of heretics We have come at length to that famous case about the baptism of heretics, in which our Saint taught by his own example how perilous it is for a man, however holy and learned, to depart from the tradition of the Roman Church in order to adhere to his own judgment or that of other churches. For although he neither withdrew from the communion of that Church on this account nor was rejected by it, nevertheless, carried away by the heat of contention, he suffered something human, and by defending more sharply than was just an error afterwards proscribed by the universal Church, he branded some blemish upon his own most upright life; which nevertheless he afterwards either himself effaced by a praiseworthy recantation, or covered over with the richness of his charity, or which the heavenly Father purged in him with the pruning-hook of his passion, as we shall see from St. Augustine in its own place. But that we may proceed in order in setting forth this controversy, in the first place we shall inquire into the time when the dissension arose; secondly, into the occasion on which it was born; thirdly, we shall set forth the judgment and the acts of St. Cyprian and of those who adhered to him about it.

[656] That that controversy between St. Stephen and Cyprian had not yet been stirred up when did it arise in Africa? when the latter wrote Epistle 67 about Marcian, bishop of Arles, is manifest from the letter itself; for neither would he then have been a suitable patron of the Gallic prelates before the holy Pontiff, nor does the style of that letter savor of the others written by him during the dissension. Hence, since we said in the preceding § that that letter does not seem to have been composed before the year 254, the present controversy cannot be placed before that time. Next, our Bosch in tom. 1 of August, in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of St. Stephen the Pope, §3, shows that the letter of Firmilian, which is the seventy-fifth among the Cyprianic letters, was written in the year 256, with winter now imminent, and observes that Firmilian so reports in it the acts of St. Stephen in this matter against the Africans and the Orientals as to signify that the grief conceived from them was altogether recent. Between the aforesaid years therefore the aforesaid controversy is to be fixed.

[657] That those baptized by heretics must be baptized when they come to the Church, Whether the Africans held Agrippinus's opinion Agrippinus, St. Cyprian's predecessor in the chair of Carthage, though not his immediate one, as we have already noted elsewhere, was the first in Africa to decree, a council of bishops having been convened; and both St. Cyprian in Epistles 71 and 73, and St. Augustine in various places, commemorate him as the author of this opinion in that province. That that custom, introduced by him against the ancient usage, persevered there until the time of the controversy of which we are treating, St. Cyprian seems to indicate in Epistle 73 to Jubaianus. For he speaks thus in the same place: But among us it is no new or sudden thing that we judge that those must be baptized who come to the Church from the heretics; since it is now many years and a long time since, under Agrippinus, a man of good memory, very many bishops coming together into one determined this, and since then to this day so many thousands of heretics in our provinces, being converted to the Church, have not spurned nor hesitated, nay have both reasonably and gladly embraced it, so as to obtain the grace of the life-giving laver and of saving baptism.

[658] But St. Augustine in book 3 On Baptism against the Donatists, down to Cyprian. chap. 12, confesses that he does not grasp how the Saint said these things; since from the transaction itself it seems it must be said that that recent custom

was interrupted after Agrippinus. But let us hear Augustine. But how he can say: "And since then to this day so many thousands of heretics," etc., I do not see; unless perhaps he says this: Since then to this day; because no question of any excommunication (which the Roman Pontiff had already threatened to St. Cyprian and to those who thought with him) has arisen about those who, from the time when they were baptized in the Church by the council of Agrippinus, were so received. For the rest, if the custom of baptizing those coming from the heretics remained from Agrippinus down to Cyprian, why were councils held by Cyprian on this matter? Why does he say to the same Jubaianus that he is not doing a new or sudden thing, but one established by Agrippinus? For why should Jubaianus be disturbed at its novelty, so that he had to be healed by the authority of Agrippinus, if the church had held this from Agrippinus down to Cyprian? Why finally did so many of his colleagues say in the council that reason and truth are to be preferred to custom, and not rather say that those who wished to act otherwise were acting both against truth and against custom? Thus St. Augustine.

[659] The Saint, being consulted by the Numidians, in a Synod But I do not know whether these things cannot be reconciled by saying that the custom introduced by Agrippinus was observed in the Carthaginian and in some other dioceses suffragan to that see, but was rejected in others. Certainly in this way St. Cyprian's words can without difficulty be brought into agreement with the arguments adduced to the contrary by St. Augustine. But however these things may stand, this is certain, that there was doubt on this matter in Africa, especially in Numidia, from which eighteen bishops thought that St. Cyprian should on that account be consulted by letter, although they themselves likewise followed the opinion of Agrippinus. Their letter, which has perished, was read in a Carthaginian council of thirty, or thirty-one, bishops, whom the holy Metropolitan had either summoned then for that very cause, or, being gathered for other reasons, had with him. And this was the first Carthaginian synod celebrated under St. Cyprian about the baptism of heretics, and the origin of the dissension between him and St. Stephen the Pope.

[660] rejects the baptism of heretics. Now St. Cyprian and the aforesaid bishops who were with him, adhering to the decision of Agrippinus, altogether judged that baptism could not be conferred outside the Church; and therefore they wrote back to the aforesaid Numidian bishops that all who, having been dipped by heretics or schismatics, were admitted into the Church must be baptized. That is Epistle 70 among the Cyprianic letters, at whose beginning this is read: When we were together in council, dearest brethren, we read your letter, which you wrote to us about those who seem to have been baptized among heretics and schismatics, whether, when they come to the Catholic Church, which is one and true, they ought to be baptized. About which matter, although you yourselves there hold the truth and firmness of the Catholic rule; nevertheless, since out of our common affection you judged that we should be consulted, we bring forth our judgment, not a new one, but one long since established by our predecessors and observed by us, and we join it to yours with equal consent, judging namely and holding for certain that no one can be baptized outside, outside the Church, since there is one baptism established in the holy Church, etc.

[661] Against Eusebius and Nicephorus Callistus Eusebius did not rightly set forth the present controversy when in book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 2, in the translation of Henri de Valois, he said: To this Stephen Dionysius (of Alexandria) wrote the first of those letters which were composed about baptism, since at that time no small controversy had arisen, whether those who were converted from any heresy whatever ought to be cleansed by baptism. For the ancient custom had prevailed that in men of this kind the imposition of hands alone with prayers should be employed. And presently, chap. 3: First of all, Cyprian, who at that time governed the church of Carthage, judged that they must not be admitted unless they had first been cleansed from error by baptism. Thus he; but, as I have said, not rightly, or at any rate rather obscurely. For, as those words present the matter, Cyprian would have to be said to have judged that heretics, when they came to the Church, ought to be cleansed from their error or heresy by baptism. Even further from the truth did Nicephorus Callistus stray, and worse did he understand Eusebius, in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 2, writing that it seemed good to our holy Prelate that not only all heretics, but also those who had lapsed in the persecution, must be expiated by that saving laver.

[662] But that the Saint's controversy with Stephen was far otherwise, the genuine judgment of the Saint and his judgment about baptism otherwise, is beyond doubt, as I undertake to show. In the first place, what St. Cyprian wished to be observed in reconciling the lapsed he expressly affirmed in Epistles 9 and the five following; namely penance, exomologesis, and the imposition of hands, which he demands in all the places cited, but of conferring baptism on them he speaks neither here nor elsewhere. Secondly, that he and the bishops who thought with him judged that the Sacrament of baptism could be conferred only in the Catholic Church is certain both from the words given at num. 660 and from other letters written by him on the same argument, and from the judgments delivered in the council of Carthage. From this false opinion another necessarily flowed; namely that all those who, never having been baptized in the Church, but having been so dipped by heretics or schismatics, demanded to be admitted into the Church, must be baptized.

[663] That this was the genuine judgment of St. Cyprian and of those adhering to him and the controversy that arose his Epistle 71 to Quintus demonstrates, where, to remove from himself the odious suspicion of rebaptizing, he says: But we say that those who come thence (from heresy or schism) are not rebaptized among us; but are baptized. For neither do they receive anything there where there is nothing; but they come to us, that they may receive here, where there is both grace and all truth. And again in Epistle 73 to Jubaianus: This same thing we have again confirmed by our judgment, determining that there is one baptism, which has been established in the Catholic Church; and that on this account those are not rebaptized but baptized by us, whoever come from adulterous and profane water to be washed and sanctified by the truth of the saving water. Consequently he thought it unlawful that those should be baptized who, after receiving baptism in the Catholic Church, had lapsed into heresy or schism, and afterwards returned to the Church.

[664] Hear him again speaking in the same Epistle 71: is explained. We too observe today that, when it is established that men were baptized here (in the Catholic Church) and passed from us to the heretics, if afterwards, their sin being recognized and their error digested, they return to the truth and to the mother, it is enough to lay hands on them in penance; so that, because it had already been a sheep, the shepherd may receive this estranged and wandering sheep into his own fold. But if he who comes from the heretics was not previously baptized in the Church, but comes wholly alien and profane, he must be baptized, that he may become a sheep, because there is one water in the holy Church which makes sheep. Hence, when other Catholics objected against him a contrary custom already from the very times of the Apostles, he answered in the same place that those heretics or schismatics who were received into the Church without baptism had previously been baptized in the Church. They say that in this they follow the ancient custom, he said; whereas among the ancients the first beginnings of heresies and schisms were still such that those were there who had withdrawn from the Church, and had first been baptized here; whom nevertheless, when they returned to the Church and did penance, it was not necessary then to baptize. See also the remainder of the letter, especially at the end. Far therefore was St. Cyprian from that opinion which Eusebius seems to report, and still further from that which Nicephorus Callistus attributed to him. Now let us return to the events.

[665] He answers Quintus: a second synod is held, Not long after the synod reported at num. 660, St. Cyprian was again consulted about the same case by Quintus, a bishop in Mauretania, through Lucianus the presbyter, and he answered him to the same effect in Epistle 71, and at the same time transmitted the synodical letter of the council lately mentioned, to be communicated also to the other bishops of that province. To the former council he added a second far more numerous, at which indeed, on St. Cyprian's testimony in the letter to Jubaianus, bishops both of the province of Africa and of Numidia, seventy-one in number, took part. In this both certain other things were decreed, and above all those things were approved and confirmed which the preceding synod had ordained about the baptism of heretics. But this too was added, that if any presbyters or deacons who, having previously been ordained in the Catholic Church, had gone over to the heretics, or had been initiated by heretics with a sacrilegious ordination, should return to the Church, these should be admitted only to lay communion.

[666] the assembled bishops inform St. Stephen These things being thus settled, the assembled fathers wrote a synodical letter, which is the seventy-second among the Cyprianic letters, to St. Stephen the Pope, whose opening I report here. Cyprian and the rest to Stephen their brother, greeting. For the arranging of certain things and for polishing them by the examination of common counsel, we found it necessary, dearest brother, several priests coming together into one place, to convene and hold a council, in which many things indeed were brought forward and transacted. But it was necessary to write to you above all, and to confer with your gravity and wisdom, about that which the more pertains both to priestly authority and to the unity and likewise the dignity of the Catholic Church coming from the ordinance of the divine disposition: namely that those who are dipped outside, outside the Church, and are stained among heretics and schismatics with the defilement of profane water, when they shall have come to us and to the Church, which is one, ought to be baptized; because it is too little for them that a hand be laid on them for receiving the Holy Spirit, unless they receive also the baptism of the Church.

[667] of what was done by letter; To this letter they joined two others, one to Quintus, the other to the bishops of Numidia, mentioned above, in which they judged their opinion to be established by solid reasons. But that what heretics use is not baptism, they say in the same place, and that no one among those who oppose Christ can profit by the grace of Christ, was lately diligently set forth in the letter which was written on that matter to Quintus our colleague, established in Mauretania; likewise in the letter which our colleagues previously wrote to their fellow-bishops presiding in Numidia, copies of both which letters we subjoin here. They confidently add too toward the end: These things we have brought to your conscience, dearest brother, both for our common honor and out of simple affection, believing that, by the truth of your religion and faith, things which are both religious and true please you also.

[668] they do not however condemn those who think otherwise. Nevertheless, because they knew well that the opinion opposed to their own was held in by far the greatest part of the Church by

immemorial time, and was in force even then, they profess that they wish to prescribe a law to no one in this case, nor to withdraw from the communion of others who think otherwise. For thus they closed the aforesaid letter: For the rest we know that some are unwilling to lay aside what they have once imbibed, nor easily to change their purpose; but, the bond of peace and concord among colleagues being preserved, to retain certain things of their own which have once been taken up among them. In which matter we neither do violence to anyone nor give a law, since each prelate has in the administration of the church the free judgment of his own will, being about to render an account of his conduct to the Lord. We desire, dearest brother, that you always fare well.

[669] This synodical letter to St. Stephen was cited by Crescens of Cirta under the name of Cyprian alone in the third council of Carthage, This letter escaped St. Augustine. celebrated on the same case, and he says that it was read out there to all. But St. Augustine had not seen it when he wrote the books On Baptism against the Donatists. For in book 6, chap. 15, refuting the arguments of the aforesaid Crescens, he denied that St. Cyprian's letter to St. Stephen pertained to the present question, and challenged his adversaries to show the contrary if they could. For altogether, he says, that letter has nothing about baptism given among heretics or schismatics, of which we are now treating. And so only the other letter of St. Cyprian to the aforesaid Pontiff had come into St. Augustine's hands; namely that which among the Cyprianic letters is the sixty-seventh, and which deals with the deposing of Marcian, bishop of Arles, as was said in the preceding §. That the one which pertains to the said controversy was not unknown in Augustine's time is however manifest from St. Jerome's Opusculum against the Luciferians, in which he not only cites it in express words, but also recites an entire passage from it; so that there can be no doubt that he had seen it.

§ XXXIX. He brings Jubaianus over to his side, or confirms him in it, and among other things sends him the book On the Good of Patience: having received St. Stephen's reply, he summons a third synod, and writes against him: he publishes the book On Jealousy and Envy.

Being consulted on the same case While the African prelates were awaiting a reply from Rome from St. Stephen the Pontiff, St. Cyprian was again consulted by letter on the same argument by Jubaianus, a bishop of a see and province unknown to us. There had come into his hands a certain letter written on behalf of the Apostolic tradition against that new opinion, whose author some have without any foundation believed to have been St. Stephen. Now on which side Jubaianus stood is uncertain; but if he did not think that one should stand by the ancient custom, he nevertheless seems to have inclined much toward it, or at least to have been moved by the reasons brought forward for it. However that may be, he thought that St. Cyprian should be consulted by a letter, which has perished, and in it both set forth his doubts and at the same time transmitted to him a copy of the aforesaid letter written on behalf of the Catholic custom.

[671] To this letter of Jubaianus St. Cyprian, writing back by his own, which is the seventy-third, persisted in his opinion, by Jubaianus, he writes back to him, and strove to establish it by various arguments and to dissolve the objections. There is no leisure to report the arguments of the long letter: I observe only this, that the Saint carefully took pains not to seem to rebaptize after the manner of the Novatians, which Jubaianus had objected to him, or to have introduced anything new. Hence to the suspicion of novelty he opposed the council formerly celebrated by Agrippinus, in which his opinion had been established. But that the Novatians rebaptized those who came to them from the Church, he answered was not to be regarded, nor was one on that account any more to abstain from baptizing heretics than to give up one's bishopric, because Novatian had usurped the Roman Episcopate. For the rest he contended that no one was rebaptized by him, because he denied that baptism could be conferred by heretics. Nevertheless in this whole letter he so disputed that he was by no means willing to condemn other bishops who thought otherwise, nor on that account to withdraw from their communion, as he also expressly testified toward the end.

[672] and either brings him over to his opinion, By the same labor he transmitted to Jubaianus what he had already written and done about this controversy, from which we at the same time understand the time of this letter. Since, he says, we have already expressed in our letters what we thought about this matter, in order to be brief, I have sent you a copy of those same letters: what we decreed in council when very many of us were present, and likewise what I afterwards wrote back to Quintus our colleague inquiring about the same matter. And now too, when we had come together into one place, bishops both of the province of Africa and of Numidia, seventy-one in number, we have again confirmed this same thing by our judgment, etc. This letter to Jubaianus was therefore written after the second synod on the same case, which seems to have been held in the year 256, and before the third, which we shall show was celebrated by him on the Kalends of September of the same year.

[673] or confirms him in it; Now the holy Bishop by this same letter brought it about that he either drew Jubaianus over to his side or confirmed him in it. So we learn from our Saint himself, who, when he had said in the third Carthaginian synod that there had been read in it both Jubaianus's letter to him and his own to Jubaianus, then subjoined: Likewise there has been read to you another letter of Jubaianus, in which, writing back to our letter out of his sincere and religious devotion, he not only consented; but also, confessing that he had been instructed, gave thanks. Hence too observe in passing, reader, that that letter to Jubaianus is certainly Cyprian's, so that it is a wonder that St. Augustine spoke of it so doubtfully, when in book 2 against Cresconius, chap. 33, citing it, he says: For when either St. Cyprian, or whoever wrote that letter, attempted to persuade, etc. But that other writings too which pertain to this controversy were suspected by that holy doctor of being supposititious or adulterated, we shall see below.

[674] he writes the book On the Good of Patience, To the letter sent to Jubaianus the Saint joined also the little book which he had composed about the same time On the Good of Patience, out of that love of concord which he had always zealously cultivated, and which was then beginning to be in peril. For since the question raised about baptism had very many adversaries, who contended sharply for the defense of the Apostolic custom, he rightly feared lest the disputes should breed discord and disturb the peace of the Church. In order therefore to meet this evil, and to prepare a kind of antidote, he published the book On the Good of Patience, in which by general admonitions only he exhorted his readers to patience and concord; no mention however being made of the present controversy, so that, as I judge, it might the more easily be read even by his adversaries.

[675] Of this book he himself writes thus in the aforesaid letter to Jubaianus: which he sends to Jubaianus at the same time. We, so far as in us lies, do not contend on account of heretics with our colleagues and fellow-bishops, with whom we hold divine concord and the Lord's peace… There is preserved by us patiently and gently charity of soul, the honor of the college, the bond of faith, and the concord of the priesthood. On this account we have now also written a little book On the Good of Patience, so far as our mediocrity availed, the Lord permitting and inspiring, which we transmit to you out of our mutual affection. St. Pontius in the Life, num. 14, thus briefly recounts the same: Whence should we learn patience? St. Augustine too praises it, book 4 On [ ], chap. 8, and book 4 against the two letters of the Pelagians, chap. 8, where it is called the Epistle On Patience; and it is extant among the Works of St. Cyprian, truly worthy of its Author.

[676] Meanwhile the letter sent to Rome by the fathers of the Carthaginian synod St. Stephen, having reprobated the opinion of the Africans, was delivered to St. Stephen the Pope. But it turned out far otherwise than they had hoped: for whereas they had believed that the Roman Pontiff would go along with their opinion without difficulty, and would confirm it by his authority; he on the contrary, having read their letter, was rightly indignant that the Apostolic tradition should be proscribed as erroneous, and that by bishops of notable sanctity and doctrine, by whom above all it ought to have been defended. Now these movements of the Africans in a matter so great fell the more grievously upon the holy Pontiff, because many in the East also were at the same time overthrowing the same tradition, chiefly on the authority of Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and of Helenus of Tarsus, as has already been observed in our Work at the second day of August in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of the same St. Stephen, §3. For the holy Pontiff clearly perceived how much weight the African church, and the authority of St. Cyprian above all, would have among the Orientals for the defense of the error, and how great a peril impended thence, lest it should be more widely sown, unless he checked it by a timely and effective remedy.

[677] Delaying therefore not at all, writing back to St. Cyprian and the other bishops of Africa, enjoins that nothing be innovated, he replied that their opinion was new and contrary to the Apostolic tradition, from which it was unlawful to depart; and accordingly he determined thus: If therefore anyone shall come to us from any heresy whatever, let nothing be innovated but what has been handed down, that a hand be laid on him in penance; since the heretics themselves properly do not baptize those coming to them from one another, but only admit them to communion. The aforesaid letter of St. Stephen has not indeed reached us; but that it was of this kind we learn from St. Cyprian's Epistle 74 to Pompey, in which he strove to refute it, and reported the passage which we have just recited. There are those who have not blushed impudently to smear an erroneous opinion upon St. Stephen from these same words, as though he had approved a baptism conferred among heretics even without the words prescribed by Christ. But it is not necessary to answer their madness, since our Bosch in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of the same holy Pontiff, §4, has already demonstrated that his opinion about baptism was constantly approved by the better part of the Church from the very beginning of the controversy; which afterwards the universal Church also embraced and held.

[678] And on this side too was St. Augustine, who nevertheless in book 6 On Baptism, with grave threats added chap. 25, writes: Who does not know that it is not the baptism of Christ, if the Evangelical words, of which the formula consists, have been lacking there? Then to that general manner of speaking of St. Stephen he supplies another answer as well, subjoining: But heretics are more easily found who do not baptize at all than who do not baptize with those words. There may also be consulted the preface prefixed to the Venetian edition of the Works of St. Cyprian, §4. Our aforesaid Bosch, §3, judged that St. Stephen in the aforesaid letter, the more strongly to settle the dispute, used all his authority, and commanded as Bishop of Bishops and successor of St. Peter. He gathers this both from the third council of Carthage, in which St.

Cyprian seems to him to suggest this, when he says: For none of us sets himself up as bishop of bishops; and from Epistle 75, where it is said of St. Stephen: He glories in the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid.

[679] against the refractory. This is certain, that the holy Pontiff threatened the penalty of excommunication upon those who would not comply, or at least pronounced that they must be held worthy of it. For St. Cyprian indicates this when in Epistle 74 to Pompey he says of Stephen: Does he give honor to God who … thinks that the priests of God, defending the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church, must be excluded? The same we have from Epistle 75, in which Firmilian, his bile being stirred, poured out among other things this against the same holy Pontiff: For while you think that all can be excluded by you, you have excluded yourself alone from all. Nevertheless, that St. Stephen stopped at threats alone, and that a sentence of excommunication was never pronounced by him against St. Cyprian or the Africans, our aforesaid Bosch has already proved, and we with him shall show in its own place against Tillemont and others.

[680] Cyprian does not however yield; This so unexpected letter of the Roman Pontiff vehemently struck St. Cyprian and his colleagues, since they saw their opinion, which they had believed would be approved by him, rejected as contrary to the Apostolic tradition, and understood themselves to be reduced to this, that it was necessary either likewise to reprobate it, or to be exposed to the manifest danger of being proscribed by the Chair of St. Peter. And to reprobate an opinion established and confirmed not only by their own vote in two synods, but also by Agrippinus and by the bishops who had assembled with him, seemed to them hard and not necessary, because they believed that not about any article of faith, but only about discipline, which is sometimes diverse in various particular churches, was the question here; and because they judged the custom alleged by the holy Pontiff to be not divine but human, nay contrary to the sacred Letters. There was added that they alone did not so think, but had as partners in this matter various bishops of the East, especially Firmilian and Helenus, who tenaciously defended the same error, introduced in synods held about the year 230 at Iconium and Synnada.

[681] of which resistance Nor indeed were there lacking reasons drawn from sacred Scripture which seemed in appearance to favor that opinion, and which they seized the more eagerly the greater the hatred with which they were carried against the heretics. It will be useful to hear St. Augustine discoursing on this matter. In book 2 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 7 and 8, he says thus: And so, when so great a question rushed in, since it was difficult to render a reason about the remission of sins and about the spiritual regeneration of man, whether it could take place among heretics or among schismatics, and since there went before the authority of Agrippinus and of some who had consented to him, men failing in this question, who had preferred to contrive something new rather than to hold a custom whose defense they did not understand; there rushed upon the eyes of the Man's * soul plausible reasons, and they blocked the way of tracking out the truth.

[682] Nor do I think that the blessed Cyprian for any other reason set forth more freely what he thought against custom, and spoke first, than that he might most gladly receive another, if perchance one should arise to whom something better had been revealed; and that he might show that not only diligence in teaching but also modesty in learning is to be imitated: but that, if no one should arise who could bring forward anything such as to refute all those plausible reasons by which he was moved, he should remain in the same opinion, well conscious to himself both of not having concealed the truth as he thought it, and of having retained the unity which he loved. For he so understood also that which the Apostle says: "But let two or three prophets speak, and let the rest examine; if anything be revealed to another sitting by, let the first hold his peace." In which passage, he says (Augustine here reports Cyprian's words from Epistle 71 to Quintus), he taught and showed that many things are revealed to individuals for the better, and that each one ought not pertinaciously to contend for that which he had once imbibed and held, but if anything better and more useful should appear, gladly to embrace it.

[683] By these words assuredly he not only admonished those to agree with him by St. Augustine who saw nothing better; but also exhorted, if any could bring forward anything by which the former custom should rather be confirmed as to be preserved, that, if it were such as could not be refuted, he himself too might show how truly he had said that each one ought not pertinaciously to contend for that which he had once imbibed and held, but, if anything better and more useful should appear, gladly to embrace it. But because there had then arisen none but such as opposed custom, and they brought forward defenses of that very custom not such as would move so great a Soul; that most grave Man was unwilling that his reasons, though not true (which was hidden from him), yet not overcome, should yield to a custom truthful indeed, but not yet asserted. Which custom nevertheless, unless Agrippinus first, and some of his fellow-bishops throughout Africa, had attempted to desert even by the sentences of a council, this man would not at least have dared to reason against; but, disturbed in so obscure a question, and everywhere beholding a universal and robust custom, he would rather have straitened himself both with prayer and with intentness of mind toward God, so that what afterwards seemed good to a plenary council he might perceive and teach to be true.

[684] But when, wearied, the authority of the preceding council which was held by Agrippinus took him up, are recounted; he preferred to defend what was as it were the discovery of his predecessors, rather than to labor further by inquiring. For at the end of the letter to Quintus he thus shows on what couch of authority, as though wearied, he rested. "Which indeed," he says, "Agrippinus, a man of good memory, with the rest of his fellow-bishops who at that time governed the church of the Lord in the province of Africa and Numidia, both determined and confirmed by the weighed examination of a common council; whose judgment, religious and lawful, salutary, agreeing with the faith and with the Catholic Church, we too have followed." That St. Cyprian slipped more readily into this opinion out of hatred of the heretics, the same St. Augustine declares in the book On the One Baptism against Petilian, chap. 13, in these words: He was unwilling to acknowledge Christ's baptism given among heretics or schismatics, while he too greatly detested those whom he grieved to be separated from the Catholic unity, which he greatly loved. The same is likewise manifest from St. Cyprian's own letters written on this argument.

[685] and he summons a third synod: Since therefore the holy Prelate and the other bishops of Africa and Numidia with him so adhered to the new opinion, and St. Stephen replied to them nothing beyond an immemorial custom, nor proved from any other source that it rested upon Apostolic tradition, they determined to omit nothing by which they might both defend their opinion and escape the threats of the indignant Pontiff, unity and communion being preserved. To this end the holy Metropolitan summoned a third council on this case for the coming Kalends of September of the same year 256, to which he called all the bishops of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania whom he could, doubtless with this mind and this hope, that, if all these should agree with him, so great a number and authority of the bishops of a most flourishing church would, if it did not draw the Roman Pontiff over to his side, at least restrain him from passing the sentence of the threatened excommunication; but that if they should dissent, he too would depart from Agrippinus's opinion.

[686] he writes about Stephen more sharply than is fair; Meanwhile the report scattered abroad of St. Stephen's reply reached also Pompey, bishop of Sabrata in the province of Tripolitana, as is gathered from the third council of Carthage; who, having already received from him copies of the other letters which St. Cyprian had written about the same case, asked him also by a letter, which has perished, to inform him too about Stephen's latest letter. He answered by Epistle 74, in which, having undertaken to refute the enclosed letter of the Pontiff by reasons solid, as it seemed at least to him, and being carried away more vehemently than was fair by the heat of contention and by grief at the threatened excommunication, he angrily wrote certain things against the holy Pontiff, who was bravely opposing himself, with by far the greatest number of bishops, for the preserving of the Apostolic tradition — things which do not savor of the Cyprian who often speaks elsewhere of the Chair of St. Peter. I have no wish to unravel them here; but I shall follow the example of St. Augustine, who in book 5 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 25, treating of that letter, says: Now those things which, being irritated, he poured out against Stephen, I do not wish to review, … and it is better to pass over those things which had the peril of a pernicious dissension.

[687] persevering nevertheless in his communion: Nor yet was he so indignant at the threatening Pontiff that he was unwilling to remain in his communion, and did not remain in it, as the aforesaid St. Augustine presently subjoins in the same place: But Stephen had even thought that those must be excluded who attempted to overthrow the ancient custom about receiving heretics: but this man, moved by the difficulty of the question itself, and most abundantly endowed with the holy bowels of charity, judged that one must remain in unity with those who thought differently. So, although he was indignant somewhat more excitedly, but nevertheless in a brotherly way, yet the peace of Christ conquered in their hearts, so that in such a dispute no evil of schism arose between them. For the rest, the studious reader will find the arguments produced by St. Cyprian in the same letter against the judgment of St. Stephen and of the Church examined and refuted by the same St. Augustine in the book cited, from chap. 23 to the end.

[688] he publishes the book On Jealousy and Envy, Out of the same love of unity and concord he is believed to have written about this time the book On Jealousy and Envy, so that he might set this, as he had also done by the book On the Good of Patience, as an antidote against the quarrel that had arisen, and might admonish the parties inflamed on both sides not to be carried away by intemperate jealousy and envy, and to break forth into harmful contentions and hatreds and envy of the brethren. Yet with the same artifice with which we said the book On the Good of Patience was written, he composed this one also; namely in such a way that he discoursed in it on the evils and losses of jealousy and envy, while silently passing over the question then agitated about the baptism of heretics and the quarrel, judging doubtless that thus his Opusculum would be read more peaceably and usefully by the bishops opposing him. Of this book St. Pontius in the Life, num. 14, makes mention after the book On the Good of Patience thus: Who should restrain envy, coming from the poisoned malignity of jealousy, by the sweetness of a saving remedy?

[689] The same is praised by St. Augustine in book 4 On Baptism against the Donatists, praised by SS. Augustine and Jerome. chap. 8, where, because he at the same time makes mention of the unity preserved by him amid these controversies, he seemed to Pamelius to suggest that this book, which he calls a letter, was written on the occasion of them. But let us hear Augustine. Let us read then, he says, Cyprian's letter On Jealousy and Envy, and let us see how great an evil it is to envy those who are better; the origin of which evil from the devil himself

he memorably teaches to have arisen. He then subjoins the beginning of the book, and one or two sentences, and at last continues: These words of Cyprian in a letter known to the peoples, how true, how strong they are, we recognize. It truly befitted Cyprian both gravely to reprove and to admonish about jealousy and envy, from which so deadly an evil his heart proved itself utterly alien by so great an abundance of charity; by which most vigilantly kept guard he remained in the unity of communion with his colleagues, who thought differently about baptism not out of malevolence, while he himself too, thinking otherwise not from malevolent contention but from human temptation, remained in it — that which God would afterwards reveal to him, persevering in charity, when he willed. Jerome too praises him in book 3 of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, chap. 5, saying: The blessed Cyprian also wrote a book On Jealousy and Envy, a very excellent one.

* perhaps of the truth

§ XL. The third Carthaginian synod, in which the earlier judgment was again confirmed: the Saint's acts in this case of baptism formerly called into doubt by some.

In the third Carthaginian synod On the Kalends of September in the year 256 the third council on the baptism of heretics was celebrated at Carthage, at which together with St. Cyprian eighty-five bishops from Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania took part; presbyters and deacons also being present, and the greatest part of the people. That this council cannot be placed later than the year 256 is certain from the fact that it was held while Stephen was alive, who was crowned with martyrdom in the month of August of the year next following. But that it should not be placed earlier either is persuaded by the few things which passed between St. Stephen and Cyprian about this controversy after the council was celebrated. The aforesaid synod is extant both in the Collections of the Councils and among the Works of St. Cyprian, and is wont to be entitled the Judgments of the LXXXVII bishops, not because so many took part, but because of the 85 present, all of whose names, dioceses, and judgments are recounted in it, Natalis of Oea gave his opinion in it both in his own name and in that of Pompey of Sabrata and of Diogas of Leptis Magna.

[691] The Saint exhorts those assembled The cause of convening the council, and its manner and beginning, its very preface, which I subjoin, declares. It runs then thus: When there had come together into one place at Carthage on the Kalends of September very many bishops from the province of Africa, Numidia, Mauretania, with presbyters and deacons, the greatest part of the people also being present, and when there had been read the letter of Jubaianus written to Cyprian, likewise Cyprian's written back to Jubaianus, about the baptizing of heretics; and what afterwards the same Jubaianus wrote back to Cyprian, Cyprian said: You have heard, most beloved colleagues, what Jubaianus our fellow-bishop wrote to me, consulting our mediocrity about the unlawful and profane baptism of heretics, and what I wrote back to him, judging namely what once and again and often we have judged, that heretics coming to the Church must be baptized and sanctified with the baptism of the Church. Likewise there has been read to you another letter of Jubaianus, in which, writing back to our letter out of his sincere and religious devotion, he not only consented, but also, confessing that he had been instructed, gave thanks.

[692] to declare their judgment freely; It remains that each of us bring forward what we think about this matter, judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he shall have thought differently. For neither does any of us set himself up as bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror compel his colleagues to the necessity of obeying; since every bishop has, by the license of his liberty and power, his own judgment; and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone and only has the power both of setting us over the governance of his Church and of judging our conduct. Thus far St. Cyprian. But besides the two letters of Jubaianus, which we have said perished, and St. Cyprian's reply, of which we have already treated above, that there was also read in the same council another letter of the same Saint to St. Stephen, reported in §38, Crescens of Cirta, one of the assembled fathers, testifies, as has likewise already been observed by us above.

[693] in whose address But what St. Cyprian there records about a bishop of bishops, and about the use of tyrannical terror to the necessity of obeying, may seem to strike at St. Stephen the Pope, because he had by his Pontifical authority, with grave threats of excommunication against the refractory added, striven to recall those African prelates from their undertaking. And if this is so, we must needs confess that the holy Prelate here again suffered something human. Nevertheless these same things can be taken as said without any fault of an excited mind, and without injury to Pontifical authority. For the holy Primate wished to admonish the assembled bishops that each should freely say his own judgment. To this end, since he judged that it conduced most to that liberty, he observed that they were all colleagues; and that although he himself held the primacy of Africa, nevertheless neither he nor any other of those present was a bishop of bishops, nor tyrannically arrogated to himself that power of driving the rest by his terror to his own views.

[694] certain things in appearance rather bitter In this sense St. Augustine interpreted the aforesaid address in book 3 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 3, where, weighing it, he praises the Saint's gentleness and equity, in that he permitted each to think and speak freely; and at the same time he rebukes some who judged that these things were said by him feignedly and craftily. I subjoin Augustine's words. For he goes on and says (the holy Bishop in the aforesaid council): "It remains that each of us bring forward what we think about this very matter, judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he shall have thought differently." He therefore allows me, with the right of communion preserved, not only still to seek the truth, but even to think differently. "For neither does any of us," he says, "set himself up as bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror compel his colleagues to the necessity of obeying." What more gentle? What more humble? Certainly no authority deters us from seeking what is true.

[695] Would Augustine therefore have exclaimed thus, if he had believed that the holy Pontiff, laboring for the preservation of the Apostolic tradition, was here publicly charged by Cyprian with tyrannical terror and pride? said are explained; Would he have said that nothing was more gentle, nothing more humble than this address? For indeed that holy doctor was so far from praising gibes of this kind that he judged them not even to be endured, in the same Work, book 5, chap. 25, as we have already said above, and as it will be useful to have repeated here. Now those things, he said, which, being irritated, he poured out against Stephen, I do not wish to review, … and it is better to pass over those things which had the peril of a pernicious dissension. These things being observed, let us resume St. Augustine's text. He, likewise weighing the rest of St. Cyprian's words, thus continues in the same place: "Since every bishop has," he says (the Prelate of Carthage), "by the license of his liberty and power, his own judgment; and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another:" I suppose assuredly, adds St. Augustine, in those questions which have not yet been discussed with the most refined perfection.

[696] For he knew how great a profundity of the sacrament the whole Church was then turning over in varied disputation, and the Saint's sincerity and he made free the judgment of inquiring, so that the truth, being examined, might be laid open. For he was not lying, and thinking to catch his simpler colleagues in a word, so that, when they had betrayed that they thought differently, he might then judge, contrary to what he had promised, that they must be excommunicated. Far be that wicked perfidy from so holy a Soul: those who think this of such a Man, as though to his praise, profess nothing else than that they themselves are such. I could by no means believe that Cyprian, a Catholic bishop, a Catholic martyr, and one who, the greater he was, so much the more humbled himself in all things, that he might find grace before God, put forth with his mouth, especially in a holy council of colleagues, anything other than what he bore in his heart; especially since he adds and says: "But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone and only has the power both of setting us over the governance of his Church and of judging our conduct." Under the commemoration therefore of so great a judgment, awaiting to hear the truth from his colleagues, would he first offer them an example of lying? May God turn away this dementia from any Christian whatever, how much more from Cyprian. We have therefore free judgment of inquiring, granted to us by the most gentle and most truthful discourse of Cyprian himself.

[697] These things from St. Augustine it has seemed good to report here, is vindicated both that I might show that it is not necessary that we say the holy Pontiff was branded by St. Cyprian in the aforesaid address; and that the latter's sincerity in celebrating this council might be vindicated; and finally that it might appear in what sense the same Saint there said that every bishop has, by the license of his liberty and power, free judgment, and cannot be judged by another. For St. Augustine admonishes that this is to be understood only in those questions which have not yet been discussed, or decided, with the most refined perfection. Certainly that St. Cyprian believed that bishops could be deposed for certain crimes, and so could be judged, is manifest from various of his letters, and namely from the sixty-fourth, in which he approved the deposition of Fortunatianus, formerly bishop of the people of Assuras, and from the sixty-eighth, in which he approved that of Basilides and Martial, Spanish prelates, and willed it to be ratified; and likewise from the sixty-seventh, in which he asked St. Stephen the Pontiff to order that Marcian, bishop of Arles in Gaul, who followed the heresy of Novatian, be deposed with all speed, and another substituted in his place.

[698] from the calumny of the Donatists. Finally, what the holy doctor there has for the vindicating of St. Cyprian's sincerity in the aforesaid council strikes directly at the Donatists, who gloried in the authority of the same Saint for repeating baptism, but shrank very greatly from that love of concord and peace which he had always striven to preserve. For these said, on St. Augustine's testimony in book 3 against Cresconius the Donatist, chap. 2, that (their forefathers) were separated from the communion of the Orientals for this reason, that they (the Orientals) rescinded their own judgment, by which it had pleased them that in that question of baptism agreement should be given to Cyprian and to that African council. And when St. Augustine replied to them that their forefathers had on that account acted against the mind of St. Cyprian, who had said that unity must be preserved with his colleagues even when they thought differently, and proved this from his words in the aforesaid council; they answered: That he had willed to speak thus lest perhaps, deterred by the fear of excommunication, they should not dare freely to say what they thought; not because he was about to remain in communion with them; as the holy doctor testifies in the same place. Whence he also took up those words thus: Where they openly say that Cyprian lied; and, convicting the Donatists themselves of falsehood, he vindicated the holy Prelate from so foul a calumny.

[699] The Africans believed that this question St. Cyprian therefore judged that that question pertained not to the dogmas of faith but to discipline; and that the custom, which alone

St. Stephen objected to him, and which so many African prelates and some Orientals also rejected, was — he being preoccupied with plausible reasons — merely human, and ought to yield to truth; and therefore he was of the opinion that this question must be further discussed, and that meanwhile he could, the unity of the Church being preserved, think differently from others. Hence he himself, with the other bishops gathered in the second Carthaginian council, reckons this question among the customs observed differently in various churches. His words we recited at num. 668. For he believed his case not unlike that which in Epistle 52 to Antonianus he commemorates in these words: And indeed among our predecessors certain of the bishops here in our province thought that peace should not be given to adulterers, and altogether closed the place of penance against adulteries: they did not however withdraw from the college of their fellow-bishops, nor break the unity of the Catholic Church by the obstinacy of their hardness or censure; so that, because among others peace was given to adulterers, he who did not give it should be separated from the Church. The bond of concord remaining, and the undivided sacrament of the Catholic Church persevering, each bishop arranges and directs his own conduct, about to render an account of his purpose to the Lord.

[700] In the same way about this question, as pertaining to discipline alone, did not pertain to the faith: left to the bishop's judgment, Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, was of the opinion, in the letter given about the same to St. Cyprian as the seventy-fourth. For among other things which, his bile being stirred, he poured out against holy Stephen no less falsely than irreverently, he contends that this diversity of discipline can be preserved with the bond of unity intact. But that those who are at Rome, he says, do not in all things observe those things which were handed down from the beginning, and in vain hold forth the authority of the Apostles, anyone can know even from this, that in the matter of celebrating the days of the Pasch, and in many other sacraments of the divine rite, he sees that there are among them certain diversities, and that not all things are there observed equally which are observed at Jerusalem, according as in very many other provinces also many things vary according to the diversity of places and names; nor yet on this account has there ever been a departure from the peace and unity of the Catholic Church. Now let us return to the council.

[701] The assembled bishops, being roused in the way we have said by their holy Primate to speak their judgment freely, their judgment in the synod, gave their opinion each in turn, and generally confirmed their opinion with several reasons; but all went over to this judgment: that they should reject as profane and void the baptism conferred by heretics, and should therefore decree that all who came to the Church dipped by that alone must be baptized. There were moreover, as we have said, together with their Primate, eighty-five bishops, of whom Natalis of Oea gave his vote also in the place and name of Pompey of Sabrata and of Diogas of Leptis Magna, prelates who were absent; and so eighty-seven judgments were gathered. Last of all St. Cyprian gave his judgment, and set the crown upon the synod in these words: My judgment is most fully expressed by the letter which was written to Jubaianus our colleague: that heretics, called according to the Evangelical and Apostolic attestation both adversaries of Christ and antichrists, when they shall have come to the Church, must be baptized with the one baptism of the Church, so that from adversaries they may be able to become friends, and from antichrists Christians.

[702] Now whoever desires to see the reasons brought forward by the assembled fathers for rejecting the baptism of heretics in this council solidly refuted, which, like the other things pertaining hereto, let him go to St. Augustine, books 6 and 7 On Baptism against the Donatists, where he examined and refuted each. But this is worthy of observation, that in the time of the same St. Augustine it was doubted whether St. Cyprian thought thus about baptism, as he is reported to have thought in the aforesaid council and in his letters; and that there were not lacking those who then expressly denied it, and contended that that error had been fastened upon him. So the holy doctor himself teaches us, writing in Epistle 93, elsewhere 48, to Vincentius the Rogatist, chap. 10: But that Cyprian thought otherwise about baptism than the form and custom of the Church held is found not in the canonical writings, but in his own and in the letters of the council … Although there are not lacking those who contend that Cyprian did not think this at all, but that it was fabricated under his name by presumptuous men and liars.

[703] For the integrity and knowledge of the writings of one bishop, however illustrious, could not be so guarded fastened upon St. Cyprian, in St. Augustine's age as canonical Scripture is guarded by the letters of so many tongues, and by the order and succession of Ecclesiastical celebration; against which nevertheless there have not been lacking those who fabricated many things under the names of the Apostles — in vain indeed, because that is so commended, so celebrated, so known. But what impious audacity's attempt can do against writings not founded on canonical authority, it has demonstrated even from this, that it did not omit to raise itself even against those which are confirmed by so great a mass of knowledge. Thus St. Augustine; observing that what some contended about the opinion fastened upon St. Cyprian ought not to seem incredible. Then he subjoined what he himself thought: We nevertheless, he says, for two reasons do not deny that Cyprian thought that, both because his style has a certain proper face by which it can be recognized; and because there our cause against you is shown the more invincible.

[704] some believed. But a little after, as though doubtful, he says again: But moreover Cyprian either did not at all think what you recite him to have thought, or afterwards corrected this in the rule of truth, etc. The same doubt he repeats in book 1 against Cresconius the Donatist, chap. 32, where he says: For you too bring forward the council of Cyprian, which either was not held, or was deservedly overcome by the other members of unity, from whom he was not divided. From these things our Bosch in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of St. Stephen the Pope, §9, not idly inferred that that opinion did not seem to St. Augustine altogether trifling; I should nevertheless believe that he held the opposite, and made mention of the other for no other end than to show the Rogatists and Donatists how little he valued their arguments drawn from St. Cyprian's council and letters, since he admitted both these and that as genuine, which he could — not without precedent and probability — reject among fables, if he feared their strength or authority.

§ XLI. The legates of the Africans rejected by St. Stephen: Firmilian's account of this case, more vehement than is fair: this embassy first set on foot after the third Carthaginian synod.

The legates rejected by St. Stephen, We judge that from this same synod legates were sent to Rome, of whom Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, writing to our holy Prelate, makes mention in Epistle 75 among the Cyprianic letters; although others place that embassy earlier, to whose argument we shall reply below. The judgment about rejecting the baptism of heretics having been confirmed by the common consent of so many bishops, as we saw in the preceding §, it seemed good to St. Cyprian and to the other bishops with him to send legates to the City, who should persuade St. Stephen of the same face to face, or at least should deter him by the authority of so great a council from passing the sentence of excommunication, and should bring him to some kind of conciliation and connivance. For they hoped, as it is right to believe, that the holy Pontiff, when he saw the African church, with which not a few in the East agreed, established in its opinion, would not with difficulty be moved to gentler counsels, lest he should suffer the loss of so illustrious a portion of the Church.

[706] But neither did this embassy obtain the outcome which they had proposed to themselves: for if we believe Firmilian in the letter cited, of whom Firmilian makes mention, the Pontiff, being forewarned of their arrival, forbade them all hospitality and roof of Christians, and, when they approached, was unwilling to admit them even to common conversation. I said: If we believe Firmilian; because we shall show that his authority here is very much suspect. Meanwhile let us hear his words. After he had produced the passage of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians about humility, gentleness, and mutual love, he thus continued: How diligently did Stephen fulfil these commands and salutary admonitions of the Apostle, keeping humility of mind and gentleness in the first place! For what is more humble or gentle than to have dissented with so many bishops throughout the whole world, breaking peace with each by a various kind of discord, now with the Orientals, which we trust is not hidden from you either; now with you who are in the South, from whom he received legate bishops patiently enough and gently, so that he would not admit them even to the speech of a common conversation; and further, mindful of love and charity, enjoined upon the whole brotherhood that no one should receive them into his house, so that to those who came not only peace and communion, but even roof and hospitality was denied.

[707] Before we discuss these things, it must be observed were the Africans, that not all modern writers have taken them as said of the legates of St. Cyprian and the Africans. For the most eminent Baronius at the year 258, num. 15, and Noël Alexandre, Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 3, art. 1, prop. 2, of the Paris edition of the year 1714, judged that Firmilian here treats of Oriental legates sent by the council of Iconium, which council the former fixes to the year 258, which for us is 256, and with which the latter agrees. But whoever weighs the words of Firmilian recounted will not doubt that they are to be taken of legates of Africa. Hence too he had premised: Which (to withdraw from the peace and unity of the Church) Stephen has now dared to do, breaking the peace against you which his predecessors always kept with you with mutual love and honor. To the same thing he seems also to have looked when he likewise said in the same place: We can render thanks to Stephen in this, that through his inhumanity it has now come about that we should take a proof of your faith and wisdom.

[708] Besides, that the synod of Iconium, from which they would have those legates sent, not the Orientals. was celebrated long before the Pontificate of St. Stephen, St. Dionysius of Alexandria teaches in Epistle 3 to Philemon, reported by Eusebius in book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 7, where he writes this: This besides I have learned, that this custom (of rebaptizing those baptized by heretics) was not now first introduced by the Africans alone; but that much earlier also, in the times of former bishops, in the most populous churches, and in the councils of the brethren at Iconium and Synnada, and among very many others, the same was sanctioned. Whose judgments and statutes I for my part should be unwilling to overturn, and to rouse them to quarrels and contentions. For it is written: You shall not remove the landmarks of your neighbor, which your parents set up. With Dionysius Firmilian not obscurely agrees, writing on the same argument in the letter cited above: All which we LONG SINCE confirmed at Iconium, which is a place of Phrygia, being gathered into one place, with men coming together from Galatia and Cilicia and the other neighboring regions,

as a thing to be firmly held and vindicated against the heretics, when some doubted about that matter. Now let us return to the passage of Firmilian from which we digressed.

[709] Firmilian's statements This severe manner of St. Stephen's dealing with the African legates I cannot believe for certain on the assertion of Firmilian alone, who at that time (be it said with the leave of so great a man) with exacerbated mind shamelessly blurted out many things against the holy Pontiff, not only more bitter than was fair, but also false. For he did not blush to charge him with audacity, insolence, and manifest folly; to call him unskilled, irascible, schismatic, apostate, excluded, worse than all heretics; to accuse him of things wickedly done, and to load him with other reproaches. This too he says falsely, that the same holy Pontiff dissented with so many bishops throughout the whole world, breaking peace with each by a various kind of discord; as though the chief part of the Church had agreed with Firmilian, and Stephen on that account, and for other causes, had excommunicated all the bishops throughout the whole world; whereas nevertheless St. Augustine in the book On the One Baptism against Petilian, chap. 14, expressly relates that far more adhered to St. Stephen; and affirms both here and elsewhere that no one of the opposite party was on that account excommunicated. Many, he says in the place cited, thought with him (Stephen), some also with this man (the Bishop of Carthage); both parties standing with them in unity. And in book 3 against Cresconius the Donatist, chap. 3: If it is at all now to be believed that fifty bishops of the Orientals held what seventy Africans, or somewhat more than that, held, against so many thousands of bishops to whom this error was displeasing in the whole world.

[710] about the things done against these legates Nor have those things a greater appearance of truth which he adds about a various kind of discord; since antiquity was so ignorant of the rest that, on the testimony of St. Augustine just cited, even the Donatists themselves, who strove to defend the custom of rebaptizing by the authority of St. Cyprian, reckoned St. Stephen among the Roman Pontiffs whom they confessed to have borne the Episcopate unimpaired. Who besides would believe the gibes which Firmilian ascribes to Stephen against St. Cyprian toward the end of the letter, in these words: And nevertheless Stephen is not ashamed … besides even to call Cyprian a pseudo-Christ and a pseudo-apostle and a deceitful workman? I for my part no more believe that these things were said by the holy Pontiff than that those things are true which Firmilian irreverently subjoins in the same place: Who (Stephen), conscious that all these things were in himself, forestalled it, so as to object by a lie to another those things which he himself deserved to hear. With the same seething of mind, and the same zeal for disputing, from ill-understood words of St. Cyprian he denied that heretics existed in the times of the Apostles, contending that no one is so foolish as to believe that the Apostles handed down this (that those baptized by heretics are not to be rebaptized); since it is evident that the very heresies, execrable and detestable, arose afterwards.

[711] are shown to be of doubtful credit, Since therefore Firmilian in this letter inconsiderately poured out many things from the impulse of an angry mind, beyond what was fair and becoming, to kindle odium against St. Stephen, what wonder if he had amplified with a like, though lesser, license the same holy Pontiff's severity in rejecting the legates of Africa, and had passed off as deeds the threats aimed by him at those obstinately persisting? So certainly he asserts that the peace and unity between holy Stephen and Cyprian was broken; whereas nevertheless it is evident that these always remained in mutual communion, and that the just indignation of the former stopped at threats alone, as we shall show more fully below. I readily agree however with Firmilian that those legates were severely repulsed by the holy Pontiff, and ordered to depart from Rome with their business wholly unaccomplished, grave threats against the Africans being repeated also, unless they returned to the ancient custom of the Church. For so both the gravity of the matter and the danger lest they should stir up something at Rome demanded, as Pierre Coustant in the Letters of the Roman Pontiffs, in the dissertation on the judgment of St. Stephen the Pope concerning the reception of heretics, §7, has learnedly set forth.

[712] Some, among whom is Maran, would have the aforesaid legates of the Africans sent to Rome That rejection of the legates not from the third Carthaginian synod but from the second, and consequently hold that St. Stephen's letter to Cyprian, which the latter set about refuting in his own to Pompey, was either brought to Carthage by those legates, or sent thither a little after their return. To this opinion Maran came on account of the reckoning of time, which he judged conflicts with ours. Now this reckoning is of this sort. From what has been said it is evident that the third council of Carthage was celebrated on the Kalends of September in the year 256. Nor is it less certain from Epistle 75 that Rogatianus the deacon was sent, after the legates were rejected at Rome, to Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, with a letter of St. Cyprian, that he might inform him of the things done before the Roman Pontiff. But the time of this mission the same Firmilian in the letter cited opportunely indicates thus: But since that legate (Rogatianus) sent by you was hastening to return to you, and the winter season was pressing, we have written back to your writings as much as we could.

[713] According to these things therefore, on our view, there would have had to be, between the Kalends of September and the beginning of winter of the same year 256, the synod celebrated at Carthage, not after the second, and the legates sent to Rome and returned thence into Africa; and after these things Rogatianus besides would have had to set out for Caesarea in Cappadocia and already be pressing his return toward Carthage. But this seemed to Maran the less possible to have happened, because he thinks the council's legates to St. Stephen did not use the greatest speed, from the fact that report, preceding their arrival in the City, gave the aforesaid Pontiff time and occasion of enjoining upon the whole brotherhood that no one should receive them into his house; so that to those who came not only peace and communion, but even roof and hospitality was denied, as was said above from Firmilian's letter. To this argument he adds a passage from St. Cyprian's Epistle 73 to Jubaianus, which we with him hold to have been written not long after the second council of Carthage. For since in it the Saint says: If therefore we hold the right of our possession, if we acknowledge the sacrament of unity, why are we reckoned prevaricators of the truth, why betrayers of unity? — since, I say, the Saint says this in that place, Maran judges that he is complaining of Stephen's severity toward his legates; on account of which he likewise thinks it came about that certain rather sharp words against the same holy Pontiff escaped the holy Prelate in Epistle 74 to Pompey.

[714] I confess indeed that Maran's first argument is of such a kind but after the third that I should readily yield to him, were it not both that the space of time absolutely suffices for the events, and that weighty reasons persuade otherwise. Let us begin from these. It is not probable that St. Stephen, having learned the opinion of the Africans only from elsewhere, at once used such severity as to decree that their legates, and those bishops, unheard, nay not yet landed, should be kept not only from his conversation but also from the hospitality and roof of the faithful, as Maran holds from Firmilian's letter. This reason seemed so strong to Tillemont, who is otherwise less than fair toward the Roman Pontiffs and namely toward St. Stephen, that on account of it he thought one should by no means depart from the opinion which we follow. Nor does this difficulty vanish, as it seemed to Maran, by observing that a dissension on the same cause had already arisen between the holy Pontiff and the Asiatics, namely Firmilian and the rest adhering to him, before this embassy of the Africans; and that therefore it ought not to seem a wonder if the new decrees of the Carthaginian synod applied new torches to his kindled mind, and drove him to that severity.

[715] the Carthaginian synod, It does not vanish, I say, hence; because not even so did prudence or equity permit that legates sent by the African church should, plainly unheard, be treated with so great severity; since they had up to then given no token of obstinacy, and had received no orders on this matter from the Pontiff. This severity is much less, and fairer, on our view, according to which those legates were then at last so received and repulsed (unless indeed Firmilian exaggerates), when the Africans, having already once been heard, had, against a most weighty rescript and threat of the Pontiff, confirmed their error with an even greater number of bishops than before. Secondly, if the rejection of the legates happened before the letters to Jubaianus and Pompey were written, and likewise before the third synod, why, I ask, did St. Cyprian make no mention, either in this or in those, of so notable and unexpected an event?

[716] must be said first to have happened, Maran answers indeed that this silence must be attributed to that gentleness which was supreme in Cyprian; but about those two letters see his words at num. 713. But I, although I likewise venerate his gentleness and meekness, cannot nevertheless but, with St. Augustine in book 5 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 25, reverently refrain from praising those things which, being irritated, he poured out against Stephen in the latter letter, and which had the peril of a pernicious dissension. If however these things are rightly reconciled with his supreme gentleness, I do not see why he should have made it a scruple to commemorate that severity of the Roman Pontiff against the said legates, which he certainly could have done with less suspicion of an excited mind than that with which he wrote the letter to Pompey, as will appear to one reading it. Hence it is not probable that the things which in this same letter he wrote rather harshly against St. Stephen, or of which he complained in the other to Jubaianus, proceeded from grief at the rejection of the legates. But in the former he wrote thus, being moved by St. Stephen's letter and grave threat, of which alone he there expostulates; while in the other, which does not even mention Stephen, he attempts to refute a letter of an author unknown to us, a copy of which Jubaianus had sent to him, and in which he, and those who thought with him against the Apostolic tradition, could be traduced as prevaricators of the truth and betrayers.

[717] nor do they prove the contrary These reasons plainly persuade me that the aforesaid embassy was set on foot only from the third Carthaginian synod, unless it be shown that the reckoning of time set forth above cannot be reconciled with the events that meanwhile took place. But why can it not be reconciled? For first indeed, Firmilian's letter does not prove that those legates did not use the greatest speed on their Roman journey: for report could have anticipated their arrival at Rome through someone who had either departed from Carthage the day before they did, or had had a somewhat more favorable voyage; nor was much time required for the Pontiff to issue an interdict about keeping the legates from hospitality. Next, neither is it evident from Firmilian's words that this was issued by him before their arrival; since they can be taken of threats alone, which St. Stephen aimed at them, if, persevering in the same error, they should return thereafter. In vain therefore did Maran on this head strive to delay the legates' journey.

[718] The crossing from Carthage to Rome is not so great the reasons adduced by Maran. but that those same legates, all whose delay at Rome would plainly have been useless, could easily have been back in Africa before the end of September, and so that in the same month Rogatianus the deacon could be sent to Caesarea of the Cappadocians to Firmilian, and toward the end of October or the beginning of November arrive there, and, winter having now begun, wish soon to return. Winter having now begun, I say; for nowhere is it said that Rogatianus arrived there before winter. I subjoin Firmilian's words: But since that legate sent by you was hastening to return to you, and the winter season was pressing, we have written back to your writings as much as we could. But these words signify the beginning of winter as much as the end of autumn; and we can so interpret them that Rogatianus hastened to return to Africa lest the winter, already begun and growing heavier, should, if not shut off his return, at least render it more troublesome.

§ XLII. The Saint writes on the same case to Firmilian, and receives a letter from him: what St. Augustine praised in the Saint concerning this controversy.

He writes to Firmilian, It cannot be doubted that the African prelates, and St. Cyprian especially, having learned from the legates returned from Rome the unhappy outcome of their case, were not a little disturbed, and, fearing lest the Roman Pontiff, whom they found immovable in his purpose, should proceed at last from threats to a sentence of excommunication, turned their minds in every direction to avert that thunderbolt from their heads. But since the holy Prelate knew that Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, had been reproved by St. Stephen for the same opinion, and in no dissimilar manner, together with many of his colleagues, it seemed good to him to give a letter to him, by which he might be informed of the state of the African church and of their common peril, and might declare what his own opinion then was. Our Bosch, in the often-cited preliminary Commentary on St. Stephen, §3, suspected that St. Cyprian took this counsel in order at the same time to exhort Firmilian that, if he had any friends either in the East or in Egypt whom he knew not to be suspect at Rome and to have some influence, he should employ them as intercessors against so great a misfortune. Which, although it may appear probable enough from other sources, nevertheless in Firmilian's reply nothing at all occurs that supports this suspicion; but that letter which St. Cyprian wrote on this occasion to Firmilian does not survive. Nevertheless that St. Dionysius of Alexandria contributed his labor and prayers in this case, we shall see below.

[720] There was sent therefore to Caesarea, toward the end of the month of September, as we proved in the preceding §, Rogatianus the deacon, and receives from him a sharp letter to whom St. Cyprian committed a letter to be carried to Firmilian, in which he either recited his own letter written to Pompey against St. Stephen, or at any rate transmitted it together with the letter, as will be evident from what is to be said. Nothing could have happened to Firmilian more welcome than this letter; since, being himself in the same crisis, he saw his own side vehemently strengthened by the accession of so great a Bishop, and at the same time of very many prelates of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania, and trusted that he had the less to fear from the just indignation of the Roman Pontiff, the more patrons of his opinion he could set against him. This joy of his he expressed both at the very beginning of Epistle 75, which he wrote back to St. Cyprian, by thanksgivings, and again a little later, in this manner: But learning about you, that you have arranged according to the rule of truth and the wisdom of Christ this matter which is now in question, we exulted with great gladness, and gave thanks to God, because we have found in brethren so far off so great a unanimity with us of faith and of truth.

[721] against St. Stephen, Now in this letter Firmilian repeated and approved the arguments produced by St. Cyprian in the letter to Pompey against St. Stephen, and added besides certain things which seemed to him to serve his cause; as will be manifest to one comparing both letters, and as Firmilian himself testifies in his own. For he writes thus in it: But we have taken up what was written by you as though it were our own; nor did we read it in passing, but, having often repeated it, committed it to memory. Nor does it hinder saving usefulness either to reweave the same things for the confirming of the truth, or to add certain things for the heaping up of the proof. But he boiled over far more vehemently than St. Cyprian, and with less self-control poured out very many things against St. Stephen no less injurious to him than unworthy of himself, some of which we touched on in the preceding §, and the rest of which I have no wish to report here; being such as I suppose he would himself have deleted, had Rogatianus, who cut short all delays of his return, granted him a space in which that turbulent commotion of mind might have cooled. Nor is it to be doubted that Firmilian, who deserved well of the Church of God against Paul of Samosata, and is inscribed in the Greek Menaea at the XXVIII day of October, washed away those gibes by penance, which will have to be examined at the said day.

[722] which we do not believe was translated by St. Cyprian. On the contrary I shall not readily allow myself to be persuaded that the said letter was made Latin from Greek with St. Cyprian as translator, as some have thought should be gathered from the similarity of style alone; for although it must be confessed that the holy Prelate in the present dissension sometimes from human frailty wrote rather harshly about St. Stephen, I do not however suppose that he was willing to expend his labor so that the revilings of an angry Firmilian against the same St. Stephen should be more widely spread rendered into Latin. Hence I wonder the more that this pleased Maran also, to whom the gentleness of the holy Prelate amid these very contentions seemed so great that he affirms it must without doubt be attributed to this, that he was willing to say not a word about St. Stephen's severity in rejecting the legates of the Africans in the letters to Jubaianus and Pompey, and also in the third Carthaginian council, all of which he places before Firmilian's letter. Besides, it does not appear sufficiently probable that St. Cyprian was the translator of a letter in which it is denied, as though from his mind and judgment, that heretics existed in the times of the Apostles, since he himself in the letter to Pompey had asserted the contrary, and had only said that afterwards even sharper ones broke out than those whom the Apostles condemned.

[723] The season of the year in which the aforesaid letter was written The time when this letter was written. we noted above from it; now take the year itself from the same. Firmilian, about to narrate in this letter the history of a certain pseudo-prophetess in Cappadocia, premises this about the time: For about twenty-two years ago, in the times after the emperor Alexander, many conflicts and pressures happened there. Firmilian therefore was writing these things in the twenty-second year running after the reign of Alexander: but he was slain in the year of Christ 235, and in the month of March, as most hold; from which time, if you count to the beginning of the winter of the year 256, you will have the twenty-second year already begun by some months from Alexander's destruction; and therefore both the aforesaid third council of Carthage and the things which followed it up to Firmilian's rescript are to be referred to the year 256, and cannot be deferred to the following year, in whose month of August St. Stephen was crowned with martyrdom, and St. Cyprian driven into exile.

[724] What was afterwards attempted on both sides in this controversy Being consulted by Magnus about the baptism of the Novatians, is unknown; but to this time I believe more probably belongs St. Cyprian's Epistle 76 to Magnus, which the most eminent Baronius at the year 258, num. 22, and after him Pearson at the year 255, num. 2, judge not improbably to have been given in the first place about the baptism of heretics, and which it is evident was written after the Pontificate of St. Cornelius, from the fact that express mention is made in it of his martyrdom. Now Magnus asks two things in it: first, whether among the other heretics those also who come from Novatian ought, after his profane laver, to be baptized and sanctified in the Catholic Church with the lawful and true and one baptism of the Church. The other, what … seems right about those who obtain the grace of God in infirmity and sickness (that is, those who, being in peril of life, are baptized on their bed by aspersion, and are therefore called clinics), whether they are to be held lawful Christians, because they have not been washed with the saving water but sprinkled.

[725] To both questions St. Cyprian answers in the affirmative; and about those baptized in bed, he answers; for no heretic or schismatic, of whatever kind he may be, can baptize; nor does it matter whether one be washed or sprinkled, whether in health or lying sick, when he is baptized in the Church of Christ. Toward the end however he admonishes, after his manner, that he thinks these things in such a way that he is unwilling on that account to condemn those who think otherwise, or to withdraw from their communion: I have written back, he says, dearest son, to your letter, so far as our small mediocrity availed, and have shown what we, so far as in us lies, think, prescribing to no one, so as to prevent each prelate from determining what he thinks, being about to render an account of his conduct to the Lord, according as the blessed apostle Paul writes and says in his epistle to the Romans: "Every one of us shall give account for himself. Let us not therefore judge one another."

[726] But the reason on account of which the aforesaid Baronius, and Pearson with him, which letter to this time judge it the first of all written by our Saint on this argument is this, that no mention is had in it of letters previously written to various bishops, nor of the councils gathered in Africa on that case, the citation of which might have seemed necessary. Thus the most eminent annalist, and not improbably. We however with Pamelius and others prefer to place it last, on account of the very argument of the letter. For the question here is not whether those dipped by any heretics whatever must, if they come to the Church, be baptized, as we saw above was doubted in Africa; but whether among the other heretics those also who come from Novatian ought, after his profane laver, to be baptized … in the Catholic Church. Already therefore the earlier question about baptizing all who had been baptized in any heresy whatever had been decided in Africa, and Magnus, adhering to that judgment as certain, doubted only whether the same should be determined about the Novatians.

[727] is more probably to be referred. A particular reason for doubting St. Cyprian there records thus: But if anyone objects this, saying that Novatian holds the same law which the Catholic Church holds; that he baptizes with the same formula with which we do; that he knows the same God the Father, the same Son Christ, the same Holy Spirit; and that on this account he can usurp the power of baptizing, because he seems not to differ from us in the interrogation of baptism, etc. This objection he then attempts to refute at length. Hence flows the answer to Baronius's argument: namely that it was not necessary that mention be made of the earlier letters and councils, whose judgment and decrees Magnus knew and approved;

but it was enough to have set forth their equity briefly, for the refreshing of his memory, and then to have proved at length that Novatian must be held in the same place as the other heretics and schismatics in the case of baptism; as St. Cyprian did in the aforesaid letter. Hence it is likewise plain why neither is the council of Agrippinus recorded in the same letter, whose citation must be said to have been no less necessary on Baronius's view, to which he seems not to have adverted. For the rest, that this letter was written when the dissension about baptism had arisen and was in force, the Saint's sharper words here and there sufficiently suggest.

[728] What St. Augustine thought about this whole It remains that we dispatch the other matters pertaining to this controversy of St. Cyprian. It is certain that our holy Prelate with the other patrons of the same opinion sharply defended an error which not only by far the greatest part of the Church then reprobated, but which afterwards the universal Church utterly proscribed, the penalty of excommunication being passed upon the refractory, which St. Stephen had formerly threatened. Certainly St. Augustine in book 2 On Baptism, chap. 9, and elsewhere, testifies that this controversy had already been settled before his times in a plenary council according to Stephen's judgment. Yet this deed of St. Cyprian's heterodox writers, and all who take ill the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff in questions pertaining to the faith, are wont to celebrate with great praises; and therefore they do not blush to gnaw with envious tooth at St. Stephen, whom, besides other notable merits, this very constancy in defending the Apostolic tradition made worthy of eternal memory. But it is not the place here to treat at length of these things, which properly pertain to that holy Pontiff and martyr, and about which therefore consult, if you please, the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of the same Saint, in our tom. 1 of August at the second day, §4, where it is shown that his acts against St. Cyprian and those who rebaptized were constantly approved from the beginning by the better part of the Church.

[729] dissension of St. Cyprian Certainly St. Augustine, although he excuses him in various places as much as he can, nevertheless does not absolve him from all fault, but in Epistle 93, elsewhere 48, to Vincentius the Rogatist, chap. 10, he writes: But moreover Cyprian either did not at all think what you recite him to have thought, or afterwards corrected this in the rule of truth, or covered over this blemish, as it were, of his most candid breast with the richness of charity, while he both most copiously defended the unity of the Church growing throughout the whole world, and most perseveringly held the bond of peace. For it is written: Charity covers a multitude of sins. There was added to this also that, as a most fruitful branch, if there was anything in him to be amended, the Father purged it with the pruning-hook of his passion. For the branch, says the Lord, which bears fruit in me, my Father purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Similar things he repeats in Epistle 108, elsewhere 255, to Macrobius, chap. 3, and in book 2 against Gaudentius, chap. 9.

[730] Hence too in book 2 On Baptism against the Donatists, in various places chap. 1, book 4, chap. 6, book 6, chap. 2, and book 7, chap. 1 and 20, he compares this same error of the Saint with the deed of St. Peter the Apostle, for which he judged, from the epistle to the Galatians, chap. 2, that he was seriously and rightly reproved by St. Paul. Take one passage for the rest, the first cited: If Peter could, I say, against the rule of truth which the Church afterwards held, compel the gentiles to judaize, why could not Cyprian, against the rule of truth which afterwards the whole Church held, compel heretics or schismatics to be baptized anew? I think that without any insult to himself Cyprian the bishop is compared with Peter the Apostle, so far as concerns the crown of martyrdom. For the rest I ought rather to fear lest I be insulting toward Peter. For who does not know that that principate of the Apostolate is to be preferred to any episcopate?

[731] Nor do I judge that the same holy doctor labored so greatly for any other cause, thought. now to call that deed into doubt, as he did both in the words reported at num. 702 and in those which are there subjoined, and in the aforesaid Epistle 108, and finally in book 1 against Cresconius the Donatist, chap. 82; now to excuse or diminish it, as he did in places almost innumerable in his lucubrations against the Donatists and Rogatists — I judge, I say, that he did this for no other cause than that he grieved that that blemish had ever crept into that candid breast of so great a Bishop and Martyr. For a like reason I think it came about that St. Pontius, Cyprian's deacon and the writer of his Life, did not touch even with a word on this whole controversy about the baptism of heretics, doubtless judging it better to press down with reverent silence the things which had befallen this excellent Prelate from human frailty in this case; for he does not seem likely to have passed over these things, if he had believed them worthy of so much praise as they seem to have deserved from the adversaries of Pontifical authority.

[732] But although we confess that St. Cyprian here suffered something human, Nevertheless he praised in him we nevertheless acknowledge and venerate in him his love of peace and unity amid these contentions, which St. Augustine in many places deservedly praised and set before the Donatists for imitation. For although the holy Prelate believed that the decree of Agrippinus, and his own decree, was plainly conformable to reasons which seemed true to him as he labored in a most obscure question and wavered about the remission of sins, as St. Augustine says in book 4 On Baptism, chap. 6 — although, I say, he believed his decree plainly conformable to those reasons, and saw it confirmed not only by the judgment of so many bishops of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania, but also of several Orientals, and by synods gathered there, and therefore boiled over rather vehemently against the Roman Pontiff who proscribed it, penalties of excommunication being even set forth — nevertheless he most zealously took care that neither he himself nor others should be separated from the communion of the Roman Church. Certainly the holy doctor made so much of this love of unity in him that he believed he was permitted by God to slip into this error, so that he might offer an example of peace and unity even amid sharp contentions to his contemporaries as much as to posterity.

[733] a notable love of concord amid the very disputes It would be long to recount the several passages of St. Augustine, and therefore I subjoin only one from book 1 On Baptism, chap. 18. That this (that those baptized by heretics should be baptized) is not rightly done, the Lord doubtless for this reason did not disclose to so great a Man, that his devout humility and charity in salutarily guarding the peace of the Church might be laid open, and might be signed, for a medicinal knowledge, so to speak, not only to the Christians of that time but also to those who came after. For when a Bishop of such merit, of so great a Church, of such a breast, of such utterance, of such virtue, thought otherwise about baptism than the truth, more diligently inquired into, was going to establish, and when many of his colleagues, though it was not yet clearly manifested, nevertheless held that which both the past custom of the Church and afterwards the whole Catholic world embraced; he did not nevertheless disjoin himself by a separated communion from the rest who thought differently, and he did not cease to persuade this to the rest also, that they should bear with one another in love, being zealous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. For thus, the framework of the body remaining, if anything in certain members was weak, it would rather grow strong from the health of those, than, being mortified by cutting off, admit the diligence of no cure.

[734] and of the unity of the Church. And if he had separated himself, how many would have followed! What a name he would have made for himself among men! How much more widely would they be called Cyprianists than Donatists! But he was not a son of perdition, of whom it is said: You cast them down while they were being exalted; but he was a son of the Church's peace, who, endowed with so great an illumination of heart, for this reason did not see something, that through him something else more surpassing might be seen. And still, says the Apostle, I show you a more surpassing way: If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, I am become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. He penetrated less far, so as to discern the hidden secret of the sacrament: but if, knowing all the sacraments, he had not had charity, he would be nothing. But when, perceiving that less, he nevertheless kept this humbly, faithfully, bravely, he deserved to attain the crown of martyrdom; so that, if any cloud from the human condition had crept into his lucid mind, it was put to flight by the glorious serenity of his shining blood…

[735] Since therefore that holy Man, thinking otherwise about baptism than the matter stood — which afterwards was thoroughly handled and confirmed by most diligent consideration — remained in Catholic unity, it was both compensated by the richness of his charity and purged by the pruning-hook of his passion. These and similar things St. Augustine has in various places, praising in our holy Prelate not his dissension from Stephen, but his love of unity, and praising this the more and the more frequently because he was writing against the Donatists, whom, as they boasted that Cyprian was their author in rebaptizing heretics, he continually pressed by the example of the same Saint that they should return to the unity of the Church, and from their own schism argued how far they differed from the mind and morals of this holy Martyr. From what has been said, gather how unfaithfully some report various passages of St. Augustine, as though this holy doctor had said that in that whole controversy nothing was done by St. Cyprian but what was worthy of the highest praise.

§ XLIII. Stephen never excommunicated St. Cyprian, but the latter always lived in his communion and in that of his successor, and was crowned with martyrdom.

St. Stephen, the excommunication What we have thus far alleged from SS. Cyprian and Augustine puts it beyond doubt that our holy Prelate, notwithstanding the contention, was unwilling to depart from the communion of the Roman Church, and labored with all zeal that those who thought with him should not separate themselves from it. But there are some, among whom is Tillemont, who either openly say that he was in fact excommunicated by St. Stephen, or at any rate so speak as to wish this to be persuaded to their readers; namely in order to gnaw at the authority of the Apostolic See, while they devise that so notable a Bishop and Martyr lived and died excluded from it. But if they had consulted St. Augustine in this part with as even a mind as that with which they eagerly seized upon, and unjustly interpreted against St. Stephen, whatever that holy doctor wrote against the Donatists and Rogatists for excusing Cyprian and praising what he had done well, they would certainly have recognized that the sentence of excommunication was indeed threatened by the holy Pontiff, but never nevertheless passed; and they would not have besprinkled with that stain a Prelate most loving of Catholic unity.

[737] And so let us hear St. Augustine. He, in the single book On Baptism against Petilian, which he threatened against the Saint, chap. 14, objects to the Donatists — who, while they commended St. Cyprian's authority for baptizing heretics, alleged as the cause of their schism that there were many evil men in the Catholic Church, and that the good were contaminated by communicating with them — as an insoluble argument, St. Cyprian's uninterrupted communion, both with St. Stephen and with all those whom he

admitted into the Church as baptized by heretics. The passage is indeed rather long, but notable, and therefore I subjoin it here. But I wish him (Petilian) to solve a question for me, he says: since, when he commemorated the Bishops of the Roman Church in order, he commemorated among them Stephen also, whom he confessed to have borne the Episcopate unimpaired. Since therefore Stephen not only did not rebaptize heretics, but even judged that those who did this, or who decreed that it should be done, must be excommunicated, as the letters of other bishops and of Cyprian himself show; nevertheless Cyprian remained with him in the peace of unity. What will they say here? Let them shake out their wits as much as they can, and consider whether they are able to answer.

[738] Behold, there were two at one time (to be silent about others) who thought differently: never inflicted upon him; there were two bishops of the most eminent churches, namely the Roman and the Carthaginian, Stephen and Cyprian, both established in Catholic unity; of whom Stephen judged that the baptism of Christ was to be repeated in no one, and was gravely angry with those who did this; but Cyprian judged that those baptized in heresy or schism, as not having the baptism of Christ, must be baptized in the Catholic Church. Many thought with the former, some also with the latter, both parties standing with them in unity. If therefore what these men say is true, and from which they attempt to assert or to excuse the cause of their separation — that in one communion of the Sacraments the bad stain the good, and that therefore one must withdraw from the contagion of the bad by bodily disjunction, lest all perish together — then it must be confessed that already in the times of Stephen and Cyprian the Church perished, and that none was left to posterity, in which Donatus himself might be spiritually born.

[739] but the latter always lived in his communion, But if they judge it wicked to say this, because it is in truth wicked; so the Church remained from those times down to the times of Caecilian and Majorinus, or Donatus, nor could they destroy it by staining it, whoever were admitted into it, according to them, without baptism, full of all their sins and crimes; nor was any division from their communion made by Cyprian and those who likewise thought about baptism as he did, since they did not judge that in the unity and communion of the Sacraments of Christ they could be stained by the evils of others; so could the Church thereafter continue, which, growing throughout the whole world, as was foretold of it, the crimes of others — of any traitors and criminals whatever — could in no way stain. Then, a few things intervening, when he had also produced sentences of sacred Scripture which the Donatists, ill interpreting, boasted that they followed, he thus continues again: Which divine testimonies or precepts nevertheless, if Cyprian had understood them in the way these men do, he would assuredly have separated himself from Stephen, nor would he have persisted with him in the communion of Catholic unity. For he, according to the opinion which these men think must be held about baptism, in admitting into the Church heretics and schismatics who, as they suppose, did not have baptism, communicated in the sins of others; because forsooth the sins of those who had not been washed with true baptism assuredly remained in them. Cyprian therefore ought to have withdrawn from his communion…

[740] always lived, Since therefore he did not do this, but remained with them in unity, the whole mass of that unity was then corrupted, nor did the Church persevere which afterwards was to bear their saints Majorinus and Donatus. Because they by no means dare to say this, it remains that they confess that the good remained with the bad in the communion of the Christian Sacraments without any stain of their own, and that the Church persevered down to the time of Caecilian, etc. How at length, and how vehemently, does the holy doctor here press the Donatists, proving from Cyprian's deed — as from a thing by no means doubtful and most well known — of perpetually preserving communion with Stephen and with those whom he did not believe baptized, that the Catholic Church perseveres, although many bad men, such as the Donatists reckoned those baptized by heretics to be, communicate in it? But this whole argument would have been nerveless and empty, if the Roman Pontiff had excommunicated St. Cyprian: for to say that he, notwithstanding that excommunication, remained in his communion, is too vain.

[741] and in it The same holy doctor in book 4 On Baptism, chap. 9, writes again thus to our purpose: With this patience of charity he (our Saint) tolerated … in an obscure question good colleagues who thought otherwise not from malevolence, just as he himself was tolerated; until in process of time the most salutary custom, when God willed, should be confirmed, the truth being declared, by a plenary council. Since therefore it is evident from St. Cyprian himself that the defenders of the Catholic judgment were so tolerated by him that he was unwilling on that account to excommunicate anyone, or to withdraw from anyone's communion and unity; consequently neither was he himself, on St. Augustine's testimony, excommunicated by the Roman Pontiff. I add another testimony also of the same St. Augustine from book 5 of the aforesaid Work, chap. 25, where this is to be read: Stephen … had even thought that those must be excluded who attempted to overthrow the ancient custom about receiving heretics: but this man (the holy Prelate of Carthage), moved by the difficulty of the question itself, and most abundantly endowed with the holy bowels of charity, judged that one must remain in unity with those who thought differently. So, although he was indignant somewhat more excitedly, but nevertheless in a brotherly way, yet the peace of Christ conquered in their hearts, so that in such a dispute no evil of schism arose between them.

[742] But how did the peace of Christ conquer in their hearts, he was crowned with martyrdom. how did no evil of schism arise between them, if the one was on that account separated from the other's communion? Further, that he also died in this communion, he teaches both elsewhere and in Epistle 108, elsewhere 255, to Macrobius, asserting that he was crowned with martyrdom, not because he was slain for the name of Christ, but because he was slain for the name of Christ in the bosom of unity. For he himself, he continues, wrote and most confidently asserts that those who are outside unity, even if they die for that Name, can be slain, but cannot be crowned. Nor did St. Jerome think otherwise, who in the Altercation against the Luciferians held this for so certain and explored that he did not hesitate to prove even from it that St. Cyprian never pronounced an anathema against the party opposed to him. His words are these: But if those who were instructed by Hilary, and have begun to be sheep without a shepherd, should wish to bring forward from the Scriptures those things which blessed Cyprian left in his letters about rebaptizing heretics; let them know that he did not publish these with an anathema against those who had been unwilling to follow him. Seeing that he remained in the communion of those who had gone against his opinion.

[743] The testimonies drawn from St. Augustine Tillemont did not ignore, An answer is given to the arguments, nor did he nevertheless judge that the controversy could be settled by them. For he answers, art. 47, that it is indeed manifest that the peace of Christ, as St. Augustine says, conquered in the heart of St. Cyprian, and that no schism arose from him; but that it cannot so easily be maintained that St. Stephen did not break communion and peace with him. That the holy doctor's words are to be taken in the former way, he judges from the book On the One Baptism, chap. 14, because in it, in the words recited at num. 737 and following, he writes that, although St. Stephen judged that those must be excommunicated who rebaptized heretics, Cyprian nevertheless always persisted in his unity and peace, in that neither he nor those who thought with him ever separated themselves from the communion of others. In this sense Tillemont admits that no schism arose between them, St. Cyprian constantly persevering in the unity of charity. He adds also that this can be said, either because the excommunication which St. Stephen had inflicted or had wished to inflict was not carried into execution, the bishops on both sides persisting in unity; or because the Pontiff himself relaxed that rigor; or finally because the other bishops did not consent with him in this part, although they held the same opinion with him about not rebaptizing those baptized among heretics.

[744] Then he suggests thus which of these he himself prefers to be believed: by which Tillemont But it cannot so easily be maintained that Stephen did not on his own part break communion and peace. And perhaps St. Augustine himself, if he had had to declare his mind, would have spoken otherwise, especially if he had seen those things which we have in Eusebius, and much more those which we have in Firmilian's letter. How wretchedly does he here torment himself, in order, if he does not persuade the reader, at least to stir up in him the suspicion that the holy Bishop of Carthage lived estranged from the communion of the Roman Pontiff, and thus to gnaw at the authority of the Apostolic See. But to these things I answer first of all that that interpretation of Tillemont's, as though St. Augustine had only meant to say that Catholic peace and communion was not broken by St. Cyprian, but was by Stephen, is too empty and unworthy of a learned man. For with what probability, St. Augustine's judgment being preserved, does he obtrude that Cyprian, of whom he says at num. 737: With him … he remained in the peace of unity, was excommunicated by the Roman Pontiff? And at num. 741: He tolerated … good colleagues (among whom St. Stephen is certainly reckoned) who thought otherwise not from malevolence, just as he himself was tolerated. On what ground will he persuade us that the one was severed from the other's communion, in whose hearts the peace of Christ so conquered that in such a dispute no evil of schism arose between them, and that the holy Prelate persisted with him (St. Stephen) in the communion of Catholic unity?

[745] strives to call it into doubt; Wonderful indeed is this Catholic peace and communion, where the one separates himself from the other by excommunication. Certainly this was unknown to St. Augustine, who in book 5 On Baptism, chap. 17, grants indeed that the good can have peace toward the bad, but cannot hold it with those who have broken it. The holy doctor there treats of this same controversy, and of the peace nevertheless preserved, and speaks thus: He (our holy Prelate) saw and perceived that even those who thought differently could think so with charity preserved; for he would not say that he held divine concord and the Lord's peace with the bad: for a good man can have peace toward the bad; but he cannot hold with them a peace which they themselves do not hold. And what at length is it to hold peace with someone, other than to remain in peace with him, to persist with him in the communion of Catholic unity, which Augustine expressly asserts above that St. Cyprian did with St. Stephen?

[746] and from which he conjectures, Nor can that be admitted either which he says in the same place, that perhaps it is thus said that no schism arose between them, because, the bishops on both sides persisting in mutual unity, the excommunication was passed in vain; for St. Augustine does not merely say that the prelates of both opinions stood in mutual unity, but that they stood and persevered with him (namely St. Stephen) in unity always, as has already been shown.

For the rest, he speaks to no purpose of the execution of an excommunication which we deny was inflicted, and which he himself does not prove. Hence equally empty is the conjecture about a relaxed rigor, if he means that a sentence of excommunication passed by the Pontiff against St. Cyprian and the rest who agreed with him was afterwards revoked by him; but if he means that that sentence which he had threatened, his former rigor being relaxed, was never passed, we shall gladly agree with him, as will be plain from what is to be said. Tillemont doubtless perceived that St. Augustine was too manifestly against him in this part, and therefore, I suppose, he had recourse to saying that he himself, if he had had to declare his mind, would perhaps have spoken otherwise, especially if he had seen what is read on this subject in Eusebius and Firmilian. But what else is this than, out of a mind inclined to one side, to divine against the holy doctor's express judgment?

[747] Let us see however whether the things by which he attempts to confirm this conjecture of his that St. Augustine on this matter are of such moment that St. Augustine must on their account be said to have been about to speak otherwise. Whether he ever read the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius as it was written by him in Greek, I do not dispute; but that he read it rendered into Latin by Rufinus he certainly testifies in the book On Care for the Dead, chap. 6, in these words: We read in the Ecclesiastical History which Eusebius wrote in Greek and Rufinus translated into the Latin tongue. It remains therefore to inquire whether Rufinus writes that St. Stephen acted less severely in the present controversy than Eusebius does. Eusebius, cited by Tillemont, has this in book 7, chap. 3: First of all, Cyprian, who at that time governed the church of Carthage, judged that they must not be admitted unless they had first been cleansed from error by baptism. But Stephen, judging that nothing should be innovated against the tradition which had prevailed already from the earliest times, took it most grievously.

[748] Then in chap. 7, when he had said that Sixtus succeeded Stephen: would have written otherwise, To him, he says, Dionysius wrote a second letter about baptism, in which he set forth the opinion and judgment of Stephen and likewise of the other bishops, writing thus about Stephen: He had indeed previously written a letter about Helenus and about Firmilian, and finally about all the priests established through Cilicia, Cappadocia, and all the neighboring provinces, that he would for that cause withdraw from their communion, because they rebaptized heretics. And see, I beg you, the gravity of the business: for in truth in very great councils of bishops, as I hear, it was decreed that those who come from the heretics to the Catholic Church should first be made catechumens, and then be purged by baptism from the filth of the old and impure leaven. About all these things I sent a letter to him (St. Stephen), asking and adjuring… But to our dearest … brethren and fellow-presbyters, Dionysius and Philemon, who had previously thought the same as Stephen, and had written to me about the same matters, I wrote before indeed briefly, but now at greater length. These are the things which Eusebius inserted into his History from St. Dionysius of Alexandria about the aforesaid contention of SS. Stephen and Cyprian and of the other bishops.

[749] But Rufinus, after he had said wrongly in book 7, chap. 2, if he had read Eusebius's History that this controversy about baptism arose between SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, and that the latter's opinion was refuted by the former, priestly concord however remaining; says in chap. 3 about St. Stephen: Likewise, as Cornelius *, he passed judgment about not rebaptizing. And again in chap. 4: To whom (St. Sixtus, Stephen's successor) Dionysius, writing about baptism, recalling what indeed Stephen his predecessor had determined, writing to Firmilian and Helenus and the other bishops of those parts, that neither must communion be held with those who rebaptize; but that the greatness of the matter must be considered, because it is not just anyone, but very great and noble men among the bishops to whom this has seemed good. He says also that on this account he wrote more fully to Dionysius and Philemon, presbyters of the city of Rome. Thus Rufinus, read by St. Augustine, as we have proved.

[750] Let the fair reader now judge on account of what discrepancy between the two narratives St. Augustine, and Firmilian's letter as Tillemont would have it believed, would have judged otherwise if he had read Eusebius. For indeed what Rufinus says, that Stephen wrote that neither must communion be held with those who rebaptize, could rather have impelled the holy doctor to the contrary opinion than what Eusebius, or in Eusebius St. Dionysius, relates, that the same Pontiff wrote that he would for that cause withdraw from their communion; for this he could have interpreted only of threats aimed, but that absolutely of an excommunication already passed. To Firmilian's authority we have already answered above in §41, and have shown that in the letter cited by Tillemont he blurted out many things against the holy Pontiff from a disturbed and inflamed mind, beyond what was fair and becoming, not to say anything harsher, which have no appearance of truth; so that it is no wonder if he exaggerated his severity, and obtruded threats as deeds.

[751] had read. We gave examples in the same place; I observe here this one thing only, that if anyone hold all Firmilian's statements for true, he must needs say that St. Stephen dissented with so many bishops throughout the whole world, and broke peace with each by a various kind of discord; which about that holy Pontiff, who deserved most excellently of the Church of God in preserving the Apostolic tradition, and was honored with the crown of martyrdom, and whose Episcopate even the Donatists themselves, as we saw at num. 737, acknowledged to have been borne unimpaired — this, I say, he will certainly not persuade me. Hence it matters little whether St. Augustine saw Firmilian's letter or not, whose statements he certainly could not have approved; since he did not approve even those of St. Cyprian against the same Pontiff, though far less sharp. To these it is added that, even if the legates of the Africans had been rather severely rejected by him and prohibited from his conversation, as Firmilian narrates, they would not on that account have to be said to have been excommunicated by him; as Pierre Coustant in the Letters of the Roman Pontiffs, in the dissertation on Stephen's true judgment concerning the reception of heretics, §7, and Noël Alexandre, Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 3, dissert. 12, art. 12, proposition 2, of the Paris edition of the year 1714, have already shown.

[752] Stephen prudently relaxes his severity It is therefore not to be doubted that St. Stephen, who had hoped that the Africans as well as the Orientals would be deterred by just threats from proscribing the Apostolic custom, when he perceived that nothing was gained by these, but that on the contrary minds were being more and more exacerbated, determined by an excellent counsel that something of his severity, however just, must be relaxed, and that meanwhile those who thought differently must be tolerated in his communion, lest the medicine should turn to poison for them. To persuade the holy Pontiff to this so salutary gentleness St. Dionysius of Alexandria labored, who, as we saw at num. 748 from Eusebius's History, sent a letter to him on this matter, asking and adjuring. Probably there labored also St. Dionysius, then a presbyter of the Roman Church and afterwards Pontiff, and Philemon, likewise a presbyter of the same Church, whom, as has likewise been shown in the place just cited, wrote to the aforesaid St. Dionysius of Alexandria on the same argument, and received a reply. For when that holy Alexandrian bishop says of them in the same place: They had previously thought the same as Stephen, I judge that this is so to be taken that he means that they previously judged with St. Stephen that the patrons of the opposite opinion must be excommunicated, but afterwards preferred gentler counsels to severe ones; for it is not probable that they fell away from the Catholic judgment of their holy Pontiff to the adversaries, whom not only the Romans but also by far the greatest portion of the Church opposed.

* i.e. As Cornelius

§ XLIV. Whether, and when, St. Cyprian and the other bishops of his opinion retracted the aforesaid error.

St. Augustine admonishes that it must be judged It remains that we see whether our holy Prelate at length acknowledged his error, and whether, as he lived and was slain in the unity of the Church and in the communion of the Roman Pontiff, so he also at some time embraced the same opinion with him. St. Augustine confesses that he can prove this by no testimony of the ancients; nevertheless he wishes it to be believed, and suspects that that salutary recantation of the most holy Martyr was perhaps deliberately suppressed by those who preferred to follow his error. For in Epistle 93, elsewhere 48, to Vincentius the Rogatist, chap. 10, he writes thus: But that Cyprian thought otherwise about baptism than the form and custom of the Church held is found not in the canonical writings, but in his own and in the letters of the council: but that he corrected that opinion is not found; nevertheless it is not incongruously to be judged of such a Man that he did correct it, and that perhaps it was suppressed by those who were too much delighted with this error and were unwilling to lack so great a patronage, as it were.

[754] The same in book 2 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 4, says again of the same: that St. Cyprian afterwards corrected his error: For if he praises and proclaims Peter as having been patiently and concordantly corrected by one later colleague, how much more quickly would he himself with the council of his own province have yielded to the authority of the whole world, the truth being laid open; because assuredly so holy a Soul, so peaceable, could most easily consent even to one man speaking and demonstrating the truth: and perhaps it was done; but we do not know. For neither could all the things which at that time were done among the bishops be committed to memory and to writing, nor do we know all the things which were so committed. And in the same place, chap. 5: Therefore for the most part something is less revealed to the more learned, so that their patient and humble charity, in which there is greater fruit, may be proved; either how they hold unity when in more obscure matters they think differently; or how they receive the truth when they learn that it has been declared against what they thought. Of which two we hold one manifested in blessed Cyprian; that is, how he held unity with those from whom he thought differently. For he says: Judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he shall have thought differently.

[755] But the other, that is, how he could receive the truth once found against what he thought, afterwards corrected: although the writings are silent, his merits cry out; if a letter is not found, his crown testifies; if a council of bishops does not indicate it, the fellowship of the angels indicates it. For it is no small evidence of a most peaceable Soul to have deserved martyrdom in that unity from which, though thinking differently, he was unwilling to separate himself. These things about St. Cyprian's recantation St. Augustine says, which he judged so worthy of so great a Bishop and Martyr, and so just and necessary, that, because he could not prove it by certain testimony, if anyone should nevertheless have wished to deny it, he had recourse now to the abundance of the holy Prelate's charity, now to the pruning-hook of his passion, in order to persuade that this error, as a blemish of his most candid breast, was either covered over or purged by the Father of the household. So far was he from those who, being unjust toward the Roman Chair, and by the example of those

of whom the holy doctor speaks at num. 253, although on a dissimilar ground, being too much delighted with his error, prefer to believe that the holy Martyr persisted in that opinion of his until death.

[756] Bede expressly affirms it; Nor did it seem otherwise to the venerable Bede than to St. Augustine, who did not hesitate to assert that salutary recantation of the most holy Man as certain and beyond doubt, and to report it as the reward of his charity, in the book of various Questions, question 5, where on that saying of the Apostle, Let each abound in his own sense, he writes thus: If you work through charity the good things which you know, the divine grace will grant you that, if you have any opinion otherwise than is fitting, you may at some time understand this also; as it is plain happened to blessed Cyprian; who with his fellow-bishops who were in Africa determined, against the custom of the Church, that heretics must be rebaptized: but because in his own sense, which seemed right to him, he was zealous to abound in good works, he soon deserved to be corrected, and to be brought back to the universal norm of the holy Church by the instruction of spiritual men. This venerable writer is indeed removed by several centuries from the age of St. Cyprian, but is nevertheless so conspicuous in sanctity and doctrine that no one would prudently suspect that he wrote these things rashly and without any testimony of the ancients, and adduced as an example a deed which he had nowhere read. Hence not improbable is the conjecture of our Bosch in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of St. Stephen, §4, that some writing, which St. Augustine suspected to have been craftily suppressed, came into the hands of St. Bede, whence he learned that recantation.

[757] which St. Jerome too about the African bishops Older than Bede, St. Jerome in the Dialogue against the Luciferians, although he does not expressly assert this about St. Cyprian, nevertheless expressly affirms it about the other bishops who had thought with him. Blessed Cyprian, he says, strove to flee broken cisterns and not to drink of another's water; and therefore, reproving the baptism of heretics, he directed the African synod on this matter to Stephen, then Bishop of the city of Rome, who was the twenty-sixth from blessed Peter; but his effort was in vain. Finally those very bishops who with him had determined that heretics must be rebaptized, having rolled back to the ancient custom, issued a new decree. What do we do? So both our elders handed it down to us, and to them their own elders. Thus St. Jerome about the African bishops; but about the Orientals Cresconius the Donatist testifies the same in St. Augustine, in his book 3 against him, chap. 2, in which the holy doctor writes this: But your forefathers, of whom you gave such testimony, "that they were separated from the communion of the Orientals for this reason, that they rescinded their own judgment, by which it had pleased them that in that question of baptism agreement should be given to Cyprian and to that African council," acted against Cyprian.

[758] and the Donatists asserted about the Orientals. Behold, this very Cresconius, although he pertinaciously rejected the baptism of heretics, and therefore gloried in the authority both of St. Cyprian and of the Oriental bishops, could nevertheless not but confess the recantation of the latter. Now St. Augustine took up these words of Cresconius in the same place, chap. 3, thus: Accordingly, if it is at all now to be believed that fifty bishops of the Orientals held what seventy Africans, or even somewhat more, held, against so many thousands of bishops to whom this error was displeasing in the whole world; why should we not rather say that even those few Orientals corrected their judgment, not, as you say, rescinded it? For as it is praiseworthy not to be moved from a true opinion, so it is blameworthy to persist in a false one, never to have held which is the first praise, the second to change it, so that either from the beginning the true one may remain, or, the false one being changed, the true one may succeed. But now who would believe that St. Cyprian alone, the other bishops embracing the truth, persisted in his error, and defended it until death against so many thousands of bishops to whom this error was displeasing in the whole world? That surely seems not able to be fastened upon the most holy Martyr without some mark of pertinacity.

[759] But at what time then, you will say, must St. Cyprian and the other bishops praised above be said to have changed their opinion? This salutary recantation The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 259, num. 1 and following, judges that this was done by the Orientals while St. Stephen was still living, who suffered in the month of August of the year 257. What made him believe so was an ill-understood passage of Eusebius from book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 4, which I subjoin here. To him therefore (St. Stephen), as I have said, Dionysius (bishop of Alexandria) wrote many things by letter on this argument (namely about the baptism of heretics); in which he at length indicates this to him, that all the churches everywhere, the fury of the persecution being now softened, detesting the turbulent novelty of Novatus, had entered into peace among themselves. This Baronius took of the Orientals' agreement with the Catholic judgment of St. Stephen, observing that their former error is therefore called by Eusebius the novelty of Novatus, or Novatian, because he with sacrilegious daring rebaptized all who fell away from the Catholic Church to his schism; and the most eminent man believed this the more readily because Eusebius in fact speaks in chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the case of those who rebaptized, and on the occasion of the letters written about it by St. Dionysius to St. Stephen records the aforesaid concord, as though it pertained to that matter.

[760] But that this error about the baptism of heretics had not yet been laid aside by the Orientals in the time of St. Stephen not to Stephen's, is manifest from the same chapter 5. For in it is reported a fragment of the letter of the aforesaid St. Dionysius of Alexandria, which he wrote about the same case, as by no means then settled among the Asiatics, to St. Sixtus II, Stephen's immediate successor, and to holy Dionysius and Philemon, then presbyters of the Roman Church, and of whom the former afterwards succeeded the same Sixtus in the Pontificate, in the words which we recited at num. 748. But what the same Eusebius relates in chap. 4 about St. Dionysius of Alexandria's letter given to St. Stephen concerning the detestation of the novelty of Novatus, that is, Novatian, and the concord entered into by the Orientals, is to be taken of the proscribing of Novatian's heresy, which we said on this very day in the historical Commentary on the acts of the same St. Cornelius, §10, was condemned probably by a synod convened at Antioch, while Lucius or Cornelius sat at Rome, although some of the bishops had previously inclined toward it.

[761] It appears more probable that the aforesaid dissension about baptism was at length so composed under the aforesaid holy Pontiff Sixtus II both in the East but to the Pontificate of Sixtus II and in Africa, that the bishops of both churches, laying aside their error, yielded their conquered hands to the truth. And of the Orientals indeed there is as evidence the other letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria written to the same holy Pontiff, and reported by Eusebius in book 7, chap. 9. For whereas he, on St. Jerome's testimony in the Catalogue of Writers, had previously agreed with the doctrine of St. Cyprian and of the African synod, he afterwards in the letter just cited showed himself so alien from it that he did not dare even to baptize, without consulting St. Sixtus, one of his flock who, having long before been admitted into the assembly of the faithful, then asserted that he had formerly been dipped by heretics with a baptism far different from that which the Church uses, and full of blasphemy and impiety, and therefore demanded with groaning to be washed in the sacred laver of Christ. And this indeed about the Orientals: but that the same was performed by the Africans and by holy Cyprian, as St. Augustine admonishes must altogether be judged, and as Jerome and the venerable Bede expressly affirm was done, is not ineptly gathered from Pontius in the Life, num. 29.

[762] seems to be referred. For he says thus to our purpose: Already about Xystus, a good and peaceable priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, a message had come from the City; namely that he had already been crowned with martyrdom. But no more probable reason can be adduced why Sixtus II should be so studiously called by St. Cyprian's deacon a good and peaceable priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, than that he amicably composed the dispute begun under his predecessor St. Stephen, and fully reconciled a peace not indeed broken but nevertheless disturbed, the bishops who had thought differently being peacefully led back to embracing the Catholic tradition. For neither can it be said that he is so called because he removed an excommunication inflicted by his predecessor, which we proved in §43 was never inflicted; much less because he followed the opinion of Cyprian and the rest, which no one hitherto, and not even the Donatists themselves, has dreamed. This peace and concord is solidly confirmed by the African church's communion with the Roman under the same Sixtus, which St. Cyprian's Epistle 82 to Successus teaches passed between them, in which it is related both that he consulted the Romans about the persecution and that he received a reply from them, St. Sixtus having then been taken away by martyrdom.

[763] The arguments are refuted, Now although all these things altogether persuade that the opinion of SS. Jerome, Augustine, and Bede about the recantation of St. Cyprian and of those adhering to him — a recantation so salutary and most worthy of them — is most true; nevertheless not only some heretics, which is the less to be wondered at, but also Launoy, Tillemont, and others strive either openly to deny it, or at least to call it into doubt. Launoy, cited in Schelstrate's Antiquity illustrated concerning the councils, part 2, dissert. 1, chap. 5, art. 3, does not hesitate to charge with falsity the words of St. Jerome which we gave at num. 757, and denies that any decree for retracting the error ever issued from the African bishops who had agreed with St. Cyprian. He draws his reason from canon 8 of the synod of Arles and from St. Basil's letter to Amphilochius, in which he contends that it is asserted that all of them always persevered in their custom of rebaptizing. Besides, he asks why, if the aforesaid decree is true, the Donatists so often objected St. Cyprian's letters and the African synod to the Catholics, and why St. Augustine did not repress them by producing the same decree. Finally he suspects that there shone before St. Jerome a little book entitled The Penance of St. Cyprian, and rejected among the apocrypha by a Roman synod many years after the death of the same St. Jerome. These things he confidently says, to each of which let us reply.

[764] by which some wish to persuade, Canon 8 of the first council of Arles, objected by Launoy, in Labbe, tom. 1 of the Councils, col. [ ], runs thus: About the Africans, in that they use their own law, that they rebaptize, it has seemed good that, if anyone come to the Church from * heresy, they question him on the creed; and if they perceive that he was baptized in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let a hand only be laid on him, that he may receive the Holy Spirit. But if, being questioned, he does not answer with this Trinity, let him be baptized. This Launoy would have taken of the Africans generally, which Jacques Sirmond in his posthumous Notes on that council, published

by Labbe after tom. 1 of the Collection of the Councils, rightly warns was said of schismatics alone. And this he solidly proves from St. Optatus, bishop of Milevis, book 1 On the schism of the Donatists, where sentence is said to have been passed against Donatus, who was promoting a schism against Caecilian, bishop of Carthage, in a Roman council under St. Melchiades the Pope, held not long before the first of Arles, for this very reason, that he confessed that he had rebaptized and had laid a hand on lapsed bishops, which is alien from the Church. But on the contrary Caecilian was declared innocent by the votes of all, the witnesses brought forward by Donatus confessing that they had nothing to say against Caecilian.

[765] But now with what appearance of probability will Launoy here reply, that the aforesaid error either that Donatus was condemned by St. Melchiades and the other fathers of the council because he had rebaptized, while Caecilian was absolved, although he held the same error; or that the supporters of Donatus did not intervene against the sentence, even though the other bishops of the African church, no otherwise than he, rebaptized? Assuredly they could have produced nothing more suitable for Donatus, at least in this part, than that common custom of rebaptizing which Launoy would have believed to have been preserved from the age first of Agrippinus and then of St. Cyprian down to that time. Now not long after, as I have said, the aforesaid council of Arles, at which various African prelates also took part, was convened in the same case of the Donatists, St. Silvester I the Pope now sitting at Rome, and the Donatists were again condemned; and therefore that canon 8 is likewise to be taken of them. In vain therefore does Launoy oppose this canon to the most clear words of St. Jerome, which, compared with the sayings of St. Optatus of Milevis, not only do not conflict with them but greatly favor them, as will be plain to one who considers.

[766] In vain too does he cite for his opinion the canonical letters of St. Basil to Amphilochius, was never corrected by St. Cyprian and the other bishops, in which the discourse is not about the Africans but about the Asiatics, and there is treatment of various heretics and schismatics, of some of whom Basil admits the baptism, of others reproves it. For the rest, in canon 1 he says indeed: It seemed good to the ancients, I mean Cyprian and our Firmilian, to subject all these to one reckoning, the Cathari and the Encratites and the Hydroparastatae; but he does not deny that this was retracted by them. Nay, about the Cathari he subjoins in the same place: But since it has altogether seemed good to some of the Asiatics that their baptism, for the sake of consulting for a greater number, should be received; let it be received. And when in canon 47 he says: Among you (at Iconium) rebaptism has been prohibited, as also among the Romans; he manifestly relates that the error of rebaptizing, once established at Iconium in a synod, had already in his own time been abolished there; and thus it does not stand against our opinion, but rather in some way confirms it. Finally, what Tillemont likewise objects in art. 51 pertains equally to the Asiatics, and therefore does not serve to weaken St. Jerome's authority.

[767] To Launoy's second argument I answer that the Donatists objected to the Catholics St. Cyprian's letters and the African synod because these were extant and commonly most well known; but of the recantation of Cyprian and of the other bishops there was no such evidence from any document that was known to be producible. Hence, since St. Augustine could not convict them by a document of this kind, he repressed them as far as he could by replying that this must altogether be judged of such a Man. But that he could not prove that recantation by any writing, he denies that it is rightly concluded from this that it either was not made or was not committed to writing, since, as he says at num. 753, that perhaps was suppressed by those who were too much delighted with this error, and were unwilling to lack so great a patronage, as it were. And in the following number: For neither could all the things which at that time were done among the bishops be committed to memory and to writing, nor do we know all the things which were so committed.

[768] had been. Finally at num. 755 he says again: Although the writings are silent, his merits cry out; if a letter is not found, his crown testifies; if a council of bishops does not indicate it, the fellowship of the angels indicates it. For the rest, why could not that have come into the hands of St. Jerome and the venerable Bede which St. Augustine had not found, and suspected to have been craftily suppressed? What Launoy adds about a little book entitled The Penance of St. Cyprian, and afterwards rejected among the apocrypha by a Roman synod, as though it had shone before St. Jerome in this part, does not deserve an answer; for it pertains to another St. Cyprian, and no mention is made in it of the baptism of heretics, but his coming over from magic and the worship of idols to the rites of Christ is narrated.

* al. from this

§ XLV. The primacy of St. Peter and of his successors in the Roman Chair acknowledged and asserted by St. Cyprian.

The primacy of the whole Church Since this famous dispute about baptism, of which we have treated hitherto, and some other acts of St. Cyprian also, reported in the course of this Commentary, seem apt for those envious of the Roman Church to persuade that the primacy of the Apostolic See was unknown to our holy Prelate, I have thought it necessary to discuss that question in this §. It is not however my intention to treat it in a long dissertation, which belongs properly to theologians, and by whom we have observed above that this has already often been done. This one thing therefore I shall here show from the Cyprianic Works, that the primacy of the Roman Pontiff in the universal Church was by St. Cyprian not only acknowledged but also asserted; and that the contrary cannot be proved from the aforesaid dissension and from his other deeds.

[770] was given to St. Peter St. Cyprian, in his notable book On the Unity of the Church, having premised that heresies and schisms arise at the devil's instigation, thus continues: This comes about, most beloved brethren, when there is no return to the origin of truth, and the head is not sought, and the doctrine of the heavenly Master is not kept: which if anyone consider and examine, there is no need of a long treatise and of arguments. The proof is easy for faith in a compendium of the truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: "I say to you, he says, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and what you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven." And again to the same after his resurrection he says: "Feed my sheep." Upon that one man he builds his Church, and to him he entrusts his sheep to be fed.

[771] And although after his resurrection he grants equal power to all the Apostles and says: by Christ, St. Cyprian "As the Father has sent me, I also send you; receive the Holy Spirit, if you shall have remitted anyone's sins, they shall be remitted to him; if you shall have retained anyone's, they shall be retained;" nevertheless, that he might manifest unity, he disposed by his own authority the origin of that same unity as beginning from one. This assuredly the other Apostles also were, which Peter was, endowed with an equal share both of honor and of power; but the beginning proceeds from unity, and the primacy is given to Peter, so that the one Church of Christ and the one chair may be shown. And a little after: He who struggles against and resists the Church, who deserts the Chair of Peter, upon whom the Church is founded, does he trust that he is in the Church? This passage, taken from the Venetian edition of the year 1728, which we use, and which likewise is extant in the edition of Manutius and Pamelius, would alone suffice for settling the present controversy, had it not been held by some other editors to be interpolated, and rendered on the faith of other codices in such a way that the things which are here expressly said about the Chair and the primacy of St. Peter, and which we have enclosed in brackets, were utterly rejected from it.

[772] On this matter Baluze may be consulted in the Annotations on the aforesaid Venetian edition, expressly asserted. in which the text as we have given it was restored, although he himself judged that the same things as those said above must be expunged from it. I do not wish to interpose my own judgment here about the genuine reading; but even if these things were in truth not Cyprian's, I shall nevertheless show that they are plainly conformable to his doctrine, and therefore by no means to be expunged on that head. But even with what they wish cut away gratuitously, the text does not lack its own force for asserting the primacy to St. Peter. For how, when bidding heretics seek the head, namely of the Church, does he at once show them the Church founded upon Peter, and assert that for proving this there is no need of a long treatise and of arguments, but that it is sufficiently demonstrated from those passages of Matthew and John alone — unless he means that the primacy of the Church was promised to Peter in the first place, and given in the second, that is, that Peter was here appointed by Christ head of the Church on earth? How does he say that the unity of the Church is shown from the same words of Christ to Peter by an easy compendium of proof, if he judged that nothing at all was conferred on him beyond the other Apostles? For indeed on that reasoning he would have asserted several heads of the Church, and would not have proved its unity but destroyed it. To what end finally did Christ, on Cyprian's testimony in the same place, use his own authority, when, that he might manifest unity, he disposed by his own authority the origin of that same unity as beginning from one? On the adversaries' view, then, that disposition made by Christ's authority will look to this, and hence the unity of the Church will be proved: that on Peter first of all the Apostolate was conferred; and how inept this is, no one of sound mind fails to notice. To the objections we shall reply below.

[773] Further, of this unity of the Church, founded upon St. Peter, The same primacy St. Cyprian makes mention in various places as of a special prerogative conferred upon him. Thus in Epistle 69, having adduced St. Peter's answer to Christ from chap. 6 of John, he subjoins: That Peter speaks, upon whom the Church was to be built, teaching in the name of the Church, etc. Of the same passage he says in Epistle 55: Peter nevertheless, upon whom the Church had been built by the same Lord, speaking one for all, and answering with the voice of the Church, says: Lord, to whom shall we go? And in Epistle 73: For to Peter first the Lord, upon whom he built the Church, and from whom he instituted and showed the origin of unity, gave that power, that that should be loosed in heaven which he had loosed on earth. Likewise in Epistle 70: One Church was founded by Christ the Lord upon Peter by the origin and principle of unity. Further, that the Roman Chair is the See of St. Peter, and therefore that the Roman Pontiffs are his lawful successors, he manifestly acknowledges in Epistle 52 to Antonianus, saying: But Cornelius was made Bishop by the judgment of God and of his Christ, … when the place of Fabian, that is, when the place of Peter and the grade of the priestly Chair was vacant. Hence too in Epistle 52 to communicate with Cornelius is for him the same as to communicate with the Catholic Church. For thus he addresses Antonianus in the same place: You wrote also that I should transmit a copy of the same letter to Cornelius our colleague, so that, laying aside

all solicitude, he might now know that you communicate with him, that is, with the Catholic Church.

[774] in the Roman Pontiffs Consequently to these things he in Epistle 45 not obscurely designates the Roman Church by the root and mother of the Catholic Church, and admonishes that this must be acknowledged and held against the schism of Novatian. But in Epistle 55 he again calls the same the Chair of Peter and the principal Church, and is indignant that Felicissimus the schismatic with his followers hoped that he could impose upon the Roman Pontiff with his lies. After these things, he says, with a pseudo-bishop (Fortunatus) appointed for themselves by heretics into the bargain, they dare to sail and to carry letters from schismatics and profane men to the Chair of Peter (which St. Cornelius then held) and to the principal Church, whence priestly unity took its rise; and they do not consider that these are the Romans, whose faith, by the Apostle's preaching, was praised, to whom perfidy can have no access.

[775] he likewise acknowledged in various places. The primacy of St. Stephen, who after Lucius succeeded Cornelius in the Roman See, he likewise acknowledged in Epistle 71, when he says: For neither did Peter, whom the Lord chose first, and upon whom he built his Church, when Paul afterwards disputed with him about circumcision, claim anything for himself insolently or arrogantly assume it, so as to say that he held the primacy and that he ought rather to be obeyed by those newly come and later. Cyprian here indeed charges Stephen with excessive confidence in his primacy, and sets St. Peter's modesty against him; but he nevertheless does not deny the primacy, but acknowledges it, while he brands what he contended was its abuse. Thus Firmilian, who had read the said letter of St. Cyprian, complains in Epistle 75 of the same Stephen, that he who so glories in the place of his Episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid, introduces many other rocks, etc. And a little after he says again: Stephen, who proclaims that he has the Chair of Peter by succession, is stirred by no zeal against the heretics.

[776] he acknowledged. These things he says to St. Cyprian: yet who would infer from this that it is denied by him that the Roman Chair of St. Peter is held by Stephen through succession; since it is manifest that Firmilian contends only this, that Stephen was not bearing himself according to the dignity of his place, while, by approving the baptism of heretics, he too much favored the heretics, as he at least judged. Nay rather, St. Cyprian held this primacy of the Roman See for so indubitable that in Epistle 76, branding Novatian for having impiously invaded it, he says: These (the followers of Novatian), rending the Church and rebellious against the peace and unity of Christ, set up a chair for themselves, and attempt … to assume the primacy. So closely then is the primacy connected with the Roman Chair, that he who invades the latter must be said to have invaded the former as well. Nor did Novatian himself think otherwise, who, having been made pseudo-pontiff, did not hesitate to claim the primacy also for himself, sending legates through the world, and ordaining pseudo-bishops in the place of Catholics even in Africa.

[777] To these things the adversaries of the Roman See reply that all the Apostles were endowed with an equal share … of honor and of power, The arguments are refuted, on St. Cyprian's own judgment at num. 771. Secondly they produce St. Cyprian's words, addressing his colleagues thus in the council of Carthage: For neither does any of us set himself up as bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror compel his colleagues to the necessity of obeying, since every bishop has, by the license of his liberty and power, his own judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone and only has the power both of setting us over the governance of his Church and of judging our conduct. They add another passage of the same Saint, reported above at num. 547, where the Saint complains that the followers of Fortunatus, the pseudo-bishop of the schismatics in Africa, having already been condemned by the African bishops, had had recourse to the Roman See, and asserts that it had been determined that each should plead his cause there where he could have both accusers and witnesses of his crime; and at length subjoins: Unless perhaps to a few desperate and abandoned men the authority of the bishops established in Africa seems to be less, who have already judged concerning them.

[778] Which words indeed John Fell in his Annotations on this passage takes up thus: are alleged against the said primacy On the judgment of that blessed Martyr, those are to be held desperate and abandoned to whom the authority of the bishops in Africa seems less than even that of Cornelius himself, sitting in the Chair of Peter at Rome. To these may also be added the things which we have already reported at num. 640 and following about the case of Basilides and Martial, bishops who had lapsed in Spain. To the first of these objections I answer that from the very text which we gave at num. 771 the mind of the holy Prelate is manifest. For in order to demonstrate evidently the unity of the Church, he notes that Christ the Lord, although he had given to all the Apostles equal power and honor for promulgating the Gospel and for discharging the other functions of their Apostolate, nevertheless founded his Church upon one, St. Peter, and set him over them, so that the Church might be governed under one head on earth and his vicar.

[779] It will be useful to have illustrated this by a like example. Cyprian certainly did not contend from St. Cyprian's words, that more power over the bishops of Africa was granted to him than to St. Peter over the other Apostles: he therefore and the remaining African prelates were endowed with an equal share both of honor and of power. Yet who would deny that the same Cyprian presided over proconsular Africa and Numidia and Mauretania, and held the primacy among the bishops of these provinces? As therefore that fellowship of honor and power could stand with St. Cyprian's primacy in Africa, so neither does the dignity and power of the Apostles asserted by him stand in the way of the primacy of the whole Church, and supreme power over it, being said to have been conferred on St. Peter. For the rest, Rigault deserves no answer when in his Observations on that celebrated passage of the book On the Unity of the Church, reported at num. 770 and the following, which he himself holds to be interpolated, he says thus: A primacy destroys unity: for he who is one is not first, nor last, but alone.

[780] in the council of Carthage The text drawn from the council of Carthage we have already partly explained in §40, and have shown that those sayings of St. Cyprian are so to be taken that, in order that the assembled bishops might the more freely open their mind, he denied that any of all who took part in the council was a bishop of bishops, or tyrannically arrogated to himself the power of such a one, so as to compel the rest to his own views. And thus he did not deny that supreme power to Stephen, but not obscurely ascribed it to him. But what he there adds about the judgment and power of each bishop, namely that none can be judged by another, nor likewise judge another, these things are to be referred to those same assembled bishops, and indeed in a sound sense, or else they manifestly conflict with St. Cyprian's own deeds. Certainly St. Augustine, reported by us at num. 695, took up those words thus: I suppose assuredly in those questions which have not yet been discussed with the most refined perfection. But it was most true that that question about the baptism of heretics, which up to that time no general council and no Roman Pontiff had defined by a supreme judgment — at least as they judged — and which rested on custom alone; most true, I say, is it that this question could not be so decided by any of the bishops assembled with St. Cyprian that on account of his authority the rest should be compelled to depart from their opinion.

[781] suited to those assembled, On the contrary, if anyone contends that the Saint's words must be taken generally, he must then say by what right or what wrong the same Saint pronounced Fortunatianus, bishop of Assuras in the proconsular province, in Epistle 64, and Basilides and Martial, bishops of the Spains, in Epistle 68, rightly deposed for the crime of idolatry, and took care that they be kept from their sees. By what right likewise did he give Epistle 67 to St. Stephen the Roman Pontiff, that he should order Marcian, bishop of Arles in the Gauls, to be cast down from his see and another substituted in it, if every bishop has, by the license of his liberty and power, his own judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another, and if on that account the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ must be awaited, who alone and only has the power both of setting them over the governance of his Church and of judging their conduct? It cannot therefore be denied that St. Cyprian's words objected must be restricted to a sound sense, or else it must be said that he here suffered something human from the heat of contention.

[782] and from the letters in the case of Fortunatus Against the same primacy of the Roman Pontiff the case of Fortunatus likewise proves nothing, of whom St. Cyprian complains in Epistle 55 that he had sailed to Rome to St. Cornelius through Felicissimus and other associates of the schism, in order to extort communion from him by his lies and calumnies; and he demands that, if he wishes to make any reply to the sentence passed against them, he present himself at his own tribunal. For it must be noted that that Fortunatus was one of the five schismatic presbyters of Carthage, whom we have taught above to have been already before a fugitive from the Church for the schism stirred up with Felicissimus, and condemned by the African bishops, and then ordained pseudo-bishop in Africa by heretics and schismatics; and so he could not here be held for a bishop. But St. Augustine testifies in Epistle 43, elsewhere 162, that even in his own time it was not permitted to presbyters and to the other clergy of a lower Order to appeal to the Apostolic See; which nevertheless he affirms both there and elsewhere was permitted to bishops. It had therefore been agreed among the African prelates that clerics below bishops should be judged each in his own province, and that doubtless with the Roman Pontiff's assent, lest appeals to the Apostolic See should be too frequent and give occasion to unjust accusations.

[783] But as this prohibition in St. Augustine's time did not prevent him who had recourse to St. Cornelius from acknowledging, both often elsewhere and in the place cited, the power over the other bishops and the primacy of the Roman Church, in which, as he there says, the principate of the Apostolic Chair always flourished; so neither can anything be concluded against the same primacy from a like deed of St. Cyprian. But it is false what Fell, a heterodox bishop in England, impudently fastens upon the most holy Prelate: namely that, on the judgment of that blessed Martyr, those are to be held desperate and abandoned to whom the authority of the bishops in Africa seems less than even that of Cornelius himself, sitting in the Chair of Peter at Rome. For if anyone attentively considers the whole passage which we gave at num. 546 and the following, he will confess that the authority of the bishops in Africa is set by St. Cyprian not against St. Cornelius, but against a few desperate and abandoned men, namely the followers of Fortunatus and Felicissimus. For he subjoins: Now the case

of these men has been taken cognizance of, sentence has already been pronounced about them, nor does it befit the censure of priests to be reproved for the levity of a changeable and inconstant mind… If the number of those who judged about them in the previous year be reckoned with the presbyters and deacons, more were then present at the judgment and cognizance than are these same men who now seem to be joined with Fortunatus. For you ought to know, dearest brother, that he, after he was made pseudo-bishop by heretics, has now been deserted by almost all.

[784] And so St. Cyprian there argued roughly thus: had appealed to the Roman Pontiff; It has been determined that clerics inferior to the episcopal order should plead their cause in their own diocese: but the case of Fortunatus and Felicissimus and the rest has been discussed among us, and sentence has already been pronounced about it, and therefore they are not to be heard at Rome, unless perhaps someone should judge that those few desperate and abandoned men are more to be believed than so great a number of bishops in Africa and of other clerics, who in the previous year judged about them, and were far more than those who, now adhering to Fortunatus, have appealed to the Apostolic See. This I judge to be the genuine sense of the words: but if anyone should contend that those words a few desperate and abandoned men are to be taken not in the ablative but in the dative case, not even so will he hammer Fell's fiction out of them, or prove that the authority of the African prelates is here made equal to that of the Pontiff; since the sense could then be: Unless perhaps those few schismatics judge that the authority of the African prelates is less than that they should subject themselves to their sentence according to what had been decreed about appeals. This is certain, that no comparison is there instituted between the African sees and the Roman Chair, and that Fortunatus and his followers are called desperate and abandoned on account of their heresy and their crimes, not because they had appealed to the Pontiff.

[785] The case of Basilides and Martial does not weaken the asserted primacy of the Roman Pontiff, and in the case of Basilides and Martial, but brilliantly confirms it. We set it forth in §37, and therefore it will suffice to have recalled it here in a few words. These two bishops of the Spains, being besides the crime of the abominable certificates convicted of various crimes and cast out of their sees, had both, or at least the former of them, appealed to the Roman Pontiff St. Stephen. And to Basilides indeed his fraud and lies had succeeded happily enough for recovering his bishopric against Sabinus, who had been substituted in his place. Now St. Cyprian in Epistle 68 denies that this appeal of Basilides can profit him. And he writes thus: Nor can that rescind the ordination (of Sabinus) rightly accomplished, that Basilides, after his crimes had been detected and his conscience laid bare even by his own confession, going to Rome, deceived Stephen our colleague, placed far off and ignorant of the transaction and of the truth, so as to canvass for being unjustly restored to the bishopric from which he had been rightly deposed.

[786] who had had recourse to St. Stephen. This tends to this, that Basilides's offenses are not so much abolished as heaped up, so that to his earlier sins there has been added the crime of deceit and circumvention. For that man is not so much to be blamed upon whom something was negligently foisted, as this man is to be execrated, who fraudulently foisted it. But if he could impose upon men, he cannot upon God, since it is written: God is not mocked. Thus he; from which it is plain that the power of restoring Basilides to his see is not denied to Stephen by the holy Prelate, but rather asserted; since otherwise Basilides's restoration would have had to be proved invalid not from his surreption and frauds, but from a defect of power in Stephen, and the latter would have had to be charged not with any negligence, but with a power undeservedly arrogated to himself. Whether however the holy Pontiff negligently permitted Basilides to steal upon him, the preliminary Commentary on his Acts at the second day of August, §2, may be consulted. For the rest, St. Cyprian most clearly acknowledged Pontifical power over bishops in the same Stephen, when he wrote to him: Let a letter be directed by you into the province and to the people dwelling at Arles, by which, Marcian being excluded, another may be substituted in his place. Nor did he doubt of a happy outcome once Stephen had written; for he subjoined: Signify plainly to us who has been substituted in the place of Marcian, that we may know to whom to direct our brethren and to whom we ought to write.

§ XLVI. A persecution having arisen under Valerian, he writes to Fortunatus On the Exhortation to Martyrdom: he confesses Christ, and is banished to Curubis.

The persecution coming on from Valerian, We have at length reached the year of Christ 257, memorable for many triumphs of martyrs, and for St. Cyprian's confession and exile under the persecutor Valerian. St. Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 10, ascribes the cause of this persecution, which is usually reckoned the eighth, to a certain Marcianus, who, abandonedly given over to magic, and inflamed with a desire of the empire promised him by the magicians, perverted Valerian's kindly mind toward the Christians, and vehemently incited him against them. There is no doubt that the holy Prelate, on learning these things, soon thoroughly equipped his flock for that sacred battle, and animated them to the laurel of martyrdom. On the same occasion he is believed by some to have written the letter to Fortunatus On the exhortation to martyrdom, which others with Baronius judge to have been written under Gallus. The reason of the former is that it is recounted by St. Pontius after the book On Patience, which they hold with us to have been composed while Valerian was reigning, in these words: Who should raise up so great martyrs by the exhortation of the divine word? But this reason is uncertain, as we have shown elsewhere; since however even lighter ones are brought forward for the opposite opinion, we prefer to refer it here.

[788] Fortunatus, perhaps that very bishop who in the third council of Carthage is written Fortunatus of Tuchabor, he writes On the Exhortation to martyrdom; had asked of St. Cyprian that, since the weight of persecutions and pressures was impending, and in the end and consummation of the world the hostile time of antichrist had already begun to draw near, he would, for the preparing and strengthening of the minds of the brethren, compose exhortations from the divine Scriptures, by which he might animate the soldiers of Christ for the heavenly and spiritual contest. With these requests the holy Prelate gladly complied: For it is too little, he says, that we raise up the people of God with the trumpet-call of our voice, unless we strengthen the faith of believers and their virtue dedicated and devoted to God by divine reading. He wrote back therefore to him the aforesaid letter, in which he transmitted rather the matter of a treatise than a treatise. For he speaks thus in it: And lest I should extend my discourse to length, dearest brother, and weary the hearer or reader with the abundance of a broader style, I have made a compendium; so that, headings being set forth which one ought both to know and to hold, I might subjoin the Lord's chapters, and might make solid by the authority of divine reading what I had set forth, so that I may seem not so much to have sent you my treatise as to have furnished matter to those who treat. For the rest, this letter, which Marianus Victorius had ascribed to St. Hilary of Poitiers, see vindicated for our St. Cyprian, if you please, in Baluze's Annotations, and likewise in the Paris edition of the Works of St. Jerome of the year 1706, tom. 4, col. 241, likewise in the Annotations, and in the Preface to the Works of St. Hilary himself, of the Paris edition of the year 1693, §3, num. 26.

[789] Let us return to the persecution. The edicts having been brought to Carthage, He confesses Christ before the proconsul, St. Cyprian was questioned about his religion by Aspasius Paternus, proconsul of Africa. There are extant authentic proconsular Acts of this matter, which, since we shall publish them below after the Life, we shall here only touch upon. The time and place of the confession and of the trial the aforesaid Acts thus indicate: In the fourth consulship of the emperor Valerian and the third of Gallienus, on the third of the Kalends of September, at Carthage in the council-chamber, Paternus the proconsul said to Cyprian the bishop: The most sacred emperors Valerian and Gallienus have deigned to send me a letter, in which they have commanded that those who do not cultivate the Roman religion ought to acknowledge the Roman ceremonies. I have therefore made inquiry about your name; what do you answer me? Now it is certain from Bucherius's Cycle and from others that the fourth consulship of Valerian and the third of Gallienus fell in the year of Christ 257, in which therefore he must be said to have been driven into exile, as we shall show.

[790] To the proconsul's questions the Saint answered intrepidly that he was both a Christian and a bishop; and is banished to Curubis. and that he worshiped none but the one true God, whom both he and the other Christians entreated night and day for all men, and for the safety of the emperors themselves. As he persisted in this purpose, Paternus threatened him with exile in vain, and ordered him to betray to him the presbyters who were staying at Carthage: but he replied that it had been well and usefully forbidden by the laws that there should be informers; but that neither was it permitted by Christian discipline to offer themselves of their own accord; for the rest, that they would be found by him if he inquired diligently. After this the proconsul signified to the holy Confessor that by the command of the same emperors it had been forbidden under penalty of death that Christians should thereafter hold assemblies or enter cemeteries; to which, when he had replied: Do what has been commanded you, he was by his order banished to Curubis. Here you have, reader, a summary of the proconsular Acts under Aspasius Paternus, upon which some things now come to be noted.

[791] Prudentius's account In what manner our St. Cyprian came to the Proconsul's tribunal, whether bound or brought free, neither the aforesaid Acts nor St. Pontius in the Life indicated, being content to have cited those very Acts in these words: And what the Priest of God answered when the proconsul questioned him, there are Acts to relate. But Aurelius Prudentius in Hymn 13 on our Saint sings that he was not only bound but also shut in a foul prison before he was brought forth to the proconsul's tribunal. For he says thus:

He is led before others, bound, while the proconsul rages.

Caverns lie hidden in Tyrian Carthage, set in secret places,

Conscious of the darkness of Tartarus, cut off from the soil:

Shut in these caves, holy Cyprian, and with a chain

Binding either hand, invokes the name of the supreme Father.

Then after many things about his confession before the proconsul he thus proceeds:

Meanwhile, gladder now for the day of his own people,

Thascius is set at a distance before the fury of the untamed proconsul:

Being ordered to tell the kind of his doctrine and his place; A Christian, he says,

I serve the consecrated mysteries of saving Christ.

[792] about the Saint's captivity On these things Tillemont rightly observed in Note 47 on St. Cyprian that they cannot be true if they are taken of his second confession, which happened immediately before his martyrdom before Galerius Maximus; since we have the plain contrary both from the proconsular Acts and from the Life by Pontius. But that they were said by Prudentius of this one is clear from the fact that after the verses recounted he at once introduces the proconsul speaking thus:

He upon this: There is now crime enough, Thascius himself confesses,

He himself denies the thunderbolt of Jove; make ready the steel,

Let the enemy of the idols pay the penalty by the executioner's sword.

He gives due thanks to God, and sings in triumph.

Sad Africa wept that the Man had died, etc.

But as these things cannot be admitted, so neither do I agree with Tillemont that they were truly said of the former confession, of which we are now treating; but I judge that Prudentius, who, as we have shown elsewhere, confused the acts of St. Cyprian of Carthage with those of the holy martyr of Nicomedia of the same name, here too transferred to the former what belonged to the latter. So altogether persuades the silence of St. Pontius, who, when according to our division of the Life he had in chap. 2, from num. 17, celebrated the distinguished services of the most holy Prelate to the people of Carthage while the pestilence raged, notes at num. 20 what ungrateful returns these same people rendered, and at once makes mention of the exile: Upon these so good, he says, and so devout acts there came exile: for impiety always renders this return, that it repays better things with worse.

[793] is corrected, as is St. Gregory's mistake. These same things he pursues at length in the same place, nor does he nevertheless make any mention of chains or prison; but he refers the reader for the rest that pertains hereto to the proconsular Acts, in which he well knew that likewise nothing was contained about his Bishop being bound or cast into prison. A like silence altogether is in Epistles 78 and 79, in which the confessors, whose prisons and chains among other things he had celebrated in Epistle 77, likewise made express mention with great praise of his confession. Finally the whole account of the Saint's confession, exile, and martyrdom, both in the Acts and in the Life, so signifies that he was everywhere dealt with as with a person of singular condition, that that narrative of Prudentius does not appear even probable. Hence it seems to me by far most probable that St. Cyprian appeared before the proconsul's tribunal either freely on the day appointed for him, or brought by officers sent for him, without a preceding imprisonment. St. Gregory of Nazianzus also was mistaken, when in Oration 18, which he delivered in praise of our St. Cyprian, confusing his retirement under Decius with his exile in the persecution of Valerian, he judged that this last, as also his martyrdom, happened while Decius was reigning.

[794] From the two letters just cited moderns commonly observe, not improbably, In this persecution he seems to have confessed first there. that our holy Bishop was the first of all in this persecution of Valerian to confess Christ at Carthage. For in the former letter indeed SS. Nemesianus, Dativus, Felix, and Victor, bishops condemned to the mines, write thus to our Saint, then in exile: You yourself also know, most dear one, that it is our desirable prayer that we should see you, our teacher and lover, having attained the crown of a great confession. For, as a good and true teacher, you first pronounced before the acts of the proconsul what we your disciples, following you, ought to say before the governor; and, sounding as with a trumpet, you roused the soldiers of God, equipped with heavenly arms, to the battle of the encounter, and, fighting in the first line, you slew the devil with the spiritual sword; you also arranged the ranks of the brethren on this side and that by your words, so that snares might be laid for the enemy on all sides, and the severed sinews of the corpse of that public enemy might be trodden underfoot. Believe us, most dear one, since your innocent soul is not less than the hundredfold reward, which neither feared the first assaults of the world nor refused to go into exile, … and since it gave to many the evidence of confession, it itself first led the way to martyrdom. In like manner Lucius and the rest speak in Epistle 79. For before our suffering, they say, we were called forth by you to glory, who first offered us the leadership to the confession of the name of Christ. But we, following the footsteps of your confession, hope for a grace equal to yours.

[795] The place of exile, as we have from the proconsular Acts, The place of exile, Curubis, was Curubis, a city of Africa proper, in the province of Zeugitana, and situated in that peninsula which runs out further into the Mediterranean sea toward the North. By the same word it is named by St. Augustine in book 22 On the City of God, chap. 8, and in Sermon 309, which is the first on the birthday of St. Cyprian. Pliny agrees, who reckons it among the free towns, and Antoninus in the Itinerary, in Cellarius, tom. 2 of the Notitia of the ancient world, part 3, book 4, chap. 4: but in Ptolemy, in the same place, it is called Κουροβὶς, or, as the Palatine codex has it, Curabis. It was also at one time distinguished with a bishopric; for in Thierry Ruinart, in the History of the Vandal persecution, or in the Notitia of the provinces and cities of Africa, and the notes on it, there is read Felix Curbitanus, and Benenatus, by the grace of God bishop of the holy church of Curbis, as also Victor bishop of Curubis, and Peregrinus bishop of the church of Curubis, the name of the city being contracted, namely, in the first two places.

[796] was pleasant, in which nothing was lacking to him, That this place of exile was sufficiently pleasant, St. Pontius in the Life, in our edition chap. 2, num. 22, indicates in these words: I do not wish now to describe the charm of the place, and for the present I pass over the provision of all delights. And again in the following number: Now let us with thanksgiving repeat what I had placed in the second place: that there was divinely provided, even for the mind of so great a Man, a sunny and suitable place, a lodging secluded according to his wish, and whatever has been promised to be set before those who seek the kingdom and the justice of God. Since Pontius, St. Cyprian's deacon and inseparable companion of his exile even to his martyrdom, says these things, St. Nemesianus and the other bishops do not seem to have known that place sufficiently, when in Epistle 78 cited above they wrote about our holy Exile: Nor did he shrink from dwelling in a desert place. Wherefore I cannot agree in these things with Tillemont; nevertheless Pearson perhaps not ineptly reconciled their words with the biographer's by judging that Curubis itself was set in a desert place. But it can also be said that the Saint was in exile not in the town of Curubis itself, but near it in some suburban house remote from others, yet set in a sunny and pleasant place. This opinion is altogether favored by what we shall presently see about the frequent access of the people of Carthage to him; for in a place of this kind he had less danger than in the town.

[797] and he was often visited by his own people: That nothing was lacking here to the most holy Exile, the aforesaid biographer notes both at num. 22 and at 23 in the words just given, the inhabitants of the place bestowing everything upon him abundantly of their own accord. Besides, it happened conveniently that between Curubis and Carthage there was not so great a distance but that many of his flock could hasten thither from here, to visit their Bishop and to help him if he needed anything. This devout zeal of the inhabitants of both cities toward the Saint the cited Pontius thus indicates: To omit the frequency of the brethren visiting him, and the charity of the citizens both of the place and from there, which supplied everything of which he seemed to have been deprived, etc. That it was also granted him to take some of his household with him we have from the same biographer, who was one of them. For the condescension of his charity, he says at num. 24 of the Life, had chosen even me among his household companions as a voluntary exile; and would that this had been permitted in his passion also!

[798] he arrived here on the 13th or 14th of September. Now the glorious Exile arrived at the aforesaid place on the XIII or XIV day of the month of September. So we learn from the same Life compared with the proconsular Acts. For since in the former, at num. 24, it is said that on that … day on which he first stayed in the place of exile, when he was not yet lulled in the rest of sleep, his martyrdom was foretold to him by an admirable vision after one day, which he had asked for the ordering of his affairs; and at num. 26 that on that very day, a year having been completed, he was crowned; and since it is evident from the Acts that his martyrdom fell on the XIV day of September, it is likewise evident that the Saint arrived at his exile at Curubis on the XIV, or XIII, day of the same month, because it is uncertain at what hour of the night the aforesaid revelation befell him. But of what sort this was, you have in the Life from num. 24, where the biographer discourses at length about it, and therefore I have thought it need not be reported here. This one thing I observe, that it was of such a kind that none of those to whom the Saint had narrated it doubted of his imminent martyrdom; although the day of the martyrdom was held uncertain. For truly, says the biographer at num. 27, no one knew why this (about undergoing martyrdom after one day) had been shown to him; except that afterwards he was crowned on the same day on which he had seen it. Nevertheless in the intervening time his imminent passion was known for certain by all; yet the certain day of the passion was passed over in silence by all of them, as though they did not know it.

§ XLVII. He orders ecclesiastical affairs: he provides for the poor: he consoles the confessors with letters and alms: at Curubis he moves into his own gardens: he warns the faithful about a new edict of Valerian, and, refusing to flee, prepares himself for martyrdom.

He arranges the affairs of his bishopric and of the poor: How usefully the holy Exile spent that space of a year which God, signified in the vision by a respite of one day, had revealed was to be granted him, both the Life and the letters written by him in exile teach. Certainly the biographer at num. 28 of the Life denies that that delay of martyrdom was either asked by the Saint himself in the aforesaid vision, or granted him by the gentiles themselves through divine providence for any other cause than that he might set in order the affairs of his bishopric, and might then also provide for the poor, whom he had always held in his love. But let us hear St. Pontius himself. But the reason, he says, for asking a delay came from the ordering of affairs and from the disposition of his will. But what affairs of his, or what will, was to be ordered, save that of the ecclesiastical state? Therefore a final delay was received, so that whatever had to be disposed by a final judgment concerning the care of cherishing the poor might be set in order. And I think for no other reason, nay rather for this alone, was indulgence admitted even by those very men who had cast him out and were to slay him: that he, being present, might relieve the poor who were present with the last, and, to speak more fully, with the whole resources of his final dispensation.

[800] Nor did the charity of the holy Bishop suffer itself to be confined within the bounds of his own diocese of Carthage; the confessors condemned to the mines but it penetrated also to other confessors and martyrs from other bishoprics, placed far away. There was, among the other exiles for the faith, a great number of prelates of various sees in Africa and Numidia, of presbyters, and of faithful of both sexes, among whom neither virgins nor boys were lacking, condemned to the mines of Sigus. Some of these had already consummated their contest, others were wasting away in the workhouses and pits in a long martyrdom, as we have shown at length in tom. III of this month of September at the X day, from p. 483, where these holy martyrs were treated by us along with the Roman Martyrology. And as the holy Prelate rejoiced in a wonderful manner at their glory, no otherwise than at his own, so he could not but grieve at their hardships. He wrote therefore to them Epistle 77, and sent it by

Herennianus the subdeacon, and Lucianus, Maximus, and Amantius the acolytes; which, since we have recited the greatest part of it in the place just cited, we shall here report only those things which pertain more closely to our Saint.

[801] That this letter was written in exile is clear from its very beginning, he consoles by letter, where he also declares the reason for writing, and the joy which he had conceived from their confession and unconquered constancy, in this manner: Your glory indeed demanded, most blessed and most beloved brethren, that I myself should come to the sight and embrace of you, were it not that the bounds of an appointed place confine me too, banished for the confession of the Name. But how I can, I present myself to you, and to you, even if it is not granted to come in body and by walking, nevertheless in love and in spirit I come, expressing in a letter my mind, in which I joyfully exult in those virtues and praises of yours, reckoning myself a partaker, if not in the suffering of the body, yet in the fellowship of charity. Or could I be silent and press down my voice in silence, when I learn so many and glorious things about my dearest ones, with which the divine condescension has honored you, so that a part of you has already gone before by the consummation of its martyrdom, about to receive from the Lord the crown of its merits; while a part still lingers in the enclosures of prisons, or in the mines and in chains, exhibiting by the very delays of its punishments greater evidences for strengthening and arming the brethren, advancing by the slowness of the torments to ampler titles of merit, about to have as many rewards in the heavenly prizes as it now numbers days in its punishments.

[802] he asks their prayers, he aids them with alms; Having thus premised, he goes on to celebrate their virtues and the glory of their confession; and pursues with great praises the cudgels, reproaches, chains, prisons, squalor, want of all things, and the other hardships borne by them, which they constantly endured for Christ, and consoles them with the sure hope of eternal blessedness. Finally toward the end of the letter he signifies his desire of martyrdom, and to this end begs their prayers: Plainly, he says, because your speech is now more effective in prayers, and your supplication easier for obtaining what is asked in tribulations, ask the more earnestly and pray that the divine condescension may consummate the confession of us all, that from these shadows and snares of the world God may free us also with you, whole and glorious, so that we who here, joined by the bond of charity and peace, stood together against the injuries of heretics and the pressures of gentiles, may alike rejoice in the heavenly kingdoms. Nor did he console them by words only, but also in deed, moneys being sent together with the letter, to which a certain Quirinus also had added some, to be distributed among them: for although he made no mention of these in the aforesaid letter, that they were sent will be evident from what is to be said presently.

[803] and he receives letters from them. To the aforesaid letter the said confessors replied by three different letters, which hold the seventy-eighth, seventy-ninth, and eightieth place among the Cyprianic letters. Of these the first was written by SS. Nemesianus, Dativus, Felix, and Victor, bishops; the second was composed by St. Lucius, likewise a bishop, both in his own name and in that of very many others who were with him; the third finally was given by another Felix, and by Jader and Polianus, likewise bishops, and also by presbyters and the rest who were staying with them in the mines of Sigus. All of them contain a thanksgiving both for the letter and for the money subsidy transmitted to them. And in the first indeed this is read about it: But both your ministry and that of our most beloved Quirinus, which you sent by Herennianus the subdeacon and by Lucianus and Maximus and Amantius the acolytes to be distributed, has also brought it about that whatever was lacking to the necessities of our bodies has been supplied. But in the second thus: We have received therefore, most longed-for Brother, that which you sent from Quirinus and from yourself, a sacrifice from every clean work. The third letter finally runs thus: We greet you in return, dearest Brother, by Herennianus the subdeacon, Lucianus and Maximus, our brothers, … from whom we have received under the name of an oblation no small quantity, together with your letter, which you wrote, etc.

[804] There are those who would have the Saint's Epistle 81, to Sergius and Rogatianus Having stayed some while at Curubis, and the other confessors shut up in prison, written from this very exile, while others refer it to the reign of Decius, and others to the persecution of Gallus, whose opinions we examined in §10 and showed to be uncertain. What further the holy Exile did at Curubis can only be conjectured. His martyrdom had, as we have said, been divinely revealed to him on the first day on which he lived in his exile, and therefore it is not to be doubted that he thoroughly prepared himself for it by prayers and other exercises of the virtues. Nay, it is altogether probable that he daily offered the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass, as he was wont to do at other times both in peace and in persecution, and strengthened himself with the most sacred Body and Blood of Christ, which he had in Epistle 54 acknowledged to be so useful to those about to contend; for that he had a sufficiently free lodging for this appears from the biographer. Nor did he any the less exhort the rest to that supreme contest with words, in which he was very powerful, on the biographer's testimony at num. 30 of the Life. Indeed so great was his desire, as is there said, of sacred discourse, that he wished the prayers of his passion so to befall him that, while he was speaking of God, he might be slain in the very act of speaking.

[805] How long the holy Prelate stayed in this exile at Curubis is uncertain; by order of the new proconsul but that he was recalled thence to his own gardens, which he had near Carthage, by Galerius Maximus the proconsul, who had succeeded Aspasius Paternus, and that by his order he spent the rest of his life there, we have from the proconsular Acts. For thus it is read in them: And when he had stayed a long time there (at Curubis), Galerius Maximus the proconsul succeeded Aspasius Paternus the proconsul, who ordered St. Cyprian the bishop, recalled from exile, to be presented before him. And when Cyprian, the holy martyr chosen by God, had returned from the city of Curubis, in which he had been given over to exile by the order of Aspasius Paternus, then proconsul, he stayed by sacred order in his own gardens. Thence he daily expected that they would come to him, as had been shown him.

[806] Of his final stay in the aforesaid gardens St. Pontius makes mention at num. 30, he moves to his own gardens. observing that these were the very ones which St. Cyprian in the beginnings of his conversion had sold for the sustenance of the poor, and had afterwards by divine providence recovered. I subjoin his words: And these were the daily acts appointed for a Priest's victim pleasing to God; when behold, by the proconsul's order, an officer with his soldiers suddenly came upon his gardens (upon the gardens, I say, which, having been sold in the beginnings of his faith and restored by God's indulgence, he would certainly have sold again for the uses of the poor, were he not avoiding the ill-will arising from the persecution) — nay, to speak more truly, believed that he had come suddenly. Thus he, passing over what we lately recited about his arrival from Curubis at the gardens by order of Galerius Maximus. The aforesaid proconsul therefore seems to have wished that the holy Prelate, summoned from Curubis, should stay near Carthage and perhaps under closer custody, so that, when it should please him to pass sentence upon him, the distance of the exile should not be a cause of delay.

[807] As far as we gather from the aforesaid Life, the Saint was already staying in his gardens when he wrote Epistle 82 to Successus the bishop, who is perhaps he He receives a message from Rome who in the council of Carthage is called Successus of Abbir Germaniciana; from which letter we have learned the following. Various rumors were daily being scattered about the persecution growing hot, about which the aforesaid Successus had consulted St. Cyprian; but he, since he likewise had nothing on this matter but from uncertain rumors, had sent some of his people to Rome to bring back more certain news. He deferred therefore to give an answer, both because he was awaiting their return from the City, and because it was difficult to send one of the clerics to Successus, since all alike expected a capital sentence to be passed upon them. Meanwhile the awaited messengers, returning from Rome, reported that Valerian had written back to the senate and to the governors of the provinces that faithful of various Orders should be chastised with various penalties according to each one's condition; for the rest they added that St. Sixtus the Pontiff, and four deacons with him, had already been crowned with martyrdom, and that the prefects of the City were daily pressing the execution of the edict.

[808] about the persecution growing heavier, Having learned these things, St. Cyprian gave the cited Epistle 82 to Successus, asking that he would communicate the same also to the other bishops and Christians as far as he could, lest the persecutor should assail them unprepared. But it will be useful to have set before the reader this letter, which is not at all long, in full. It is this: Cyprian to Successus his brother, greeting. That I did not write to you at once, dearest brother, this circumstance brought about: that all the clerics (by whom, namely, he was wont to send letters), being set under the stroke of the contest, could not at all withdraw from here, all being ready, according to the devotion of their mind, for divine and heavenly glory. But know that those have come whom I had sent to the City for this purpose, that they might bring us the explored truth as to whatever had been written back about us: for many various and uncertain things are tossed about in men's opinions.

[809] and about a new rescript of Valerian, But the things which are in truth are these: That Valerian has written back to the senate that bishops and presbyters and deacons should at once be punished; but that senators and men of rank and Roman knights, their dignity being lost, should also be despoiled of their goods; and, if, their property being taken away, they persevere in being Christians, should also be punished with death; but that matrons, their goods being taken away, should be banished into exile; and that members of Caesar's household, whoever either had confessed before or shall now have confessed, should be confiscated and sent in chains, enrolled, to Caesar's estates. The emperor Valerian also subjoined to his address a copy of the letter which he wrote about us to the governors of the provinces; which letter we daily expect to come, standing according to our firmness for the endurance of suffering, and awaiting from the help and indulgence of the Lord the crown of eternal life. But know that Xystus (the Roman Pontiff) was punished in the cemetery on the eighth day of the Ides of August, and with him four deacons. But also the prefects in the City daily press this persecution, so that, if any be presented to them, they may be punished, and their goods claimed for the treasury.

[810] about which he takes care that the faithful be warned. These things, I beg, let them be made known through you to our other colleagues also, so that everywhere by their exhortation the brotherhood may be strengthened and prepared for the spiritual contest, so that each of our people may think not so much of death as of immortality, and, dedicated to the Lord with full faith and with all their virtue, may rejoice rather than fear in this confession, in which they know that the soldiers of God and of Christ are not destroyed but crowned. I desire, dearest brother, that you always fare well in the Lord. From the martyrdom of St. Sixtus II noted it is manifest that this letter of St. Cyprian was written after the VI day of August in the year 258,

in which he was crowned. For the rest, of the same holy Pontiff and martyr treatment has been made by us in tom. 2 of August, at the day just cited, where in §3 and the following of the preliminary Commentary there is a disputation about his companions in martyrdom, who are variously reported by various writers. For, to pass over other things, Pamelius and others assign him in the aforesaid letter not four deacons but only Quartus as a companion; but it is not the place here to examine that, and therefore I return to St. Cyprian.

[811] The news brought about Valerian's rescript and about the glorious slaying of St. Sixtus He prepares himself for martyrdom, added new torches of divine love to the holy Exile, and gave sure hope that that day of martyrdom promised by the heavenly vision, and desired with so many prayers, would at length shortly dawn; which, the nearer it seemed to be at hand, the more ardently it stirred up desire of itself in the sacred breast of the Man. Hence he passed the remaining space of his life in that sweet expectation, not without a kind of prolonged martyrdom, as St. Pontius, his inseparable companion in exile, declares at num. 29 in the following words: Affairs therefore having been so devoutly ordered, and thus disposed according to his will, the next day was drawing near. Already about Xystus, a good and peaceable Priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, a message had come from the City. Already at any moment the executioner was expected to come who should strike the devoted neck of a most holy Victim: and thus all those days were of daily expectation of dying, so that a crown could be ascribed to each one.

[812] There were not lacking however most illustrious men, eminent in rank and dignity, and refuses to flee. who out of their old friendship toward the holy Prelate urged flight upon him, and of their own accord offered places into which he might withdraw: but he, long since panting for the heavenly country, reckoned counsels of this kind unworthy of himself, and rather exhorted the rest to receive death bravely for Christ. Hear the biographer again: Meanwhile many came together, distinguished and of most illustrious rank and blood, and also noble by the world's nobility, who, on account of their old friendship with him, repeatedly urged retirement; and, lest bare persuasion should be too little, they even offered places into which he might withdraw. But he had already neglected the world, his mind being suspended toward heaven; nor did he assent to their flattering persuasions. He would perhaps then also have done what was asked by very many and faithful men, if he had been bidden by a divine command also, etc.

§ XLVIII. Fearing that he might not be slain at Carthage, he lies hidden for a little while: returning to his own gardens, he is seized, and, having confessed Christ, is beheaded.

Fearing lest he should be carried off to Utica, While St. Cyprian, as we have said, was awaiting the last day of his life in his gardens, a new message brought to him rendered him not a little anxious. Galerius Maximus the proconsul had departed to Utica, which was a maritime city of Africa proper, and was there then holding trials against the Christians, the month of August being already far advanced, if those three hundred martyrs, called by St. Augustine the white mass of Utica, and inscribed in the Martyrologies at the XXIV day of the said month, were, as is more probable, crowned at Utica. Consult, if you please, tom. IV of August at the day just cited, where in §2 of the historical Commentary there is a dispute about their place of contest. The proconsul therefore staying there, it was reported to St. Cyprian that Commentarii had been sent to bring him to Utica to be condemned. Now the commentarii and commentarienses of whom here there is question were keepers of prisons, to whom sometimes also the care of arresting the accused was given, as Samuel Pitiscus proves in his Lexicon of Roman Antiquities from Ulpian, Firmicus, and others. Manutius, Morel, and Pamelius prefer to read Frumentarii; by which name certain soldiers also, whose duty it was to explore all things diligently through the provinces, were called, as you may see in the aforesaid Pitiscus in his Lexicon. Whichever way you read, it matters little.

[814] he withdraws, until the proconsul should return thence: This news fell grievously upon the holy Prelate because he vehemently desired to confess and to be slain in his own episcopal city and in the sight of his flock, so that as a good shepherd he might offer an example to his sheep and rouse them to follow his footsteps; of which hope he grieved that he would be utterly frustrated if he were carried off to Utica. Being set in these straits of mind, it seemed good, on the counsel of his friends, who had urged and offered him a safe retirement, that it should be used so far that he should lie hidden for a little while, until the proconsul, having returned to Carthage, should restore to him the hope of dying at Carthage. He withdrew therefore, but into what place is unknown; and, the proconsul having returned to Carthage, he appeared again in his gardens. Nothing of this retirement, which we have from the Saint's own Epistle 83, presently to be recited, was handed down by St. Pontius, who on that account is beaten by Rigault in his Observations, but undeservedly, as we showed in §1, where we said that the holy biographer had already been vindicated by Henschen from his unworthy censure. This one thing I add here, that the biographer's words reported above at num. 812 by no means conflict with the Saint's cited letter; since it is one thing to lie hidden for a time for a just cause, another to flee, which last his friends must be said in the biographer to have urged, and the Saint to have refused.

[815] about which matter he informs his flock Among the first cares of the holy Prelate in hiding was to inform his clergy and people of his retirement, lest he should be believed to have taken to flight, or to be lying hidden out of fear of punishment. For he knew that his virtue had been not a little suspected by the Roman clergy when he had withdrawn in the persecution of Decius; and he could rightly fear lest they should suspect something similar of him, if they did not know the reason for his lying hidden. In order therefore to remove every sinister opinion about himself, he admonished the clergy and people of Carthage in the aforesaid letter of the counsel which he had taken, in these words: Cyprian to the presbyters and deacons and the whole people, greeting. When it had been reported to us, dearest brethren, that commentarii had been sent to bring me to Utica, and when it had been urged upon me by the counsel of my dearest friends that we should withdraw for the time from our gardens, a just cause intervening, I consented; because it is fitting that a bishop, in that city in which he presides over the Lord's church, should there confess the Lord, and that the whole people should be made illustrious by the confession of their prelate present among them. For whatever in that moment of confession a confessor bishop speaks, by God's inspiration he speaks with the mouth of all.

[816] and gives it salutary counsels For the rest the honor of our so glorious church will be mutilated, if I, a bishop set over another church, having received sentence upon my confession at Utica, should thence set out to the Lord as a martyr; seeing that both for myself and for you I ought — and with continual prayers entreat and with all my desires wish — to confess among you, and to suffer there, and thence to set out to the Lord. We await therefore here, being established in a hidden retirement, the coming of the proconsul returning to Carthage, to hear from him what the emperors have commanded concerning the name of Christian laymen and bishops, and to say what the Lord shall have willed to be said at that hour. Having set forth in this manner the reason for his retirement, he briefly touches on salutary admonitions, which they were chiefly to use in the persecution: But do you, he says, dearest brethren, according to the discipline which you have always received from me out of the Lord's commands, and according to what, when I taught you, you have very often learned, keep quiet and tranquillity; and let none of you stir up any tumult for the brethren, or offer himself of his own accord to the gentiles.

[817] For he who has been seized and delivered up ought to speak: seeing that the Lord, set within us, speaks at that hour, who willed that we should rather confess than profess. by letter. But what for the rest it befits us to observe, before the proconsul passes sentence upon me for the confession of God's name, we shall arrange in common, the Lord instructing us. After this he ends his letter with a conclusion otherwise unusual to him: May our Lord make you, dearest brethren, to remain safe in his Church, and deign to preserve you. So be it done through his mercy. Baluze notes however that the last clause, So be it done, etc., was added by him from the codex of Foix. And these are the last admonitions of the most holy Prelate, given in writing to his flock, which have reached us. But whether he had time to arrange the other things also which seemed besides to need observing, and whether he entrusted them in writing, or only by word of mouth, to the clerics who were with him, I have not explored, nor have I found anything handed down to memory about these things.

[818] Valerius Maximus having after a few days returned from Utica to Carthage, Seized in his gardens, St. Cyprian, having likewise returned to his gardens, was giving himself to his accustomed exercises of the virtues, when at length on the XIII day of September he was seized by the proconsul's order and brought to the tribunal; about which matter the biographer speaks thus at num. 30 of the Life: And these were the daily acts appointed for a Priest's victim pleasing to God; when behold, by the proconsul's order, an officer with his soldiers suddenly came upon his gardens (upon the gardens, I say, which, having been sold in the beginnings of his faith and restored by God's indulgence, he would certainly have sold again for the uses of the poor, were he not avoiding the ill-will arising from the persecution); nay, to speak more truly, believed that he had come suddenly: for whence could a mind always prepared be come upon suddenly, as by an unforeseen assault? He went forth therefore, now certain of being dispatched, which had long been delayed; he went forth with a lofty and erect spirit, showing cheerfulness in his countenance and virtue in his heart. Thus the biographer.

[819] The same things, with some slightly different circumstances, are narrated in the proconsular Acts, and set in a carriage between two apparitors, or in additions to them. For thus they run: And when he was staying there (in his gardens), suddenly on the Ides of September, in the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus, there came to him two officers; one a strator of the staff of Galerius Maximus the proconsul, who had succeeded Aspasius Paternus; the other an equistrator, from the guards of the same staff, who also lifted him into a carriage and placed him in the middle. Nevertheless between the two narratives there is only this difference, that the biographer named only the chief of the two officers, and recounted the other circumstances also less exactly than the writer of the Acts. About Stratores of the staff Pitiscus's Lexicon of Antiquities cited above may be consulted, and the writers cited by him. St. Augustine, who had seen these Acts, in Sermon 309 to the people, which is the first on the Birthday of St. Cyprian, likewise says that they were sent, and calls them apparitors, and speaks thus on that subject: Now therefore, as to the fact that two were sent to bring him forth to his passion, who also lifted him with them into a carriage and set him in the middle; this too was of divine admonition, that he might joyfully recall that he belonged to the body of him who was reckoned among the wicked. For Christ, hanged on the wood between two robbers, was offered as an example of patience. But Cyprian, carried in a carriage to his passion between two apparitors, was following the footsteps of Christ.

[820] led to the place of Sextus, before the officer Thus set in the middle, the aforesaid officers brought him to the place of Sextus, whither Galerius Maximus the proconsul had withdrawn for the sake of recovering his health, as is read in the aforesaid Acts. But whether

the proconsul was then detained by the trouble of his illness or by other cares, he ordered (the words likewise are of the Acts) that Cyprian be kept for him for another day. And at that time blessed Cyprian, being led away, withdrew to the officer and strator of the staff of the same Galerius Maximus, the most illustrious proconsul, and stayed in his lodging with him in the street which is called Saturn's, between the Venerian and the Salutarian. Things very like these the biographer has, except that he says the holy Martyr went first to the praetorium, and thence, his case being deferred to the next day, turned aside to the officer's house, but does not express the names of the places. Whence the place was called of Sextus is uncertain. The venerable Bede in the Martyrology published by us before tom. 2 of March, and after him Usuard and Baronius in the Roman Martyrology and in the Annals at the year 261, num. 22, judged that it was so called because it was situated at the sixth milestone from Carthage; and hence the aforesaid Baronius admonishes that Paul the deacon must be corrected in the Acts of St. Cyprian written by him, as he judges, since he holds the same place to be distant at the fourth milestone from the same city.

[821] and passed the night with the stator of the staff; But I do not know whether this opinion of theirs is sufficiently certain; since the name of Sextus could have clung to that place also from some distinguished man of that surname. For thus in the same proconsular Acts below at num. 7 the Saint is again said to have been brought forth into the field of Sextus and beheaded, just as in the same place at num. 8 he is related to have been buried at the plots of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator. Besides, so great a distance of the place of contest from the city of Carthage corresponds less to the holy Martyr's prayer, who desired to die in his own city, and is less easily reconciled with what we read, both in the Acts and in the Life, about the throng of people hastening from the same city. For the biographer writes thus of these things at num. 31 and the following: But being deferred until the next day, he was returning from the praetorium to the officer's house, when suddenly a rumor, scattered through all Carthage, grew strong that Thascius had already been brought forth — a man whom, besides his renown, celebrated by glorious repute, everyone knew also from the commemoration of his most distinguished work (especially that performed at Carthage in the time of the plague). They all ran together from every direction to the spectacle, glorious to us out of the devotion of our faith, and to the gentiles a thing to be grieved over … Meanwhile the whole people, anxious lest anything should be done during the night without their knowledge, kept watch before the officer's doors.

[822] The proconsular Acts agree, in which there is also narrated a memorable deed of the most holy Prelate, solicitous even then about his flock. I subjoin the words of the Acts. where, with his people keeping watch before the doors, There (before the officer's house) the whole people of the brethren came together: and when St. Cyprian had learned this, he ordered that the girls be guarded, since all had remained in the street before the door of the officer's lodging. For the Prelate, most loving of his people and a notable lover of chastity, feared lest they should suffer any harm among the girls mingled with the crowd, and therefore, unconcerned as to what the proconsul and the executioners were preparing for him, he ordered them to be guarded. This distinguished solicitude of the holy Martyr St. Augustine weighs in the Sermon 309 cited above, and pursues with worthy praises in this manner: What of this — that, being deferred to another day, he was among the guards, and, when a multitude of brethren and sisters gathered there and passed the night before the doors, he ordered the girls to be guarded — with how great attention is it to be considered? With how great praise to be proclaimed? With how great heralding to be commended?

[823] With the death of his body at hand, the pastoral vigilance was not dying in the Shepherd's soul; he provides for the chastity of the girls. and the care of guarding the Lord's flock was held with a sober mind even to the last day of this life: nor did the now nearest hand of the bloody executioner shake out of his mind the diligence of a most faithful Steward. He so thought that he was to be a Martyr as not to forget that he was a Bishop; caring more what account he should render to the Prince of shepherds for the sheep committed to him, than what he should answer to an unbelieving proconsul. For he loved him who had said to Peter: Do you love me? Feed my sheep. And he was feeding his sheep, for whom, imitating him, he was preparing to shed his blood. He ordered the girls to be guarded, knowing that he had not only a simple Lord but also a wily adversary. And so against the openly roaring lion he was arming a manly breast in confession, and against the wolf lying in wait for the flock he was fortifying the female sex. Thus far St. Augustine. But Ruinart notes in his Annotations on the Acts of the Martyrs that in all his codices, if you except Colbertinus 1, in the aforesaid Acts for "that the girls be guarded" is read "that the girls be chastised"; that the former reading however is to be preferred, as is plain from the passage of St. Augustine adduced: and that St. Fulgentius too so read, Sermon 6, from which he recites this: Being detained by the officer, he guarded … the chastity of the virgins. Pamelius likewise reads "be guarded," and with him I think it should be read.

[824] Further, that last night of his life the holy Martyr passed in the aforesaid lodging of the officer, The next day he is presented to the proconsul; being kept indeed in custody, but honorably, and treated liberally according to his condition and reputation, as the biographer testifies at num. 31 of the Life: Yet, having been received and set in the officer's house, a delicate custody kept him for one night, so that after our custom we were his guests and dear ones in his company. Thence on the following day, the XIV of the month of September, before a most crowded people who had flocked thither, he was brought to Galerius Maximus the proconsul. But in going from the lodging to the proconsul's tribunal there intervened, on the biographer's testimony, a passage across the stadium, whence also it came about that he arrived there soaked with too much sweat. The proconsul meanwhile delaying, a more private place was given to the Saint, and a seat was offered to him weary, … covered by chance with a linen cloth, so that even under the stroke of his passion he might enjoy the honor of the episcopate; for that the chairs of bishops were formerly wont to be covered with linens we have also from St. Pacian the bishop in Epistle 2 to Sympronianus, where he reproaches Novatian with having received a linen-covered seat with no one consecrating him.

[825] Besides, the same biographer observes that one of the soldiers of the tesserarii, drenched with sweat from the journey, once a Christian, while the Saint, drenched with sweat, was resting in that seat, offered to exchange his own garments for his soaked ones, with no other mind than to possess the now bloody sweats of a Martyr setting out to God: but that he answered: We apply remedies to complaints which perhaps will not exist today. But it has seemed good to have noted these things, so that from this too it may be plain how highly the faithful of old esteemed any relics whatever of the holy Martyrs, and how greatly in this part too they dissented from the heretics, who in later ages so impiously profaned them. For the rest it is probable that that apostate soldier coveted the holy Martyr's garments in order to procure money for himself from them from the Christians. Meanwhile, St. Cyprian's arrival having been announced to the proconsul, he was at length brought to his tribunal, and, having again freely confessed Christ and his episcopate, and refusing to burn incense to the idols, he was condemned to death. The proconsul's questions, and what the Saint answered to them, the Acts exhibit at num. 5 and 6, which consult. The sentence passed upon him I here only subjoin.

[826] and condemned to death, Galerius Maximus, having conferred with his council, scarcely and with difficulty pronounced sentence in words of this kind: You have long lived with a sacrilegious mind, and have gathered to yourself very many men of a nefarious conspiracy, and have set yourself an enemy of the Roman gods and of the sacred laws; nor could the devout and most sacred princes Valerian and Gallienus the Augusti, and Valerian the most noble Caesar, recall you to the observance of their ceremonies. And therefore, since you have been detected as the author and standard-bearer of most wicked crimes, you shall yourself be an example to those whom you have gathered with you by your crime: discipline shall be sanctioned by your blood. And having said this, he recited the decree from a tablet: It is decided that Thascius Cyprian be punished with the sword. Cyprian the bishop said: Thanks be to God. The sentence is clear, and such as the most holy Martyr could desire for the glory of Christ and for the instruction of his flock. But it is uncertain whether, when Galerius is said to have pronounced it scarcely and with difficulty, we ought to interpret this of his sickness of body, or of mind, which he had conceived from the imminent slaying of so great a Man. The same sentence the biographer cites, and weighs some things from it to the Saint's glory; but about the manner in which it was pronounced he records nothing.

[827] and, amid the tears of his own people, into the field of Sextus But with what mind the faithful received the condemnation of their Bishop, the writer of the Acts declares at num. 7 in these words: But after this sentence the crowd of the brethren said: Let us too be beheaded with him. On this account a tumult of the brethren began, and a great crowd followed him. This tumult however does not seem to have been anything else than the devout prayers of Christians desiring to die with their Shepherd, and the tears and voices of the grieving, which either compassion for the Bishop about to die, or the desire of a like martyrdom, wrung from them: for of prayers of this kind the biographer also makes mention; but of a tumult stirred up he has nothing. Further, when he was going out of the doors of the praetorium (these are the biographer's words), a crowd of soldiers went as his escort; and, lest anything should be lacking to his passion, centurions and tribunes had covered his flank. There accompanied him besides a great throng of people, whom partly love of their Prelate, partly his celebrated fame had drawn. With this escort he was brought forth into the field of Sextus, as the Acts have it. But that place itself, on the biographer's testimony, is level, where it fell to him to suffer, so that, with trees thickly set on every side, it offers a lofty spectacle. But since, through the enormity of the too great distance, sight was denied through the excessively confused crowd, favoring persons had crept into the branches of the trees, lest even this should be denied him, that after the likeness of Zacchaeus he should be seen from the trees.

[828] That this place is set at the sixth milestone from Carthage by the Venerable Bede being led, he is beheaded. and by other martyrologists, on account of the word Sextus as it seems, we have already observed above, nor have we nevertheless admitted it as certain. This is beyond doubt from what has been said, that it was outside the walls of Carthage, where also we shall see in the Saint's posthumous Glory that a church was on that account afterwards erected. Hence, when the biographer writes at num. 36 of the Life that the holy Martyr shed his glorious blood in the very city in which he had so lived, he is to be understood of the neighborhood of the city. To this field of Sextus therefore the holy Prelate, being led, consummated his martyrdom in the sight of his dearest flock, as he had wished, his head being cut off; the manner and course of which may be seen in the Life and in the Acts; where also the holy Martyr's body is said to have been publicly exposed to the curiosity of the gentiles, and to have been taken away by night by the faithful and honorably buried at the plots of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator in accordance with the merits of the most holy Man, but Galerius Maximus the proconsul is said to have died after a few days. But for all these things I refer the reader to the aforesaid Acts and to the biographer.

[829] Before however we give these, three things remain here to be examined. Money given by his order to the executioner. And first indeed in the proconsular Acts at num. 7 St. Cyprian is said, having been brought to the place of martyrdom and now about to die,

to have ordered his own people to give twenty-five gold pieces to the executioner by whom he was to be beheaded. This largess seemed to John Fell to be attributable to the munificence of the copyists; but he alleges no reason, and Maran in his Annotations asserts that the same largess is found in all the manuscripts which he saw. He observes however in the same place that St. Augustine favors Fell, who in Sermon 309, elsewhere 12, which is the first on the Birthday of St. Cyprian, calls these his last words to Galerius Maximus, Thanks be to God, the venerable Martyr's last utterance. But these things in no way prevent us from retaining, with the aforesaid manuscripts and editions, that munificence of the Saint toward his executioner; since St. Augustine in the place cited speaks of the holy Prelate's last word to the proconsul before the tribunal, not of the last word of his life: this is clear from the text itself, in which nothing further is added about the execution of the sentence.

[830] Another difficulty Tillemont raises in Note 50 on St. Cyprian from the Life, Of the bishops of Carthage he is the first martyr; in which Pontius says at num. 36: Thus, his passion being consummated, it was brought about that Cyprian … should also be the first in Africa to dye the priestly crowns. Besides these things Tillemont cites the genuine Acts of SS. Montanus, Lucius, and Companions, which were given in our Work at the XXIV day of February, and in which at p. 458, num. 21, St. Cyprian is said, when he had as yet … suffered alone, to have appeared to St. Flavian. But he thinks neither this nor that probable, since it is evident that very many suffered in Africa before St. Cyprian, among whom without doubt there were some bishops. He rightly however took Pontius's words of the bishops of Carthage alone, nor is another interpretation needed, since Pontius himself, explaining his mind in the same place, at once restricts what he had said more generally, thus continuing: For from the time when the order of the episcopate is counted at Carthage, never is anyone recorded, although of good and [*] priests, to have come to a passion. As regards the Acts of St. Montanus and his companions, in these it is only said that St. Cyprian suffered first at Carthage in the persecution of Valerian, which is probable from other sources also.

[831] he had no companions in martyrdom. To our holy Martyr Ado of Vienne in his Martyrology joined four companions, taken from I know not where, namely Crescentianus, Victor, Rosula, and Generalis, but doubtfully however. For after St. Cyprian's eulogy at this very day he subjoined: But there are reported to have suffered with blessed Cyprian Crescentianus, Victor, Rosula, and Generalis. With Ado agree Usuard and Notker and others: but that these martyrs by no means suffered with St. Cyprian is more manifest, both from the Life by St. Pontius and from the proconsular Acts, and finally from the passage of the Acts of St. Montanus and his companions reported in the preceding number, than that it needs proving; and therefore about them there will be separate and brief treatment on this very day. Now I subjoin the Life.

* i.e. even

THE LIFE

By St. Pontius, his deacon,

From Ruinart's edition in the genuine Acts of the Martyrs.

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, martyr, near Carthage in Africa. (S.)

BHL Number: 2041

By St. Pontius the deacon.

CHAPTER I.

The author's preface: the Saint's conversion to the faith: his promotion to sacred Orders: his zeal for virtue: his episcopate and virtues.

The author sets forth his reasons Cyprian, a religious prelate and a glorious witness of God, although he wrote many things through which the memory of a name worthy of remembrance survives; although the ample fruitfulness of his eloquence and of God's grace so extended itself by the abundance and richness of his discourse that perhaps it will not be silent until the end of the world; nevertheless, because to his works and merits this prerogative also is owed, that his example be set down in writing ^a, it has seemed good to write a few things summarily ^b; not that the life of so great a Man is hidden from anyone even ^c of the gentiles, but that to our posterity also an incomparable and great evidence may be extended into immortal memory. Certainly it were hard that, whereas our elders gave so much honor to plebeians and catechumens who had obtained martyrdom, out of veneration for the martyrdom itself, that they wrote much, or, I might almost say, well-nigh everything about their passions, so that these might come also to our knowledge who were not yet born; the passion of Cyprian, so great a priest and so great a martyr, should be passed over — a man who even without martyrdom had things to teach, and whose deeds, done while he lived, would not lie open.

[2] Which indeed are so great and so mighty and so wonderful that I am deterred by the contemplation of their greatness, and confess myself unequal to bringing forth a discourse worthy of the honor of his merits; for writing; nor able so to follow out deeds so great that they may appear as great as they are; save that the multitude of his glories ^d, being sufficient to itself, has no need of another's heralding. It is added to the sum that you ^e too desire to hear much, or, if it can be done, all about him, longing with burning ardor to know at least his deeds, though meanwhile his living words have fallen silent. In which part, if I say that we fail in the resources of eloquence, I say too little. For eloquence itself fails ^f of a worthy faculty which might satisfy your desire with full spirit. Thus we are gravely pressed on both sides: since he burdens us with his virtues, and you weary us with your entreaties.

[3] Whence then shall I begin? Whence shall I approach the opening of his good deeds, and he begins from the religion embraced by him. save from the beginning of his faith and from his heavenly birth? Seeing that the deeds of a Man of God ought to be reckoned from nowhere else than from the time when he was born to God. Though there may have been studies, and though good arts may have imbued ^g his devoted breast, nevertheless I pass those over: for they pertained as yet only to the profit of the world. After he had both learned the sacred Letters ^h and, the cloud of the world being dispelled, emerged into the light of spiritual wisdom, if I was present at any of his acts, if I have learned anything of his earlier works ⁱ, I shall tell it: asking however this indulgence, that whatever I shall say less fully (for it is necessary that I say less) be set down rather to my ignorance than to any lack in his glory.

[4] Among the first rudiments of his faith he believed nothing else worthy of God than that he should keep continence: As a catechumen he embraces continence, and the price of his estates for then, he thought, could his breast become fit, and his understanding attain to the full capacity of the true, if he trampled the concupiscence of the flesh with a robust and unimpaired vigor of sanctity. Who ever recalls so great a miracle? Not yet had a second birth given eyes to the new man with the full splendor of divine light, and already by the mere preparation of the light he was conquering the old and former darkness. Then, what is greater, when he had learned certain things from the divine reading, not according to the condition of his newness but according to the haste of his faith, he at once seized upon what he found would avail for gaining God's favor. His property being sold for the sustaining of the need of the poor, and the whole of his estates ^k being dispensed in their price, he joined two goods together: that he might both spurn the ambition of the world, than which nothing is more pernicious, and fulfil mercy, which God preferred even to his own sacrifices, and which not even he who had said that he had kept all the commandments of the Law performed ^l: and therefore by the swiftness of his devotion he almost began to be perfect before he learned to be so.

[5] Who, I ask, of the men of old did this? Who of the most ancient men aged in the faith, he pays out to the poor. whose minds and ears the divine words had struck for very many years, bestowed any such thing as this Man, still raw in the faith, and one to whom perhaps trust would not yet have been given ^m, accomplished by glorious and admirable works, surpassing the age of the old? No one reaps as soon as he has sown: no one has pressed a vintage from newly dug trenches: no one has ever yet sought ripe apples from newly planted saplings. In him all incredible things ran together. The threshing forestalled — if it can be said (for the thing does not admit belief) — forestalled, I say, the sowing; the vintage the shoot; the fruit the root ⁿ.

[6] The Apostle's letter says that neophytes ought to be passed over, He is quickly promoted to sacred Orders; lest, the stupor of gentilism still clinging to minds not yet grounded, an untaught newness should sin somewhat against God ^o. He was the first, and, I think, the only example that one can be advanced more by faith than by time. But even if in the Acts of the Apostles that eunuch is described as having been at once dipped by Philip, because he had believed with his whole heart [p]; the comparison is not alike: for he was both a Jew and, coming from the temple of the Lord, was reading the prophet Isaiah, and hoped in Christ, although he had not yet believed that he had come: but this man, coming from among the unskilled gentiles, began with as mature a faith as few perhaps have attained at the end. Finally there was no delay about the grace of God, no postponement. I have said too little: he received at once the presbyterate and the priesthood: for who would not have believed all the grades of honors due to one believing with such a mind?

[7] The saints to be imitated by him, There are many things which he did while still a layman, many which he did when already a presbyter, many which, following after the examples of the just men of old with a like imitation, he performed by gaining the Lord's favor through the service of all religion. For it was his accustomed discourse on this subject, that, if he had read of anyone proclaimed with the praise of God, he urged that inquiry be made for what deeds he had pleased God. If Job, glorious by God's testimony, was called a true worshiper of God, and one to whom no one on earth could be compared; he taught that whatever Job had done before must be done: so that, while we too do the like, we may call down upon ourselves a like testimony of God. He, despising the losses of his household estate, so advanced by exercised virtue that he did not even feel the temporal damages of devotion.

[8] he continually sets before himself. Neither want nor grief broke him, nor did a wife's persuasion turn him aside [q], nor did the dire punishment of his own body shake him. His virtue remained fixed in its own seat, and his devotion founded on deep roots: by no assault of the tempting devil did he yield so as to fail to bless his God with grateful faith even amid adversities. His house lay open to whoever came: no widow returned with empty bosom: no one lacking sight failed to be guided with him as companion: no one weak in gait failed to be carried with him as bearer: no one stripped of help from the hand of a more powerful man failed to be protected with him as guardian. These things, he used to say, they ought to do who desire to please God: and thus, running through the evidences of all good men, while he always imitates his betters, he also made himself one to be imitated.

[9] Brought to the faith by Caecilius, There was indeed also from among us his intimacy with Caecilius [r], a just man and of laudable memory, then a presbyter both in age and in honor, who had corrected him from worldly error to the acknowledgment of the true Divinity. Him he loved with all honor and every observance, looking up to him with obedient veneration, not now as a friend equal to his own soul, but as the parent of his new life. Finally he, softened by his services, was so provoked by the merit of his immense affection that, departing from the world, his summons being now at hand, he commended

to him his wife and children [s], so that the man whom he had made a partaker in the fellowship of the sect he might afterwards make the heir of his devotion.

[10] and while still a neophyte It is long to go through particulars, it is burdensome to enumerate all his deeds. For the proving of his good works I think this alone is enough, that by the judgment of God and the favor of the people he was chosen, while still a neophyte and, as was thought, a novice, to the office of the priesthood and to the grade of the episcopate [t]: although in the first days of his faith, and in the raw age of his spiritual life, so noble a disposition shone forth that, resplendent, if not yet with the brightness of office, at least with that of hope, he gave promise of all the confidence of the imminent priesthood. Nor shall I pass over this excellent thing either: how, when the whole people, at the Lord's inspiration, sprang forth into love and honor of him, he humbly withdrew, yielding to older men, and judging himself unworthy of the title of so great an honor, so that he might become the more worthy: for he is made the more worthy who excuses himself from what he deserves.

[11] With what ardor did the people then, seething, waver, longing with spiritual desire, as the outcome taught, being compelled to take up the episcopate, not only for a bishop; for in the man whom they then, by a hidden [u] presage of the Divinity, so demanded, they were seeking not only a priest but also a future martyr. A copious brotherhood had beset the doors of the house, and through all the approaches a solicitous charity went about. It could perhaps then have befallen him, as he wished, to be let down through a window, as in that Apostolic case [x]; if with the Apostle he were made like also in the honor of ordination. It was to be seen that all the rest awaited with suspended and anxious spirit his coming, and received him with exceeding joy when he came. Unwillingly I say it; but I must say it: some resisted him, even so that he might conquer [y]. To whom nevertheless with what gentleness, how patiently, how benevolently he was indulgent, how clemently he pardoned, afterwards reckoning them among his most friendly and among his intimates, to the wonder of many: for to whom could the forgetfulness of so retentive a mind not be a miracle?

[12] Thereafter how he bore himself, who would suffice to relate? he shines forth with episcopal virtues. What devotion was in him? What vigor? How great mercy? How great censure? So much of sanctity and of grace shone from his countenance that it confounded the minds of those who beheld it. His face was grave and glad; neither was his severity gloomy nor his affability excessive; but a temper mixed of both, so that one might be in doubt whether he deserved rather to be revered or to be loved; save that he deserved both to be revered and to be loved. But neither was his dress unlike his countenance, being itself also tempered in the mean. Worldly pride had not puffed him up; nor yet had an affected penury made him squalid; because this kind of clothing too is not less of boasting than an ambitious frugality thus ostentatiously displayed [z]. But what would a Bishop do about the poor, whom as a catechumen he loved? Let the prelates of devotion see to it, whether those whom the discipline of that same Order instructed to the duty of good work, or those whom the religion of the common sacrament constrained to the service of showing charity. The chair received Cyprian such from his own resources; it did not make him such.

ANNOTATA.

p. Read chapter 8 of the Acts of the Apostles.

q. From this passage Pagi and John Fell had given St. Cyprian a wife; but wrongly, as they themselves acknowledged. Consult the Commentary, §2, num. 24 and the following.

r. In the Fossat and Fleury codices Caecilianus is read in Ruinart: our reading is better. Further, from this St. Caecilius, of whom treatment has been made in our Work at the third day of June along with the Roman Martyrology, St. Cyprian took the surname of Caecilius, on St. Jerome's testimony in the Catalogue of writers. Go to the Commentary, §2, num. 28 and the following.

s. What we have noted about these things, consult, if you please, in the passage of the Commentary just cited.

t. That these things must be referred to the year of Christ 248 or 249 was proved in §5 of the Commentary, and it was likewise said there that the Saint more probably succeeded Donatus.

u. The Fossat and Fleury codices read hidden (accusative), on Ruinart's testimony.

x. Go to chapter XI of the second Epistle to the Corinthians.

y. That is, that he should not be made bishop. About these things consult §5 of the Commentary from num. 91.

z. The codex of Fossat, already often cited, has: Which an ambitious frugality otherwise displays. With this the Fleury codex agrees, except that for frugality it has frailty.

CHAPTER II.

The Saint's proscription and retirement: the mercy shown to those infected with the plague: his exile: the vision about his martyrdom.

Being proscribed and demanded for the lion, Finally, for such merits he at once obtained also the glory of proscription ^a. For nothing else was fitting than that the man who within the secret hiding-place of his conscience flourished in all the honor of religion and faith should also be publicly titled by the celebrated report of the gentiles. There could indeed then, according to the swiftness with which he always attained everything, the crown of martyrdom due to him also have hastened; especially since by often-repeated shouts he was demanded for the lion; had it not been that he must pass through all the orders of glories, and so come to the highest; and had it not been that the imminent ruin needed the help of so fruitful a breast. For imagine him then translated by the condescension of martyrdom; who would have shown the gain of grace advancing through faith? Who would have restrained virgins, as with certain reins of the Lord's reading, to a discipline of chastity befitting them and to a habit worthy of holiness? Who would have taught penance to the lapsed, truth to heretics, unity to schismatics; peace to the sons of God, and the law of Evangelical prayer?

[14] Through whom would the blaspheming gentiles be conquered, prudently the things which they hurl at us being flung back upon themselves? By whom would Christians of softer feeling at the loss of their own, or, what is more, of smaller faith, be consoled by the hope of things to come? Whence should we thus learn mercy, whence patience? Who should restrain envy, coming from the poisoned malignity of jealousy, by the sweetness of a saving remedy? Who should raise up so great martyrs by the exhortation of the divine word? Who finally should animate so many confessors, marked with the second inscription of branded foreheads, and reserved as survivors for the example of martyrdom, by the incitement of the heavenly trumpet ^b? Well, well then and truly spiritually did it come about that a Man necessary to so many and so good works was deferred from the consummation of martyrdom. Do you wish to know that that retirement was not fear ^c? Though I should excuse nothing else, he himself afterwards suffered; which passion assuredly he would have avoided after his custom, if he had avoided it before as well.

[15] It was truly a fear ^d, but a just one: a fear which feared to offend the Lord: and by the counsel of divine providence a fear which preferred to obey the precepts of God rather than to be crowned in that way. For a mind dedicated to God in all things, and so surrendered to divine admonitions, believed that, unless it had obeyed the Lord then commanding a hiding-place ^e, it would be sinning even by the very passion. Finally I think that even now some things must be discussed about the usefulness of the delay, although we have already briefly touched on a few. For through these things which are seen to have followed afterwards, as follows, let us prove ^f that that retirement was not conceived from a Man's pusillanimity, but was, as it is, truly divine. An insolent and bitter raging of a hostile persecution had laid waste the people of God: and because the crafty enemy could not deceive all by one fraud, wherever an incautious soldier had exposed a bare flank, he had by a different kind of raging cast down individuals with diverse slaughter.

[16] he withdraws. There had to be one who could, according to the quality of the wound, either for the time cut or cherish men who were wounded and struck by the varied art of the assailing enemy, by applying the remedy of the heavenly medicine. There was preserved a Man of a talent, besides all else, also spiritually tempered, who amid the resounding waves of colliding schisms might steer the middle course of the church with a balanced path ^g. Are not these, I ask, divine counsels? Could this have come about without God? Let those see to it who think that these things can happen by chance. The Church answers them with clear voice, saying: I do not admit, I do not believe that necessary men are preserved without God's nod.

[17] The dire plague raging, Let us run through the rest however, if it seems good. There broke out

afterwards a dire plague, and the excessive devastation of a detestable disease, snatching away innumerable peoples by day, each from his own seat, with abrupt onset, invaded house after house in order of the trembling populace. All shuddered, fled ^h, avoided contagion, impiously exposed their own kin, as though with the man who was to die of that plague ⁱ one could shut out death itself as well. Meanwhile there lay throughout the whole city not now bodies, but the corpses of very many, and by the contemplation of their own lot they demanded mercy for themselves from those who passed by. No one looked to anything else than cruel gains; no one trembled at the recollection of a like fate; no one did to another what he wished to have done to himself ^k. What the Pontiff of Christ and of God did amid these things — he who so far surpassed the pontiffs of this world in devotion as he did in the truth of religion — it is a crime to pass over.

[18] he brings his people, by an effective address, Having gathered the people first in one place, he instructed them on the goods of mercy, teaching by the examples of the divine reading how much the offices of piety avail for gaining God's favor. Then he subjoins that it is not wonderful if we cherish only our own with the due service of charity; that he can be made perfect who does something more than the publican or the heathen; who, overcoming evil with good, and practicing the likeness of divine clemency, loves his enemies also; who prays for the salvation of those who persecute him, as the Lord admonishes and exhorts. God makes his sun to rise continually, and from time to time bestows rains for the nourishing of the seeds, exhibiting all these things not only to his own but also to strangers; and he who professes himself to be even a son of God, why does he not imitate the example of his Father? It befits us, he says, to answer to our birth, and it is not fitting that those who are known to have been born again through God should be degenerate; but that rather there be proved in the offspring the strain of a good Father by the emulation of goodness.

[19] to succor those infected with it. Many other things, and great ones indeed, I pass over, which the plan of keeping this volume within measure does not permit to be repeated in a longer discourse; concerning which it is enough to have said only this: that if the gentiles could have heard them from the rostra, they would perhaps have believed at once. What would the Christian people do, who take their name from faith? Ministries therefore were at once distributed according to the quality of the persons and of their ranks. Many, who through the straitness of poverty could not bestow the benefits of expense, bestowed more than expense, making up by their own labor a recompense dearer than all riches. And who would not, under so great a Teacher, hasten to be found in some part of such a warfare, by which he might please both God the Father and Christ the judge, and meanwhile so good a Priest? And so it came about, by the bounty of overflowing works, that good was done to all, not to the household of the faith alone. Something more was done than what is recorded of the incomparable piety of Tobias. Let him pardon, and pardon again, and pardon frequently; or, to speak more truly, let him deservedly concede that, although very much was permitted before Christ, something more was permitted after Christ, to whose times fullness is owed. He gathered up only those of his own race who had been killed by the king and cast out.

[20] Upon these so good and so devout acts there came exile: He is driven into exile for impiety always renders this return, that it repays better things with worse. And what the Priest of God answered when the proconsul questioned him, there are Acts to relate ^l. Meanwhile there is shut out from the city the man who had done some good for the city's welfare; the man who had labored that the eyes of the living should not endure the horror of an infernal abode; the man, I say, who, keeping watch in the vigils of devotion — O the wickedness! — had by an ungrateful goodness provided that, when all were leaving the foul face of the city, the commonwealth should not, being deserted, and the fatherland, being abandoned, feel that there were many exiles. But let the world see to it, for whom exile is counted among punishments. To them their fatherland is too dear, and it is a name common with their parents ^m: we abhor our very parents if they urge us against the Lord. To them to live outside their own city is a grave punishment: to a Christian this whole world is one house. Whence, although he was banished into a hidden and out-of-the-way place, being mingled with the things of his God, he cannot reckon it exile.

[21] Add that one who wholly serves God is a pilgrim even in his own city; to Curubis, where for while by the continence of a holy spirit he holds himself back from carnal desires, laying aside the conversation of the former man, even among his own fellow citizens, or, I might almost say, among his very parents, he is a stranger to earthly life. It is added that even if this could otherwise seem a punishment, nevertheless in causes and sentences of this kind, which we endure for the trials of proving our virtue, it is not a punishment, because it is glory. But let it be granted indeed that exile is not a punishment to us: let even their own conscience as witness ascribe to them the ultimate crime and the worst wickedness, who can inflict upon the innocent what they think a punishment.

[22] I do not wish now to describe the charm of the place ⁿ, and for the present I pass over the provision of all delights. nothing is lacking to him, Let us imagine that place foul in situation, squalid to the sight, having no healthful waters, no pleasantness of greenery, no neighborhood of a shore; but vast rocks amid the inhospitable jaws of forests, of the fashion of a deserted solitude, removed to a trackless part of the world. Could such a place, even so, have the name of exile, whither Cyprian the priest of God had come; to whom, if the services of men failed, either birds, as to Elijah, or, as to Daniel, angels would minister? Far, far be it that anyone should believe that to any least man whatever, provided he be set in the confession of the Name, anything would be lacking: so far is it from being the case that that Pontiff of God, who had always devoted himself to works of mercy, should need the resources of all these.

[23] Now at length let us with thanksgiving repeat what I had placed in the second place: he is visited by many, and by a vision that there was divinely provided, even for the mind of so great a Man, a sunny and suitable place, a lodging secluded according to his wish, and whatever has been promised to be set before those who seek the kingdom and the justice of God. And, to omit the frequency of the brethren visiting him, and the charity of the citizens both of the place and from there, which supplied everything of which he seemed to have been deprived; I shall not pass over the admirable visitation of God, by which he willed his Prelate to be so secure in exile about his coming passion, that Curubis, by a fuller confidence in the imminent martyrdom, possessed not only an exile but also a martyr.

[24] For on that day on which we first stayed in the place of exile ^o (for the condescension of his charity had chosen even me among his household companions as a voluntary exile, and would that this had been permitted in his passion also!) There appeared to me, he said, when I was not yet lulled in the rest of sleep, about undergoing martyrdom, and about its delay a young man beyond measure huge; who, when he was leading me to the praetorium, I seemed to myself to be brought before the tribunal of the proconsul then sitting there. He, as he looked upon me, at once began to note down on a tablet a sentence which I did not know; for he had asked nothing about me by the usual questioning. But indeed the young man who was standing behind him read very inquisitively whatever had been noted down: and because he could not utter it from there in words, he showed by a declaring nod what was contained in the letters of that tablet. For with his hand stretched out and flattened after the fashion of a sword, imitating the stroke of the usual punishment, he expressed what he wished to be understood after the likeness of clear speech.

[25] he is divinely admonished; I understood that it would be a sentence of passion. I began to entreat, and continually to ask, that a delay even of one day be prolonged to me, until I should arrange my affairs by a lawful ordering. And when I had frequently repeated my prayers, he had again begun to note down I know not what on the tablet. Yet I perceived from the serenity of his countenance the judge's mind, as though moved by a just petition. But that young man also, who had a while before disclosed by gesture rather than by speech the indication of the passion, hastened with a repeated secret nod to signify, by twisting his fingers one after another, that the delay asked for the morrow had been granted. I, although the sentence had not been read, and although I rejoiced with a very glad heart at the joy of the delay received; nevertheless so trembled with fear of the uncertain interpretation that the remnants of dread still beat upon my exulting heart with all their terror.

[26] which vision What is more manifest than this revelation? What happier than this condescension? All the things which afterwards followed were foretold to him beforehand. Nothing was diminished of God's words; nothing mutilated of so holy a promise: recognize finally each thing, according as it was shown. He asks a delay of a morrow, when a sentence of passion was being deliberated; asking that on that day which he had obtained he might set his affairs in order. This one day signified the year which he was to spend in the world after the vision. For, to speak more manifestly, on that day, a year having been completed, he was crowned, on which this had been shown him a year before. But we read in the divine Letters of a day of the Lord, though not of a year, and we take that time as owed to the promise of things to come: whence it matters nothing if now under the signification of a day a whole year alone was shown; because that ought to be the fuller which is the greater.

[27] the author interprets, But as to the fact that it was explained by a nod rather than by speech, the utterance of speech was being reserved for the representation of the time: for anything is then wont to be brought forth in words, whenever whatever is brought forth is fulfilled. For truly no one knew why this had been shown to him, except that afterwards he was crowned on the same day on which he had seen it. Nevertheless in the intervening time his imminent passion was known for certain by all; yet the certain day of the passion was passed over in silence by all of them, as though they did not know it. Indeed I find something of the kind in the Scriptures also: for Zechariah the priest, when a son had been promised him by an angel, because he had not believed, was struck dumb, so that, being about to write his son's name rather than to declare it, he demanded tablets by a nod [p]. Deservedly here too, where God's messenger expressed the Prelate's imminent passion rather by a nod, he both admonished his faith and fortified the Priest.

[28] But the reason for asking a delay came from the ordering of affairs and from the disposition of his will. But what affairs of his, or what will, was to be ordered, save that of the ecclesiastical state? Therefore a final delay was received, and proves to have been truthful. so that whatever had to be disposed by a final judgment concerning the care of cherishing the poor might be set in order. And I think for no other reason, nay rather for this alone, was indulgence admitted even by those very men who had cast him out and were to slay him: that he, being present, might relieve the poor who were present with the last, and, to speak more fully, with the whole resources of his final dispensation.

ANNOTATA.

p. This event you have reported in St. Luke, chap. 1.

CHAPTER III.

The Saint's acts in exile: his arrest: his condemnation and martyrdom.

The Saint refuses to flee; Affairs therefore having been so devoutly ordered, and thus disposed according to his will, the next day was drawing near. Already about Xystus, a good and peaceable Priest, and therefore a most blessed martyr, a message had come from the City ^a. Already at any moment the executioner was expected to come who should strike the devoted neck of a most holy Victim: and thus all those days were of daily expectation of dying, so that a crown could be ascribed to each one. Meanwhile many came together, distinguished and of most illustrious rank and blood, and also noble by the world's nobility, who, on account of their old friendship with him, repeatedly urged retirement; and, lest bare persuasion should be too little, they even offered places into which he might withdraw. But he had already neglected the world, his mind being suspended toward heaven, nor did he assent to their flattering persuasions. He would perhaps then also have done what was asked by very many and faithful men, if he had been bidden by a divine command also ^b.

[30] he animates his people to martyrdom: he is seized; But neither is that sublime glory of so great a Man to be passed over without heralding; because, when the world was already swelling and, from confidence in its princes, panting for an assault upon the Name, he was instructing the servants of God, as occasion was given, with the Lord's exhortations, and animating them to trample the sufferings of this time by the contemplation of the brightness to come. Indeed so great was his desire of sacred discourse that he wished the prayers of his passion so to befall him that, while he was speaking of God, he might be slain in the very act of speaking. And these were the daily acts appointed for a Priest's victim pleasing to God; when behold, by the proconsul's order, an officer ^c with his soldiers suddenly came upon his gardens (upon the gardens, I say, which, having been sold in the beginnings of his faith and restored by God's indulgence, he would certainly have sold again for the uses of the poor, were he not avoiding the ill-will arising from the persecution); nay, to speak more truly, believed that he had come suddenly: for whence could a mind always prepared be come upon suddenly, as by an unforeseen assault?

[31] there is a huge concourse to him, He went forth ^d therefore, now certain of being dispatched, which had long been delayed; he went forth with a lofty and erect spirit, showing cheerfulness in his countenance and virtue in his heart. But being deferred until the next day, he was returning from the praetorium to the officer's house; when suddenly a rumor, scattered through all Carthage, grew strong that Thascius had already been brought forth — a man whom, besides his renown, celebrated by glorious repute, everyone knew also from the commemoration of his most distinguished work ^e. They all ran together from every direction to the spectacle, glorious to us out of the devotion of our faith, and to the gentiles a thing to be grieved over. Yet, having been received and set in the officer's house, a delicate custody kept him for one night, so that after our custom we were his guests and dear ones in his company ^f.

[32] Meanwhile the whole people, anxious lest anything should be done during the night without their knowledge, the people keep watch through the night before the doors. kept watch before the officer's doors. The divine Goodness then granted to him, truly worthy of it, that the people of God should keep vigil even in the passion of their Priest ^g. Perhaps however someone may ask what was the reason for returning from the praetorium to the officer. And some indeed would have it that the proconsul then was unwilling of his own accord. Far be it that in things divinely done I should complain of the sloth or the fastidiousness of the proconsul: far be it that I should admit this evil within the conscience of a religious mind, that a man's belch ^h should pass judgment upon so most blessed a Martyr: but that morrow, which a year before the divine condescension had foretold, had truly to be a morrow.

[33] At length another day dawned, that appointed one, that promised one, The next day, being led to the proconsul's tribunal, that divine one; which if a tyrant himself had wished to defer, he would never at all have availed ⁱ: a day glad from the consciousness of the future Martyr, and, the clouds being dispelled throughout the whole compass of the world, radiant with a clear sun. He went out of the officer's house, but as a Prince of Christ and of God, and he was hedged in on every side by the throngs of a mixed multitude. And so an infinite army clung to his escort, as though they were coming in a formed band to storm death. But in his going there intervened a passage across the stadium. Well indeed and as though of set purpose it was brought about that he who was running, the contest being consummated, to the crown of justice should pass by the place of a fitting contest. But when they had come to the praetorium, the proconsul not yet coming forth, a more private place was given him. There, when after the long journey he was sitting soaked with too much sweat (and the seat was covered by chance with a linen cloth, so that even under the stroke of his passion he might enjoy the honor of the episcopate ^k), one of the tesserarii ^l, once a Christian, offered his own things, as though he wished him to change his damp garments for drier ones; who plainly sought nothing else in the things offered than to possess the now bloody sweats of a Martyr setting out to God. To whom he answered and said: We apply remedies to complaints which perhaps will not exist today. Is it a wonder if he despised toil in his body, who had despised death in his mind?

[34] What more? Suddenly he was announced to the proconsul. sentence being passed, He is brought forth, brought near, questioned about his name: he answered that he was the man: and so far the words ^m. The judge therefore read from the tablet the sentence which he had lately in the vision not read ⁿ, a spiritual sentence not to be uttered rashly; a sentence worthy of such a Bishop and of such a Witness; a glorious sentence, in which he was called the Standard-bearer of the sect, and an Enemy of the gods, and one who was himself to be an example to his own people, and that by his blood discipline should begin to be sanctioned ^o. Nothing is fuller than this sentence, nothing truer: for all the things which were said, although said by a gentile, are divine. Nor is it any wonder at all; since pontiffs are wont to prophesy about a passion [p]. He had been a Standard-bearer who taught about bearing the standard of Christ: an Enemy of the gods, who commanded that the idols be destroyed: and he was an example to his own people, who first in the province dedicated the first-fruits of martyrdom for many who were to follow in a like kind. Discipline too began to be sanctioned by his blood — but the discipline of martyrs, who, emulating their Teacher by the imitation of a like glory, themselves also sanctioned by their own gore the discipline of his example.

[35] And when he was going out of the doors of the praetorium, a crowd of soldiers went as his escort; and, lest anything should be lacking to his passion, centurions and tribunes had covered his flank. But the place [q] itself is level, where it fell to him to suffer, so that, with trees thickly set on every side, it offers a lofty spectacle. before a most numerous people But since, through the enormity of the too great distance, sight was denied through the excessively confused crowd, favoring persons had crept into the branches of the trees, lest even this should be denied him, that after the likeness of Zacchaeus [r] he should be seen from the trees. But now, his eyes being bound by his own hands [s], he tried to urge on the delay of the executioner, whose office is the steel: and with his right hand slipping he could scarcely with trembling fingers grasp the sword around, until the ripe hour of his glorification at length, permission being given, set free the centurion's hand, strengthened by a vigor granted from above, for accomplishing the death of the precious Man.

[36] he is beheaded. O blessed people of the church, who suffered with such a Bishop of theirs both with their eyes and with their senses alike, and, what is more, with their published voice; and, as they had always heard when he himself taught, were crowned with God as judge. For although what their common prayers desired could not come about, that the whole people should suffer together in the fellowship of an equal glory, whoever under the eyes of Christ beholding, and under the ears of the Priest, wished from his heart to suffer, sent as it were the letters of an embassy to God by a fit Witness of his prayer. Thus, his passion being consummated, it was brought about that Cyprian, who had been the example of all good things, should also be the first in Africa [t] to dye the priestly crowns; because he was the first after the Apostles both to be such

and to begin to be such. For from the time when the order of the episcopate is counted at Carthage, never is anyone recorded, although of good and [*] priests, to have come to a passion. Although a devotion always surrendered to God is reckoned in dedicated men in the place of martyrdom; Cyprian nevertheless advanced even to the perfect crown, the Lord consummating it, so that in the very city in which he had so lived, and in which he had first done many distinguished things, he should also be the first to adorn with glorious gore the insignia of the heavenly priesthood.

[37] The author's epilogue. What shall I do in this place? A mind divided into parts between the joy of the passion and the grief of remaining, and a breast too narrow, are burdened by twofold feelings. Shall I grieve that I was not his companion? But his victory must be celebrated in triumph. Shall I triumph over the victory? But I grieve that I am not his companion. Yet to you I must confess simply what you also know, that I have been of this mind. Much and exceedingly much do I exult over his glory; yet more do I grieve that I have remained.

ANNOTATA.

p. He alludes to chapter XI of John, where Caiphas, since he was Pontiff of that year, prophesied that Jesus was to die for the nation.

q. That was the field of Sextus, as is said in the same proconsular Acts below, num. 7.

r. I do not know whether a slight lapse did not here befall Pontius, or the copyists, the word Zacchaeus being written for Christ: for it is manifest that allusion is here made to chapter 19 of Luke, in which Zacchaeus, as Christ approached, running ahead, climbed a sycamore tree that he might see him. Namely, St. Cyprian is here said to have been thus seen by others who had climbed into the trees.

s. In the Acts too, below at num. 7, he is said to have bound his own eyes himself; but other things pertaining hereto are added there, which you may read in that place.

t. Go to the preliminary Commentary, num. 830.

* i.e. even

THE PROCONSULAR ACTS,

From Ruinart's edition in the genuine Acts of the Martyrs.

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, martyr, near Carthage in Africa. (S.)

BHL Number: 2037

From Ruinart's edition.

Having professed the faith before Paternus the proconsul, In the fourth consulship of the emperor Valerian and the third of Gallienus ^a, on the third of the Kalends of September, at Carthage in the Council-chamber, Paternus ^b the proconsul said to Cyprian the bishop: The most sacred emperors Valerian and Gallienus have deigned to send me a letter, in which they have commanded that those who do not cultivate the Roman religion ought to acknowledge the Roman ceremonies. I have therefore made inquiry about your name: what do you answer me ^c? Cyprian the bishop said: I am a Christian and a bishop. I know no other gods, save the one and true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them. This God we Christians serve: him we entreat day and night, for ourselves and for all men, and for the safety of the emperors themselves. Paternus the proconsul said: Do you then persevere in this will? Cyprian the bishop answered: A good will, which knows God, cannot be changed.

[2] and refusing to betray the presbyters, he is banished Paternus the proconsul said: Can you then, according to the command of Valerian and Gallienus, set out as an exile to the city of Curubis ^d? Cyprian the bishop said: I set out. Paternus the proconsul said: They have deigned to write to me not only about bishops but also about presbyters. I wish therefore to know from you who are the presbyters who dwell in this city. Cyprian the bishop answered: By your laws you have well and usefully determined that there should be no informers. And so they cannot be uncovered and betrayed by me. They will be found in their own cities. Paternus the proconsul said: I make inquiry today in this place. Cyprian said: Since discipline forbids that anyone should offer himself of his own accord, and since this displeases your censure also, they cannot offer themselves; but, being sought by you, they will be found. Paternus the proconsul said: They shall be found by me. And he added: They have also commanded that in no places assemblies be held, nor that they enter cemeteries ^e. If therefore anyone shall not observe this so salutary command, he shall be beheaded. Cyprian the bishop answered: Do what has been commanded you.

[3] to Curubis: recalled thence by Galerius, Then Paternus the proconsul ordered blessed Cyprian the bishop to be carried off into exile ^f. And when he had stayed a long time there, Galerius Maximus the proconsul succeeded Aspasius Paternus the proconsul, who ordered holy Cyprian the bishop, recalled from exile, to be presented before him. And when Cyprian, the holy martyr chosen by God, had returned from the city of Curubis, in which he had been given over to exile by the order of Aspasius Paternus, then proconsul, he stayed by sacred order in his own gardens ^g. Thence he daily expected that they would come to him, as had been shown him ^h.

[4] And when he was staying there, suddenly on the Ides of September, he is seized: the people keep vigil through the night at his lodging. in the consulship of Tuscus ⁱ and Bassus, there came to him two officers; one a strator ^k of the staff of Galerius Maximus the proconsul, who had succeeded Aspasius Paternus; the other an equistrator ^l from the guards of the same staff, who also lifted him into a carriage and placed him in the middle, and brought him to the place of Sextus ^m; whither the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul had withdrawn for the sake of recovering his health. And so the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul ordered Cyprian to be kept for him for another day. And at that time blessed Cyprian, being led away, withdrew to the officer and strator of the staff of the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul, a most illustrious man, and stayed in his lodging with him in the street which is called Saturn's, between the Venerian and the Salutarian ⁿ.

[5] There the whole people of the brethren came together: and when St. Cyprian had learned this, The next day, having again confessed before Galerius, he ordered that the girls be guarded ^o; since all had remained in the street before the door of the officer's lodging. And so on the next day, the eighteenth of the Kalends of October, early in the morning a great crowd came together at the place of Sextus, according to the command of Galerius Maximus the proconsul. And so the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul on the same day ordered Cyprian to be presented before him, as he sat in the atrium Sauciolum [p]. And when he had been presented, Galerius Maximus the proconsul said to Cyprian the bishop: Are you Thascius Cyprian? Cyprian the bishop answered: I am. Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: Have you offered yourself as pope [q] to men of a sacrilegious mind? Cyprian the bishop answered: I have.

[6] Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: The most sacred emperors have ordered you to perform the ceremonies. he is ordered to be beheaded, Cyprian the bishop said: I do not do it. Galerius Maximus said: Take counsel for yourself. Cyprian the bishop answered: Do what has been commanded you. In a matter so just there is no deliberation. Galerius Maximus, having conferred with his council, scarcely and with difficulty pronounced sentence in words of this kind: You have long lived with a sacrilegious mind, and have gathered to yourself very many men of a nefarious conspiracy, and have set yourself an enemy of the Roman gods and of the sacred laws; nor could the devout and most sacred princes Valerian and Gallienus the Augusti, and Valerian [r] the most noble Caesar, recall you to the observance of their ceremonies. And therefore, since you have been detected as the author and standard-bearer of most wicked crimes, you shall yourself be an example to those whom you have gathered with you by your crime: discipline shall be sanctioned by your blood. And having said this, he recited the decree from a tablet: It is decided that Thascius Cyprian be punished with the sword. Cyprian the bishop

said: Thanks be to God [s].

[7] But after this sentence the crowd of the brethren said: and is beheaded before a great crowd of the people: Let us too be beheaded with him. On this account a tumult of the brethren arose, and a great crowd followed him. And so the same Cyprian was brought forth into the field of Sextus, and there he stripped himself of his lacerna and byrrus [t], and bent his knee to the ground, and prostrated himself in prayer to the Lord. And when he had stripped himself of his dalmatic [u] and handed it to the deacons, he stood in his linen garment, and began to await the executioner. But when the executioner had come, he ordered his own people to give twenty-five gold pieces to that same executioner [x]. But linen cloths and napkins [y] were being thrown before him by the brethren. But afterwards blessed Cyprian covered his eyes with his own hand; and when he could not tie the strips of the napkins for himself, Julianus the presbyter and Julianus the subdeacon [z] tied them for him.

[8] Thus blessed Cyprian suffered; and his body was placed nearby on account of the curiosity of the gentiles. Thence it was taken away during the night with candles and torches [aa] to the plots of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator, his body is carried off by the faithful at night. which are on the Mappalian way beside the fish-ponds, and was conducted with prayer and with great triumph. But after a few days Galerius Maximus the proconsul died. But the most blessed martyr Cyprian suffered on the eighteenth day of the Kalends of October, under the emperors Valerian and Gallienus; but with our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

ANNOTATA.

p. The Colbert and Germ. I codices in the aforesaid Ruinart have: In the atrium Secutiolum; Conches: Saloutium. But that Sauciolum must be retained we have drawn out from canon 19 of the second council of Mâcon, from which we learn its signification as well. For this in Labbe's Collection of the Councils, tom. 5, col. 987, runs thus: We have also learned that some foolish clerics frequently come to the public sentences of the accused. Therefore for the prohibiting of their access we have set forth this canon, determining that no cleric should come to the place of the examination of the accused, nor be present in the atrium Sauciolum, where, according to the quality of his guilt, anyone is to be put to death. The Benedictine editors of the enlarged Glossary of Du Cange however note, at the same word — note, I say, from Valois against Du Cange — that the adverb where is of time, not of place; for that it was the Romans' custom to behead the accused not in an atrium, but in an open place outside the city, as also happened in the case of St. Cyprian.

q. Others prefer to read papas.

r. He was the second son of Valerian Augustus, or his grandson by Gallienus; about which controversy consult, if you please, Antonius Pagi in his Hypatic Dissertation 52 and the following, and Tillemont, tom. 3 of the History of the emperors, in Valerian, art. 4, and Note 3.

s. These questions of the proconsul and the Saint's answers, and also the sentence of death passed by him upon the latter, St. Augustine inserted into Sermon 309, elsewhere 12, which on that account he also wished to end with that word of St. Cyprian, Thanks be to God.

t. The lacerna, as well as the birrus, was a kind of man's garment among the ancients, about which Samuel Pitiscus in his Lexicon of Roman Antiquities and Du Cange in his Glossary have gathered many things. There are those who judge that one or other of the two words is here superfluous, whom the Germ. 1 codex in Ruinart favors, in which, the lacerna being omitted, only byrrus is read. But since Festus in the aforesaid Du Cange says: The ancients said burrum for what we now call red; and since in the same place it is read from the Scholiast of Juvenal, satire 1: What the Greeks call coccus, the ancient Latins call birrus; and likewise in the Glosses of Isidore: Birrus, red; since, I say, these things are read there, the color of the lacerna could easily be designated by birrus, and consequently it will have to be read: A red lacerna. Of the byrrus however, as of a garment not unbecoming to clerics and bishops, St. Augustine speaks in Sermon 356, which is the second on the life and morals of clerics, elsewhere 50 On various matters. Let no one, he says, give a byrrus or a linen tunic, or anything, except in common… I do not wish your sanctity to offer such things as I alone should use, as though more becomingly: let it offer me, for example, a precious byrrus: perhaps it befits a bishop, although it does not befit Augustine, that is, a poor man born of the poor.

u. Ruinart here admonishes that in the Fossat, Colbert, Conches, St. Genevieve, etc., codices, for dalmatic is read tunic, but in many more dalmatic. And that this garment, which is said to have been so called from Dalmatia, where it was first made, was not unknown to the ancient Romans, Baronius shows in his Annotations on the Roman Martyrology at the 31st day of May, on St. Paschasius the deacon; and Pitiscus cited above. Whether however the same Baronius in the Annals at the year of Christ 261, num. 40 and following, where he disputes about the aforesaid garments of St. Cyprian, has rightly interpreted these of the sacred vestments whose use is now in the Church, I would not dare to assert.

x. See what we have observed about this passage in the Commentary, num. 829.

y. That is: Sudaria; namely that they might catch the sacred blood of the Martyr: for how highly the Christians even of that time esteemed the relics of martyrs is exemplified by that tesserarius soldier, once a Christian, who desired even the garments of this our Saint soaked with his sweat, as was said in the Life, num. 33.

z. Other codices, on Ruinart's testimony, have: Deacon.

aa. The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 261, num. 36, reads scholares, and therefore interpreted the aforesaid of a clergy going before, of various classes and schools, each carrying lighted torches. I for my part do not doubt that many clerics were present at the funeral of their holy Bishop and Martyr; but I prefer to read scholaces, or scolaces, and to understand by them tapers or torches, as it is in Du Cange in his Glossary.

APPENDIX

On the Saint's posthumous glory, and on the Works ascribed to him.

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, martyr, near Carthage in Africa. (S.)

BY C. S.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's apparitions, or visions offered about him to certain martyrs: two churches erected to him near Carthage: the same profaned, especially by the Vandals, and restored to the Catholics.

The Saint in a vision admonishes and strengthens The first thing which we have concerning the posthumous glory of St. Cyprian the bishop and martyr is a twofold apparition of him, or vision offered about him, to the holy martyrs Montanus and Flavian, whose genuine Acts were given in our Work at the XXIV day of February, on which they were inscribed together with their companions in the Roman Martyrology, and who, having been seized not long after the glorious slaying of our holy Martyr, whose disciples they seem to have been, were after a prison of some months crowned with a like martyrdom. The first of these, St. Montanus, in the place cited, p. 456, num. XI, candidly narrates in what manner he was admonished through St. Cyprian and Leucius about the blemish of his mind, which he had contracted from a certain discord. I subjoin the words: For when Montanus had had some discourse with Julianus about that communion which crept in with regard to our woman, who did not communicate, and when after the reproof which he had heaped upon her he had remained in the very rigor of that discord, this was shown to Montanus on the same night: It seemed to me, he said, that centurions had come to us. And when they were leading us along a long road, we came into an immense plain,

in which Cyprian and Leucius met us.

[2] But we came to a bright place; and our garments were made bright, SS. Montanus, Flavian and our flesh was changed, brighter than the bright garments. And so translucent was our flesh that it admitted the sight of the eyes to the inmost parts of the heart. And looking upon my breast, I see certain stains, and I awoke in the vision. And Lucianus met me, and I reported the vision to him, and I say to him: Do you know that those stains are this, that I did not at once come to concord with Julianus? And at this I awoke. The other, whether apparition or vision, St. Flavian in the same place, p. 458, num. 21, reported thus: When as yet, he says, our Bishop alone had suffered, this was shown to me, as though I were questioning Cyprian himself: whether it was painful to suffer the blows; namely, being about to be a martyr, he was consulting about the endurance of the passion. Who answered me and said: It is another flesh that suffers, when the mind is in heaven, and this body by no means feels, when it has devoted itself to God with its whole mind. O words of a Martyr exhorting a martyr! He denied that there was pain in the blow of the passion, so that he too, who was to be slain, might be more steadfastly animated, because he would have not even a small feeling of pain from the blow of the passion. These things however are not to be taken generally; but so that either the Saint speaks there of a special grace, or means only that martyrs are so strengthened by divine power that they reckon the torments of the body as nothing.

[3] To these I subjoin also another apparition of the same holy Martyr, and Marian likewise exhorting St. Marian to martyrdom by a wonderful vision, which in the Life of the holy Numidian martyrs, written by an eyewitness and published in our Work at the XXX day of April, p. 746 and following, is reported at num. 6 in this manner: When Marian, after that vexation of his body (the torments inflicted by the persecutors), had been more deeply relaxed in the calm of sleep, what the divine condescension showed him for confidence in saving hope, he himself, on waking, thus narrated to us. There was shown to me, he says, brethren, the lofty summit of an exceedingly high and bright tribunal, on which one presided in place of a judge. There was a platform, not with a low stage, nor ascendable by one step only, but arranged with many steps, and a far lofty ascent; and the companies of the several confessors were brought forward, whom that judge ordered to be led to the sword. Then I heard a clear and immense voice saying: Bring Marian forward. And I was climbing onto that platform: and behold, unexpectedly to me, Cyprian appeared, sitting at that judge's right hand, and stretched out his hand and raised me to a higher place of the platform, and smiling said: Come, sit with me.

[4] And it came about that other companies were heard, with me also sitting by: as martyrs. and that judge rose, and we were leading him to his own praetorium. But our way was through a place pleasant with meadows, and clothed with the glad foliage of green groves … And behold, suddenly that judge withdrew from our eyes. Then Cyprian there seized a vessel which lay upon the margin of a spring: and when he had filled it from the streamlets of the spring, he drank, and, filling it again, held it out to me, and I gladly drank. And when I was giving thanks to God, being roused, he says, by my own voice, I got up. Now the martyrdom of St. Marian and his companions happened, according to what was said in the same place, about the year 259, and so not long after St. Cyprian was crowned, which we have shown above happened on this XIV day of September of the year 258. For the rest, although the aforesaid were not so much apparitions as visions, nevertheless they pertain thus far to the glory of our holy Martyr, that God willed as it were to use the services of him who, while alive, had roused the faithful to martyrdom both by his words and by his example, in order to prepare and kindle the confessors for that same thing.

[5] A church in the place of his punishment, and an altar, We saw above in the proconsular Acts, num. 7, that St. Cyprian was beheaded in the field of Sextus. This place, on St. Augustine's testimony, was afterwards held in the highest honor among the people of Carthage, and adorned by an altar built over it, which was called the Table of Cyprian, and by a church. Hear him speaking in Sermon 310, which is the second on the Birthday of the same Saint, elsewhere 113 On various matters: He governed the church of Carthage while alive, he honored it in dying. There he bore his episcopate, there he consummated his martyrdom. For in that place where he laid aside the spoils of his flesh a savage multitude had then come together, to shed the blood of Cyprian out of hatred of Christ: there today a venerating multitude runs together, which for the Birthday of Cyprian drinks the Blood of Christ. And so much the more sweetly is the Blood of Christ drunk in that place for the Birthday of Cyprian, as the more devoutly the blood of Cyprian was shed there for the name of Christ. Finally, as you know, all of you who know Carthage, in that same place a table has been built for God, and yet it is called the TABLE of Cyprian; not because Cyprian ever feasted there, but because he was there immolated, and because by that very immolation of his he prepared this table, not at which he should feed or be fed, but at which the Sacrifice should be offered to God, to whom he too was offered.

[6] called the Table of St. Cyprian. But that that table, which is God's, should also be called Cyprian's, this is the cause: because, that it may now be surrounded by those who serve, Cyprian was there surrounded by those who persecuted; where now it is honored by praying friends, there Cyprian was trodden upon by raging enemies: lastly, where it has been raised up, there he was laid low. "Sing to God, say a psalm to his name, who ascends above the sunset" — he himself did these things above the slain man. Of the same table of St. Cyprian he makes mention in his Exposition on psalm 80, and various sermons delivered by him are inscribed to it. In the same place he also delivered Exposition 3 on psalm 32, where among other things he says to a thronging people: This place, when the body of the blessed Martyr was struck, was full of wolves: one captured Sheep conquered so many wolves, and the slain Sheep filled the place with sheep… And because these things have been done, even now, do you think that those who see, not yet believing, our assemblies, celebrations, solemnities, and the now manifest and public praises of our God, do not grieve, do you think they do not rage? But now is fulfilled what was said of them: "The sinner shall see, and shall be angry."

[7] Another church erected over his body, Besides this there was also another church at Carthage, erected over the body of the same holy Martyr, which in the proconsular Acts published above, num. 8, we read was buried at the plots of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator, which are on the Mappalian way beside the fish-ponds. So St. Augustine again teaches us in Sermon 313, elsewhere 114 On various matters, which he delivered there, and at whose close he says this: Whose victorious soul's holy flesh, as the sheath of that sword, we adorn in this place with the sublimity of a divine altar; flesh to be given back to that same soul in a triumphal resurrection, and thereafter to be laid down by no death. Both churches Victor of Vita likewise records in his History of the Vandal persecution, published by Ruinart, book 1, num. 5, reckoning outside the walls of Carthage two excellent and ample (churches) of the holy martyr Cyprian; one where he shed his blood, the other where his body was buried, which place is called Mappalia; namely from the Mappalian way, on which his body is said above in the Acts to have been buried.

[8] That one of them was situated on the sea shore and was magnificent in which St. Monica prayed; Procopius relates in book 1 On the Vandal War, chap. 21, as we shall see below; and this seems to be the same in which St. Monica, while she passed the night in prayers that Augustine might not sail to Italy without her, was eluded by him. This happened in the year 383, as was said in tom. VI of August in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of the same holy doctor, §5; but he himself narrates this very thing in book 5 of the Confessions, chap. 8, reported in the aforesaid tome, p. 403: And yet, he says, when she (Monica) refused to return without me, I scarcely persuaded her that she should stay that night in a place which was next to our ship, the memorial of blessed Cyprian. But that night I set out secretly; she remained praying and weeping. And what was she asking of you, my God, with so many tears, but that you would not let me sail? But since it is evident from book 22 On the City of God, chap. 8 and 9, and from Sermon 323, elsewhere 32 On various matters, that memorials of martyrs were for St. Augustine generally the places where the bodies of martyrs were kept, we gather that the church to which St. Monica withdrew to pray was the very one in which the body of our holy Martyr rested.

[9] Of the same too mention is made in Sulpicius Severus, Dialogue 1, chap. 2, its profanation where Postumianus, Sulpicius's friend, while he was in Africa, is said to have gone to it for the sake of devotion. For Postumianus is there introduced speaking thus: It pleased my mind to go to Carthage, to visit the places of the Saints, and especially to adore at the tomb of Cyprian the martyr. Further, into this so sacred and venerable place a certain depraved custom, by which its sanctity was profaned, once crept in, which the bishop of Carthage happily rooted out by introducing sacred vigils into it in the age of St. Augustine, or at any rate not long before. So St. Augustine himself teaches in Sermon 311, already cited elsewhere, which he delivered there on the very birthday of St. Cyprian, and in which he says this about that sacrilegious custom: The Lord says in the Gospel: "We have sung to you, and you have not danced." How should I say this, if I did not read it? Vanity mocks me; but authority helps me. If I had not premised who said this, which of you could bear me saying: "We have sung to you, and you have not danced?" Is it that in this place, even if a psalm must be sung, someone must dance?

[10] Some time ago, not very many years since, the wantonness of dancers had invaded even this place. is checked by the bishop of Carthage. This so holy place, where lies the body of so holy a Martyr — as many remember who are of age; a place, I say, so holy, the pestilence and wantonness of dancers had invaded. All night long abominable things were sung here, and to those singing there was dancing. When the Lord willed, through our holy brother, your bishop, from the time when holy vigils began to be celebrated here, that plague, having struggled a little, afterwards yielded to diligence, blushed before wisdom. Since therefore these things, God being favorable, are not now done here, because we do not celebrate games for demons, … but the sanctity and solemnity of the Martyrs is celebrated here, there is no dancing here; and where there is no dancing, nevertheless it is read from the Gospel: "We have sung to you,

and you have not danced." Thus far there, after which he expounds those words of the Gospel. But it seems that that profanation of the place was first introduced under the appearance of religion, as though by a festivity of this kind the birthday of the Martyr were worthily celebrated; just as at Hippo Regius the birthday of St. Leontius, once bishop of that place, was wont to be recalled by wine-drenched banquets in the church, which abuse St. Augustine, then a presbyter of Hippo, likewise abolished, as he himself writes in Epistle 39 to Alypius, bishop of Thagaste.

[11] Both churches by the Vandals A far graver and sadder profanation desolated both churches of the holy Martyr in the fifth century under Genseric, king of the Vandals, Carthage having been captured by guile. Of the pitiable destruction of this city there may be consulted Victor of Vita, book 1 of the History of the Vandal persecution, chap. 4 and following, Prosper in the Chronicle, and others, whom Thierry Ruinart in the historical Commentary on the aforesaid Opusculum of Victor, chap. 5, recounts; where he also shows that this happened in the year 439 of the common era. As regards the present argument, the same Victor in chap. 5 writes thus: For the bishop (Quodvultdeus) having been driven out, as we have said, with his venerable clergy, he (Genseric) immediately made over to his own religion (the Arian) the church named Restituta, in which the bishops always dwelt, and took away all those which had been within the walls of the city, with their riches. But outside the walls too he seized whichever he wished, and especially two excellent and ample ones of the holy martyr Cyprian; one where he shed his blood, the other where his body was buried, which place is called Mappalia.

[12] are occupied by the Arians It is uncertain whether Genseric assigned those two churches of St. Cyprian to the exercise of the Arian heresy, or handed them over to his Vandals to be dwelt in. For neither does Victor explain this, and Prosper in the Chronicle expressly relates that many churches were assigned by him to a profane use of this kind. Nor abstaining, he says, from the despoiling of the churches, which, being emptied of their sacred vessels and deprived of the administration of priests, he ordered to be no longer places of divine worship, but dwellings of his own people. However that may be, that at some time one of them, which was situated on the sea shore and, from what has been said, kept the venerable bones of the Saint, passed over to the ministers of the Arian sect, Procopius writes in book 1 On the Vandal War, chap. 21, as we shall presently see; although he could easily have been mistaken in saying that it was taken away by force from the Catholics under Honoric or Huneric, who succeeded his father Genseric in the kingdom of the Vandals, and assigned to the said impiety of the Arians. But how grievously the African faithful bore this profanation of a most holy church may be gathered both from their devout mind, with which they honored the venerable relics of the Martyr, once their Bishop, and from Procopius, whose words we shall presently give, and finally from a Homily delivered on the Saint's very birthday in the time of the persecution stirred up by those same Vandals in Africa against the Catholics, and printed by Ruinart in the aforesaid Opusculum.

[13] In this the author at num. 2, raising his hearers to hope, to the greatest grief of the Africans, and introducing St. Cyprian as supplicating God, says among other things: He also says (the holy Martyr in heaven), pleading the cause of his own body: Lord, why have you suffered the members which so confessed you to be led captive? Why have you left in such contempt the witness of the blood which you had exalted with so great honor? At the last, both about us and about our own, which [*] are all yours, do as you will. Where is your name, where is your glory, where is your power? By saying these things the nations, which blasphemed you in order to assail us. Arise, why do you sleep, Lord; arise, and cast us not off to the end. Give back to yourself your own glory, give back your land to your own people, give back my bones to my own, so that, as you triumph, both your enemies may perish and we may rejoice in our own seats in our own order. But in order that the author of the homily might the more confirm in the minds of his hearers the hope of recovering so dear a pledge, he added another patron as well, who should ask that very thing together with St. Cyprian. There is present, he says, St. Cornelius, prelate of the City of Rome, who, having suffered on this same day, does not abandon his Companion in such a cause, does not desert his Colleague in such a petition.

[14] Further, this confidence of the Africans in their holy Bishop seems to have been born not from a devout affection of mind alone, and, as the Saint had suggested through visions, but to have rested upon the Saint's own promise. For Procopius in book 1 On the Vandal War, chap. 21, writes that the holy Martyr often appeared to the Africans, who were sad about so venerable a place taken from him, and bade them be secure; for there would be a time when he would himself avenge his own injury. And he shows that this prophecy was proved by a happy outcome, when Belisarius, the commander of the armies of the emperor Justinian I, the Vandals having been afflicted with a huge disaster at Decimum on the day before the same Saint's festival, recovered Carthage, and restored to the empire Africa, which had now for more than a whole century groaned under them, and, Gelimer having been captured and led in triumph, happily extinguished the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa, as may be seen at length in the aforesaid writer, books 1 and 2. Nevertheless, as regards our argument, take it from book 1, chap. 21. After relating the victory over the Vandals at Decimum and the recovery of Carthage by Belisarius, he thus proceeds, in the translation of Claude Maltret: There was also laid open and received light a vision often offered to many in their sleep, whose outcome was hidden from all. And it was of this kind.

[15] The people of Carthage set up to the divine Cyprian, whom they especially venerate, the Vandals having been routed by Belisarius, a most illustrious church before the city on the sea shore; and while they duly attend to the other things which pertain to his cult, they also celebrate a solemnity which by them is called the Cypriana. This very name the sailors attribute to that tempest of which I lately made mention, because it is wont to arise about that time at which the Africans have been accustomed to keep this feast. That church the Vandals, in the reign of Honoric, took away by force from the Christians, and, their priests having been most unworthily thrust out, they themselves thereafter attended to the sacred rites after the Arian manner. To the Africans, saddened by that matter and doubtful in mind, Cyprian is reported often to have appeared in dreams and said that he would not have the Christians anxious on his account; for there would be a time when he would himself avenge the injury done to him. Which saying, when all the Africans had received it as it spread abroad, they eagerly awaited that some penalty, avenging such rites, should at length be inflicted on the Vandals: but to what that vision would at last come, they could not attain by conjecture.

[16] it is at length recovered by the Catholics. But now, after the emperor's fleet had landed in Africa, on the day before the returning feast, although Ammatas (the brother of the tyrant Gelimer) had led the Vandals to Decimum (a place distant 70 stadia from Carthage) against Belisarius, nevertheless the Arian priests thoroughly cleaned the church, hung up all the most beautiful of the votive gifts which were kept there, and, the lamps being adorned and the sacred furniture brought out of the storerooms, diligently prepared everything for the fitting use of each. There followed the things which I have said above were done at Decimum: then, the Arian priests having escaped by flight, Christians, worshipers of the right faith and of the true Religion, entering the church of Cyprian, lit all the lamps and attended to the sacred rites after their accustomed manner. Thus it became known what the vision signified. Thus Procopius, Belisarius's companion in this war, and an eyewitness of the event. For the rest, Ruinart in the historical Commentary on the Vandal Persecution, chap. 12, notes that Africa was recovered by the Romans in the year 534 of the common era, a hundred and seven years after it had been occupied by the Vandals; but Carthage in the ninety-fifth year after it was captured by Genseric.

[17] Mention of his church in SS. Gregory of Tours and Gregory the Great. Of one or other of the two aforesaid churches of St. Cyprian those things also seem to have been said which St. Gregory of Tours writes in book 1 On the Glory of the martyrs, chap. 94, in these words: The most blessed Cyprian, both prelate and martyr of Carthage, very often bestows health on the sick who entreat him, in whose basilica an analogium (that is, a pulpit) in which, a book being placed upon it, singing or reading is done, is reported to have been wonderfully composed. For it is asserted to have been wholly carved out of one stone of marble; that is, the table above, to which one ascends by four steps; the rails round about, the columns beneath: because it also has a platform, under which eight persons can be received. Which could never have been produced there by any skill, had not the Martyr's power afforded it. That prayers be poured out for him at the body of the same Saint in the aforesaid church near Carthage St. Gregory the Great begged, writing in book 6 of the Register, epistle 19, to Dominicus, bishop of Carthage: And it befits me to apply myself in prayers for you at the most sacred body of blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, and you for me at St. Cyprian the martyr. Thus far there: but whither that sacred body at length came, we shall set forth below.

* al. because

CHAPTER II.

The Saint's cult throughout the universal Church.

The veneration of the Saint What we have produced in the preceding chapter make most fully attested the most celebrated cult of St. Cyprian among his ancient people of Carthage: now we must speak of the same cult as propagated elsewhere also. This in St. Augustine's age was already so widely extended that his birthday, namely that on which he had borne martyrdom, was hidden neither in Africa nor in regions across the sea, nor even from Jews or gentiles or heretics. For thus he himself speaks in Sermon 310, which is the second on his Birthday: May the Holy Spirit teach us in this hour what it behooves us to say: for we are about to say something in praise of Cyprian the most glorious martyr, whose birthday, as you know, we celebrate today. Which name the Church so frequents — that is, Birthdays — that it calls Birthdays the precious deaths of the martyrs. So, I say, the Church frequents this name, that even those who are not in her say this with her. For who today — I will not say in this our city (Hippo), but plainly throughout all Africa and the regions across the sea — could be found, not only a Christian, but a pagan or a Jew or even a heretic, who would not say with us the Birthday of Cyprian the martyr?

[19] But the cause of a cult so widely diffused he assigns in the same place: the Saint's writings and his illustrious martyrdom: propagated through the world. Into all the earth, he says, has gone out his sound, and to the ends of the world his words. He faithfully taught what he was to do; he bravely did what he had taught… He not only said things to be heard, but also wrote things to be read; and to some places he came through the tongues of others, but to others through his own writings; and he became known to many regions, partly through the fame of a most brave passion, partly through the sweetness of a most delightful reading. For the rest there are extant five sermons of St. Augustine delivered on the Birthday of the same Martyr, which in the edition we use are the three hundred and ninth and the four following, and which are recounted by St. Possidius in the Index thus: On the Birthday

of St. Cyprian, four treatises, or rather five, as is read in our manuscript codex. The same universal cult of the Saint St. Maximus, bishop of Turin in the fifth century, likewise acknowledged, in Homily 2 on his Birthday, published in the Library of the Fathers, of the Cologne edition of the year 1618, tom. 5, p. 37, which he began thus: In the martyrdom of blessed Cyprian, most dear brethren, the whole Church of Christ exults with us, which he both instructed unto all joy by the learning of his heavenly discourse and adorned by the gift of his triumphal blood. And again at the end: Nor undeservedly, brethren, is the memory of his name celebrated with so great honor throughout the most ample spaces of the world; because throughout the whole globe both his passion and his doctrine have availed for the strengthening of our faith.

[20] But although these things suffice to prove his cult anciently received throughout the universal Church, His ancient cult in Italy, it will nevertheless not be amiss to have set forth this very thing somewhat more fully with Tillemont, art. 62. Besides the aforesaid Homilies of St. Maximus, and others formerly attributed to St. Ambrose but now to him, his notable cult in Italy is proved also by Homily 129 of St. Peter Chrysologus, bishop of Ravenna, likewise delivered on his Birthday, which you have in the Library cited above, tome or Century 5, part 2, p. 758. That in Lucania too the feast of St. Cyprian was celebrated, and that a great concourse of men was wont to flock there both for the sake of religion and for that of the fairs, we have from Cassiodorus, who in book 8, epistle 33, recites the rescript of Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, against the injustice of certain men, from which it had come about that those who had come most religiously to keep the Birthday of St. Cyprian, and to adorn the face of the city with their wares, departed shamefully in want and empty. To these is added the most ancient Calendar of Bucherius, in which his festival in the cemetery of Callistus is inscribed at this day. Take the words: On the eighteenth of the Kalends of October, of Cyprian of Africa. At Rome it is celebrated in that of Callistus. Tillemont indeed doubts whether it should not be read: At Rome, of Cornelius: it is celebrated, etc.: but this doubt rests on no other foundation than that the memory of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian occurs together on the same day in other ancient Calendars, and that it is evident from elsewhere that the first of them was buried in that cemetery. Next, even if it really had to be read so, it would nonetheless indicate our Saint's cult in the City of Rome; since that Calendar was drawn up for the use of this Church.

[21] and especially at Rome, For proving the same cult of the holy Martyr among the Romans there serve the ancient Sacramentaries which are circulated under the name of Leo I, Gelasius II, and Gregory I, in which the festival of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian is celebrated on the same day and with a Mass common to both; as has already been shown in the historical Commentary on the acts of that holy Pontiff, §1, num. 8 and the following. But this too is plainly worthy of note, that Cyprian's name was formerly placed in the Canon of the Mass immediately after the holy Roman Pontiffs by this Church, and is still read there today. Besides, although SS. Cornelius and Cyprian were anciently venerated at Rome on the same day, as we have just said, nevertheless the memory of the latter seems there at some time to have been more celebrated than that of the former. For the Roman Calendar which John Fronto published, and which in his Prefatory notes, §2, he holds to have been made between the year 714 and 731, makes mention indeed of both Saints at the present day in this manner: On the XIV day of the month of September, the Birthday of SS. Cornelius the Pontiff and Cyprian; but then the following six weeks, which occur next between this day and the Advent of the Lord, it reckons, with no mention made of St. Cornelius, from the festival of St. Cyprian thus: The first week after St. Cyprian's… The eleventh week after St. Cyprian's, etc. To this Calendar Tillemont cites a certain manuscript one of Reims as conformable.

[22] where he was celebrated To Fronto's I add another Calendar, likewise Roman, published by Leo Allatius from a most ancient codex of the Vatican library, transcribed, as he himself says, nine hundred years ago. In this at the XVII of the Kalends of October is likewise read: The Birthday of SS. Cor. and Cyprian: but then, after the Birthday of St. Matthew the Apostle, nine weeks up to the Advent are in a like manner numbered thus: The first week of the seventh month after St. Cyprian's … The eleventh Sunday after St. Cyprian's, etc., up to the ninth. Now from this manner of numbering the aforesaid Fronto in his Annotations doubted whether the feast of St. Cyprian's birthday was not by itself, that is, celebrated with a particular Office proper to him alone, although the Sacramentary of Pamelius and Ménard mark the memory of both Saints also together. This suspicion of his he confirms by a twofold observation: first, that if St. Cornelius was then venerated there with the same Office, common to both, but in the first place, as is noted in the Calendars and Sacramentaries, no sufficiently urgent reason seems able to be adduced why those weeks were not reckoned equally, or rather, after St. Cornelius's birthday as after St. Cyprian's.

[23] is shown to have been, Secondly, in favor of the same opinion he cites St. Gregory the Great, Register book 12, epistle 30, elsewhere book 2, epistle 32, in which he writes to Peter the subdeacon of Sicily: Take care, if it please God, to cross to this City before the Birthday of blessed Cyprian: lest from the sign which always threatens the sea in those days, which God forbid, some danger should be able to arise. This suspicion, which pleased Tillemont also, is favored also by the Calendar of Bucherius, in which, as we have seen, St. Cyprian alone is announced: but the same is less firm from the other Calendars and Sacramentaries which join both Saints. But to Fronto's first observation I answer that the veneration of St. Cyprian, a doctor and martyr most celebrated in the whole world, could have been more celebrated even at Rome than that of Cornelius; and therefore, although these two were venerated there together on the same day and with the same Office, nevertheless the subsequent weeks were marked from his name, although to St. Cornelius, on account of the Pontifical dignity, the first place was given in the Martyrologies and Sacramentaries.

[24] The passage of St. Gregory produced also favors them less than it seemed to Fronto and Tillemont; it is proved from various sources. for since he bids Peter the subdeacon beware of that tempest which, because it was wont to arise about the feast of St. Cyprian, was called by the Africans the Cypriana; it is no wonder that he there made mention of the festival of St. Cyprian, not of Cornelius. But that this tempest is here designated by St. Gregory cannot be doubted by anyone who has read Procopius, reported above at num. 15, and chap. 20 of the book there cited. As regards the present-day veneration of the holy Martyr in the Roman Church, he is venerated together with St. Cornelius in the Breviary and Missal of that Church with a semidouble rite only, on the XVI day of September, as we have already observed in §1 of the Commentary: at Rome however in the Lateran church likewise together with the same holy Pontiff, with a double rite, on the XXII of the same month. But from what has been said gather how far from probability they stray who contend that St. Cyprian died in his error about rebaptizing heretics: for it is not sufficiently credible that the Romans would have honored with so great veneration the memory of an African Bishop who had defended until death an error contrary to the Apostolic tradition against the Pontiff of their City and of the world.

[25] That in Spain too the veneration of our Saint was celebrated likewise in the Spains, the Gauls, and in the East; is clear from Aurelius Prudentius, a poet of the fourth century, who in the book Περὶ στεφάνων, Hymn XI, urging Valerian the bishop to keep the feast day of St. Hippolytus, a martyr venerated at Rome, recording among the more solemn ones the festival of St. Cyprian, sang thus:

Among the solemn days of Cyprian, or of Chelidonius, and of Eulalia, let this one too run its course for you.

There is extant also another hymn of the same poet, number 13, which is wholly about St. Cyprian, and in which among other things he says:

He is a Martyr of his own country, but by love and by utterance ours.

That the festival of the same Saint was by no means unknown to the ancient Gauls we have from the Gothic, or old Gallican, Missal, published by Joseph Thomasius, in which a proper Mass on the Birthday of the holy martyrs Cornelius [*] and Cyprian is exhibited. Of the Eastern church St. Augustine bids us believe like things, when in book 4 against the two letters of the Pelagians, to Boniface, chap. 8, he writes that the most blessed Cyprian, most glorious also with the crown of martyrdom, was most well known not only to the African and Western churches but also to the Eastern, fame proclaiming him and his writings spreading him far and wide.

[26] We cannot however prove his cult among the Orientals from elsewhere; but whether this one was venerated at Nazianzus, or another, since neither the Menaea, nor the Basilian, nor that which Sirletus published — the Menologies of the Greeks — make mention of him. We have indeed among the Orations of St. Gregory of Nazianzus one, which is the eighteenth, in praise of St. Cyprian the martyr, delivered by him on the day after that feast, which Tillemont cites for asserting an annual festival of our holy Bishop and martyr among the people of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, and whose opening in fact is such: Cyprian has almost escaped us: O great loss! And this you have suffered, who look up to him most of all, and celebrate him with annual honors and feasts. But to me it is plainly uncertain whose festival of St. Cyprian is here recorded: for, as we have proved above more than once, St. Gregory of Nazianzus in the aforesaid Oration confused two Martyrs of the same name; namely our Bishop of Carthage with Cyprian of Antioch, who is related to have suffered at Nicomedia, and who is inscribed together with St. Justina the virgin in the Roman Martyrology at the XXVI day of September, but in the Basilian and Sirletian Menologies at the second of October, and whose Acts Eudocia Augusta bound in verse, on Photius's testimony in the Library, cod. 184; but in loose style you have them published in Martène and Durand, tom. 3 of the Thesaurus of Anecdota.

[27] was venerated, is not so certain. For indeed, since that Cyprian is a martyr of the Eastern church, and their Martyrologies, which are silent about the Carthaginian, expressly testify to his cult among the Greeks, it is far more probable that it was his feast, not this one's, which Gregory indicates was wont to be celebrated yearly at Nazianzus; although he by an error judged him to be the same as the Carthaginian. This suspicion is increased by what he narrates in the same Oration about the body of St. Cyprian, who was venerated there, hidden away in the keeping of a certain devout woman, and about the same being found by a revelation made to another matron: for as these things cannot be taken of St. Cyprian of Carthage, so they seem to be referred to the Antiochene, whose body was carried by sailors to Rome, and was received by Rufina, a woman of illustrious family, and laid in an honorable place, as is read in the prose Acts just cited, with Eudocia in Photius agreeing, who makes Rufina of the family of Claudius,

and affirms that by her agency an elegant church was built to the holy martyr at Rome; all which things will be able to be examined in their own place in our Work. But Tillemont himself too, in tom. 5 of the Monuments, art. 7, in SS. Cyprian and Justina, likewise interpreted those sayings of St. Gregory about the martyr's body of the Antiochene.

[28] The Church's estimation of the Saint. Further, I forbear here to weave a series of the holy Fathers and ancient writers who have pursued our holy Bishop and Martyr with worthy eulogies, or have recorded him with honor, and of whom you have many cited in Tillemont, art. 63. Let this one thing stand for all, which St. Augustine, writing of him in book 6 On Baptism against the Donatists, chap. 6, says: Whom our devout mother the Church numbers among the rare and few men of most excellent grace. I forbear likewise to recount the great number of Latin martyrologists who, after the Bucherian Calendar, the Hieronymian, and the Old Roman, or Little Martyrology of Rosweyde, celebrate the memory of St. Cyprian at this XIV day of September with unanimous consent. From recounting these, I say, I forbear, because from what has been said hitherto it is sufficiently evident concerning his most ancient cult in the universal Church, which he illustrated both by the sanctity of his life and by his glorious martyrdom and by his most distinguished books; so that not undeservedly Prudentius, already cited elsewhere, sang of him:

He holds the kingdoms of heaven; Nor any the less does he fly over the lands, nor does he withdraw from this world. He discourses, he speaks, he treats, he teaches, he instructs, he prophesies. Nor does he rule the peoples of Libya only; he goes out even to the rising Of the sun and even to its setting: he cherishes the Gauls, he imbues the Britons, He presides over Hesperia, he sows Christ among the farthest Iberians. Finally he is a doctor on earth, the same also a martyr In the world above: Here he instructs men, from there as Patron he gives devout gifts.

* i.e. of Cornelius

CHAPTER III.

The translations of the Saint's body, and his relics honored in various places.

The Saint's bones by the legates of Charlemagne That the venerable body of the holy Martyr, which we saw above was worthily honored in a notable church near Carthage, was thence translated into France, first to Arles and then to Lyons of the Segusiani, while Charlemagne reigned, Agobard testifies, who from chorepiscopus of Lyons became bishop of that church after Leidrad voluntarily yielded it about the year 814 — a contemporary author and probably an eyewitness — in the Poem which he composed on the reception among the people of Lyons of the bones of the same Saint, and also of SS. Speratus and Pantaleon. This Poem the studious reader will find printed both elsewhere and in our Work, tom. IV of July at the XVII day, p. 211, where the Scillitan Martyrs were treated. Of the same translation Ado of Vienne in his Martyrology at this XIV day of September, after St. Cyprian's eulogy, has this: But after many courses of years, when the most glorious Charles was ruling the Franks, it happened that men bearing the embassy of the Franks, illustrious legates and circumspect in wisdom, made a passage through Africa.

[30] These, when, returning from Aaron king of the Persians, who, except India, held almost the whole East, they had seen Carthage in ruins and the venerable places of the holy martyrs, translated into the Gauls, the prince being easily conciliated to them and showing favor in such a matter, asked as a great gift that he would permit the bones of blessed Cyprian to be carried away by them. Which he, not accounting it a great thing, at once granted as requested, and gladly assented that they should carry them to the devout emperor, whose favor he preferred to the friendships of all the kings and princes who were in the whole world. And when the venerable legates were returning bearing huge gifts, namely the relics of the Martyrs (for they had with them, along with the blessed bones of Cyprian, also the limbs of blessed Speratus the martyr, who was one of those XII most distinguished Scillitan martyrs, and the head also of the glorious martyr Pantaleon), enjoying favorable sails, they at length arrived at Arles. Where, leaving the sacred limbs of the Martyrs sealed for the time, they hastened to report their embassy to the glorious emperor, and, in order the more to conciliate the king's mind toward themselves for an embassy strenuously accomplished, among other things they raised his spirits about the relics of the Saints brought from Africa.

[31] Whence he, greatly gladdened, ordered that they be kept for so long at Arles with worthy veneration, first at Arles, then deposited at Lyons: until he himself should found a church in his kingdom with some great work, where he might lay so precious a pledge with immense honor and adornment. But, causes arising, while the work was being built too slowly, Leidrad, the venerable bishop of Lyons, having found an opportunity, asked the glorious emperor that it might be lawful for him to carry the blessed bones of the Martyrs to his own city. The emperor assented. But that same devout man too the more quickly accomplished his prayer: they were carried with honor within the city of Lyons, and were there kept for some time in the greater church of blessed John the Baptist and of the holy martyr Stephen; and for the defense of the citizens, God mercifully working this, and the emperor now transferring his prayer about the building of a church to a far different one, the holy bishop laid up the most blessed relics of the glorious Martyrs in the aforesaid church behind the venerable and sacred altar in a most fitting burial, and honorably commended them as about to profit his citizens in after times. Thus far the aforesaid St. Ado.

[32] about which some things are observed. Now since, on the occasion of the translation of the bones of St. Speratus made at the same time, our Cuper in the tome of July cited above, from p. 210, has already discussed and reported whatever pertains to this translation of St. Cyprian, I have thought that the studious reader should be referred there, lest I do what has been done. It will nevertheless be useful to have observed in a few words that Agobard in his poem makes no mention of any permission given to the legates by the king of the Persians to carry off the body; but on the contrary speaks as though they had carried off those sacred relics secretly. For thus he sings of those legates there in hendecasyllabic verses:

After the many labors of an exceeding journey, Seeking the sea on their returning entry, They suddenly entered the Libyan borders, Where Carthage, lying in heavy ruin, Bewails the glory of her bygone youth. Here, while they enter the basilicas dedicated to God And the venerable churches of Christ, They see how a neglected coffin Kept your bones, Cyprian the martyr. Then indeed, moved by exceeding grief, And gazing at the sky with great groaning, They ask the help of the everlasting God, For whom, Holy one, your head was cut off. And soon, their knees bent in prayer, They open the sarcophagus, and are eager to bind The sacred limbs in linens made ready, And commit the body [*] to its own small casket. The bones too of blessed Speratus the martyr, And also of Pantaleon, hastily They take up all together, and bind them in cloths. Swiftly they board the ship made ready, etc.

[33] The year of the translation. Secondly, as regards the time when the translation was made, Cuper in the same place refutes Severtius, who, relying on a supposititious passage of Bede, writes that the aforesaid relics of the Saints were brought from Carthage and deposited at Arles in the year 616, and thence first translated to Lyons in the year 807 by the agency of Leidrad. Next, since the same translation is assigned by Ado in his Chronicle to the year of Christ 806, or, as others would have it, 807, he admonishes that assent should rather be given to him, as nearer to the times of the event, than to Sigebert, who in his Chronicle likewise had fixed it to the year 802; which last Baluze followed in his Notes on Leidrad. Finally he observes that a twofold embassy was sent by Charlemagne to Aaron the Amir, king of the Persians, and that hence it could have come about that Sigebert, confusing the two, referred to the former of them what was to be referred to the latter. More things pertaining hereto the curious reader will find in the same place, as I have already noted.

[34] The verses of Florus about the Saint's relics at Lyons. There are extant in Mabillon, tom. 1 of the ancient Analecta, p. 407, verses of Florus, a deacon of the church of Lyons in the same ninth century, about the aforesaid relics kept there; of which, since Cuper reported only those which treat of SS. Speratus and Pantaleon, it is fitting to recount them all here. They are then such:

In this ark is stored the rich treasure of Christ, Purer than silver, more precious than tawny gold, And brighter than all the light of glittering gems. Here indeed the most sweet Doctor of distinguished utterance, The excellent Prelate, the same a most celebrated Martyr, Sent like a shining morning star from great Carthage, Shines forth, and Cyprian rests in a fair lot. To him, radiant with light, is added a twin star, Speratus the martyr with Pantaleon the martyr, With whose head the sacred bones of the former are here powerful. Whom alike, Charles being prince of the Franks, rejoicing Gaul received, enriched with Libyan talents. May faithful prayer therefore make these our patrons, So that, when Christ comes in the glittering heavens And brings bright diadems to his martyrs, Eternal light may receive us by their merits.

[35] From what has been said gather that what Mabillon relates in tom. 3 of the Benedictine Annals, Mabillon's account corrected. at the year 856, num. 9, from the book On the acts of the Saints of Redon in Brittany, about St. Cyprian's body still resting at Carthage after the middle of the ninth century, and being there famous for miracles, is not true. For he writes that a certain Frotmund, a most noble man among the Franks, and his two brothers, being ordered by the bishops as a penalty for the slaying of their uncle to go about the holy places in ashes and hair-cloth, with their arms and loins bound with iron chains, came also into Africa to the tomb of St. Cyprian the bishop and martyr, who (the words are excerpted by Mabillon from the aforesaid book) rests at the second milestone from the city of Carthage beside the sea, where many powers and many miracles are very often shown by the Lord. These things, I say, according to what has been said above, cannot be true; but are either to be taken of St. Cyprian's empty tomb, or Frotmund with his brothers must be said to have come to Lyons, not to Carthage.

[36] In the Martyrology of Ado of Vienne, published by the labor of Rosweyde, Another translation from the published Ado, after the words given at num. 31, there is reported also another translation of the bones of our holy Martyr, made in the same century by the order of Charles the Bald from Lyons to Compiègne. And it is read in it thus: But afterwards, an interval of time having come between, while the glorious king Charles, son of the emperor Louis, was reigning, again the relics of blessed Cyprian were, by his order, translated to the new monastery which the same king built with august workmanship at Compiègne, his palace. The same things are read in the edition prepared by Jacobus Mosander. But that these things are not Ado's, but added to the pure text by someone, Cuper cited above rightly suspected among others, both because Ado neither at the XVII day of July, where on the occasion of the Scillitan martyrs he records the earlier translation, nor in his Chronicle, said any word about this second one. Certainly at the said day of July he rather indicates that St. Cyprian's bones, while he was writing, still rested at Lyons. I subjoin the words: Their relics (those of the Scillitan martyrs), with the bones of blessed Cyprian and the head of St. Pantaleon the martyr, having been translated from Africa into the Gauls, are venerated at Lyons in the basilica of the most blessed John the Baptist. Nothing about it either has Aloysius Lipomanus in the Eulogies of the Saints, which he recounted from a Bolognese manuscript codex of Ado in tom. 4 of the Lives of the Saints; whence it may be gathered that it was likewise absent from that codex.

[37] But Dominicus Georgius also, in his Annotations on the aforesaid Rosweydian Martyrology,

lately reprinted by him, but this not in the genuine one, testifies that the same translation is by no means found in the Vatican codices which he used for making the said annotations. Ruinart too seems to have got some scent of the supposititious character of this passage: for whereas he had said here, in the Acts of the first martyrs, of the Paris edition of the year 1689, p. 203, that that translation is read in the genuine Martyrology of Ado, in the other edition enlarged and emended by him, which came out from the Amsterdam presses in the year 1713, p. 205, he substituted published for genuine. But what betrays the interpolation more is the year of St. Ado's death, as it is fixed by Mabillon both in the Acts of the Saints of the fourth Benedictine Century, part 2, p. 271, and in the Annals, tom. 3, at the year of Christ 875, num. 65, compared with the year in which the church of Compiègne was dedicated by Charles the Bald. For since Mabillon in the places cited teaches that St. Ado died in the year 875, but we have shown at this very day in the historical Commentary on St. Cornelius the Pope and martyr, §13, num. 269, that the dedication of the aforesaid church fell in the year 877, it follows that the disputed words of the Martyrology are not Ado's, but were added by another after his death.

[38] made from Lyons to Compiègne Not on that account however would I wish to deny that translation, since that very addition is ancient and is confirmed from elsewhere. Of the church of Compiègne in France we have said more in the historical Commentary just cited, and there we have shown that it was founded by Charles the Bald in order that, after the example of Charlemagne his grandfather, who had built a notable basilica at Aachen and had made it illustrious with a very great heap of relics, he too might have a like church at Compiègne. As therefore to this end he honorably deposited in it the body of St. Cornelius brought from Rome, so also he could likewise have translated thither the bones of St. Cyprian, for whose keeping Charlemagne had once thought to found a church, in order to enrich that church with so great a treasure. And so on this side that assertion, or addition, of the published Martyrology is probable. With these agree the domestic records of Compiègne, on Mabillon's testimony, tom. 3 of the Annals, at the year 877, num. 94, and namely a manuscript Martyrology and a book of Customs of that place, in which at the Ides of March is read: At Compiègne, the reception of the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian.

[39] by Charles the Bald To the same opinion the aforesaid Mabillon cites the Ecclesiastical Library of Steinwich, tom. 2, p. 25, where he asserts it is read that the Responsory Citizens of the Apostles was composed on the occasion of the translation of the bodies of the holy Cornelius and Cyprian at Compiègne. He cites besides the ordinances of Charles the Simple and Louis d'Outremer, in which the things which were given to the basilica of Compiègne are said to be granted to the holy Mother of God Mary and to the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian. More clearly speak Rotbert, or Robert, king of France, and his consort queen Constance in the Charter of a donation made to the same church in the year 1029, as it stands in the same Mabillon, book 6 On Diplomatics, p. 582. For there certain things are granted to the church of Holy Mary of Compiègne, … and to the holy martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian, resting in the same church. Finally the aforesaid Benedictine annalist had premised: Certainly the relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian are kept in one precious casket in the church of Compiègne. Of the body translated to that same place and kept there Maran has like things in §34 of the Life, saying: As Ado of Vienne and the most certain instruments of the same monastery testify. But what is to be judged of Ado we have already said; but whether those instruments are other than those which Mabillon cited we do not know.

[40] Ruinart too, in the Acts of the first martyrs, of the Amsterdam edition, p. 205, from various instruments affirms that the same things are confirmed by many ancient, and indeed genuine, instruments of the same place, and refers the reader to Marlot, tom. 1 of the Metropolis of Reims, book 3, chap. 33; but neither did the latter there recite or cite any instrument of this kind. Equally uncertain to me is whether it be true, as Tillemont, art. 66 in St. Cyprian, says is asserted, that that translation made by Charles the Bald is demonstrated from the authentic letters of the foundation of that same monastery. This is certain, that no trace of this matter exists in the ordinance of the same Charles which Mabillon exhibits, as issued by him for the construction of that place and transcribed from the original, in the Appendix to tom. 3 of the Annals, instrument 24. Tillemont likewise, art. 17 in St. Cornelius, and Note 45 in St. Cyprian, suspected that the author of the Life, whom Pamelius believed to be Paul the deacon, suggested in it that the body of each holy Martyr already then rested in one and the same place, namely at Compiègne. I subjoin the words in which he seemed to him to say this.

[41] Thus therefore, says the writer of the aforesaid Life, blessed Cyprian followed St. Cornelius with glorious faith, and by testimonies and by the same kind of martyrdom, on the same day of passion, though not in the same year, the devil being conquered, passed as a triumpher to heaven. And as it is written: As in their life they loved one another, so in death they were not separated. Both illustrious in faith, both unconquered in constancy, both glorious in martyrdom. Let us therefore, brethren, pray to almighty God for the most serene emperor Charles, that he who made blessed Cornelius the Pope and martyr, from the Roman parts, near to himself for the defense of himself and of all the faithful, and has honored us with so great a patron, may — by the suffrages of this renowned martyr, the blessedness of everlasting life being granted him — cause us to deserve to obtain, to be possessed forever, the fellowship of all the Saints whom he venerably honored. Thus he, recording nothing about the body of St. Cyprian. Hence it appears that Tillemont's conjecture rests on no other foundation than that these two martyrs are said not to have been separated in death, and that on that occasion mention is at once made of the bones of St. Cornelius translated by Charles, namely the Bald, from Rome into the Gauls, and that therefore it can seem to be suggested here that they were placed beside the body of St. Cyprian, long since brought under Charlemagne from Africa into the Gauls, and already deposited at Compiègne, as was commonly known. But this is a weak conjecture, which is propped up by the translation of St. Cyprian's body to the church of Compiègne known from elsewhere, and does not draw it out from the words adduced.

[42] However that may be, the same translation is finally asserted by Marlot cited above, is handed down: Severtius resisting in vain: by Saussay and by Castellanus, each in his own Martyrology, the Gallican namely and the Universal, as also by the present-day Paris Martyrology and Breviary, the one at this day, the other at the XVI of this month, on which day St. Cyprian is celebrated there separately from Cornelius. To these add Bucelinus, who in the Benedictine Sacrarium at the XIV day of September has: Of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, the chief part of their bodies at Compiègne. But Jacobus Severtius in the chronological History of the bishops of Lyons, in Leidrad §5, denies that that translation is admitted as true by the people of Lyons, and contends that the body of the holy Martyr, deposited at Lyons under Charlemagne, was never afterwards carried away thence. And in order to persuade of this he produces part of a letter of Stephen Charpin, a presbyter of Lyons, written there in the year of Christ 1553, in which he affirms that the relics of the same Saint were in his own time still kept at Lyons, in the words which I subjoin. But it has come, he says, into my mind, on account of the relics of the sacred body of Cyprian, which we know for certain to have been laid up in the church at Lyons by the benefaction of Charlemagne, a man most great in true religion, in that shrine which stands above the altar, that all the best men keep his feast as devoutly as worthily. And a little after: Now I would gladly proclaim happy the church of Lyons, which possesses such heroes as are Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eucherius, in whose most ample merits she rejoices, and by which she subsists hitherto distinguished and illustrious. Thus there.

[43] another difficulty solved. But that letter cannot weaken the testimonies of so many others, nor does anything prevent its being taken of some part of the relics: for in vain does Severtius contend from it that, if anything of the Saint's body was carried off to Compiègne, it was only some portion and an image of the truth, namely a tiny part; nor does it appear to me sufficiently probable that Charles the Bald, if he wished to make his basilica of Compiègne illustrious with the relics of St. Cyprian, would have been content with a slight portion of them. Mabillon in tom. 3 of the Annals, at the year 877, num. 94, raises against himself another difficulty against the people of Compiègne from Anselm the monk in the History of the Dedication of the church of St. Remigius, or of the Council of Reims, as it is elsewhere entitled. For there Anselm narrates that the canons of Compiègne came to Reims with the body of St. Cornelius, to make complaint before St. Leo IX the Pope about an injury done to them by certain malevolent persons, as we have said in St. Cornelius, §13; nor yet, making mention of St. Cyprian, does he say more than: Finally he (St. Leo) excommunicated those about whom the clerics of Compiègne had made their proclamation, on account of whose injustice they had brought thither the body of the holy martyr Cornelius. To these things Mabillon answers that Anselm spoke compendiously, and named St. Cornelius the Pontiff and martyr alone before the rest: which he proves is inferred from the fact that the same Anselm had premised in the same place: But when morning had come, the holy martyr Cornelius was received by the lord Pope within the church, whom with other pledges of the Saints the clerics of Compiègne had brought thither, etc. For the rest, whether the bodies of both Saints were translated to Compiègne at the same time, the writer of the Translation of St. Cornelius, which we gave from a manuscript in the historical Commentary on him, §13, makes me more doubtful, since he says no word there about the relics of St. Cyprian.

[44] Some relics of the Saint at Ronse in Flanders, Further, although Mabillon and the other Benedictines cited would have St. Cyprian's body to have remained among the people of Compiègne, there are nevertheless not lacking those who assert that at least a great part of it was already anciently translated thence to Ronse, which is a town of present-day Austrian Flanders in ancient Brabant beyond the river Scheldt, where even today it is celebrated yearly with a twofold Office in the collegiate church of the canons; namely first at the IV day of July on the feast of the translation of the relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, martyrs and pontiffs, and of St. Celestine the Pope, confessor: and then at the XIV of September, which is the birthday of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian. Of this church, of the very ancient reliquary of St. Cyprian kept there, of the profanation by the heretics of the relics deposited in the castle of Pamele, and of the other things pertaining hereto, we have treated more fully in the whole of §15 of the Historical Commentary on St. Cornelius, so that, unless we wish to repeat the same things, nothing further need here be added.

[45] In the same Commentary, §16, we said that the abbey of Ninove, and kept in the abbey of Ninove. of the Premonstratensian Order in Flanders and in the diocese of Mechlin, also venerates its own relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian,

which an ancient tradition of the place reports were left there when the people of Ronse received theirs from Inde. It is moreover uncertain whether this is that very translation about which Jacobus Meyer in the Annals of Flanders at the year 1160 writes thus: In the same year, on the Kalends of June, the body of the divine Cyprian, bishop and martyr, was translated at Ronse, at which translation Arnulf, abbot of Ename, was present. See what was said in the cited Commentary, §15, num. 304, and §16, num. 316. One thing I here add: the testimony of Cornelius van Gestel in his sacred and profane History of the Archbishopric of Mechlin, tom. 2, p. 199 and following, where it is read: For several centuries there has always been, and today persists, a very frequent concourse to the abbey church of epileptics, or of those laboring under the falling sickness and other infirmities, who at the relics of the holy martyrs and pontiffs Cornelius and Cyprian, as authentic testimonies prove, have obtained and do obtain entire health.

[46] There are also various other places in which some relics of St. Cyprian are said to be kept, likewise some at Venice, others at Ochsenfurt, whether these are really our Saint's or another's of the same name. Among the rest Baronius in tom. 9 of the Annals at the year 806, when he had reported the translation of the sacred body from Africa into the Gauls, subjoined: Venice too was then enriched with the same treasure, the relics of St. Cyprian, which the legates (of the Venetians, as he had premised), returning, received as a gift from Charles (the Great) and carried to their fatherland, with which by the Venetians a noble memorial of St. Cyprian was erected at Murano, which persists hitherto. Thus he, but citing no witness. That some portion also was given by the same emperor to Egilward, bishop of Würzburg, Johann Georg von Eckhart suspects in tom. 2 of Eastern France, at the year 806, num. 39, alleging this reason: For afterwards relics of SS. Cyprian and Sebastian were translated by bishop Humbert to Ochsenfurt on the Main, and the church of this place, built by Gozbald the presbyter for this purpose [*], was dedicated in honor of these Saints. We know these things from the Martyrology of Bede (enlarged, namely) written in the ninth century, which is kept in the library of the cathedral church. In it at the IV day of the Nones of November is read: "The dedication of the church of Gozbald at Ochsenfurt in honor of the holy martyrs Cyprian and Sebastian, venerably celebrated by bishop Humbert."

[47] Of the same church, and of its dedication by Humbert, are said to be honored at Moissac and elsewhere, and of the relics of St. Cyprian deposited in it he makes mention again at the year 835, num. 41; but here he preferred to suspect that they had been obtained by Gozbald himself, then arch-chancellor of Louis I, king of Germany, and abbot of Altaich, and afterwards bishop of Würzburg, while he was staying at Lyons with the aforesaid king. Our Bolland, in tom. 1 of February in his Annotations on the Life of St. Sorus the hermit, p. 200, letter b, affirms that some were brought to Moissac in the province of Cahors; but this likewise without a witness. Likewise that others are kept at Paris in the cathedral church of St. Mary the Virgin, and others in the abbey of Val-de-Grâce of virgins of the Order of St. Benedict, Baillet asserts in his Lives of the Saints at the XVI day of September in St. Cyprian. But also a notable bone of the same Saint Martin L'Hermite attributes to Montreuil of St. Austreberta, which is a nunnery of Benedictine virgins in the diocese of Amiens, commonly Sainte Austreberte le Montreuil, in his History of the Saints of the territory of Lille, Douai, and Orchies, published in French, where he treats of the cult of the same Saint at Hem, which is a place in the district of Lille, about which the historical Commentary on St. Cornelius, §16, num. 318, may be consulted.

[48] of which perhaps some are of another Cyprian. In the same place likewise, at num. 321 and the following, it was reported from an anonymous writer of the History of the patriarchs of Bourges that other relics besides of a certain St. Cyprian were, at the end of the eleventh century, brought by a certain illustrious count from Rome into France together with the relics of St. Cornelius, and deposited in a monastery built in the territory of Orléans, which they called Corneliacum. But at the same time we admonished that this is by no means probable of the bones of our St. Cyprian, since his body was never translated to Rome. Wherefore, if the aforesaid writer narrates truly, I should believe that those things must be taken of the relics of another St. Cyprian, namely the Antiochene, or the martyr of Nicomedia, whose sacred body is read to have been conveyed to that City by sailors in the Acts of him and of Justina the virgin martyr, which you have in the new Thesaurus of Anecdota of Martène and Durand, tom. 3, col. [ ], as we have noted above more than once, when we observed that this holy martyr of the same name was confused with the Bishop of Carthage by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and by others. Finally, that in the abbey of Inde near Aachen, from which some think they received their relics of the Saint, as was said above, the crown of his head, or the topmost part of his skull, is kept, Johannes Nopelius notes in the Chronicle of Aachen, printed at Cologne in the year 1632: he adds however that this is not clearly proved. I should be longer than is fair if I wished to recount all the places which glory in the relics of our holy Martyr; and therefore I forbear to report more on this subject.

* al. head

* perhaps: for this purpose

CHAPTER IV.

The Saint's Opuscula, except those which treat of the baptism of heretics, always highly esteemed: certain others perhaps to be ascribed to him, others wrongly attributed.

The Saint's Works always highly esteemed, How highly the Catholic Church has always esteemed St. Cyprian's writings the distinguished testimonies of the holy Fathers, and namely of Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory of Nazianzus, brilliantly demonstrate, which, referred to his several Opuscula each according to its own time as it seemed to us, we have recounted through the course of the Commentary. Of the various arguments of the Opuscula too we have said enough, so that it is not necessary to add anything further about these here. This one thing however it will be useful to have observed from St. Jerome's Epistle 49, elsewhere 13, to Paulinus: why the holy Martyr, among so many arguments of faith and morals which he handled, published no lucubration on sacred Scripture, although his other Works prove that he was most versed in it. The blessed Cyprian, says the aforesaid St. Jerome, after the manner of a most pure fountain, proceeds sweet and calm; and since he is wholly occupied in the exhortation to virtues, being taken up with the straits of persecutions, he by no means discoursed on the divine Scriptures. And certainly what we have discussed in the preliminary Commentary about the atrocity of the Decian persecution, about the case of the lapsed, about the intemperate easiness and audacity of some confessors, about the rise of schisms and heresies, and about the various business of so ample a diocese, sufficiently makes manifest that not much leisure was left him which he might use for commenting on the sacred Letters.

[50] Further, to the Church's judgment St. Gelasius I the Pope adhered, and approved by Gelasius when in a Roman council, weaving a canon of the books which the Church should receive and which on the contrary she should reprobate, he decreed that in the first place after divine Scripture and the councils the Opuscula of blessed Cyprian the martyr and bishop of Carthage should be received, as may be seen in Labbe, tom. 4 of the Collection of the Councils, col. [ ]. But in the same place, col. 1265, there are likewise reckoned among the apocryphal books the Opuscula of Tatius (or Tarsus) Cyprian, apocryphal: nor is there any doubt that for Tatius, or Tarsus, one should read Thascius or Tascius, as Hardouin reads in his own edition of the Councils, tom. 2, col. 942. But since it cannot be said that the same Opuscula were by the same Pontiff, and in the same decree, now approved and now rejected, some corruption must needs lurk here. The most eminent Baronius in tom. 2 of the Annals, at the year 261, num. 46, judged that the latter passage is to be taken only of the treatises written by him for rejecting the baptism of heretics, which he supposed had been collected into one volume and marked with the title of Opuscula.

[51] On the contrary Tillemont, Note 52, with some others contends besides the writings on the baptism of heretics, that none of St. Cyprian's Opuscula was reprobated in the aforesaid decree, and that the things which we have reported from Labbe on the contrary side must be held supposititious. And as a manifest indication of interpolation he alleges the added name Tascius, little used, and deformed into Tatius; as though, he says, the very imposture blushed to condemn the great Cyprian, and wished it to be believed that it was not he but some other whom the censure branded. Besides, he says that another undoubted sign of interpolation is that in Gratian the Opuscula of the same Saint are reckoned in the same decree only among those books which the Church does not reprobate but admits. Nevertheless not only in the editions of Labbe and Hardouin, but also in the most ancient Florentine codex from which Joseph Blanchini, and in the Palatine-Vatican from which Justus Fontanini published the same decree, it is read thus, as may be seen in tom. 4 of Anastasius the Librarian, among the Prolegomena, p. LXI and following, in one of which also Tassius, in the other Tarsus, is written for Tatius.

[52] Further, it matters little whether that censure be supposititious or genuine; which are deservedly numbered among the apocrypha. since it is evident from elsewhere that St. Cyprian's Opuscula were always held in esteem by the Catholic Church, except however those which he wrote about the emptiness of the baptism of heretics, and in which he defended an error rightly reproved by St. Stephen, and afterwards already reprobated by the universal Church before the Pontificate of St. Gelasius; so that it ought to seem no wonder at all if he rejected these among the apocrypha, nay rather a wonder if he had admitted his Opuscula generally, without expressly excepting those erroneous ones. Nor on that account however would he have to be said to have condemned the great Cyprian, but to have proscribed his error; which the Saint himself, from what has been said in the Commentary, is to be believed to have retracted, and which the Church had already proscribed before Gelasius. For the rest, some corruption could easily have crept into that censure, for it is both too general, and Baronius's interpretation is at the least very uncertain. But neither do I think that reading genuine which Hardouin followed, according to which among the books which Gelasius admits there are reckoned Likewise the Opuscula of blessed Cyprian the martyr and bishop of Carthage, to be received in all things. Too little accurately also did Noël Alexandre write, Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 3, chap. 4, art. 4, as though all the Saint's Works had been rejected by Gelasius on account of that same error. For thus he has in the same place, num. 15: In St. Cyprian's Works the error about rebaptizing heretics must be guarded against, on account of which alone Gelasius in a Roman synod set them down in the reckoning of the apocrypha.

[53] It is uncertain whether the book On Spectacles Besides the Works which all agree to be genuine offspring of St. Cyprian, certain others are circulated under his name in manuscripts and printed books; of which some are doubtful, others certainly fastened upon him falsely, about which I shall here treat briefly, following the order in which they are recounted in the Venetian edition of Baluze. In the first place occurs the book On Spectacles

, a notable one, and not unworthy of Cyprian, to whom many have also ascribed it. These are favored both by the very superscription of the book: Cyprian to the people standing in the Gospel, greeting; and by the person of the writer, who presents himself as some prelate absent from his church, and to whom it is grievous that he can address his own people neither in person nor by letter as often as he pleases: which fits rightly our holy Bishop either lying hidden in his retirement or in exile at Curubis. Then the marks of time favor it: for it was written while paganism was in force, and it makes mention of the custom then usual of the most holy Eucharist being carried home by the faithful from the church, and of exorcisms then frequent; which same things we have seen in the Commentary flourished at Carthage in his age. Finally it is favored by the fact that the author of this Opusculum imitated here and there Tertullian's books On Spectacles, which we have also said elsewhere were familiar to our Saint.

[54] is to be ascribed to St. Cyprian, But the style too of the book approaches the Cyprianic not a little, so that to some learned men it seems to differ from it only very slightly. It must however be confessed that this difference of style is by no means doubtful to one accustomed to read Cyprian. Nor is there to be found here that force and effectiveness of speech so proper to him, nor that use of sacred texts in which he excelled in a wonderful manner in his Works. Add that, apart from the name of Cyprian, nothing is read in that Opusculum which would persuade that it was written to the people of Carthage rather than to the faithful of another church. Nay rather, since the author makes mention of the origin of the games in the City of Rome, and not elsewhere, and since after many things toward the end of the Work, calling forth his flock to a spectacle worthy of Christians, namely the fabric of the world and the sacred Letters, he says: This is the spectacle which no praetor or consul exhibits, but he who is alone and before all things and above all things, nay from whom are all things, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.; since, I say, he says these things there, there could be a suspicion that this book was written to the Romans rather than to the people of Carthage; since these had not a consul but a proconsul, and therefore the latter, not the former, would seem to have had to be named. But as regards the name of Cyprian, this could have been added by a copyist who supposed the book to be his. And so we judge that this Opusculum must be left among the doubtful works of St. Cyprian, until something more certain be produced on one side or the other.

[55] A distinguished Work likewise is the book On the Praise of martyrdom, as also the book On the Praise of martyrdom written in an oratorical style, and one more elaborate than the undoubted Opuscula of the Saint, if you except the letter to Donatus. Erasmus, and after him John Fell and Elias Du Pin, on that account denied it to St. Cyprian, and judged it the offspring of some idle orator. On the contrary Baronius in tom. 2 of the Annals at the year of Christ 255, num. 37 and the following, gravely reproves Erasmus for so censuring on account of a difference of style alone, and proves from St. Augustine, book 4 On Christian Doctrine, chap. 21, that St. Cyprian did not always use the same kind of writing; but now the subdued, as in the book or Epistle 63 On the Lord's Cup to Caecilian; now the tempered, as in the book On the Discipline and Habit of virgins; now also the grand, as in this same book, when the matter so demanded, St. Augustine in the same place observes was done by him. The same Fell besides attacks this Opusculum on the ground that mention is made in it of the plague then raging, and yet it is inscribed to Moses and Maximus and the other confessors: for since it is evident that St. Moses was crowned with martyrdom under Decius in the year 251, but Fell holds that the plague first arose while Gallus was reigning, hence he infers that that book is of a writer little informed about matters remote from his own age.

[56] To these things it may be replied with Tillemont that it is not proved to St. Moses and his fellow confessors, that that plague first blazed out under Gallus, although it then raged more bitterly, as we too have observed elsewhere; and consequently that on this head the aforesaid book cannot be denied to St. Cyprian. Baluze in his Annotations uses another answer, namely by denying that the superscription of the book to Moses and Maximus is found in very many of the best and most ancient codices which he had; and he asserts that in these there is only simply prefixed: Here begins On the praise of martyrdom, or something similar. Hence he in his own edition omitted that former superscription as added by another. That the same is likewise absent from three ancient codices John Fell testifies. But it is not necessary to have recourse to this, since the letter of SS. Moses, Maximus, Nicostratus, and the other Roman confessors, which is the twenty-sixth among the Cyprianic letters, furnishes no empty argument for vindicating the same book for the holy Martyr, which the most eminent Bellarmine in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, in St. Cyprian, doubtless suggested, when he says that the aforesaid confessors make mention of it in the aforesaid letter. I set forth the matter itself.

[57] Those confessors in that letter of theirs in reply to St. Cyprian write among other things this: detained in the Roman prison, We have received therefore, we say again, brother Cyprian, great joys, great consolations, great cherishings, especially because you have pursued with glorious and worthy praises the glorious — I will not say deaths, but immortalities of the martyrs. For such departures had to be followed with such words, that the things which were related might be spoken of just as they were done. From your letter therefore we have seen those glorious triumphs of the martyrs, and with our eyes we have in a manner followed them as they sought heaven, and have beheld them set among the angels and the powers and the heavenly dominations. But we have also in a manner perceived with our ears the Lord bearing before the Father the testimony promised to them. It is certain therefore that St. Cyprian set before them among other things the glory of the martyrs in heaven, and Christ's testimony before God the Father, in order to rouse them the more vehemently to martyrdom. But now we have indeed two letters of the holy Martyr to them, of which one is the fifteenth, the other the twenty-fifth in the Venetian edition of Baluze which we use; but although each is a kind of exhortation to that same contest, in neither nevertheless is the heavenly glory of the martyrs or Christ's testimony recorded, and therefore it must be that they designated by the words just cited some other Opusculum of the same Saint.

[58] are of St. Cyprian, And in fact both those things occur in the aforesaid book On the Praise of martyrdom. First, of Christ bearing testimony before his Father he says: And to be silent about the rest, this assuredly ought the more to exhort us, that the confession of one voice is preserved by the perpetual confession of Christ, as it is written: "Whoever shall confess me on earth before men, I too will confess him before my Father and before his angels." Of the glory too of the martyrs he discourses there at length, and finally toward the end says: O blessed are they whom from the beginning of the world the Blood of the Lord has dyed, and whom that splendor of a snowy mantle has deservedly clothed, and the whiteness of an encircling robe adorned! Finally I seem to myself already to discern, and, by the judgment of a human mind, that divine and notable thing runs together before my eyes and sight; I seem, I say, to myself already to discern how that truly noble number accompanies the glory and the journey of its own Christ. Before his face shall go the happy band of the victors, and, with their squadrons thickening, shall bring in the power as an army wholly illuminated, as by the rising of the sun: and would that it might fall to me, most abject as I am, to see that! These things, and others which the studious reader will detect by comparing the confessors' letter with the aforesaid book, raise a great suspicion that it was read by them.

[59] or of an unknown author. Hence the aforesaid Cardinal Bellarmine reckoned it among the doubtful Works of St. Cyprian, not because he judged it such, but because Erasmus had doubted about it. But neither did he judge its style to differ from his other Opuscula, except that it is more elaborate than others, but not than all; since the letter to Donatus yields by no means to this one. For asserting the same for the holy Martyr Baluze in his Annotations also observes that it is everywhere found in all the ancient codices (among which he reckons one Séguier codex, written in majuscule letters a thousand years ago) constantly among those Works of St. Cyprian which have no difficulty about their being Cyprian's. Besides he cites the Excerpts of Florus of Lyons from the Works of St. Cyprian, in which he says various passages from the same book occur, whereas all the rest are certainly Cyprian's. We cannot however deny that, besides the diversity of style here and there, some rather obscure phrases too are read in it, such as are not easily found in the Saint's undoubted Works. But also in commemorating the punishments of the underworld he follows the manner of the gentiles not a little, which I do not know whether it savors sufficiently of St. Cyprian. And so, although I incline much to ascribe the aforesaid book to him, I should not dare to do so with certainty. The editors of the Works of St. Augustine, first the Louvain and then also the Paris ones, judged indeed that the same book is cited by the holy doctor in book 1, chap. 30, against Gaudentius; but what he there records from St. Cyprian is properly and much more expressly contained in the letter to Donatus.

[60] The book On Rebaptism is not Cyprian's: doubtful are The book On Rebaptism, which follows in the Baluzian edition, is certainly not St. Cyprian's, but was either written against him while he contended about baptizing heretics, as it seems to many learned men, or, as others would have it, composed afterwards against the same error. The book On the Discipline and Good of chastity, and likewise another to Novatian the heretic On the hope of pardon not to be denied to the lapsed, which Baluze recounted in the first place among the Opuscula commonly ascribed to St. Cyprian, Bellarmine and Pamelius judged to be genuine offspring of his against Erasmus and others, who denied them to him on account of dissimilarity of style. As regards the first, it certainly had as author a bishop absent from his flock, and one who was wont to rouse it with continual exhortations to the pursuit of the virtues, as is beyond doubt from the very opening of the book. That it was written in the times of persecutions may also be gathered, since it is said in it: It (virginity) cannot fear persecution, while out of its security it can challenge it. Hence Pamelius supposed that it was published in the retirement under Decius: but this is little probable, since Pontius makes no mention of it, who so zealously commended the usefulness of that same retirement from the Works published by the Saint, and therefore would without doubt have most of all commemorated a book written in the retirement itself.

[61] Besides the discrepancy of style, Tillemont in Note 28 thought besides that he had detected in it a certain passage about divine grace, the book On the Discipline and Good of chastity, from which the writer

could be judged later than St. Augustine, were it not that mention is made there of a persecution, which however he suspected might perhaps pertain to the Vandals or to other heretics. But to these things Maran rightly replied that this conjecture is less probable, since in the undoubted Works of St. Cyprian far more testimonies of this kind about divine grace, and perhaps more express ones, occur. For the rest Pamelius notes that this book is inscribed to St. Cyprian both in a notable and ancient codex of the Charterhouse of Cologne, on Gravius's testimony, and in the codices of Louis Carrion and of St. Pantaleon at Cologne; but that the author greatly imitated Tertullian in the book On Chastity, and took over very much from it: and as regards the style, that brief sentences of this kind and enthymemes are found also in the book On the Discipline and Habit of virgins, and wherever the holy Prelate imitated Tertullian. This is certain, that besides the dissimilarity of style, which the Saint did not always use the same, nothing stands in the way of its being ascribed to him.

[62] The other, the book which was written to Novatian, and the book to Novatian, Erasmus, Tillemont, and others, on account of a like difference of diction, judged must be ascribed to another author, confessing that otherwise it is neither unworthy of St. Cyprian nor remote from his age. Certainly the author, who in the very opening of the book betrays that he is a bishop, records only one persecution after that which Decius had stirred up, in which latter he asserts that many who had fallen in the first stood unconquered. Wherefore Maran rightly supposed that he wrote it after the persecution of Gallus, in the peaceful beginnings of Valerian's reign. That he was an African moderns commonly gather, because he seems to allude to the schism of Felicissimus, known almost only in Africa, when he says: What would the most perverse Novatians, or now the very few MOST UNHAPPY ones, answer to these things? That it is not the work of St. Cornelius, as Erasmus suspected, is persuaded by these words of his: The sacrament of baptism, which, provided for the salvation of the human race, he (Christ) showed beforehand by his own mouth that the Church alone should celebrate by a heavenly reasoning. These things smell of St. Cyprian's error about the baptism of heretics, from which St. Cornelius was always most remote.

[63] But Maran judges that besides the dissonance of style he has noticed something else in it, on account of which it cannot be attributed to the holy Martyr. which Maran The author began the book thus: As I was thinking, and seething intolerably in my mind, what I ought to do about the pitiable brethren, who, wounded not by their own will but by the irruption of a raging devil, up to now, that is, through a long series of times, are paying penalties; behold, from the opposite side there has arisen another enemy, and an adversary of that very paternal piety, Novatian the heretic, etc. And again, after he had said that many of those who were wounded in the first battle-line, that is, in the Decian persecution, … afterwards, that is, in a second battle, … bravely persevered, he subjoined: Behold how glorious, how dear to the Lord, those schismatics do not hesitate to call wood, hay, stubble; whose equals, that is, those still set up to now in the same crime of their fall, they presume must not be admitted even to penance.

[64] holds must be denied to the Saint by his new observation But from these things Maran infers two conclusions: first, that the author of the book was a bishop who took it ill that Novatian impiously opposed him in dealing humanely with the lapsed who were penitent. The other, that the same author, while he was writing, had not yet granted peace to those who had lapsed under Decius; and consequently that this is not St. Cyprian, who, it is evident, when Gallus's persecution was imminent, decreed in a council of Carthage that peace should be given to the lapsed even before the completion of the whole penance, lest they should succumb to the persecution. Nor is this argument of Maran's empty; yet not so certain as it seemed to him. For first indeed, what is read in the former place about penance drawn out through a long series of times cannot be taken literally, unless one should wish to say that Novatian first began to spread his heresy under Valerian, or at any rate that knowledge of this matter only then came to the author of the book; neither of which can be said. Not the first, because it is evident from the preliminary Commentary that he stirred up his heresy together with his schism under Decius. Nor the second either, because no probable reason can be produced why an African bishop, such as Maran grants the author of the book to have been, could so long have been ignorant of the heresy of Novatian, most well known in Africa, and condemned in a council of Carthage. It seems therefore that the writer spoke less exactly about the time, and that those words, Up to now, that is, through a long series of times, must be referred not to the beginnings of Valerian's reign but to those of Gallus's.

[65] does not prove. But neither can there be certainly inferred from the second text what Maran inferred from it; namely that the author, while he was writing, had not yet granted peace to those who lapsed under Decius. For he does not deny that it had been given them by himself, but affirms that it had up to that time been so harshly denied to penitents of this kind by Novatian and his followers that, if one had to stand by their judgment, the lapsed who were penitent should not even then be admitted even to penance. Nor is it sufficiently probable either that the same author, when Valerian was already reigning, was still thinking about what should be done with the lapsed who were penitent, since already from the time of Decius it had been decreed in the council of Carthage as well as in the Roman that the lapsed should be admitted to full penance, and, this being completed, to peace; and then besides that it had been determined in a second Carthaginian synod, in the reign of the emperor Gallus, that on account of the imminent persecution all the lapsed who had begun to do penance from the first day of their fall, and had not withdrawn from the Church, should soon be granted the same peace. Wherefore, if that African bishop was then also really thinking what he ought to do about the lapsed, he must be said to be speaking of those who were not comprised in the later decree: and in this way the whole difficulty vanishes, since a deliberation of this kind could fall to St. Cyprian as much as to any other. Maran's observation therefore does indeed make it more doubtful whether the aforesaid book should not rather be ascribed to another than to St. Cyprian, but it does not prove that it must certainly be denied to him.

[66] There follow next in Baluze various Opuscula Other Opuscula, likewise formerly ascribed to St. Cyprian, which learned critics sufficiently agree are not his. Of these the book On Dice-players seems rather to be of some Roman Pontiff, since the author writes at the beginning: Since the divine and paternal piety has conferred upon us the leadership of the Apostolate, and by heavenly condescension has ordained the vicarious seat of the Lord, and we bear in our superior the origin of the authentic Apostolate, upon which Christ founded the Church, having received at the same time the power of loosing and binding, and the charge of remitting sins. Secondly, that the book On the Mountains Sinai and Zion, and the two following Orations, one for the Martyrs, the other delivered on the day of his passion, are likewise not our St. Cyprian's is agreed; but the first of these is wont to be attributed to an unknown author, and the latter two to St. Cyprian of Antioch, or the martyr of Nicomedia: whether rightly I do not examine.

[67] Baluze, after the treatise of Arnold, abbot of Bonneval in the diocese of Chartres, in loose and in bound style, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, on the last words of the Lord on the cross, subjoins the book to Cornelius the Pope On the cardinal works of Christ up to his ascent to the Father, which Pamelius judged could be St. Cyprian's, although he confesses that he lacks arguments by which to confirm it. But the most eminent Bellarmine has already shown the contrary, whose arguments there is no need to unravel here, since the learned today plainly agree with him, and from manuscript codices it is now adjudged by them to the aforesaid abbot Arnold. The poems entitled Genesis and Sodom the same Pamelius judged to have Cyprian as author, because they are attributed to him by Georg Fabricius and Morel and in a manuscript codex of the Victorine library at Paris; and because he seemed to himself to have detected some Cyprianic phrases in them. But these reasons are of small moment, nor are the aforesaid poems sufficiently worthy of the holy Martyr, and they are more rightly believed to be of some unknown author. Nothing likewise persuades us to claim for our Saint that other Poem to a Senator converted from the Christian religion to the idols, as neither the Hymn On the Cross of the Lord, or On the Pasch of the Lord, as Pamelius read, or The Tree of Life, as Fabricius read, which, on the same testimony of Pamelius, the codex of Dunes ascribes to Victorinus, and after whose end another codex of Cornelius Gualterus has: A hymn of Caelius Cyprian the bishop and martyr on the Pasch of our Lord Jesus Christ, or at any rate, according to some, of Victorinus, bishop of Pictabro (that is, of Petabona or of Poetovio), under whose name it is said to be extant also in other manuscript codices. In Baluze's Venetian edition he prefers Victorinus of Poitiers.

[68] The book On the Singleness of clerics, which some falsely adjudged to Origen, written on various subjects, others to St. Augustine, Baronius at the year 253, num. 44, held could be attributed to no one more justly than to our Saint; but from this opinion Bellarmine, Pamelius, and the other moderns dissent, who, although they commonly acknowledge that book to be notable and useful and of an ancient writer, nevertheless rightly pronounce its style, and the barbarous words which occur in it here and there, unworthy of St. Cyprian. More about this the studious reader will find in the aforesaid Bellarmine, in Pamelius, in Noël Alexandre, Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 3, chap. 4, art. 4, num. 8, in Maran §36, in Tillemont, and in others. No more can there be reckoned among the Works of St. Cyprian the Exposition on the Creed, the book To Vigilius the bishop On Jewish unbelief, and the treatise Against the Jews who persecuted our Lord Jesus Christ. For that Exposition, formerly also fastened upon St. Jerome, among whose supposititious Works it still stands, it is agreed is owed to Rufinus of Aquileia, and it is judged to be that very one of which Gennadius makes mention in his Catalogue of illustrious men, when he says: But by his own labor, nay by the gift of God's grace, the same Rufinus expounded the Creed, so that in comparison with his others may be believed not to have expounded it at all.

[69] to our holy Martyr The other Opusculum which follows, On Jewish unbelief, is manifest to a reader to be nothing but the preface of a certain aged Christian, who calls himself Celsus, to the dialogue of Jason the Christian and Papiscus the Jew, translated by him from Greek into Latin. Now that Greek Dialogue is ancient, since Origen in book 4 against Celsus makes mention of it. Finally the third treatise against the Jews the critics likewise agree cannot be attributed to Cyprian on account of the excessive dissonance of style. The Revelation of the head of blessed John the Baptist has an author later than St. Cyprian by several centuries; since indeed he makes mention in it not only of SS. Athanasius and Theophilus, prelates of Alexandria, of the emperors Theodosius and Marcian, and of the Chronicle of Marcellinus the count, but also of Pipin, king of Aquitaine. The same

judgment holds of the book On twofold martyrdom: for although the author wishes it to be believed that he wrote about the middle of the third century, when he says: Behold, most beloved brethren, from the times of the Lord our Redeemer there have flowed by more or less two hundred and forty years, he afterwards himself makes his imposture manifest, recording the persecution of Diocletian as though already then past, and — what is even much more shameful — makes mention of the Emperor's war against the Turks, saying: If any soldier, sworn in to the words of Caesar, should desert to the Turk, etc.

[70] formerly wrongly There follows the treatise On the twelve abuses of the world, formerly also wrongly attributed to St. Augustine, which the texts of sacred Scripture taken from St. Jerome's version prove is not St. Cyprian's. The Supper is worthy not only not of our holy Martyr, but not even of a Christian man; being namely the offspring of some trifler who abused the histories of sacred Scripture for his own inept little tales, so that it is a wonder that it could ever have been ascribed to our St. Cyprian. Nor does the Confession of St. Cyprian pertain to our Saint either, which stands in Greek and Latin in Baluze, and which is reckoned among the apocrypha in the decree of Gelasius; but it is believed to be of the Saint of the same name, the Antiochene or Nicomedian Martyr, who is inscribed together with St. Justina the virgin martyr in the Roman Martyrology at the XXVI day of September, on which day it will be able to be examined. Meanwhile we have already often noted in the preliminary Commentary that this Saint was wrongly confused with our Carthaginian by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and by the poet Prudentius.

[71] attributed; Falsely finally was the book On the Trinity ascribed to St. Cyprian of Carthage, which has as its author Novatian the pseudo-pope, of whom we have treated at length in the aforesaid Commentary, on the testimony of St. Jerome in his Catalogue of Writers, saying in Novatian: He wrote … a great volume On the Trinity, making as it were an ἐπιτομὴν of Tertullian, which very many, not knowing, think to be Cyprian's. Of the same book the holy doctor speaks again in book 2 against Rufinus, where he denies that it is or is called Cyprian's. Take the words: He (Rufinus) passes to the renowned martyr Cyprian, and says that a book of Tertullian, whose title is On the Trinity, is constantly read at Constantinople under his name by heretics of the Macedonian party. In which charge he lies twice: for neither is it a book of Tertullian, nor is it called Cyprian's; but Novatian's, with whose title it is also inscribed: and the property of the style demonstrates the eloquence of its author.

[72] Besides the Opuscula already recounted, Baluze immediately after St. Cyprian's letters subjoined three others as doubtful, as also two letters published by Baluze. of which he affirms that the first was drawn from two ancient manuscript codices, one of the library of the monastery of St. Remigius of Reims, the other of the library of the most illustrious Jean Bouhier; the second from the codex of Foix of the Colbertine library; and the third finally from this same codex and another of St. Remigius of Reims. The first stands under the name of Cornelius the Pope to Cyprian, and is a brief but sharp reproof of the error about rebaptizing heretics. But, as we have already said elsewhere, we do not believe that that controversy was ever stirred up between St. Cornelius and Cyprian, nor do we admit Rufinus's authority in this part. The second, whose superscription is this: Cyprian to the people dwelling at Carthage, eternal salvation in the Lord, not only differs too much from St. Cyprian's style, but also does not savor of his age, since it was written against the betrayers of sacred Scripture. The third begins thus: Cyprian to the blessed and most beloved parent Turabius, eternal salvation in the Lord; and it is a consolatory letter to him as he grieved over the death of his daughter. This same letter formerly went under the name of St. Jerome to Tyrasius; but, having been utterly denied to him by the learned, it has now been set down among his supposititious Works. Nor does the lowness of its inelegant style and the obscurity of its diction prove that it pertains any more to our St. Cyprian.