Cyprian I GENERAL INTRODUCTION I T WAS CYPRIAN'S LOT TO BE BISHOP OF ONE OF THE greatest cities of the West at a critical period in the history of the Church, the years of persecution under Decius and Valerian. For his episcopate we have much evidence in his own writings, especially in the letters, of which eighty-one are extant, fifty-nine of them written by him, with six synodical letters issued on his authority, and sixteen written to him or included in his files. These are supplemented by the brief biography composed by the deacon, Pontius, who lived with him, and the Acta Cypriani, the official record of his martyrdom. Not much is known of his life before he became a bishop. Like his compatriot Tertullian, Caecilius Cyprianus, "also known as Thascius" was brought up a pagan, well educated in rhetoric and perhaps in law. Until middle life he was teaching rhetoric professionally, and seems also to have practised occasionally as an advocate in the courts. He was a wealthy man at the time of his conversion to Christianity, which happened about 245-246. Cyprian regarded the Carthaginian presbyter Caecilianus as his spiritual father. Not long after his baptism he was ordained presbyter, and again it was not long before, on the death of Donatus, he was elected and consecrated Bishop of Carthage. This was in 249 (possibly 248); the new bishop was still near enough to his baptism to be called a neophyte and a novellus. He was to suffer for this from the jealousy and factious spirit of a group of senior presbyters. The Church in Africa had enjoyed peace, so far as the State was concerned, since Tertullian's time, and was not well prepared to face the shock of renewed persecution when Decius ordered his subjects to attest their loyalty by sacrificing to the d. 14 Sept 258 gods of the Empire. His edict took effect from the 1st January, 250. In Africa many Christians fell-"lapsed," as it was called -either by offering sacrifice or by purchasing certificates to say they had done so. Many of the faithful were imprisoned, pending sentence; some were put to death. The blow fell particularly upon the leaders, a deliberate policy. Pope Fabian, for example, was martyred on the 20th January, and it was not safe to fill the See until March, 251. Cyprian, impressed by the necessity of holding his flock together and guided, as he believed, by a dream, went into hiding and continued to direct his diocese by letters and, eventually, by a small commission of neighbouring bishops and presbyters. For the Bishop of Carthage was the most marked man in Latin Africa. It is unhappily easy to understand that the jealous presbyters made the most of their bishop's "desertion." Cyprian's first major ecclesiastical controversy arose out of the problem of dealing with lapsed Christians who wished to be forgiven and taken back into communion. Former discipline was against this, and Cyprian was himself a disciplinarian, not quick to make concessions and with a strong sense that, if traditional discipline was to be altered on so important an issue, the change must have the approval of the Church. Accordingly he postponed a final decision until the slackening of persecution made it possible for an African council to meet after Easter, 251, when some concessions were made. Meanwhile he kept in touch with the widowed Church of Rome, where the most prominent personality was the presbyter, Novatianus. In Africa there was a demand for a much easier, "laxer," policy with the lapsed. Why not restore the penitent to communion at once? The five presbyters who opposed Cyprian on personal grounds, led by a certain Novatus, adopted this platform and secured the support of numerous confessors, who were persuaded that their spiritual authority as confessors enabled them to guarantee the forgiveness even of apostasy. They began by giving the penitents letters of recommendation to the bishop, and finished by demanding that the bishop should restore such pentitents to communion. Some presbyters disregarded the absentee bishop and acted in this sense on their own authority. Thus, besides the original problem of the proper disciplinary action to take, this first crisis involved questions about the authority of presbyters and of spiritual, but unordained, persons (we remember Tertullian's spiritales) vis-à-vis the bishop, and also of the relation of the individual bishop, in his disciplinary capacity, to the wider Church. All this led to the production of Cyprian's De Unitate early in A.D. 251. It is not surprising that his experience of faction led him to emphasize the authority of the bishop. The second crisis arose out of the first. When Cornelius was made Bishop of Rome in March, 251, the presbyter Novatianus was, it seems, bitterly disappointed. Immediately he secured his own consecration as bishop, ostensibly of Rome, and headed the party which, so far from being lax in discipline, objected to any departure from the older rule that apostates must be excommunicated for life. For him, if he was sincere, this relaxation infringed the holiness of the Church to such an extent that it ceased to be the Church at all. Therefore Cornelius was not Bishop of Rome, and his party alone was the true "holy Church," and himself the lawful bishop. Cyprian, however, recognized Cornelius, after inquiry into the circumstances of both elections and consecrations. The Novatianist party soon. spread into Africa, appointed another "bishop" of Carthage, and allied themselves, on the basis of common opposition to Cyprian, with the laxist group in Carthage, which before long appointed its own "bishop," Fortunatus. Cyprian had now to deal with formal, episcopal, schism in Africa. The third crisis emerged from the second. After the excitement of the opening stages of controversy and schism, there were many Christians who wanted to return to, or enter into, communion with Cyprian. If they had been baptized before the schism, there was only a disciplinary issue, which caused no trouble except in the case of clergy. But some of them had been baptized in schism, by the Novatianists, and this raised a theological problem. Had they really been baptized at all? Could baptism be administered outside the Church? The Novatianists claimed to be the true Church, exclusively. So did those in communion with Cyprian at Carthage or Cornelius and his successors at Rome, whom, retrospectively, we can call the catholics. The first problem, then, was to decide which body was the true Church. Cyprian determines this—given orthodoxy on both sides according to the principle of apostolic succession. Novatian had never become Bishop of Rome (or a bishop at all) since he did not succeed to a vacant See. It must be understood that neither Cyprian nor Stephen of Rome, bishop from 254, allowed that the Novatianists were the Church or a church or a part of the Church. They were outside. |