critics, with one voice, pronounce such a stigma upon St. Cyprian's character to be a calumny which must not for a moment be allowed to attach itself to that holy man's name. Thus Dr. Wiseman speaks of "the machinations of the magician Cyprian," without any allusion to the Saint of Carthage. But whoever were the orator, that the subject of his discourse was St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, admits of no doubt. The words of the orator, variously and again and again repeated, fix the identity of the individual subject of his panegyric beyond question. Thus, in one passage, he says, "This Cyprian, my friends,-that those of you who know it may be the more pleased by the remembrance, and those who know it not may learn the fairest of all our histories, and the common glory of Christians,—is that man, the great name formerly of the Carthaginians, but now of the whole world." Again, he says, "He not only presided over the Church of the Carthaginians or of Africa (from him and on account of him celebrated to the present day), but also the whole West, and almost the very East, and the South and the North, wherever fame reached. Thus Cyprian becomes ours."

Now, Baronius* affirms, that this was a mistake in the orator; that the anecdote must have related to some other Cyprian; and that, as for St. Cyprian of Carthage, the story which charges him with having used magical arts is a fable to be exploded. Can we consider Gregory the Theologian, who was the most learned man of his time, and who had himself studied in

Baronius, Martyr. 26 Sept. p. 376, Paris, 1607; and Annal. Eccles. vol. ii. p. 564. Anno Christi 250. "Explosa fabula illa de Cypriani magicâ arte."

Africa, to have fallen into such a mistake, and to have been the propagator of such a fable?

Thirdly, The orator,* in a manner totally at variance with Gregory's, states that, "if used with faith, the very ashes of Cyprian dislodged devils, expelled diseases, foretold things to come; as they know who have made the experiment, and have delivered the account down to us, and will deliver it for times to come."

Fourthly, To abridge the tale in the words of the Benedictine editor, the orator + asserts that the body of Cyprian, having been hidden by a pious woman, was for a long time concealed, and was brought to light by a revelation made to another woman. Whereas the "Acts of the Proconsulate" tell us distinctly that the body of St. Cyprian, after he was beheaded, was carried at night, by torch-light, to the buryingplace of Macrobius on the Massalian way, near the fishponds, with many prayers and exultations. §

Fifthly, the orator asserts that the persecution, by which the Cyprian of whom he speaks was first banished and then beheaded, was under Decius, who was bent on destroying so eminent a Christian; whereas Cyprian of Carthage, though banished in the Decian persecution, yet returned from exile, and, after some years of labour in his episcopate, suffered martyrdom about A.D. 259, at the close of Valerian's reign.

Sixthly, Whilst it is with one voice denied that the Cyprian to whose memory the stain of attempting Justina's seduction could be the Bishop of Carthage, many of the circumstances specified by the

*P. 449.

See Benedictine edition of Cyprian. § Cyprian, Paris, 1726, cxlvii.

+ P. 448.

orator as belonging to the subject of his eulogy correspond precisely with the acknowledged facts of that Saint Cyprian's life.* Cyprian's biographer was Pontus, his own deacon, who witnessed his martyrdom ; and what he tells us of the birth, station, learning, wealth, liberality, and the death of his master, coincides exactly with the description in this panegyric. The circumstance, too, beautifully told by the orator, of his Cyprian having written many letters to encourage and comfort his people under their persecution, which both the memoir of Pontus and St. Cyprian's letters, still extant, prove to have belonged to the Bishop of Carthage, leaves no doubt as to the person whom the Orator considered himself to be describing. Whereas, on the other hand, the stories detailed by the orator of the man practising the arts of magic and summoning the devil to his aid in the work of seduction, and then destroying his books, and then being converted by Justina, whose chastity he had attempted, are all irreconcileable with the facts of the life of St. Cyprian of Carthage, who was himself a married man before his conversion, who was converted in his fiftieth year by his friend Cæcilius the presbyter, and who, instead of disgracing himself by magic, engaged in the pursuits of literature and practised every moral virtue. The orator declares, that the person of whom he spoke was Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, the glory of the Catholic Church the question recurs, Could Gregory of Nazianzum have been that orator?

Seventhly, To avoid the scandal of leaving such imputations on the character of the great Cyprian,

* There is much difficulty in fixing these dates with minute exactness; but allowing for all the varieties of reckoning, the inconsistencies and anachronisms in this oration remain unaffected.

commentators tell us that not he, but Cyprian of Nicomedia was the person meant by the orator. But, should we entertain that suggestion, the oration becomes involved in other inconsistencies. The orator says, that his Cyprian was beheaded under Decius, who died about A. D. 251; whereas no account fixes the martyrdom of Cyprian of Nicomedia at an earlier date than the reign of Diocletian and Maximinian, which did not commence till after the lapse of more than thirty years from the death of Decius.

Eighthly, Supposing the orator to mean Cyprian of Nicomedia, then he is altogether mistaken as to the kind of death suffered by the martyr. He says it was by the sword severing the head from the body (the real mode of the martyrdom of Cyprian of Carthage); whereas Cyprian of Nicomedia, together with his fellow-martyr Justina, was burnt on an instrument of torture called the gridiron, or frying-pan.

Ninthly, If Cyprian of Nicomedia be the subject of the orator's panegyric, then the story of the body having been hidden by one woman, and revealed to another, is no less inapplicable to him, than, on the other supposition, it would be to Cyprian of Carthage.* We are expressly told that the corpse of the martyr was exposed to be devoured by wild beasts, but that some Christian sailors carried it away by night and bore it to Rome, whence it was removed to Constantinople, and buried in the basilica, near the baptistry.

The passage, lastly, in which the orator tells us that one woman concealed, and another discovered the remains of Cyprian, contains a very extraordinary sentence, by no means to be overlooked in our present

* See Baronius, Martyr. Sept. 26, p. 376.

inquiry, as to the author of this oration. The reading may, perhaps, be a corruption, but it stands thus:-"That the woman might also be purified; as THOSE WOMEN who both before gave birth to Christ, and told his disciples after his resurrection from the dead, so now also the one woman shewing, the other giving up Cyprian."*

With these instances before us of the confusion, and contradictions, and inconsistencies which pervade this oration throughout, we cannot allow it to be the genuine production of so eminent and learned a divine as Gregory of Nazianzum. We cannot conceive that a bishop so deeply imbued with literature in all its branches, sacred and secular, doctrinal and historical, could have delivered an oration which professes in the plainest language, and by various expressions, to be a panegyric on that Cyprian who was the renowned prelate of Carthage, the glory of Africa and the world, and yet which is pervaded with a tissue of inconsistencies and contradictions, biographical and historical, from its first to its last page. This, however, is confessed to be the clearest testimony which the fourth century provides of the invocation of the Virgin.

APPENDIX E.

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA.

THAT the two homilies referred to in the text, and now ascribed to Cyril, (palpably different versions of the same original,) are the productions of a later age, can

Ὥσπερ τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ τεκᾶσαι πρότερον.