Cyprian

Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, known as Saint Cyprian of Carthage, was a third-century bishop, theologian, and martyr and one of the principal Latin Church Fathers. He was born in the early third century at Carthage in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, into a wealthy pagan family, and received a full classical education. He became a noted rhetorician and teacher of oratory in the provincial capital. In the mid-240s he converted to Christianity, influenced by a priest named Caecilius, whose name he adopted. After baptism he gave a large share of his property to the poor, devoted himself to scripture and ascetic practice, and was ordained priest. In 248 or 249 the faithful of Carthage chose him as their bishop. The speed of his rise, so soon after conversion, caused lasting resentment among some of the senior presbyters.

The Decian persecution of 250, which required inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the gods and obtain a certificate of compliance, struck the African church almost at once. Cyprian withdrew from the city and directed his flock by letters, a course that some later branded as cowardice. When the storm passed, the church was divided over the lapsi who had sacrificed, bought certificates, or otherwise failed. A rigorist party around Novatus and Felicissimus, and the Roman schism of Novatian, refused reconciliation or demanded extreme conditions; others wanted immediate restoration. Cyprian, in De lapsis and in African synods, held that the lapsed might be readmitted only after proportionate penance and that reconciliation belonged to the bishop, not to confessors acting on their own. In De ecclesiae catholicae unitate he argued that the Church is one, that the episcopate is a single shared office, and that to abandon the bishop is to leave the Church itself.

Cyprian also clashed with Pope Stephen I over heretical baptism. With the African and many Asian bishops he taught that baptism given outside the Catholic Church was invalid and that converts from heresy must be baptized afresh. Stephen held that a baptism performed in the Trinitarian formula was valid irrespective of the minister and forbade rebaptism. The controversy, recorded in Cyprian's correspondence and in the votes of Carthaginian councils, was not settled before Stephen died. In the same decade a devastating epidemic, later called the Plague of Cyprian, swept the empire. Cyprian's treatise De mortalitate urged Christians to nurse the sick, to avoid panic, and to regard death as a passage rather than a disaster, while his work on almsgiving and his treatise on the Lord's Prayer show the same pastoral concern.

Under Valerian a new edict in 257 required bishops, priests, and deacons to sacrifice and banned Christian assemblies. Cyprian was arraigned by the proconsul Aspasius Paternus, refused to obey, and was banished to Curubis. Recalled after a harsher rescript in 258, he was tried at Carthage by the proconsul Galerius Maximus on 13 September, again refused to sacrifice, and was sentenced to beheading. He was executed the next day, 14 September 258, at the estate of Sextus near the city, before a great crowd of Christians. The contemporary Acta Proconsularia and the Life by his deacon Pontius record the trial and death. His body was buried in the cemetery of the procurator Macrobius Candidianus on the Mappalian Way, where a basilica was later built. Veneration as a martyr began at once. His letters and treatises remained foundational for Latin ecclesiology, penance, and the theology of the episcopate. The Roman church keeps his feast on 16 September (with Pope Cornelius); the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 31 August.