S. A. Morcelli, Annales Ecclesiae Africanae temporibus Cyprianicis (ex Africa sacra)

ANNALS OF THE AFRICAN CHURCH IN THE TIMES OF CYPRIAN

(Morcelli, Africa sacra.)

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 243.

DONATUS BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. On the Kalends of January, C. Julius Arrianus and Aemilius Papus undertook the consulship: at which time Gordian Augustus was vanquishing the Persians in the East. Yet more excellent and more glorious in the annals of the African Church was the victory which Caecilius the presbyter seems to have won in this year over the great Cyprian. For Pontius the deacon, who writes that afterwards—namely in the year 248 (printed 243)—Cyprian, "while still a neophyte (Life of Cyprian, no. 5; see the Bollandists, volume III of September, p. 197) and, as was thought, a novice," by the judgement of God and the favour of the people was elected to the office of the priesthood and the degree of the episcopate, himself signifies that many things were accomplished by Cyprian before his priesthood which demand a longer space of time, and show that he surrendered himself earlier to his master (the same, ibid., nos. 2 and 3). This was that Caecilius,

whom formerly Octavius and Minucius had brought out of the mire of idolatry into the bosom of the Church, "a righteous man and of praiseworthy memory," as he is called by Pontius (the same, ibid., no. 4), "both in age at that time and in honour a presbyter," whose companionship Cyprian enjoyed. And Cyprian indeed, scarcely patient of instruction, had long resisted, thinking that it could not be done that he should put off his old habits and enter upon that singular way of life which was set before him. For he himself afterwards set forth his own tossings of mind thus in the Epistle to Donatus: "While I," says he, "was lying in darkness and in blind night, and while in the brine of the tossing world I was wavering tottering and doubtful with wandering footsteps, ignorant of my own life, a stranger to truth and light, I thought it altogether difficult and hard, according to those habits of mine at that time, what the divine indulgence promised unto my salvation—that anyone could be born again anew, and that, quickened unto a new life by the laver of saving water, he should put off what he had previously been,

and, although the frame of the body remained, should change the man in soul and mind. 'How,' said I, 'is so great a conversion possible?'" Nevertheless, with God as author, Caecilius conquered, and gave to the Church such a man as in the wretched and calamitous times which were already overhanging she could wish for rather than hope for—not only excelling in genius and learning, but admirable above all in counsel and wisdom and constancy. And Cyprian thought himself now not conquered, but vindicated into liberty, and from the name of his patron wished thenceforth to be called Caecilius Cyprianus; whom also, says Pontius, "he loved with entire honour and all observance, looking up to him with obedient veneration, no longer as a friend equal to his own soul, but as the parent of his new life."

II. That Cyprian was at that time an inhabitant of Carthage we know from an epistle which once when an exile he wrote to the Carthaginian clergy: for signifying that his return was in his prayers, "Where indeed," says he (Epistle 36), "could it be either better or more joyful for me than there where God willed me to believe and to grow?" Yet these very words hint that he was born elsewhere: nor yet should I believe that his native place was very far distant, since the same man had gardens near Carthage (Pontius, in the Life, no. 15), which together with his estates he sold in this year, that with the money raised he might support the want of the needy (the same, ibid., no. 2).

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 244.

DONATUS BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. This year is marked by Peregrinus and Fulvius Aemilianus as consuls: which was fatal to the commonwealth through the slaughter of Gordian Augustus. The author of this was reported to be Philip himself, who next undertook the empire, although the same man was believed to have been already at that time a Christian, and on account of so great a crime in this year, when at Antioch he wished to be present at the sacred assembly of the Christians, to have been repulsed by Bishop Babylas (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 6, chapter 34): which constancy of Babylas John Chrysostom adorned with distinguished praises (Works, tome 2, p. 545).

II. Cyprian meanwhile at Carthage was wholly engaged in the studies of the divine Letters, so that as much as he excelled in the liberal arts and secular studies, by so much did he surpass in Christian learning also. That among the rest of the writings of the Fathers Tertullian was assiduously read by him, Jerome testifies (On Illustrious Men, chapter 53), who says that he learned this from an old man of Concordia, who as a youth at Rome had heard it from the secretary of Cyprian, who was wont to relate "that Cyprian never passed a single day without the reading of Tertullian, and frequently said to him: 'Give me the master,' meaning Tertullian"; from whom nevertheless he so learned to cull the good that was in him, that he prudently rejected the evil, and often refuted it while concealing his name.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 245.

DONATUS BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

The Emperor M. Julius Philippus and Tib. Fabius Titianus entered upon the consulship. In this year is thought to have died

Tertullian. He certainly, as Jerome witnesses (On Illustrious Men, chapter 53), is said to have lived even to a decrepit old age, and up to middle age indeed was a Catholic, thenceforth a Montanist, and towards the end of his life even a heresiarch. Would that those who favour the memory of so great a writer, and opine that he at some time returned to a good mind, might confirm this very thing by some indication or some sure authority of the ancients! On the contrary, in his writings there are no traces of a penitent mind, his sect remained even to the times of Augustine, and the memory of his fall and defection still endures: so that he plainly seems to have had that end whereunto for a long time he was being led by his very obstinacy and contempt of the Catholic Church. For have we not in our own age also seen men with like beginnings flourishing with genius and learning of that sort, who had often been to others authors of right living, whose last days nevertheless we have bewailed as swept away and deformed by party zeal and popular breezes, the endeavour of good men who wished to recall them to the counsels of their former life proving in vain? This doubtless is the punishment of pride appointed from on high, that it brings voluntary destruction upon itself.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 246.

DONATUS BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

The consuls Bruttius Praesens and Nummius Albinus began the year: now what governors Africa had at that time, we are altogether ignorant of. Yet Cyprian, having now been engaged for two years in the sacred Letters, showed himself equal both to defending religion and to moulding morals. For in this year he made a beginning of writing with that ornate and most polished Epistle to his friend Donatus, wherein he both depicts the errors of his own old life, and extols the virtue of the baptism which he had received, and by a grateful commemoration of the divine benefit declares how great are the vices of men, and out of what great perils he was rescued. Which things nevertheless Cyprian, fresh from the rhetoric school and having not yet forgotten a certain painted glitter, treated in that style of speaking which afterwards, studious of gravity, he never used; Augustine calls it a "foaming circuit of words," touching upon this first work of Cyprian thus (On Christian Doctrine, book 4, chapter 14): "There is," says he, "something of the kind in the epistle of the most blessed Cyprian, which I think either happened or was purposely done for this reason, that it might be known by posterity what a tongue the soundness of Christian doctrine recalled from that redundancy, and restrained to a graver and more modest eloquence, such as in his subsequent letters is safely loved and religiously sought after, yet is most difficultly fulfilled."

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 247.

DONATUS BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The consuls were the Emperor M. Julius Philippus for the second time, and M. Julius Philippus Caesar, son of the Augustus, who himself also towards the close of the year was called Augustus by the Senate. To this year seems to belong the book of Cyprian which is now entitled On the Vanity of Idols, whereas

formerly it displayed as its title what are now thought to be the beginning of the book, namely, "That idols are not gods, and that God is one, and that through Christ salvation has been given to believers." Furthermore, this book most of all shows that Tertullian and Minucius were constantly read by Cyprian, since he imitated many things in both, and culled certain things also out of both. For the rest, his erudition shines forth everywhere, and a no common knowledge of the Greek writers also and of all branches of learning, which he clearly confirmed is not useless to a Christian man.

II. In the same year Bishop Donatus, now advanced in years, and in his mind, as I think, presaging future things, accounted Cyprian, whose genius, learning, virtue, and religion he admired, altogether worthy to be co-opted among the presbyters of his Church. Nor can it be set down that he was initiated into holy orders any later, since Pontius writes concerning the same man (in the Life, no. 3): "Many are the things which he did while still a layman, many which he did when already a presbyter, many which, following after the examples of the righteous men of old with like imitation, he performed in deserving well of the Lord by the obedience of entire religion"; nor indeed may one defer the beginning of his pontificate beyond the space of the following year, which is not obscurely designated by him in his epistles. That the three books of Testimonies against the Jews, and likewise the book On the Dress of Virgins, which Jerome twice calls an excellent volume (in the Epistles to Eustochium and to Demetrias), were written by Cyprian when he was a presbyter, is the opinion of many, which certain formulas also employed by Cyprian in these books persuade us of.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 248.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. Again the consulship was in the hands of the Augusti, Philip the father for the third time, and Philip the son for the second time. Nor is there any doubt that the Augusti were re-elected consuls in this year chiefly for this cause, because this was the thousandth year from the founding of the City: on account of which matter most magnificent games were held on the eleventh day before the Kalends of May (April 21), on which day the thousand and first year was begun, and likewise on the nine other following days; largesses also were given by the Augusti to the people, nor was anything omitted of those things which it was established had otherwise been done at the Secular Games.

II. Now the Carthaginian Church in the same year lost Bishop Donatus: whose praises indeed antiquity has imparted to us, while it has obscured almost all his deeds in oblivion. For concerning him nothing has come down to us besides the condemnation of Privatus the heretic, which we recounted above. Nevertheless it must be judged to have come to pass not without his labours and merits that the presbyters and deacons of the Roman Church, writing to Cyprian not long after his death, commended with that famous eulogy the Carthaginian Church recently administered by Donatus: "We know," say they (Epistle 30 among the Cyprianic ones), "the faith of the Carthaginian Church, we know her training, we know her humility."

III. After the death of Donatus, when deliberation was being held concerning a successor,

the eyes of the whole Christian people were cast upon Cyprian, and he alone seemed most suitable to whom that most ample Church should be committed. Which when he perceived, for the sake of declining the pontificate, he began to keep away from public view. "When unto his love and honour," says Pontius (in the Life of Cyprian, no. 5), "the whole people under the inspiration of the Lord leaped forth, he humbly withdrew, yielding to those older, and thinking himself unworthy of the title of so great an honour."

Yet that modesty increased the zeal of the people. "A numerous brotherhood," continues the same writer, "had beset the doors of the house, and through all the approaches anxious charity went round. Flight therefore being cut off," he had to obey the will of the people, who both had anxiously awaited his coming, and finally received him when he came exulting with joy. For the rest, in that highest agreement of souls we know that five presbyters opposed Cyprian, who afterwards also plotted many things against him (Cyprian, Epistle 40), never appeased by his gentleness, nor by his examples, nor by his benefits. "Unwillingly do I say it," says Pontius (ibid., no. 5), "yet say it I must: some resisted him, even that he might conquer. With whom nevertheless with what great mildness, how patiently, how benevolently did he bear, how mercifully did he forgive them, reckoning them afterwards most friendly and among his intimates, while many wondered! For to whom could the forgetfulness of so mindful a mind not be a miracle?"

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 249.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. Fulvius Aemilianus for the second time and Vettius Aquilinus went forth as consuls. This year was altogether mournful for the Church, the Augusti Philippi having been cut off by a faction of the soldiers, by whose favour the Christian commonwealth had been safe, and the supreme power of the empire having been transferred to Decius, whom, burning with hatred against the Christians, public authority armed with all resources.

II. Nevertheless in Africa the whole year flowed peacefully by, and it was permitted to Cyprian to bestow assiduous labour upon the instruction of the people, and to give replies concerning duties also to the bishops who consulted him. Eucratius bishop of Thenae had written to him concerning an actor who at Thenae, having professed himself a Christian, continued to practise the stage-player's art, and had asked whether that was to be borne. Now Cyprian replied (Epistle 61) that this man, since he was a master and teacher not for instructing, but for ruining boys, ought not to communicate with the Church; for it seemed to agree neither with the divine majesty nor with evangelical discipline that the modesty and honour of the Church should be befouled by so shameful and infamous a contagion. "Nor let anyone excuse himself," says he, "if he himself has ceased from the theatre, while nevertheless he teaches this to others. For he cannot seem to have ceased who substitutes deputies, and who in place of his single self supplies several successors against the institution of God, instructing and teaching how a male may be broken into a woman, and sex changed by art, and how the devil who stains the divine handiwork may be pleased through the offences of a corrupted and enervated body." Yet because he understood that it would happen

that the man when admonished would allege poverty as a pretext, whereunto it would be necessary for him to be reduced if he cast away his art, first indeed he exhorted Eucratius that out of the goods of his own church he should support his want; and that nothing might be lacking to the amendment of the actor, he himself added words which would leave no excuse: "But if," says he, "the church there does not suffice to afford food to those in need, he will be able to betake himself to us, and receive here what is necessary for him for food and for clothing, and not teach deadly things to others outside the church, but himself learn saving things in the church."

III. In the same year he is believed to have received a letter also from Pomponius bishop of Dionysiana, whereby he sought his opinion concerning virgins who shared the dwellings of men. For already in Africa there was creeping that depraved custom which, afterwards wandering through the East also, stained the splendour of the most holy orders, and was often assailed with the weightiest rebukes of Gregory Nazianzen and Jerome and John Chrysostom, and brought into the highest odium. The Greeks called virgins of that sort syneisaktoi ("brought in together"), whom presbyters and deacons were not ashamed to have at home, even as partners of their bed; and yet those men kept saying that they holily preserved chastity. Indeed Cyprian wrote back to Pomponius (Epistle 62): "Intervention must quickly be made against such, that they may be separated while they can still be separated innocent"; then, as regards the clergy: "Since," says he, "it behoves all altogether to keep discipline, much more is it right that presidents and deacons should take care of this, who should afford an example and pattern to the rest from their conversation and morals. And therefore advisedly and with vigour have you acted, dearest brother, in excommunicating the deacon who often abode with a virgin." He adds also concerning the punishment wherewith those were to be restrained who had not obeyed the command, and finally recounts the chastity prescribed to the sacred ministers of the Church, which Pomponius ought to guard with all zeal. "Therefore," says he, "lest the undisciplined be consumed and perish, bestow labour, dearest brother, that so far as you are able you may rule the brotherhood with salutary counsels, and take thought for each one unto his salvation. Strait and narrow is the way whereby we enter unto life (Matt. 7:14), yet highest and great is the fruit when we arrive at glory. Let those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:12) please God in all things, and not offend the priests of God or the Church of the Lord by the scandal of their depravity. And if for the present certain of our brethren seem to be grieved by us, let us nevertheless abide in our wholesome persuasion."

IV. For the rest, Cyprian, a most diligent censor of morals, was wont beforehand to test those whom he was about to choose into the clergy, and in the presence of his presbyters to institute a judgement concerning each one; nor yet to elect them forthwith, but to defer it to another year. Thus in this year Saturus and Optatus were made by him "next to the clergy," whom in the following year he at length co-opted, when he had already withdrawn from Carthage. For an examination of this sort in Epistle 24,

which he sent out of his hiding-place to the clergy, he recounts in these words: "Now know that I have made Saturus a reader, and Optatus the confessor a subdeacon, whom long ago by common counsel we had made next to the clergy, when either to Saturus on the day of Easter once and again we gave the reading, or when with the teacher-presbyters we were diligently testing the readers, we appointed Optatus among the readers a teacher of the hearers (catechumens), examining whether all things agreed in them which ought to be in those who were being prepared for the clergy." When this diligence, I think, has been employed, and a delay of this sort interposed, bishops will more rarely choose into the clergy men of whom they must afterwards be ashamed.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 250.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The Emperor M. Messius Decius for the second time and Annius Maximus Gratus discharged the consulship in this year. Now in the very month of January the fury of Decius against the Christians broke forth in the City, and first Fabian, the Supreme Pontiff, on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of February (January 20), accomplished a glorious martyrdom, and as Cyprian writes, "answerably to the integrity of his administration his consummation also proceeded honourable" (Epistle 4, To the Roman Presbyters). Immediately afterwards a Carthaginian citizen and offspring of martyrs, Celerinus, a most illustrious confessor, whom Cyprian often adorned with many praises, was taken at Rome. He was a youth, yet of great courage; "for nineteen days," as Cyprian himself hands down (Epistle 34), "hedged in by the ward of prison, he lay in the stocks and iron." And when, released, I think, out of pity for his age, he had returned into Africa, he had brought back his scars as witnesses of his confession. "There shine," said Cyprian, "in his glorious body the bright marks of wounds; there stand out and appear the tracks stamped upon the sinews and limbs of the man wasted with long decay."

II. Yet while Celerinus was in chains at Rome, the edicts of Decius had already been brought through to Carthage, whereby a cruel and nefarious war was declared against the Christians. And an intimation of the impending disaster had been made long before to Cyprian, to whom the divine Householder had presented Himself to be seen, "with a young man sitting at His right hand: which young man, anxious and somewhat sad with a certain indignation, holding his chin in his hand, sat with a sorrowful countenance; while another, standing on the left side, carried a net which he threatened to cast in order to catch the people standing around. And when he who saw it wondered what this was, it was told him that the young man who sat thus at the right hand was grieved and sorrowed because his precepts were not observed; while he on the left stood forth in exultation because an occasion was given to him that he might receive power from the Householder to rage." Thus Cyprian (Epistle 7, To the Clergy), who is thought to have beheld the vision himself; after which he adds: "And we have seen fulfilled what had been shown: that while we despise the precepts of the Lord, while we do not keep the salutary commands of the law given to us, the enemy received the faculty of hurting, and covered with the cast of his net men less armed and less cautious to resist." Now from

the time when the edicts against the Christians were promulgated, all the heathens that were in Africa, as though roused by a war-trumpet, began to rage against the Church of God, and to oppose every best man. At Carthage above all, when the people sat in the amphitheatre or in the circus, they dared with loud shouts to demand Cyprian before all others for the lion, because both his dignity and his holiness were more conspicuous. That victim devoted to God was sought for slaughter, for whom nevertheless God had destined other times. "There was preserved," says Pontius (in the Life, no. 7, printed 8), "a man of a genius spiritually tempered besides other things, who amidst the rebounding waves of clashing schisms should steer the middle course of the Church along a poised track." Cyprian, namely, thinking that in so great a hatred of wicked men the power was snatched from him of being usefully present and bringing help in person to his own, judged that the evangelical counsel (Matt. 10:23) ought then to be followed by him, especially since he feared this also, as he himself says (Epistle 14, printed 13, To the Roman Presbyters): "Lest through our shameless presence the sedition which had begun should be provoked further." He withdrew therefore, and lying hid far from the city avoided the onset of the raging people. Yet out of that very hiding-place he seemed in a manner to watch over his Church as though present, and most diligently to discharge the pontifical office: so nothing was unknown to him, nothing shut off from him. Now what his cares then were, and how he fulfilled all the parts of his office, we know from the same Cyprian, because afterwards before the presbyters and deacons who after the death of Fabian ruled the Roman Church he had to clear himself against those who in letters sent to Rome had disapproved of that withdrawal. "Yet though absent in body," says he (ibid.), "I was wanting neither in spirit, nor in act, nor in my admonitions, so as not to take thought according to the precepts of the Lord for our brethren in what things I could by my poor ability. And what I did, the epistles sent forth according to the times, thirteen in number, which I have transmitted to you, speak to you: wherein neither counsel to the clergy, nor exhortation to the confessors, nor rebuke to the exiles when it behoved, nor our address and persuasion to the whole brotherhood for entreating the mercy of God was wanting, so far as according to the law of faith and the fear of God, at the Lord's suggestion, our poor ability was able to strive."

III. And all these things indeed Cyprian busily performed, whereby many took courage, and despising life contended bravely for the heavenly prize. Yet many also even that first terror of the Decian fury prostrated. This Cyprian himself does not disown in that book which after peace was established he wrote On the Lapsed. "Immediately," says he (On the Lapsed, p. 436, ed. Baluze), "at the first words of the threatening enemy a very great number of brethren betrayed their faith; nor were they cast down by the onset of persecution, but by a voluntary fall cast their own selves down." Then he describes the weakness, trepidation, and treachery of very many in these words: "They did not even wait to go up when arrested, to deny when questioned: many were conquered before the battle-line, prostrated without an engagement, nor did they even leave this for themselves,

that they might seem to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. Of their own accord they ran to the forum, of their own will they hastened to death, as though they had long desired this, as though they embraced an occasion given which they had always wished for. How many were put off there by the magistrates when evening pressed, how many even asked that their destruction might not be deferred!... And for many their own destruction was not enough: by mutual exhortations the people were driven into ruin, death was pledged to one another in the deadly cup. And that nothing might be wanting to the summit of crime, little infants also, either placed upon or dragged by the hands of their parents, lost what they had obtained immediately in the very first beginning of their birth"—so far, namely, as lay in the power of their parents, by whose wickedness they were betrayed. There were also in great number those who, that they might not be harassed by the heathens, procured with money a certificate (libellus) from the magistrates, in which certificate it was written down that they had sacrificed to the gods, although in truth they had abstained from so great a crime. These were afterwards called libellatici; whose counsel and deed the Church always detested.

IV. All these things frequent letters of the presbyters whom he had left as guardians and presidents of the church brought through to Cyprian, who in that retreat of his was supplicating God day and night, and pining away with sorrow and mourning. Yet he repeatedly received good and wished-for tidings also, that in so great a defection neither brave confessors nor unconquered martyrs had been wanting. Scarcely indeed had inquisition begun to be made against the Christians at Carthage, when Rogatianus the presbyter and Felicissimus were arrested, and on account of their glorious confession led into chains. To these a little while after others were added, among whom both certain women and some boys were found, whom Cyprian then congratulating by letter (Epistle 81) was their adviser also that they should follow Rogatianus and Felicissimus in all things. Meanwhile the proconsul Fortunatianus had returned to Carthage, and had commanded the Christians to be summoned to the tribunal. They were led in great number, who when they stood before him professed with lofty courage that they were Christians; thence some were led back into prison, where they were to await the sentence of the judge, and very many were punished with exile and commanded to leave the country: out of whom sixty-five arrived at Rome, whom Celerinus writes (Epistle 20, among Cyprian's) were received at Rome in hospitality by the sisters Candida and Numeria, who had also gone forth to meet them at the port of Ostia, in order to conduct them into the city. In the number of the exiles was that youth Aurelius also, whom afterwards Cyprian on account of his merits made a reader (Epistle 33); likewise Statius and Severianus, recounted by Celerinus (ibid., Epistle 20), the first of whom from a confessor is believed to have died a martyr at Rome (Pamelius on Cyprian, p. 46). There are numbered with these Felix the presbyter also, and she who had been his wife, Victoria, and Lucius: who indeed in the first conflict had shamefully yielded; yet soon detesting the crime which they had committed, when they were questioned again, replied that they acknowledged and adored Jesus Christ as God, and on that account were despoiled of their goods and driven into exile: whom therefore Bishop Caldonius,

who himself also was taking care of the Christian commonwealth at Carthage with the presbyters of Cyprian, received into communion, and Cyprian pronounced that they had deservedly been received (Epistles 24 and 25, printed 18 and 19). It happened also that a certain woman by the name of Bona was dragged by her own husband to sacrifice: who, while her hands were held by those who were sacrificing, cried out openly (Caldonius in Epistle 24, printed 18, among the Cyprianic ones): "I did not do it; you did it!" And therefore she herself also was made an exile.

V. Hitherto rage had been exercised against the Christians by the plundering of goods, exiles, chains, and prisons. In the month of April tortures, slaughters, and martyrdoms began. And first, as it seems, Mappalicus obtained the laurel on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of May (April 17), whose name is still celebrated in the sacred calendars: concerning whom Cyprian also in his epistle (Epistle 10, printed 8) to the martyrs and confessors says: "A voice full of the Holy Spirit burst forth from the martyr's mouth when the most blessed Mappalicus amidst his torments said to the proconsul: 'You will see a contest tomorrow'; and what he said with the testimony of virtue and faith, the Lord fulfilled. A heavenly contest was exhibited, and the servant of God was crowned in the struggle of the promised contest." For under the torture itself that bravest martyr expired, by the testimony of Lucianus the confessor, who wrote to Rome to Celerinus concerning the end of this man and of the rest of the martyrs (Epistle 22, printed 21, among the Cyprianic ones). Furthermore, the companions of Mappalicus were Paulus, who died immediately after the tortures, Bassus, who died in the stocks or foot-wood, and likewise Fortunio, after he was led back into prison; besides these, Fortunata, Victorinus, Victor, Herennius, Credula, Herena, Donatus, Firmus, Venustus, Fructus, Julia, Martialis, and Aristo, who were all slain with hunger in prison. Their praises are contained in the epistle of Cyprian (Epistle 10, printed 8) to the martyrs and confessors who, still surviving at that time, awaited a like end. "The matter has been proved," says he, "by the glorious struggle of the brethren, who, having been made leaders to the rest for overcoming tortures, afforded an example of virtue and faith, engaging in the battle-line until the battle-line of the torturers yielded conquered. With what praises shall I proclaim you, bravest brethren? The strength of your breast and the perseverance of your faith with what heralding of voice shall I adorn? You endured even unto the consummation of glory the hardest torture, nor did you yield to punishments, but rather the punishments yielded to you; the end to pains, which the tortures did not give, the crowns gave." Moreover the very bodies of the martyrs and confessors who had departed in chains, by the admonition of the same Cyprian (Epistle 12, printed 37), were duly laid in tombs by the clergy: concerning which duty also the presbyters of the Roman Church diligently prescribed to the Carthaginian Church, calling that a very great matter (Epistle 8, printed 3, among the Cyprianic ones). And at the same time Cyprian wished the day also to be recorded whereon each one had won the crown, although he had at Carthage one to inform him concerning daily matters: "Finally," says he, "note down their days also whereon 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 his other solicitude and

care which he bestows upon the brethren in every service of work, who in that place is not wanting as regards the care of the bodies either, has written and writes and signifies to me the days whereon in prison our blessed brethren pass to immortality by the departure of a glorious death, and oblations and sacrifices are celebrated here by us for their commemorations, which we shall soon, under the Lord's protection, celebrate with you."

VI. That other martyrs in this year were sent up to heaven, another epistle of Cyprian to the Carthaginian clergy declares, whereby he signified that Numidicus the confessor had been co-opted by him into the college of the Carthaginian presbyters. "For know," says he (Epistle 40, printed 25; see the Bollandists, tome 2 of August, p. 411), "that we have been admonished and instructed by the divine condescension that Numidicus the presbyter should be enrolled in the number of the Carthaginian presbyters, and sit with us in the clergy, illustrious by the brightest light of confession, and sublime by the honour of virtue and faith: who by his exhortation sent before himself an abundant number of martyrs slain with stones and flames, and who joyfully beheld his wife cleaving to his side burned together with the rest—preserved, I should rather say. He himself, half-burned and overwhelmed with stones, and left for dead, while afterwards his daughter with the anxious service of filial piety was seeking the corpse of her father, was found half-alive and drawn out and revived, and remained unconquered away from the companions whom he himself had sent before." Moreover among these martyrs seem also to be numbered those whom the Greeks still honour (see the Bollandists, April 10, p. 860), Terentius and Africanus with their companions, who suffered martyrdom in Africa under Decius Augustus, whose relics afterwards Theodosius the Great caused to be brought to Constantinople into the church of Euphemia which was called "In Petra" (Theodorus Lector, book 2, no. 62, and below under the year 384, 1). But if the rest of the provinces also had had another Cyprian, assuredly something would have been transmitted even to us concerning the martyrs of those provinces also, wherein it has been noted that there were already at that time churches and bishops in great number.

VII. Meanwhile some of those who had been cast out into exile, despising the edicts of the magistrates, dared to return home. Which when Cyprian learned, he rebuked and chided the returned exiles very much, chiefly on this account, because having returned into that native land whence they had been made exiles, it could happen that when arrested they would perish no longer as Christians, but as criminals (Epistles 13 and 14, printed 6 and 14). Nevertheless the confessors themselves who still survived at that time in the prisons affected him with heavier trouble, patronizing with a certain excessive facility the Christians who had lapsed in the recent peril. For these indeed, since they were vehemently ashamed of the faith which they had violated towards God, and desired very much to be received into the Church whence on account of their betrayal they had fallen, went in crowds to the confessors, and asked them that they would admit them into communion, and commend each one to his bishop. Now certain of them were so indulgent that they communicated without delay with every disgraceful person, and giving a certificate (libellus) whereby they testified this very thing, urged the bishop also that when the man had cast himself at his feet,

he should restore him to the Church. The chief of those confessors was a certain Lucianus, a man assuredly of approved virtue and unconquered patience, yet one who knew too little the prescriptions of the Church and the teachings of the Gospel. This man not only gave certificates (libelli) to those who asked for them both in his own name and in the name of others (Cyprian, Epistle 27, printed 22), but had even offered pardon and peace to the lapsed who were absent, and to Celerinus, who had commended to him Numeria and Candida polluted by sacrifice, had written back in these words: "According to the precept of Paulus"—who namely had departed a martyr, and had shown himself merciful towards the lapsed—"and our conference, when their case has been set forth before the bishop and confession (exomologesis) made, let not only these women have peace, but those also whom you know to be near to our heart (Epistle 22, printed 21, among the Cyprianic ones)." Finally he dared to send an epistle of this sort to Cyprian himself in the name of all the confessors (Epistle 23, printed 16, among the Cyprianic ones): "All the confessors to Pope Cyprian, greeting. Know that we have given peace to all concerning whom an account has been established before you as to what they have done after their crime, and we have wished this form to be made known through you to the other bishops also. We wish you to have peace with the holy martyrs. Lucianus wrote this, there being present of the clergy both an exorcist and a reader." Now how ill Cyprian bore these things, everyone may easily understand, since both he had to bear them from those whom he singularly loved and venerated, and he understood that things were being attempted against the authority of the Church, which ought above all to be maintained by him. He grieved also and was much distressed because certain presbyters—those, namely, whom he had had as rivals in undertaking the pontificate—fostered that impunity of the lapsed, communicating with them of their own accord, and administered all things rashly and with no order.

VIII. Since these things were so, Cyprian judged that the matter ought no longer to be dissembled, and wrote back very weighty epistles full of prudence to the clergy, to the confessors, and to the lapsed, in order to admonish each one concerning his duty. His first words to the clergy were (Epistle 16, printed 9): "Long have I held my patience, dearest brethren, as though our modest silence would profit unto quietness. Yet since an immoderate and headlong presumption by its rashness endeavours to disturb both the honour of the martyrs, and the modesty of the confessors, and the tranquillity of the whole people, it behoves me no longer to keep silent, lest excessive silence proceed unto the peril both of the people and of ourselves alike. For what peril ought we not to fear from the offence of the Lord, when some of the presbyters, mindful neither of the Gospel nor of their own place, and thinking neither of the future judgement of the Lord nor of the bishop now set over them, claim the whole for themselves with insult and contempt of the president—a thing which was never at all done under our predecessors?" Moreover he touches above all upon the novelty of the matter and the preposterous manner of acting: "For," says he, "whereas in lesser sins sinners do penance for a due time, and according to the order of discipline come to confession (exomologesis), and through the imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of communion, now at an unripe time,

while the persecution is still persevering, before the peace of the Church herself has yet been restored, they are admitted to communion, and their name is offered, and before penance has yet been done, before confession (exomologesis) has yet been made, before the hand has yet been laid upon them by the bishop and clergy, the Eucharist is given to them!" Next in a second epistle he addresses the martyrs and confessors themselves thus (Epistle 15, printed 10): "The solicitude of our place and the fear of the Lord compel us, bravest and most blessed brethren, to admonish you by our letter that by the same men by whom the faith of the Lord is so devoutly and bravely kept, the law also and discipline of the Lord may be observed." Then he casts the blame upon the presbyters and deacons, who in going back and forth to them prescribed no limit, and did not set forth the laws of the Church and the precepts of the Gospel. "For to grant those things," says he, "which turn unto destruction is to deceive; nor is the lapsed thus raised up, but through the offence of God is rather driven unto ruin. Even from you, therefore, let them learn what they ought to have taught." Then he accuses the lapsed also, who too impudently asked for what would have to be denied to them if they were neither modest nor repenting from the heart; and finally he shows the limit which above all it behoved them to observe. "Now all this," says he, "can be done if you moderate with religious contemplation those things which are asked of you, understanding and checking those who, accepting persons in your favours, either curry favour or hunt after the traffic of an illicit bargaining. Concerning this I have written letters both to the clergy and to the people, both of which I have commanded to be read to you. Yet this also you ought to bring back to your diligence and amend, that you designate by name those to whom you desire peace to be given. For I hear that to certain persons certificates (libelli) are so made that it is said, 'Let such a one communicate with his own'—a thing which was never at all done by the martyrs, so that an uncertain and blind petition should afterwards heap up odium against us. For it opens a wide door when it is said, 'such a one with his own': and twenty and thirty and more can be presented to us who may be asserted to be relatives and connections by marriage and freedmen and household servants of him who receives the certificate. And therefore I ask that those whom you yourselves see, whom you know, whose penance you behold very near to satisfaction, you designate by name in the certificate, and thus direct to us letters agreeable to faith and discipline." Finally by a third epistle he undertook to check the lapsed, who had dared to write to him as though they were a body and the public Church (Epistle 33, printed 27, which wonderfully agrees with the teaching of Ignatius the Martyr). Now beginning from the authority of the bishop, whom all ought to obey: "I wonder," says he, "that certain persons with bold rashness have wished so to write to me as to make their letter in the name of the Church, whereas the Church is established in the bishop and the clergy and in all who stand fast. For far be it, nor may the mercy of the Lord and His unconquered power suffer, that the number of the lapsed should be called the Church, since it is written (Matt. 22:32): God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. We wish indeed that all may be made alive, and we pray with our prayers and groans that they may be restored to their former state. Yet if certain of the lapsed wish themselves to be the Church,

and if the Church is among them and in them, what remains save that they themselves be asked by us that they may vouchsafe to admit us to the Church?" After these things he exhorts them that, mindful of the crime whereby they were bound fast, they should display modesty and shame, and imitate certain of their fellows whom gentleness and modesty and religion chiefly commended; and that if they wished to bear away an answer from him, they should remake the letter which they had sent, and distinguish what each one asked for, and likewise subjoin the name of each one. Nor yet did he fail to take thought for those also who, while they were held by the law of penance, had fallen into peril of life. For he expressly wrote to his clergy (Epistle 18, printed 12) that, "without waiting for our presence, before any presbyter present, or if a presbyter has not been found and death begins to press, before a deacon also they may be able to make confession (exomologesis) of their offence, so that when the hand has been laid upon them unto penance, they may come to the Lord with the peace which the martyrs by letters written to us have desired to be given to them." Which words indeed seem to be a proof that those who at that time, rejected from the society of the pious, were making satisfaction to the Church on account of their sins, having long before been absolved by an almost private judgement, stood in need only of the solemn admission and sentence, which even a deacon by the authority of the bishop, in the absence of a presbyter, could pronounce after the guilty persons had themselves uncovered the old stain of their crime. For who would believe that it was taken away from the wretched men that, having obtained the pardon of their sins, they should bear their long penance with an even mind, and before God—which was above all to be sought after—while they were appeasing the Church, should procure for themselves an eternal reward by lowliness, tears, and abstinence? (See Francolini, On the Roman Clergy, book 1, disputation 11.)

IX. By these and other epistles of this sort Cyprian accomplished very much, and plainly gave courage to the presbyters whom he had faithful and obedient, so that they did not hesitate to debar from their sacred rites a foreign presbyter also and his deacon who were receiving the lapsed. This we learn from Cyprian, who praised the deed: "Uprightly," says he (Epistle 34, printed 28), "and with discipline have you acted, dearest brethren, in that by the counsel of my colleagues who were present you have judged that communion must not be held with Gaius of Didda (perhaps of Ida), the presbyter, and his deacon, who by communicating with the lapsed and offering their oblations have frequently been caught in their depraved errors, and although once and again, according to what you have written to me, admonished by my colleagues not to do this, have obstinately persisted in their presumption and audacity." Immediately afterwards the epistle of the presbyters of the Roman Church, who at that time, as they say, were guarding the flock in the place of the shepherd, confirmed the same men: for setting forth the limit which they themselves in the City observed towards the lapsed, they exhorted them to use a like method. Moreover they prudently admonished this also, that if perhaps out of that number of men some had fallen into sickness, help ought by all means to be given to them, provided, say they, "they both repent of their deed and desire communion" (Epistle 8, printed 2, among the Cyprianic ones); and following their authority,

Cyprian himself also wrote to the clergy (Epistle 19, printed 13): "That those who have received a certificate (libellus) from the martyrs, and can be helped by their aid before the Lord in their offences, if they begin to be pressed by any sickness and peril, after confession (exomologesis) has been made and the hand has been laid upon them by you unto penance, should be sent away to the Lord with the peace promised to them by the martyrs." Yet as regarded the rest, this remained settled and fixed, that before the peace of the Church and the return of the bishops no one of the lapsed ought to be admitted. And therefore Cyprian replied to the Roman presbyters also (Epistle 20, printed 14): "Plainly I have commanded the cases of the rest, although they have received a certificate from the martyrs, to be deferred and reserved until our presence, that when, peace having been given to us by the Lord, several presidents of us begin to assemble together, having communicated our counsel with you also, we may be able to arrange and reform each matter." Then to his own clergy also he showed that this was fitting (Epistle 19, printed 13): "Since," says he, "it is irreligious, and pernicious also to those very men who are hastening, that while those who have been made exiles and driven from their native land and despoiled of all their goods have not yet returned to the Church, certain of the lapsed should hasten to forestall the confessors themselves, and enter into the Church before them!"

X. While these things were being done, some hope of peace was already shining forth; yet for Cyprian his return was still shut off at that time by the hatreds of the heathens, who had marked him out above all for slaughter. Wherefore he did not yet dare to come forth out of his hiding-place; nevertheless it was permitted to him to take care of the affairs of the Church somewhat more freely. Therefore when he had received another epistle from the Roman clergy (Epistle 30 among the Cyprianic ones), which that reader Saturus had brought, and therein had been set forth what things had been established at Rome concerning the lapsed, he sent it to his presbyters at Carthage, adding those letters also which he kept that had been sent by the Roman confessors Moyses and Maximus, that they might copy them out and publish them abroad. Whence it came to pass that in that matter the greatest agreement of all the Churches shortly arose. Thinking likewise that it would be for the honour of his own Church if he chose each most eminent man out of the confessors into the clergy, when by chance some presbyters had met with him, in their presence he ordained two readers (Epistle 38, printed 33). The first of these was Aurelius, whose praises he himself pursues thus: "Our brother Aurelius, an illustrious youth, already approved by the Lord and dear to God, in years still young, yet advanced in the praise of virtue and faith, lesser in the natural capacity of his age, yet greater in honour—he strove here in a twofold contest, having twice confessed, and being twice glorious by the victory of his confession, both when he conquered in the race on being made an exile, and when anew he fought in a braver struggle, triumphant and victorious in the battle of passion." The other was Celerinus, who numbered both his grandmother and his paternal uncle and his maternal uncle as martyrs (Epistle 39, printed 34). He had been, as we have said, in chains at Rome, and having obtained his liberty had returned into Africa, and had visited Cyprian himself in hiding; now he was created a reader in such a manner that an intimation of the divine will brought him over when reluctant. For thus concerning him to the clergy and people

writes Cyprian: "Exult therefore and rejoice with us on receiving our letter, whereby I and my colleagues who were present report to you that our brother Celerinus, glorious alike for his virtues and his morals, has been joined to our clergy not by human suffrage, but by the divine condescension. Who when he hesitated to yield to the Church, by her own admonition and exhortation in a vision by night was compelled not to refuse us when we persuaded him." For the rest, Cyprian destined greater honours for both of them. "Know," says he, "that these have been appointed readers for the present, because it behoved a lamp to be set upon a candlestick, whence it may shine to all, and glorious countenances to be set in a higher place, where, beheld by the whole brotherhood standing around, they may afford an incentive of glory to the beholders. For the rest, know that we have already designated for them the honour of the presbyterate, so that both they are honoured with the same allowances (sportulae) as the presbyters, and share the monthly distributions in equal quantities, being about to sit with us when their years are advanced and strengthened: although in nothing can he seem lesser in the natural capacity of age who has consummated his age by the dignity of glory." There was besides, most illustrious among all the confessors, he whom we recounted above, Numidicus the presbyter, surviving after burning and stoning. Him Cyprian co-opted into the college of his own presbyters, the prefecture also of his own district being destined for him as soon as he should come to Carthage. "And he shall be promoted," says he (Epistle 35), "when God permits, to a more ample place in his district, when under the Lord's protection we have come into your presence." After these things, by another epistle he judged that he ought to relieve the want of the needy, and exhorted his presbyters and deacons that they should diligently take care of the widows and the sick and all the poor; and with no less zeal he commended strangers. "For to strangers also," says he (Epistle 36), "if any be in need, furnish expenses out of my own proper sum which I left with our fellow-presbyter Rogatianus: which sum, lest perhaps it has already all been spent, I have sent to the same man by Naricus and Colytus another portion, that the work of charity towards those in need may be done more largely and more promptly."

XI. As the year was now drawing to a close, the last letter of Cyprian to the clergy was written, whereby he inflamed them to pour forth assiduous prayers to God. "I admonish," said he (Epistle 7), "your religious solicitude, that to appease and entreat the Lord we groan not with voice alone, but with fastings also and tears and every kind of entreaty." At the same time he foretold that the end of the evils was at hand, being thus instructed by God, whom he had entreated day and night for his people. "Finally," he added, "to His least servant, although set in very many offences and unworthy of His condescension, He nevertheless in accordance with His goodness towards us vouchsafed to give a command: 'Tell him,' says He, 'to be without anxiety, because peace is about to come; yet as for the slight delay in the meantime, there still remain some to be tested.'" By which

words, I think, the intestine conspiracy of certain men was designated, which was already overhanging. "If," says he, "the Lord beholds us humble and quiet, if joined to one another, if fearful regarding His wrath, if corrected and amended by the present tribulation, He will render us safe from the assaults of the enemy. Discipline has gone before; pardon also will follow."

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 251.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The Emperor C. Messius Decius for the third time and Q. Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius Caesar went forth as consuls—namely the father and the son, who towards the close of the year perished in the Gothic war. So long as these were at Rome, nothing was safe for the Christians, so that they could not even assemble to elect a successor to Fabian. Many confessors also in the prisons awaited martyrdom, among whom shone forth Moyses and Maximus, to whom is thought to have been brought in this year the book On the Praise of Martyrdom, a work, as is believed, of Cyprian, although it differs very much from his style.

II. Now the African Church had begun to be somewhat safer from the heathens, yet not with that result which Cyprian had wished for; for when the fear of harassment was driven away, the old license had already revived among the people, and the approach was again open to vices. Nor were the confessors themselves all free from stain and fault. "I grieve," wrote Cyprian to the clergy (Epistle 14, printed 5), "when I hear that certain of them run about wickedly and insolently, and give their time to follies or to discords, that members of Christ, and those that have already confessed Christ, are defiled through illicit intercourse, and cannot be ruled by the deacons or the presbyters." And writing to Rogatianus and the rest of the confessors: "I hear," says he (Epistle 13, printed 6), "that certain men infect your number, and destroy the praise of your distinguished name by their depraved conversation: whom you yourselves also, as lovers and preservers of your own praise, ought to rebuke and check and amend." Instructed of these things, Cyprian asked and besought the presbyters above all that regarding those things which religious administration demanded, they should strenuously discharge the office in his stead: for to himself indeed, although desiring it very much, a return was not yet open. "Although," says he (Epistle 12, printed 5), "the cause compelled that I myself ought to hasten and come to you, first out of eagerness and desire for you, which thing is highest in my prayers, and then next that we might be able to treat together of those things which the common utility demands regarding the helm of the Church, and to polish them when examined by the counsel of very many; nevertheless it has seemed better still in the meantime to keep to my hiding-place and quietness out of regard for other utilities which pertain to the peace and safety of us all: whereof an account will be rendered to you by our most beloved (printed clarissimo) brother Tertullus, who in accordance with his other care which he lavishes earnestly upon the divine works, was the adviser of this counsel also, that I should be cautious and moderate, and not rashly commit myself into public view, and especially that of that place where I had

so often been demanded and sought for." Namely, there was a great number of heathens at Carthage of every rank, by whose fury also he had been proscribed (Pontius in the Life, no. 7) and despoiled of all his goods (Cyprian, Epistle 66, printed 69): so that in so great a hatred of wicked men Tertullus rightly thought that the life of that man ought by no means to be imperilled, whereupon the safety of the Church at that time chiefly rested.

III. Yet while Cyprian was grieving over these morals of the people, a heavier evil was already pressing from Felicissimus, a wealthy Carthaginian citizen, and the same a Christian, yet branded with vices, and hostile in mind towards Cyprian. By chance, at the beginning of the year, Cyprian had sent to Carthage with money two bishops, Caldonius and Herculanus, and with them his most approved presbyters, Rogatianus and Numidicus, "who should discharge the necessities of the brethren at his own expense, and if any wished also to exercise their own trades, should assist their desires with an addition, so far as should be enough; and at the same time also should discern their ages and conditions and merits, that he himself might be informed concerning them, and might be able to choose all the worthy" and those chiefly commended by their virtues for the use and solace of the Church (Cyprian, Epistle 41, printed 38). Now when those men were diligently pursuing the commands which they had received, behold, Felicissimus, surrounded by a band of wicked men, strives to check the bishops and presbyters, daring "to interpose that no one might be relieved," nor any roll instituted; and to those also who had come up to receive alms he threatens "that they should not communicate with him on the mountain who had wished to obey Cyprian." These things seem to have happened in the Carthaginian territory, and he is believed to have called "the Mountain" his estate and house situated on a hill, which at that time perhaps stood open to the Christians, who assembled the more safely because assemblies could not then be held in the city without peril. Thence also it is credible that the Donatists, who likewise severed themselves from the Catholic Church, were called Montenses (see Baronius on the year 254, no. 38). Furthermore, when Cyprian learned these things, not deterred by the audacity of the man who with rash fury was thrusting himself forward as the leader of a faction and the chief of a sedition, he did not suffer his authority to be despised with impunity, and the peace of the Church to be disturbed by an unavenged crime; but to the same bishops and presbyters whom he had commanded to discharge a vicarious power in that place he sent a most weighty letter, by which letter he both interdicted Felicissimus from sacred rites, and threatened that those who were his followers would be liable to the same punishment unless they forsook him. "In the meantime," says he (Epistle 41, printed 38), "since Felicissimus has threatened that those shall not communicate on the mountain with him who have obeyed us, that is, who communicate with us, let him receive the sentence which he himself first pronounced, that he may know that he is excommunicated by us, seeing that to his frauds and rapines, which we have learned with clear truth, the crime of adultery also is added, which our brethren, grave men, have reported that they have caught him in, and have asserted that they will prove. All which things we shall then take cognizance of when with several colleagues

we have assembled together, the Lord permitting. Moreover let Augendus also, who thinking neither of the bishop nor of the Church has equally associated himself with that conspiracy and faction, if he perseveres further with him, bear the sentence which that factious and rash man has provoked against himself. And whosoever also joins himself to his conspiracy and faction, let him know that he shall not communicate in the Church with us, since of his own accord he has preferred to be separated from the Church." Moreover, lest these things should be known to few and circumscribed by the circuit of that Mountain, he commanded the same letter to be transmitted to Carthage to the clergy, adding the names of those who had joined themselves with Felicissimus.

IV. Nor indeed was any delay interposed. The bishops assembled with the presbyters, calling in their colleague Victor also, who presided, as I think, over the nearest Church, and set forth an edict of this sort, a copy whereof was to be sent both to Cyprian and to the other bishops (Epistle 39, among Cyprian's): "Caldonius with Herculanus and Victor his colleagues, likewise with Rogatianus and Numidicus the presbyters. We have excommunicated Felicissimus and Augendus, likewise Repostus from among the exiles, and Irene of the Rutili, and Paula the seamstress, which from my annotation you ought to have known. Likewise we have excommunicated Sophronius, himself also from among the exiles, and Soliassus the budinarius." Thus far the edict, such as it has come down to us, whereunto I should easily admit that more names were at that time subscribed. Now when this was promulgated, it straightway appeared what Felicissimus was plotting. For the five Carthaginian presbyters who previously had endeavoured to wrest the pontificate from Cyprian offered themselves to Felicissimus as standard-bearers of his secession. Now they are thought to have been Fortunatus, he who afterwards was called by the faction bishop of Carthage; Novatus, who soon at Rome was the author of the schism of Novatian; Donatus and Gordius, whom Cyprian recounts to have once written to him together with Fortunatus and Novatus (Epistle 5); and finally that Gaius of Ida, the patron of the lapsed, whom the college of the Carthaginian presbyters in the preceding year had removed from sacred rites. By the suffrages of these men, that they might seem to return a favour, Felicissimus was created a deacon; moreover, that they might have many followers, the same men began to invite the lapsed, and to hold out the hope of pardon to all. Nor were there wanting those who gave credence to the traitors, and deserted to their camp and mountain. Save that Cyprian, to whom accurate letters concerning all matters were written by his presbyters, endeavoured by a famous epistle to keep the people in their duty (Epistle 40). "They now offer peace," said he, "who themselves do not have peace; they promise to lead back and recall the lapsed into the Church, who have departed from the Church." He added those things also which might encourage some and deter others: "Of that persecution this is the last and final temptation, which itself also, under the Lord's protection, will quickly pass away, so that I shall be presented to you after the day of Easter with my colleagues, in whose presence, according to your judgement also and the common counsel of us all,

just as was once resolved upon, we shall be able alike to arrange and to polish those things which are to be done. Yet if anyone, refusing to do penance and to make satisfaction to God, yields to the party of Felicissimus and his satellites, and joins 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."

V. That by this letter of their bishop the minds of many were moved and came to their senses, and changing their counsel detested the schism, is not to be doubted. For all looked up exceedingly both to his virtue and revered his authority. Thenceforth Cyprian, who had lain hid for more than fourteen months, since affairs were in great part tranquil, revisited his church, and being present blessed the clergy and the whole people with his countenance and address. Now at the same time other bishops from every side assembled at Carthage, in order to debate with him in council concerning the weightiest affairs of the Church. For that had first to be established by the opinion of all, in what order and by what method it behooved the lapsed to be received into the Church: concerning which matter indeed action had more than once been taken by letter, yet a law was still desired at that time which should confirm the custom, and take away the complaints of the lapsed. Cognizance had also to be taken concerning the schism of Felicissimus and concerning all that faction of seditious men, which already at that time seemed about to be the fountain and source of many evils in Africa. Meanwhile Cyprian was preparing remedies for the diseases which might then be chiefly seasonable, and not at home only, but abroad also, since he burned with a certain wonderful desire of helping all. Hence (printed Deo) there were two short works which he seems to have composed during these days, namely the book On the Lapsed and the book On the Unity of the Church: by the one whereof he drew over those guilty of violated faith towards God, broken with shame, to do penance; and by the other recalled disagreeing minds, desirous of innovations and deterred by the threat of an unhappy end, to peace and concord.

VI. Beyond these things wished-for tidings came from the City, that in the seventeenth month after Fabian had departed it had been permitted to treat concerning a successor, and by the greatest consent of all the supreme pontificate had been conferred upon Cornelius. He is thought to have been designated on the day before the Nones of June (June 4, printed Julias), when Decius Augustus, who hitherto had forbidden a bishop to be created at Rome, had already set out for the war, and in his place Julius Valens had seized the empire, which he shortly lost together with his life. Therefore the bishops, who for a long time now had called the various cases of the lapsed into debate, and had written down the several heads of their resolutions, judged that Cornelius also ought to be consulted concerning these matters. Now they had agreed, says Cyprian (Epistle 55, printed 52, To Antonianus), "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 live like heathens after the manner of the world; nor yet on the other hand should evangelical censure be relaxed, so that they should rashly leap forth to communion; but that penance should be protracted for a long time, and the paternal clemency be sorrowfully entreated, and the causes and wills and

necessities of each one be examined: that in the meantime the libellatici should be admitted, and help should be given to the sacrificati at the point of death." And when these things were brought through to Cornelius, "he himself also," adds Cyprian, "having held a council with very many fellow-bishops, agreed in the same opinion with us with like gravity and wholesome moderation": in whose decree afterwards the whole Christian world also acquiesced (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 6, chapter 43). Moreover, that the bishops might have a rule whereby they might judge both concerning the gravity of crimes and concerning a suitable punishment, they drew up a little book also, "wherein," says Cyprian, "the several heads of the resolutions were written down," and a copy thereof was sent to all the bishops: wherein one may recognize the beginning of the penitential canons, which, gathered into a fixed volume (see Morin, On Penance, in the Appendix, p. 3), posterity celebrated. Afterwards the case was pleaded of Bishops Jovinus and Maximus, whom it was established had already been condemned by the sentence of nine colleagues, both on account of other crimes and because they had burned incense to vain gods (Cyprian, Epistle 59, printed 55). Moreover there was present with these Privatus of Lambaesis also, branded long ago by Bishop Donatus. Furthermore, all of them were again rejected, and held in the number of outsiders, because namely by no indication of a penitent mind, by no sign of an amended life, had they opened for themselves an approach into the Church; like was the case of Felicissimus and of the presbyters who had cleaved to him. For Cyprian calls him "an enemy of Christ (ibid.), not a new one, but long ago excommunicated on account of his very many and most grievous crimes, and condemned not only by my sentence, but by that of very many fellow-bishops also." And the same writer testifies that he wrote in full to the Roman clergy what things had been done both concerning Felicissimus and concerning his presbytery (Epistle 45, printed 42), and hands down that Novatus above all was "condemned by the voice of all the priests" (Epistle 52, printed 41). That they were heard in the council is ascertained; yet when the Fathers were about to pronounce sentence, Felicissimus hid himself, and at length crossed over to Rome with his companions (Pacian, Epistle 3).

VII. Now from the arrival of these men all things at Rome were thrown into confusion, and a very heavy calamity brooded over the Church. Novatus above the rest was then, as Cyprian witnesses (Epistle 52, printed 49), "a torch and fire for blowing up the flames of sedition, a whirlwind and tempest for making shipwrecks of faith, an enemy of quietness, an adversary of tranquillity, a foe of peace." A little while before, the rival of Cornelius had been Novatian, a presbyter of the Roman Church, famous more for learning than for virtue, and having been passed over in the suffrages he bore with an ill mind the repulse which he had received. When Novatus had attached himself to this man's intimacy, and saw him angry with Cornelius and plotting innovations, he easily impelled the man that, having fabricated many charges against Cornelius through calumny and malice, he himself should usurp the pontificate, and find not a few followers and supporters also, in whose number stood forth some confessors also. Concerning this tumult and concerning the nefarious schism of the Novatians all things were brought through to Cyprian by the letters of many; nor were letters wanting from the schismatics themselves, who loaded Cornelius

with very many lies, whereas he on the contrary had sent a most modest letter concerning himself (Epistle 45, printed 42). On account of that matter bishops assembled in great numbers out of Africa at Carthage, and at the advice of Cyprian judged that their colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus should be sent as envoys to Rome, who being present on the spot should inquire into the fact, and report as quickly as possible what they had ascertained. From their report at length, together with the testimony of two bishops, Stephanus and Pompeius, who had been present at Rome when with the consent of all the pontificate was conferred upon Cornelius, the whole of Africa acknowledged Cornelius alone as the legitimate bishop, and rejected Novatian with like agreement. The envoys of Novatian also and their documents were rejected, and it was forbidden that they should anywhere be read to the people. For the rest, this was not enough for Cyprian, but he bestowed labour upon this also, that he might lead back to the Church and to Cornelius the confessors whom Novatian had deceived at Rome. And therefore writing to Cornelius (Epistle 45, printed 13): "I thought it," says he, "both religious and necessary for us, dearest brother, to write a brief letter to the confessors who are there, and who seduced by the obstinacy and depravity of Novatian and Novatus have departed from the Church, whereby in accordance with our mutual affection I might address them, that they may return to their mother, that is, the Catholic Church." Nor indeed did Cyprian lose his labour; for having sent at the same time the little book which he had written On the Unity of the Church, both by this and by his letter he brought it about that they acknowledged their error, and detesting the schism implored pardon and peace from Cornelius. Their return Cornelius himself describes at length in his Epistle to Cyprian (Epistle 49, printed 46, among the Cyprianic ones), naming expressly Maximus the presbyter, Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macarius, whom they had used as leaders for their profession. How rejoiced Cyprian then was at these tidings, his letter to the confessors declares (Epistle 54, printed 51): "Having read your letter, dearest brethren," says he, "which you wrote to me concerning your return, and concerning ecclesiastical peace and fraternal restoration, I confess that I was as much rejoiced as I had also been rejoiced before when I learned the glory of your confession, and with congratulations welcomed the heavenly and spiritual praise of your warfare. For this also is another confession of your faith and praise, to confess that the Church is one, and not to become a partaker of another's error, or rather depravity; to seek again the same camp whence you came forth, whence to wage battle and subdue the adversary you leaped forth with the bravest strength."

VIII. Meanwhile the envoys whom Novatian, as though bishop of the City, had secretly sent were traversing Africa—Maximus a presbyter, Augendus a deacon, Machaeus, and Longinus—concerning whom Cyprian writing to Cornelius complains most grievously (Epistle 44, printed 41): "And lest," says he, "their raging audacity should ever cease, here also they strive to draw away the members of Christ into the party of schism, and to rend and mangle the body of the Catholic Church, so that running about from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, they seek for themselves companions of their obstinacy and of their error."

Yet they accomplished scarcely anything, and the bishops everywhere gave them this reply: "That laying aside pernicious dissension and strife, they should know that it is an impiety to forsake their mother, and should acknowledge and understand that when a bishop has once been made, and approved by the testimony and judgement of his colleagues and of the people, another can in no way be appointed." Wherefore, having lost the hope of innovations, when they understood that they had also incurred the hatred of all good men, they at length departed from Africa. Yet not for long was it permitted to the African Church to be free from the plague of men of that sort; for shortly others received an embassy from Novatian, among whom was Novatus, most branded with the stains of all crimes, who both in Africa and at Rome had been the author of schism. Concerning these Cornelius straightway wrote to Cyprian (Epistle 50, printed 48, among the Cyprianic ones), and besides sent Nicephorus the acolyte to inform him concerning the morals of the envoys and the whole faction. And therefore Cyprian, instructed of those things, admonished all the bishops concerning the crimes of each one, and then by their counsel penned a list (laterculus) to Cornelius wherein the names of the Catholic bishops of Africa were written (Epistle 57, printed 54), that whomsoever he did not find in that list, he might hold them as outsiders and schismatics: such as those envoys afterwards appointed here and there.

IX. As the year was now drawing to a close, while the cruelty of the Decii against the Christians had not yet subsided, it was suddenly reported both that they themselves had been cut off, and that in their place C. Vibius Gallus with his son Volusianus was reigning, at whose honour no one can doubt that the Africans rejoiced not a little. For they are reported to have been from that same region, and to have been born in the island of Meninx, which afterwards was called Girba (Victor, in his Epitome). And there is extant at Tunis an inscription which testifies that a public work was restored there by them (Maffei, Museum Veronense, p. 459, no. 2).

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 252.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. C. Vibius Trebonianus Gallus Augustus for the second time and C. Volusianus Caesar undertook the consulship while they were in Moesia, whence, having struck a treaty with the Goths, they came to Rome after the year had begun. Thence Novatian strove both by embassies and by letters to pervert the African Churches, just as he did other Churches everywhere. And therefore he had written to Antonianus also, a Numidian bishop, in order to draw him over to his own sect; and having lied many reproaches against Cornelius, he had almost moved him. Yet since he had previously referred those accusations to Cyprian, and had awaited his counsel, confirmed by the excellent letter of Cyprian (Epistle 55, printed 52), he repulsed Novatian, and acknowledged that that was the Catholic Church over which Cornelius presided. For Cyprian both had expressly shown how legitimate was the authority of Cornelius, and had accurately declared with how great counsel the same man received the lapsed into the Church; and then had wonderfully demonstrated that Novatian by violence and fraud claimed the honour of the pontificate for himself, and against the teachings of the divine Letters rejected all the lapsed and those bound fast by any crime whatsoever to a perpetual and useless mourning.

Whose complaints also were these, the tokens of a most gentle mind looking to the common good: "O mockery of the deceived brotherhood, O fleeting deception of wretched sorrowing and grieving men, O ineffectual and vain tradition of heretical institution! to exhort to the penance of satisfaction, and to withdraw the medicine from the satisfaction; to say to our brethren: 'Mourn and pour forth tears, and groan day and night, and for washing away and purging your offence work largely and frequently; yet outside the Church after all those things you shall die; whatsoever things pertain to peace you shall do, yet you shall receive no peace which you seek!'"

II. Now the same men who were not able to ruin Antonianus in Numidia undertook a heavier crime at Carthage. For having brought Maximus back into Africa, whose first embassy had been in vain, they appointed him bishop of Carthage for their faction. Which audacity of the adversary Cyprian judged ought so to be despised, that concerning that deed he did not think anything need be written in full immediately even to Cornelius. For some time afterwards, in a letter sent to the same man concerning another matter, he brought in mention concerning Maximus thus (Epistle 59, printed 55): "The party of Novatian is said now in this place to have made Maximus the presbyter—lately sent to us as an envoy by Novatian, and rejected from our communion—a false bishop for themselves. Nor yet had I written this to you, seeing that these things are despised by us." For the rest, besides Maximus out of the number of the same envoys, Nicostratus also was made a bishop in Africa by the Novatians, concerning whom Cyprian says (Epistle 50, printed 49): "How does he assume to himself the care of ruling or governing the Church, who has despoiled and defrauded the Church of Christ?" For this man, when he was a deacon of the Roman Church, infamous for "sacrilegiously abstracting ecclesiastical moneys, and denying the deposits of widows and orphans," had fled from the City, and had brought into Africa these distinguished merits for the pontificate of the Novatians. Now all these things were done at the instigation of Novatus, whom Cyprian compared to a squall and a whirlwind (ibid.), because both quietness began to be whence he had departed, and whithersoever he approached, a turbulent tempest was stirred up there. Assuredly when he was at Rome he had just thrown all things into confusion, and in Africa he was now again rushing upon the Church.

III. Amidst these things Cyprian, labouring for the right instruction of his people, sent forth that most beautiful little work (On the Lord's Prayer) which Augustine and Hilary commended so greatly. For anticipating the Pelagians also therein, he seemed to have refuted them when he explained those words, Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth, thus (p. 491, ed. Baluze): "Not that God may do what He wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who resists God, that He may not do what He wills? Yet because resistance is made to us by the devil, that our mind and act may not in all things obey God, we pray and ask that the will of God may be done in us; which that it may be done in us, there is need of God's will, that is, of His help and protection; because no one is strong by his own strength, but is safe by the indulgence and mercy of God."

Furthermore, the very formula of praying which he explains differs slightly from that which we now employ; for the last words are of this sort: And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and suffer us not to be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Moreover he took "evil" itself as concerning every kind of evils, not as the Greeks do, ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ ("from the evil one"): "At the last," says he, "we set, but deliver us from evil, comprehending all the adverse things which the enemy plots against us in this world." Admonishing this also, how intent upon our prayers we ought to be in supplicating, at the same time he teaches us the ancient rites of the sacrifice (p. 501, ibid.): "Let every carnal and secular thought depart," says he, "nor let the mind at that time think of anything save that alone which it prays for. Therefore the priest also before the prayer, sending a preface before, prepares the minds of the brethren by saying: Lift up your hearts (Sursum corda); so that while the people answer: We have them lifted up to the Lord (Habemus ad Dominum), they may be admonished that they ought to think of nothing else save the Lord." Finally, as often as they were present at the sacrifices, he commanded them to bear themselves modestly, and to pray almost silently (p. 495, ibid.): "And when," says he, "we assemble together with the brethren, and celebrate the divine sacrifices with the priest of God, we ought to be mindful of modesty and discipline, not to toss our prayers about everywhere with uncouth voices, nor to fling forth with tumultuous talkativeness a petition which ought to be commended modestly to God: because God is the hearer not of the voice, but of the heart."

IV. It was now Easter, which in this year was kept on the day before the Ides of April (April 12, printed in Idus Apriles), when Cyprian received a letter from six bishops who by chance had assembled at Capsa in order to consecrate a new bishop—Capsa in Byzacena, certainly, which at that time was reckoned in the proconsular province, because that province had not yet been torn away from the Carthaginian province and received its own governor. For that the discourse is not concerning the Numidian Capsa is manifest, since below Cyprian recounts the proconsul, whom assuredly Numidia did not obey. Now this had been the cause of writing for the bishops, that Bishop Superius had referred to them whether it was right to admit to communion three Christians, Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus, who having suffered many and heavy things for Christ, had indeed been subdued by the violence of the tortures, "and by long-continued torments had fallen from the degree of glory whereunto they were tending with the full virtue of faith, yet after this heavy fall, incurred not by will, but by necessity, had not ceased from doing penance during these three years" (Cyprian, Epistle 56, printed 53). Indeed those bishops judged that Cyprian ought to be consulted, and that besides it ought to be demanded of him that he should seek the judgement of his colleagues in council concerning the whole controversy. Yet Cyprian, since a synod had been proclaimed for the next month, lest they should hesitate any longer, opened earlier what he himself thought concerning that matter: "And indeed," says he, "so far as pertains to the opinion of my own mind, I think that the indulgence of the Lord will not be wanting to these men, who it is established stood in the battle-line, confessed the name of the Lord, overcame the violence of the magistrates and the onset of the raging people

by the steadfastness of an immovable faith, suffered prison, and for a long time amidst the threats of the proconsul and the roaring of the people standing around resisted the mangling tortures that tormented them with long repetition: so that what seems to have been subdued in the last weakness of the flesh may be relieved by the defence of their preceding merits; and let it be enough for such men to have lost glory, yet that we ought not to close the place of pardon also to them, and deprive them of the paternal affection and of our communion, for whom we think it can suffice for entreating the clemency of the Lord that for three years continually and sorrowfully, as you write, they have mourned with the highest lamentation of penance." Thus Cyprian tempered that Novatian severity which at that time seemed almost to please the Numidian (or Byzacenian) bishops. And nevertheless he promised that he would refer that question to the Fathers as soon as they betook themselves to Carthage: "Yet since," says he, "you have written that I should treat most fully concerning this very thing with several colleagues, and so great a matter demands a greater and more earnest counsel from the conference of many, and now almost all during the first solemnities of Easter are tarrying at home with their brethren, when they have satisfied the celebrating of the solemnity among their own people and begin to come to me, I shall treat more fully with each one, so that concerning that which you have consulted us about, a firm sentence weighed by the counsel of many priests may be fixed among us and written back to you."

V. The Ides of May (May 15) brought a beginning to this council (Cyprian, Epistle 59, printed 55), whereat sixty-six bishops were present. Now the cause of convoking it had not been one alone: for besides the controversy of Superius, which the synod must be thought to have settled according to the opinion of Cyprian, a letter had come from their brother Fidus full of complaints against their colleague Therapius, because he had given peace to Victor, formerly a presbyter, "before he had done full penance, and had made satisfaction to the Lord God against whom he had offended, at an unripe time and with over-hasty speed" (the same, Epistle 64, printed 59). Now when the letter had been read through in the council, it displeased the Fathers "that a departure had been made from the authority of the decree, so that before the legitimate and full time of satisfaction, and without the request and knowledge of the people, with no sickness pressing and no necessity compelling, peace was granted to him." And Therapius could easily have consulted Cyprian concerning that matter, for he was bishop of Bulla in the proconsular province. For the rest, nothing harsh was sanctioned against him: "After counsel had been long weighed among us," says Cyprian, "it was enough to rebuke our colleague Therapius because he did this rashly, and to have instructed him not to do anything of the kind for the future. Nevertheless we did not think that the peace once given in whatsoever manner by a priest of God ought to be taken away, and through this we have permitted Victor to enjoy the communion granted to him."

VI. Next the opinion of the same Fidus concerning the baptism of infants was set forth, who thought "that those who are within the second or third day since they were born ought not to be baptized, and that the law of the ancient circumcision must be considered, so that within the eighth day

he thought that he who is born ought not to be baptized and sanctified." Yet in that assembly of bishops there was no one who thought that the old custom of circumcision availed anything or could prescribe in designating the days of baptism, and it was written back to Fidus in the name of the council: "This was our opinion in the council, that from baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and loving to all, no one ought to be hindered through us. Which while it is to be observed and retained regarding all, we think ought the more to be observed regarding infants themselves and the newly born, who by this very fact deserve more of our help and of the divine mercy, that immediately in the first beginning of their birth, weeping and wailing, they do nothing else than pray." From this same reply we learn that it was the custom at that time that those who were present at a baptism kissed the infant. For when Fidus had objected "that the foot (vestigium) of an infant set in the first days after its birth is not clean, so that each one of us still shrinks from kissing it," the Fathers replied: "Neither ought this indeed to be an impediment to giving heavenly grace. For it is written: All things are clean to the clean (Tit. 1:15). Nor ought any of us to shrink from that which God has vouchsafed to make. For although the infant is still fresh from birth, yet it is not such that anyone ought to shrink from kissing it in giving grace and in making peace, seeing that in the kiss of the infant each one of us according to his religion ought to think of the very hands of God still fresh, which in a manner we kiss in the man just formed and newly born, when we embrace that which God has made." Augustine often recounts the same epistle, who also used its authority to defend the ancient doctrine of the Church concerning original sin (Sermon 294, chapter 20). Now while these things were being done in the council, Privatus of Lambaesis, whom we have said was quite often condemned before, was of so great audacity that he did not hesitate to aspire again to the council, and not alone, but surrounded by a band of his fellows. Nevertheless the bishops withstood him, and judged that none of them ought to be admitted. Finally, when the council was finished, Cyprian seems to have written to Bishop Epictetus and the people of Assuras (Epistle 65, printed 64), that they should constantly repudiate Fortunatianus, who having already been cast down from the pontificate on account of impious sacrificing, dared to usurp the honour: "Which thing," says he, "has grieved me, first on account of the man himself, who, wretched man, either wholly blinded by the darkness of the devil or deceived by the sacrilegious persuasion of certain persons, whereas he ought to make satisfaction and apply himself day and night with tears and prayers and entreaties 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 right to approach to the altar of God; or as though he would not provoke a greater wrath and indignation of the Lord against himself in the day of judgement, who, whereas he could not be a leader of faith and virtue to the brethren, stands forth a master of treachery and audacity and rashness!" Then setting forth what things they themselves ought to perform, he adds: "But if Fortunatianus, either forgetful of his

crime through the blindness of the devil, or having been made a minister and servant of the devil for deceiving the brotherhood, shall persist in this madness of his, do you labour as much as you are able, and in this darkness of the raging devil recall the minds of the brethren from error, that they may not easily consent to another's madness, that they may not make themselves partakers in the offences of desperate men, but that remaining whole they may keep the perpetual tenor of their salvation and of the integrity preserved and guarded by themselves." Moreover, because the number of the lapsed also was great everywhere, he wished to deliver his admonitions to these also: "Now let the lapsed," says he, "recognizing the greatness of their offence, not depart from entreating the Lord, nor forsake the Catholic Church, which is one and alone, established by the Lord; but abiding in satisfactions and entreating the mercy of the Lord, let them knock at the Church, that they may be able to be received there where they had been, and return to Christ from whom they departed."

VII. Meanwhile the bishops had returned to their own Churches; yet Privatus the heretic and the whole faction of Felicissimus brooded over Carthage. There, in order to avenge the repulse which they had suffered from the council, they set up a bishop out of their own sect in opposition to Cyprian: this was Fortunatus, out of the number of the five presbyters whom Cyprian had now for a long time had as adversaries, who narrates the matter to Cornelius thus (Epistle 59, printed 55): "There had come," says he, "with Privatus a certain Felix also, whom he himself outside the Church in heresy had formerly appointed a false bishop; moreover Jovinus and Maximus also were present as companions with Privatus, an approved heretic, condemned by the sentence of nine bishops our colleagues on account of nefarious sacrifices and crimes proved against them, and a second time also excommunicated by very many of us in council in the preceding year. Now with these four was joined Repostus of Tuburnica also, who not only himself fell in the persecution, but also cast down the greatest part of his people by his sacrilegious persuasion. These five, with a few who either had sacrificed or had an evil conscience, co-opted Fortunatus for themselves as a false bishop, that when crimes came together into one place, the ruler, forsooth, might be such as are those who are ruled." For the rest, the faction had previously boasted that twenty-five bishops from Numidia would be present to make a bishop for them. "In which lie of theirs," adds Cyprian, "after they were detected and confounded when only five shipwrecked men and excommunicated by us assembled, they sailed to Rome with their merchandise of lies, as though the truth could not sail after them to convict their lying tongues by the proof of the certain fact." Moreover it was a solace to Cyprian that there was so great a dearth even of wicked men among them, that there could not be gathered twenty-five to them either from the sacrificati or from the heretics. What is wonderful, the faction of these men plainly disagreed with the Novatians, over whom Maximus presided: those shut off the approach to the Church against penitents, while these on the contrary boasted that they admitted all and remitted punishment to each one. "Effort is bestowed," wrote Cyprian to the same Cornelius, "that offences may not be redeemed by just satisfactions and lamentations, that wounds

may not be washed away with tears. True peace is taken away by the lie of a false peace, the salutary bosom of the mother is closed up by the stepmother interposing, lest weeping and groaning be heard from the breast and mouth of the lapsed. Moreover the lapsed are compelled besides with the tongues and mouth wherewith they had previously offended in the Capitol to offer abuse to the priests, and to pursue with insults and reviling words the confessors and virgins and all the righteous men distinguished by the praise of faith and glorious in the Church." Yet this was always the property of heretics, that they knew no limit, by observing which the Catholic Church shows herself the teacher of truth and the nourisher of virtue.

VIII. When Felicissimus arrived at Rome with some standard-bearers of the faction, although he had already once been rejected by Cornelius, nevertheless he pressed earnestly on behalf of his Fortunatus, scattered many false things against Cyprian among the common people, and endeavoured to strike fear into Cornelius, that the Roman Church might undertake the patronage of his sect. And so great was his violence and so vehement his madness, that he almost shook the mind of Cornelius. Whom therefore Cyprian undertook to confirm by an epistle: "However," says he, "having read your other epistle, brother, which you subjoined to the first letter, I wondered enough when I perceived that you were somewhat moved by the threats and terrors of those who had come, when, according to what you wrote, they had assailed you, threatening with the utmost desperation that if you did not receive the letters which they had brought, they would recite them publicly, and utter many shameful and disgraceful things worthy of their own mouth." After which he discourses very beautifully at length concerning the duties of bishops, and professes himself an open despiser of that faction: "What," says he (ibid., Epistle 55), "is their self-exaltation, what the swelling and puffed-up and vain boasting of the men who threaten, to threaten me in my absence there, when here they have me present in their power! Their revilings, wherewith they daily lacerate themselves and their own life, we do not fear; the clubs and stones and swords which they vaunt with parricidal words, we do not dread." Thenceforth Cornelius, if perhaps he was somewhat afraid of Felicissimus and the rest of the envoys of Fortunatus, when the letter of Cyprian had been read, and recited also in the hearing of the clergy, must be thought to have beaten back all their attempts. For Fortunatus certainly nothing in Africa succeeded according to his wish. For concerning all that herd of impious men Cyprian writes: "Because they know their own conscience, they neither dare to come to us nor to approach the threshold of the Church, but wander about outside through the province to circumvent and despoil the brethren; and being now sufficiently known to all, and shut out on every side according to their crimes, they sail thither also to you. For they cannot have the face to approach us or to stand before us, since the crimes which are heaped upon them by the brethren are most bitter and most grievous." On the other hand, many who had cleaved to Maximus or Fortunatus, detesting the schism, returned to the Church. Whom Cyprian, lest the wretched men should perish outside, even when the people were sometimes indignant, quite readily admitted: "Oh, if you could," wrote he to

Cornelius, "dearest brother, be present here with us when those depraved and perverse men return from schism! Thou wouldst see what a labour it is for me to persuade patience to our brethren, that calming the grief of their mind they should consent to receive and cure the wicked. For just as they rejoice and are glad when tolerable and less culpable men return, so on the contrary they murmur and resist as often as incorrigible and froward men, contaminated either by adulteries or by sacrifices, and after these things still proud besides, so return to the Church as to corrupt good dispositions within. With difficulty do I persuade the people, nay, extort from them, that they should suffer such men to be admitted."

IX. These duties of peace and piety Cyprian and the rest of the bishops throughout Africa were discharging, when already the Christian name had begun again to be called into peril. For the Emperor Gallus, when after Hostilianus the son of Decius had been cut off, and Volusianus Caesar had been declared Augustus, he had settled the wars, and all things at Rome also and throughout Italy were tranquil, imitating the Decian cruelty, having passed a law against the Christians, had commanded that they should everywhere be harassed and condemned to death. Of entering upon which counsel this is thought to have been the cause, that while a pestilence at that time was devastating most of the provinces of the Roman world, when sacrifices had been proclaimed for appeasing the gods, the Christians, turning away from that superstition, abstained from the temples. Upon them, namely, the whole blame of the calamity was cast, and the one voice of all was that the angry gods ought to be appeased with the blood of the Christians. And therefore in Africa itself, when Cyprian was writing to Cornelius those things which we have just recounted, both the law of Gallus had been brought through, and the edicts of the magistrates had already been set forth. Nay more, the people, when they sat in the circus, had demanded Cyprian himself anew for the lion. Who had already learned from on high also (Epistle 57, printed 54) "that the day of the contest had drawn near, that a violent enemy would quickly arise, that a battle was coming not such as had been before, but much heavier and sharper." Therefore, since he laboured very much for the salvation of all, having convoked in that so great peril what bishops he could—now they were forty-two—he referred to the Fathers concerning giving peace to the lapsed, which at that time was of very great moment in the Church; and he was their adviser that since battle was coming on, they should equip the unarmed, and in the common peril bring to all the help which they demanded. "Obedience must be given," said he (ibid.), "to just visions and admonitions, that the sheep may not be forsaken in peril by the shepherds, but the whole flock be gathered together into one, and the army of the Lord be armed for the contest of the heavenly warfare. For deservedly was the penance of the sorrowing protracted for a longer time, so that help was given to the sick at the point of death, so long as quietness and tranquillity were present, which suffered us to defer for a long time the tears of those who mourned, and to bring help late to those dying in sickness. Yet now peace is necessary not for the sick, but for the strong; nor is communion to be given by us to the dying, but to the living: that those whom we rouse and exhort to battle we may not leave unarmed and naked, but fortify with the protection of the blood and body

of Christ; and since the Eucharist is celebrated for this purpose, that it may be a safeguard to those who receive it, let us arm with the rampart of the Lord's fullness those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary." Furthermore, by these and other arguments of this sort Cyprian easily brought all the bishops over to his own opinion. And when all had voted the same thing, it was resolved also that a letter should be written concerning that matter to Cornelius the Supreme Pontiff, whom they thought to be of the same opinion.

X. Yet Cornelius had already gone down into the contest when the letter of the African Fathers was being brought through to him. For as the presence of the Emperor Gallus pressed, the magistrates at Rome emulously hastened the slaughter of the Christians, and the first onset had been against Cornelius, whom they were not ignorant was the leader of all. And his glorious confession in that sudden terror seems to have admonished the heathens that they should remove so unconquered a leader from the eyes of the rest, and cause him to be deported, as the old report goes, to Centumcellae. Certainly Cyprian extols it with many praises in that epistle which he straightway wrote to the exile (Epistle 60, printed 56): "We have learned, dearest brother," says he, "the glorious testimonies of your faith and virtue, and we have received the honour of your confession with such exultation that in your merits and praises we reckon ourselves also partakers and companions." Then he congratulates him that he stood forth the leader of the confession of the brethren, and by going before unto glory obtained companions and made the people a confessor. Moreover he asked also what had become of Novatian: "Does he," says he, "now lay aside his error? Or rather, as is the custom of madmen, by our very good and prosperous things has he been driven the more to madness, and the more and more the glory of love and faith grows here, the more does the madness of dissension and jealousy break out afresh there? Nor does the wretched man cure his own wound, but wounds both himself and his own still more heavily, clamouring with his tongue unto the destruction of the brethren, and hurling the darts of a poisoned eloquence; harder through the depravity of secular philosophy than peaceful through the gentleness of the Lord's wisdom; a deserter of the Church, an enemy of mercy, a murderer of penance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of truth, a destroyer of charity! Does he now acknowledge who is the priest of God, what is the Church and house of Christ, who are the servants of God whom the devil assails, who are the Christians whom Antichrist impugns? For he does not seek those whom he has already subdued, nor is he eager to overthrow those whom he has already made his own." Nor assuredly was Novatian held in the number of the Christians by the heathens, and remaining untouched, whatsoever his followers afterwards fabricated, he persisted in ruining many, a perpetual enemy of the Church. Now not long after, the martyrdom of Cornelius was consummated on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of October (September 14), which day six years afterwards the palm of Cyprian also rendered illustrious. Moreover, as soon as it was permitted to assemble, the Roman Church, again turning away from Novatian, out of her own bosom substituted Lucius, a presbyter of approved virtue, in the place of Cornelius.

XI. About the same time the bishops, when the council had been dismissed,

having returned to their own churches, were busily bestowing labour upon receiving and confirming the lapsed: that being called anew into the contest, they might bravely undertake to wash away by a constant confession and by their very blood that stain which they had lately contracted under Decius. Among them Cyprian shone forth in zeal and benevolence towards all, who not only consoled his own Carthaginians by kindly admitting them, and inflamed them with the desire of martyrdom, but embracing the neighbouring cities also with love, did not cease to help each one, and to rouse them by exhortations to constancy; prepared to run out whithersoever it might be, if it had then been permitted to him to be absent from Carthage. For he had resolved to set out for Thibaris also, whither the townspeople had invited him, had not the good of his Church compelled him to remain at home; nevertheless what things he would have said in person to the people of Thibaris, he wonderfully set forth in that famous letter which is entitled An Exhortation to Martyrdom (Epistle 58, printed 56; see Jerome on the eloquence of Cyprian, Epistle 58, printed 68, no. 10). That like epistles concerning the same subject were sent by him to other cities, and to those above all which perhaps did not have a bishop, the letter itself to the people of Thibaris seems to indicate, which contains teachings proper to those times and suited to every Christian. Among which it is best above all that that should be recounted which he expressly hands down concerning flight: "Nor let anyone, most beloved brethren," says he, "when he beholds our people put to flight through fear of the persecution and scattered, be troubled because he does not see the brotherhood gathered together, nor hear the bishops discoursing. All cannot then be together, who are not permitted to kill, but who must needs be killed. Wheresoever in those days each one of the brethren shall be separated in the meantime from the flock through the necessity of the time, in body, not in spirit, let him not be moved at the horror of that flight, nor when withdrawing and hiding himself let him be terrified by the solitude of a desert place. He is not alone, to whom Christ is a companion in flight. He is not alone, who keeping the temple of God, wheresoever he may be, is not without God. And if a robber overwhelms him when fleeing in the solitude and the mountains, if a wild beast attacks him, if hunger or thirst or cold afflicts him, or if a tempest and squall submerges him when hastening across the seas in a headlong voyage, Christ beholds His soldier fighting wheresoever he is, and to him who dies on account of the persecution for the honour of His name He renders the reward which He promised that He will give in the resurrection. Nor is the glory of martyrdom less not to have perished publicly and among many, when the cause of perishing is to perish for Christ. There suffices for the testimony of his martyrdom that Witness who proves martyrs and crowns them." Furthermore, it was of the greatest importance that these things should be known to all, and Cyprian hoped that those who had learned these things, if perhaps they believed themselves unequal to the torture and trembled through fear of the torments, would take thought for themselves by flight, lest being taken they should violate their faith and be polluted by nefarious sacrifices.

XII. Lucius the Supreme Pontiff received the last letter of the closing year from Cyprian, who, having been driven into exile a little while before when he had scarcely undertaken the priesthood, had now returned back to his Church with the great joy of all. When Cyprian learned these things, doubtless

he thought it part of his duty to congratulate him on his return. "Lately indeed," says he (Epistle 61, printed 58), "we congratulated you, dearest brother, when with redoubled honour in the administration of His Church the divine condescension appointed you a confessor and a priest alike. Yet now also not less do we congratulate you and your companions and the whole brotherhood, because with the same glory and your praises the kindly and bountiful protection of the Lord has brought you back anew to His own, that a shepherd might be restored for feeding the flock, and a pilot for steering the ship, and a ruler for ruling the people, and that it might appear that your banishment was so arranged from on high, not that the bishop banished and driven out should be wanting to the Church, but that he should return to the Church greater." Towards the end he recounts the zeal of his own Church towards him, and holds out a sure hope of martyrdom: "Presenting to you our joy by letter, we express the faithful services of charity, here also 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 ask alike that He who is perfect and perfecting may guard and perfect in you the glorious crown of your confession; who perhaps has recalled you for this purpose also, lest the glory should be hidden if the martyrdoms of your confession had been consummated abroad. For the victim which affords to the brotherhood an example of virtue ought also to be sacrificed when the brethren are present."

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 253.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. C. Vibius Volusianus Augustus for the second time and M. Valerius Maximus entered upon the consulship. That the Christians were harassed again at Rome, the martyrdom of Lucius declares, whereby the prophecy of Cyprian was fulfilled. For he is reported to have obtained the laurel on the Nones of March, after whom the Roman Church conferred the pontificate upon Stephen. And that rage was exercised no less in Africa at the same time against the Church, the book of Cyprian To Demetrianus indicates—whether he was the proconsul or the proconsul's assessor, certainly a most bitter and most cruel enemy of the Christian name, and the same an inept sophist and a reviling railer. For in that book Cyprian enumerates thus the various kinds of punishments which the Christians then underwent (To Demetrianus, p. 516; see the Bollandists, volume IV of September, p. 289): "Innocent, righteous men, dear to God, you deprive of home, despoil of patrimony, press with chains, shut up in prison, punish with the sword, with wild beasts, with fires; nor are you even content with a short summary of our pains, and a simple and swift brevity of punishments! You apply long tortures for mangling our bodies, you multiply numerous punishments for tearing our bowels, nor can your savagery and fierceness be content with customary tortures: your ingenious cruelty devises new punishments." Nor indeed can that book of Cyprian be referred to another year, since both Pontius (in the Life of Cyprian, no. 7) shows that it was written after the book On

the Lord's Prayer, and Cyprian himself designates the time of the pestilence (To Demetrianus, pp. 508 and 514), which in this year invaded Africa. For Demetrianus above all renewed that old calumny, that whatsoever adversity existed anywhere, whatsoever calamity the commonwealth had received, the Christians were justly accused, and that on their account, who despised the deities, the angry gods exacted the punishments of violated majesty from all mortals. Which calumny certainly Cyprian undertook to refute by that book in this year, which seemed about to be most unpropitious to the commonwealth; and having recounted the incursions of the barbarians, and the barrenness and famine, by which evils the Roman world had now for a long time been afflicted—not through the fault of the Christians, but through the crimes of the heathens, which grew from day to day—he added these words also (ibid., p. 514): "You lay the pestilence and plague to our charge, whereas by the pestilence and plague itself the crimes of each one have either been detected or increased, while neither is mercy shown to the sick, and avarice and rapine gape after the dead! The same men are timid towards the service of piety, rash towards impious gains, fleeing the funerals of the dying, and greedy after the spoils of the dead: so that it appears that the wretched men are perhaps forsaken in their sickness for this purpose, that they may not be able to escape while they are being cared for."

II. Indeed, if the heathens relaxed anything of their cruelty (printed credulitate) against the Christians in that so great trepidation of all, yet another field certainly lay open to them, wherein their virtue could run forth and be recognized. "There broke forth afterwards," says Pontius (in the same Life, no. 9), "a dire plague and the excessive devastation of a detestable disease; sweeping away countless peoples daily, each from his own home, by a sudden onset, it invaded the continuous houses in succession of the trembling common people. All shrank back, fled, shunned the contagion, impiously exposed their own relatives, as though together with him who was about to die of the pestilence anyone could shut out death itself also. Meanwhile there lay throughout the whole city no longer the bodies, but the corpses of very many, and by the contemplation of a mutual lot demanded pity towards themselves from the passers-by." This at that time was the aspect of the most populous city of Carthage; nor in so great a slaughter of men and such wretched squalor and mourning was there found among the heathens anyone to undertake the care of his own, and to succour those who implored help. Yet the Christians could not behold these things unpitying, nor did they suffer so many wretched men in that want and solitude, even utter strangers, to be without assistance; whom the discourse of Cyprian also had inflamed to those highest duties of piety and mercy. For having previously convoked the people, he had instructed them with the excellent teachings of the Gospel: "That it was not wonderful (Pontius in the Life of Cyprian, no. 9, printed p. 9) if we cherished our own people only with the due service of charity; that he could become perfect who did something more than the publican or the heathen, who overcoming evil with good, and practising a likeness of the divine clemency, loved his enemies also, who prayed for the salvation of those who persecuted him, just as the Lord admonishes and exhorts." Then he had added these words also: "God makes His sun continually to rise,

and from time to time bestows rains for nourishing the seeds, exhibiting all those things not to His own only, but to strangers also; and he who professes himself to be a son of God also, why does he not imitate the example of his Father? It becomes us to answer to our birth, and it is not fitting that those who it is established have been reborn through God should be degenerate, but rather that the offshoot of a good Father should be proved in the offspring by the emulation of His goodness." Why say more? Even slothful minds, roused by the words of Cyprian, blazed forth with a wonderful zeal of helping all. "Ministries therefore," says Pontius (in the Life, no. 10), "were forthwith distributed according to the quality of the men and the ranks. Many who through the straitness of poverty could not exhibit the benefits of expense, exhibited more than expenses, making up by their own personal labour a service dearer than all riches."

III. Yet amidst these cares Cyprian perceiving that there were not wanting those who, cast down by the greatness of the calamity, lost heart, and knew not how to endure patiently and bear with an even mind those things which were done by the supreme counsel and will of God the Lord of all—not forgetting these either, he prepared the best remedy for their distress of mind, having written a book for their instruction, whereunto he gave the title On the Mortality. For he strove to show that there are very many goods which redound from death itself upon Christians. "What else in the world," said he (On the Mortality), "than a battle against the devil is daily waged, than a struggle with continual conflicts against his darts and weapons? Our engagement is with avarice, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; with carnal vices, with secular enticements there is a continual and troublesome wrestling. The mind of man, besieged and hemmed in on every side by the assault of the devil, scarcely meets each one, scarcely resists. If avarice has been prostrated, lust arises; if lust has been checked, ambition succeeds; if ambition has been despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy severs friendship. You are compelled to revile, which the divine law forbids; you are forced to swear, which is not lawful. So many persecutions the mind daily suffers, by so many perils the breast is pressed: and does it delight us to stand long here among the swords of the devil, when rather it ought to be desired and wished for to hasten to Christ with death coming more swiftly to our aid?" And this he numbered first among the goods, to be free from so many evils, and to exchange this wretched and fleeting life for a blessed and eternal age. Moreover he taught that those things also wherewith bodies were then afflicted were not evils for Christians: "This," says he (ibid.), "that now the bowels, loosened into a flux, exhaust the strength of the body; that a fire conceived in the very marrow rages into wounds of the throat (fauces); that the intestines are shaken by continual vomiting; that the eyes burn with the violence of blood; that the feet of some, or certain parts of their limbs, are amputated through the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that through the losses and damages of bodies, as weakness breaks forth, either the gait is crippled, or the hearing is stopped up, or the sight is blinded—profits for a proof

of faith. What greatness of breast it is to engage with the virtues of an unshaken mind against so many onsets of devastation and death, what sublimity to stand erect amidst the ruins of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope towards God!" Next he contended that so many deaths also ought to be held in the place of a benefit: "Improvident," says he (ibid., p. 465, printed 155), "and ungrateful are we, most beloved brethren, towards the divine benefits, nor do we recognize what is conferred upon us. Behold, virgins depart in peace safe with their glory, not fearing the threats and corruptions and brothels of the coming Antichrist; boys escape the peril of a slippery age, and happily arrive at the reward of continence and innocence; the delicate matron no longer fears tortures, having gained by the swiftness of dying escape from the fear of persecution and the office and torments of the executioner. By the dread of the mortality and of the time the lukewarm are kindled, the lax are braced up, the sluggish are roused, deserters are compelled to return, the heathens are constrained to believe, the old people of the faithful are called to rest, a fresh and abundant army is gathered with stronger strength for the battle-line, which will fight without fear of death when the battle comes, seeing that it comes to the warfare in the time of the mortality." Lastly he exhorts them cheerfully to despise death, and joyfully to think whither they were about to come: "We reckon paradise our native land," says he (ibid.); "we have already begun to have the patriarchs for our parents. Why do we not hasten and run, that we may be able to see our native land, that we may be able to salute our parents? A great number of dear ones awaits us there; a crowded and abundant throng of parents, brothers, and children longs for us, already secure of their own safety, and still anxious for our salvation. To come to their sight and embrace, how great a joy it is both for them and for us in common! What a pleasure is there of the heavenly kingdoms without fear of dying, and with an eternity of living how supreme and perpetual a happiness!"

IV. Thus had Cyprian now learned to philosophize, and this wisdom, which he had joined to eloquence, was at that time an assistance and solace to many mortals. For the pestilence wandered far and wide, and harassed the provinces everywhere for several years, now more remiss, now more severe. For the rest, in this year the Christians, whom on the one hand the plague terrified, and on the other the deadly edicts of the princes deprived of life, were relieved in part, the peril being driven away which was being stirred up against their religion and faith. For in the month of May tidings came that Gallus and Volusianus had been cut off by the soldiers, and that in their place C. Julius Aemilianus was reigning, whom report said to be a Moor by origin (Victor in his Epitome). Moreover in the third or fourth month afterwards, when he also had been slain by the army, it was reported that the empire was in the hands of P. Licinius Valerianus, who had long flourished in the praise of virtue, and at that time was reported to be most favourably disposed towards the Christians. Soon some limit seems to have been set to the pestilence also: for it appears that assemblies were held by Cyprian.

V. Yet it was an altogether sad cause which impelled Cyprian to convoke the clergy and the people.

Namely, he had received a letter from the Numidian bishops, that barbarians in great number had burst into that province, had devastated the lands, and had led away many captives, among them virgins also, into slavery. And those bishops, eight in number, asked both Cyprian and the whole Carthaginian Church that they would supply some money for the sake of ransoming the captives. Now there is still extant the letter of Cyprian to them, breathing that ancient charity and greatness of mutual love which formerly commended all Christians so greatly; and from this we have ascertained what Cyprian and what his Church performed. First, when the epistle of the bishops was read, it appears that there was weeping and lamentation of all: "With the greatest groaning of our mind," says he (Epistle 62, printed 60), "and not without tears have we read your letter, dearest brethren, which in accordance with the solicitude of your love you wrote to us concerning the captivity of our brethren and sisters." Moreover kindness and liberality straightway followed upon pity; for, as Cyprian adds, "the brotherhood thinking over all things according to your letter and sorrowfully examining them, all promptly and willingly and largely contributed pecuniary aids for the brethren—being always indeed prone according to the firmness of their faith to the work of God, yet now kindled the more to salutary works by the contemplation of so great a grief." Now the sum of the alms collected was two thousand five hundred crowns (scutati nummi). For thus Cyprian designates it: "We have sent," says he, "a hundred thousand sesterces of money, which have been collected here in the church over which by the indulgence of the Lord we preside, by the contribution of the clergy and people abiding with us, which you will dispense there according to your diligence." Furthermore, Cyprian wished this also to be known to the bishops, what each one had contributed; and wherefore he wished this, he premised: "Now that you may have in mind in your prayers," says he, "our brethren and sisters who have wrought promptly and willingly for this so necessary work, that they may always work, and may make a return to them for their good work in sacrifices and prayers, I have subjoined the names of each one; and moreover I have added the names of our colleagues and fellow-priests also, who themselves also, since they were present, contributed certain sums according to their ability both in their own name and in that of their people; and besides our own proper sum, I have signified and sent their small sums also: all of whom, according to what faith and charity demand, you ought to remember in your prayers and supplications." In which passage we understand that it was the custom of the African churches also, that if any calamity anywhere had afflicted any church, the rest with common zeal brought what help they could to it. Yet in the letter of Cyprian two things besides are to be admired: first, that he held the request of the bishops in the place of a benefit; the other, that he admonished them never to be slothful in imploring aid as often as there should be need: "We give the greatest thanks to you," says he, "that you have wished us to be partakers of your solicitude, and of so good and necessary a work,

so that you offered to us fertile fields wherein we might cast the seeds of our hope, being about to expect a harvest from the most ample fruits which come forth from this heavenly and salutary work." Then concerning the peril which might press them again, he added: "And we wish indeed that nothing of the kind may happen for the future, and that our brethren, protected by the majesty of the Lord, may be preserved safe from perils of that sort. Yet if, for testing the charity of our mind and examining the faith of our breast, anything of the kind happens, do not hesitate to report these things to us by your letter, holding it for certain that our church and the whole brotherhood here pray with supplications that these things may not happen any more, and if they do happen, willingly and largely afford aids."

VI. Having discharged these duties, Cyprian judged that it would be for the advantage of the Christian commonwealth if, by sending forth into the light a book concerning that subject, he cherished the more and inflamed the minds already moved with pity and even then warm. And therefore about the same time he published that golden little work which is entitled On Works and Alms, pursuing with the highest praises those who kindly supplied out of their own goods to the church wherewith the want of the needy might be relieved. From which we also learn that already at that time there stood in the sacred edifices hollow pillars or chests (corban), into which each one cast his alms; and that the custom likewise obtained that bread and wine were offered for the sacrifice. For he touches thus upon certain matrons who neglected these things (On Works and Alms, p. 509, printed 569): "You are wealthy and rich, and think that you celebrate the Lord's Supper, who do not at all regard the treasury (corban), who come into the Lord's house without a sacrifice, who take a part from the sacrifice which a poor person has offered!" That there were also already at that time deacons assigned to each region of the fair city (Carthage), who knew the names of the needy and relieved their want, is credible. Certainly in a synod which we have learned was held at Carthage many years afterwards under Boniface (in Hardouin, Councils, tome 2, p. 1082), there is cited Gaudiosus, "deacon of the fifth region": so that after the example of the city of Rome Cyprian above all must be thought to have created deacons of that sort, and to have committed to them the care of the wretched among the people, which they were to discharge under the presbyters.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 254.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The Augusti were declared consuls, P. Licinius Valerianus for the second time and P. Licinius Gallienus. Under these consuls the affairs of the Christians were quiet; yet the commonwealth began to be disturbed by the incursions of the barbarians, and to be imperilled by the defection of provinces. Africa nevertheless remained in its allegiance; nor was any trouble brought upon the Church save by domestic enemies. Among these was a certain wealthy Carthaginian citizen, a follower of Felicissimus, who daily assailed Cyprian with revilings, and fabricated against him many false and disgraceful things, calling him the author of all evils, and alienating the minds of good men from him as much as he could. This man's name was Florentius Pupianus, whom Cyprian calls "brother"

because he was a Christian; nor do any indications demonstrate that he was a presbyter or a bishop. Indeed Cyprian, having patiently suffered many things from Pupianus, when he received from the same man a letter also that was altogether irreligious and reviling, at length undertook to refute the man, having written a most weighty epistle to him, wherein he both sharply defends his own dignity and authority, which the man was infringing, and declares that his adversary and the patron of schism is outside the Church. "Whence," says he (Epistle 69), "you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if anyone be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who, not having peace with the priests of God, creep in and believe that they secretly communicate with certain persons, whereas the Church, which is Catholic and one, is not rent nor divided, but is certainly knit together and joined by the cement of priests cleaving to one another." The last words are: "You have my letter, and I yours; in the day of judgement, before the tribunal of Christ, both shall be recited."

II. Cyprian had another adversary hostile to the whole Catholic Church, namely Novatian, who already numbered far more followers outside Africa than he had had in Africa, and not from the people only, but from the clergy also. Among these easily the chief was Marcianus bishop of Arles, while the rest of the bishops of the Gauls, whom one profession joined in Catholic agreement to Stephen the Supreme Pontiff, were much indignant. Wherefore, just as many had complained concerning that matter before Stephen himself (Cyprian, Epistle 67), so Faustinus bishop of Lyons, who both knew the dignity of the Carthaginian Church, and was not ignorant of the learning of Cyprian conjoined with the highest virtue, wrote to him also against Marcianus, and obtained from him that he himself also should send an altogether weighty and vehement letter to Stephen, and show that Marcianus ought to be removed from his place, and provision made for the Church by appointing a successor. Having premised a few words indeed concerning the hardness and implacable severity of the Novatians, Cyprian addresses Stephen thus: "Wherefore it behoves you to write a very full letter to our fellow-bishops set in the Gauls, that they no longer suffer the obstinate and proud Marcianus, an enemy of divine piety and of fraternal salvation, to insult over our college because he does not yet seem to be excommunicated by us, who now for a long time boasts and proclaims that, favouring Novatian and following his obstinacy, he has separated himself from our communion, whereas Novatian himself whom he follows was formerly excommunicated and judged an enemy of the Church." Then, having recounted at greater length the condemnation of this man, he continues to press earnestly: "Let a letter," says he, "be directed by you into the province and to the people abiding at Arles, whereby after Marcianus has been excommunicated another may be substituted in his place, and the flock of Christ, which until this day, scattered and wounded by him, is despised, may be gathered together." Finally he demands above all that he also be informed concerning the bishop substituted: "Signify plainly to us," says he,

who has been substituted at Arles in the place of Marcianus, that we may know to whom we ought to direct our brethren, and to whom we ought to write." Furthermore, Stephen must be thought to have complied with Cyprian, and to have deposed Marcianus, for the ancient diptychs of the Church of Arles (in Mabillon, Annals, tome 3, p. 432) do not record Marcianus; yet who was substituted for him is less clear. Yet for Cyprian not even this was enough, but he judged that resistance ought to be made to Novatian himself, lest the evil should be disseminated more widely; and in a little work which he entitled To Novatian the Heretic, using the testimonies of the divine Letters, he wonderfully assailed his perverse doctrine and inexorable mind.

III. Meanwhile the Spanish Churches also sought the authority and counsel of Cyprian, at which time bishops out of Africa had assembled at Carthage, thirty-six in number (Cyprian, Epistle 67, printed 68). It was unknown to no one among the Spaniards that Basilides bishop at Legio and Asturica, and likewise Martialis bishop of Emerita, stained with certificates (libelli) of idolatry and bound fast by the consciousness of nefarious crimes, had fallen from their place. And therefore successors had already been given to both—Sabinus to Basilides, and Felix to Martialis—who had also come as envoys to Cyprian. Yet the audacity of the deposed bishops claiming their old honour for themselves disturbed the Spaniards: for on account of that matter Basilides had even set out for Rome, "and had deceived Stephen (as Cyprian testifies), canvassing that he might be unjustly restored to the episcopate wherefrom he had been justly deposed." And no less had Martialis used deceit that he himself also might hold the place whence he had been cast out. Therefore, when the letters of the Churches had been read and the envoys heard in the council, Cyprian wrote back according to the opinion of his colleagues that all things seemed to have been done in order and by right, and that by the authority of Stephen interposed through guile the offences of the ambitious men had not been abolished, but heaped up. Next, embracing the crimes of both, he addresses the clergy and people of both Churches thus: "Wherefore, since, just as you have written, most beloved brethren, and as our colleagues Felix and Sabinus assert, and as another Felix of Caesaraugusta, a cultivator of the faith and defender of the truth, signifies in his letter, Basilides and Martialis have been contaminated by the nefarious certificate of idolatry; and Basilides still besides, beyond the stain of the certificate, when he was lying in sickness, blasphemed against God, and confessed that he had blasphemed, and laying down his episcopate of his own accord on account of the wound of his conscience, turned to doing penance, entreating God, and counting himself sufficiently fortunate if it should befall him to communicate even as a layman; and Martialis also, besides the shameful and filthy banquets of the heathens long frequented in their college, and his sons placed in the same college after the custom of foreign nations among profane sepulchres and buried together with strangers, has also attested by acts publicly held before the ducenary procurator that he obeyed idolatry, and denied Christ; and since there are many other and heavy offences wherein Basilides and Martialis are held entangled, in vain do such men

endeavour to usurp the episcopate for themselves, seeing that it is manifest that men of that sort neither can preside over the Church of Christ, nor ought to offer sacrifices to God; especially since long ago with us, and with all the bishops altogether set in the whole world, our colleague Cornelius also, a peaceful and righteous priest, and honoured with martyrdom also by the condescension of the Lord, decreed that men of that sort can indeed be admitted to do penance, but are prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and priestly honour." By this letter at length of Cyprian and his council the scruple which pricked them was plucked out from the Spaniards, and the bishops were repudiated, for whom it was established that a return to the seat of their honour was shut off.

IV. Now another cause was already pressing, on account of which Cyprian had convoked the bishops of the proconsular province. For he had received a letter from the Numidian bishops, whereby they asked his opinion concerning those who seem to be baptized among heretics and schismatics, whether when coming to the Catholic Church, which is one and true, they ought to be baptized. For the matter seems then to have been called into controversy there by those who knew the custom of the rest of the Churches, and therefore did not think that they ought to stand by the ancient decrees of Agrippinus bishop of Carthage. Indeed Cyprian had imbibed in his mind that opinion, and held it deeply implanted, that sacred baptism among heretics and schismatics, because they were outside the Church, could be none at all. And therefore he acknowledged the force of the custom which was alleged as a pretext to be slight and weak, and affirmed that it behoved it to yield to the truth. Therefore, when that question began to be debated in the council, by the authority which he had among all he easily brought each one over to his own opinion, and a reply was written back to the Numidian bishops in these words (Epistle 70): "Concerning which matter, although you yourselves also hold there the truth and firmness of the Catholic rule, nevertheless since in accordance with our common love you think that we ought to be consulted, we bring forth our opinion—not a new one, but long ago established by our predecessors and observed by us—and conjoin it in like agreement with you: judging, namely, and holding for certain that no one can be baptized outside, beyond the Church, since there is one baptism established in the holy Church." And what follows. Scarcely had the council been dismissed when the same controversy was referred out of Mauretania to Cyprian. Namely, Quintus, bishop of Burug (Burugiatensis), inquired what he thought concerning those who seem to be baptized among heretics and schismatics. To whom Cyprian says (Epistle 71): "That you might know what very many of us fellow-bishops with the fellow-presbyters who were present lately voted in council, I have sent you a copy of the same epistle." And not content with this, he added many things which he thought availed wonderfully for defending his own opinion: "For I know not," says he, "by what presumption certain of our colleagues are led to think that those who have been dipped among heretics, when they come to us, ought not to be baptized, for the reason that they say there is one baptism—

which namely is one for this reason, because the Church is one, and there cannot be a baptism outside the Church." And other things of this sort. About the same time perhaps, out of the same Mauretania, Rogatianus bishop of Nova had complained before Cyprian concerning his deacon, "that unmindful of the priestly place, and forgetful of his own office and ministry, he had exasperated him with insults and injuries." Cyprian praised the modesty of the man, who had preferred to complain concerning him rather than by using his authority to punish him; yet he judged that a limit ought nevertheless to be set to indulgence: "It behoves the deacon concerning whom you write," says he (Epistle 3, printed 65), "to do penance for his audacity, and to acknowledge the honour of the priest, and with full humility to make satisfaction to the bishop set over him." And the same writer brings forward a most weighty cause for punishing the crime: "For these," says he, "are the beginnings of heretics, and the rise and attempts of evil-minded schismatics, that they please themselves, that with proud swelling they despise him who is set over them. Thus do men depart from the Church, thus is a profane altar set up outside, thus do men rebel against the peace of Christ and the ordinance and unity of God."

V. Now the peaceful times and leisure for disputing brought other matters into controversy, besides the fact that the question itself concerning baptism seemed to many somewhat difficult and somewhat obscure. Wherefore it was necessary that a council should again be assembled before the close of the year, whereunto seventy-one bishops came, partly from the proconsular province, partly from Numidia. Now many things were then brought forward and transacted therein, as Cyprian himself testifies (Epistle 72); yet there are two things above all which the same writer designates and explains: first, concerning which action had been taken in the preceding council also, "that those who have been dipped outside, beyond the Church, and stained among heretics and schismatics with the defilement of profane water, when they come to us and to the Church which is one, ought to be baptized." The second is, "that if any presbyters or deacons, who either have previously been ordained in the Catholic Church and afterwards have stood treacherous and rebellious against the Church, or have been promoted among heretics by false bishops and Antichrists against the disposition of Christ with a profane ordination, and have endeavoured to offer outside false and sacrilegious sacrifices against the one and divine altar—that these also be received on this condition when they return, that they communicate as laymen, and count it enough that they are admitted to peace who have stood forth enemies of peace; and that when returning they ought not to retain among us those weapons of ordination and honour wherewith they rebelled against us." Furthermore, it is established that both heads were sanctioned by the common consent of the council. Yet concerning both they judged that they ought to write above all to Stephen the Supreme Pontiff also, and confer, as they say, with his gravity and wisdom. There is extant the letter of the synod, wherein the same things are said to have been sanctioned, and mention is also made concerning the epistles which we indicated above were written to Quintus into Mauretania and to the bishops of Numidia: "Moreover that the baptism wherewith

heretics use is none," say they (ibid., Epistle to Stephen), "and that no one among those who oppose Christ can profit through the grace of Christ, has lately been diligently expressed in the epistle which was written upon that matter to our colleague Quintus set in Mauretania; likewise in the letter which our colleagues previously wrote to the fellow-bishops presiding in Numidia: of both of which epistles we subjoin copies here." For the rest, those words above all are to be recounted which the letter of the synod has at the end. For thence it becomes manifest that all that controversy concerning baptism pertained by no means to the sum of the Catholic profession, and that those who thought the contrary were held equally Catholics: "We know," say they, "that certain men are unwilling to lay aside what they have once imbibed, and do not easily change their purpose, but keeping safe the bond of peace and concord among colleagues, retain certain proper customs which have once been used among them. In which matter we neither do violence to anyone nor give a law, seeing that each president has in the administration of his Church the free choice of his own will, being about to render an account of his act to the Lord" (see Sommier against Anastasia Bianchi, part 1, book 2, p. 220).

VI. When this letter had been sent to Stephen in the name of Cyprian and of all the Fathers, the council was dismissed. Yet the bishops, having returned to their own Churches, filled the whole of Africa with contentions, those bishops dissenting who had found the Roman custom in their own Church, out of whose number it is credible that some wrote concerning that matter to Stephen. There were also those who desired to be taught by the testimony of Cyprian, and for that cause sent accurate letters to the same man. Among these shines forth Jubaianus, bishop of an unknown city, whom nevertheless you might think the primate of Numidia (see Schelstrate, Ecclesiastical Antiquity, tome 1, part 2, p. 281; Zonaras calls this man Jovinianus), since Cyprian is afterwards said to have written back to him and to his fellow-bishops. Now this man wrote thus to Cyprian out of his province, that he added also a copy of a treatise (libellus), either received from Rome or sent forth in Africa, in which treatise Cyprian's opinion was refuted. Wherefore Cyprian thought it part of his duty that, writing back at greater length to Jubaianus, he should bring forward the reasons also whereby he thought the arguments of the adversaries were refuted. For he understood that his reply would come into the hands of all. Yet in a question which was at that time somewhat obscure, this had settled in the mind of Cyprian, that from heretics, because they were evil, nothing of good could proceed, and that it was no less denied to them to baptize than to remit sins by absolving; whereas the very force of baptism, which depended not at all upon the minister, he considered less. This is almost the sum of the Epistle to Jubaianus (Epistle 73), which itself nevertheless he concludes in such a manner as to signify that he wished rather to dispute and to defend his own opinion than to prescribe or define anything: "These things," says he, "we have briefly written back to you according to our poor ability, dearest brother, prescribing to no one or prejudging, so that each one of the bishops should not do what he thinks right,

having the free power of his own choice. We, so far as in us lies, do not contend on account of heretics with our colleagues and fellow-bishops, with whom we keep divine concord and the Lord's peace." Finally, because he had learned that there were many of the bishops who did not think with him, and many who could not bear an adversary, and on account of that matter some dissension of minds had been made, he testifies that he set a remedy against this evil: "There is kept by us," says he, "patiently and mildly the charity of the mind, the honour of our college, the bond of faith, and the concord of the priesthood. On account of this we have also now written a little book On the Good of Patience, so far as our poor ability availed, with the Lord permitting and inspiring, which in accordance with our mutual love we have transmitted to you." And there is still extant and worn by the hands of men that excellent little work of the most holy man, which he wrote in full in such a manner that he touched upon no one at all of his adversaries even by the slightest hint, and explained most abundantly to all how much good there is in that virtue.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 255.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. Again the consulship was in the hands of the Augusti, and the Emperors P. Licinius Valerianus for the third time and P. Licinius Gallienus for the second time went forth as consuls. Now Stephen the Supreme Pontiff had already received the letter of Cyprian and his council, and the same man was deliberating with his presbyters and the bishops who by chance were present at Rome how he should write back, and deter the whole African synod from its purpose. For the Roman Church was a witness that she had had the ancient and perpetual custom that those whom she received returning from heretics, she laid hands upon for the sake of penance, and cared for by washing no one with baptism. "When therefore," says Vincent of Lérins (in the Commonitorium, chapter 6, printed 9), "all cried out from every side against the novelty of the matter, and all the priests everywhere resisted, each according to his own zeal, then Pope Stephen of blessed memory, the prelate of the Apostolic See, with the rest of his colleagues indeed, yet beyond the rest, withstood it, thinking it worthy, as I suppose, if he surpassed all the rest as much by the devotion of his faith as he excelled them by the authority of his place. Finally, in the epistle which was then sent into Africa, he sanctioned in these words: Nothing is to be innovated, save what has been handed down. For the holy and prudent man understood that the method of piety admitted nothing else save that all things which had been received in faith from the Fathers should with the same faith be delivered over to the sons, and that it behoved us not to lead religion whither we wished, but rather to follow whither she led; and that this is proper to Christian modesty and gravity, not to hand down one's own things to posterity, but to keep the things received from one's ancestors." For the rest, the letter itself of Stephen, of whatsoever sort it was, has not come down to us; nor does anything else remain of it than that short passage which is read in the epistle of Cyprian to Pompeius, whatsoever at length this epistle also is to be thought to be: "If anyone therefore," said

Stephen (Cyprian in Epistle 74; concerning this decree of Stephen read Missori, Critical Disputations, p. 385), "comes to you from whatsoever heresy, let nothing be innovated, save what has been handed down, that the hand be laid upon him unto penance, since the heretics themselves in their own proper custom do not baptize those who come to them from one another, but only communicate with them."

II. That the reply of Stephen, if it was such, displeased Cyprian much, I should easily grant. Yet that Cyprian, when once he had received a letter not according to the opinion of his own mind from the Chair of Peter and the principal Church, whence priestly unity arose (the same, in Epistle 59, printed 55), flared up in such anger that he suddenly forgot all those things which he had publicly professed—that he with his colleagues did violence to no one, gave a law to no one, and that there were kept by him the charity of the mind, the honour of the college, the bond of faith, and the concord of the priesthood—to believe this, indeed, I plainly cannot be induced. For the things which he is charged with having committed against Stephen are not slight, but rather such as seem scarcely able to fall upon so great a man. For if the epistle which is reported to have been sent to Pompeius bishop of Sabrata (Epistle 74) is to be ascribed to Cyprian, he himself not only did not acquiesce in the judgement of Stephen, but stirred up others also against him; accused the same man of error on account of such a rescript, as though he endeavoured to assert the cause of heretics against Christians and against the Church of God; affirmed that many things had been written by him unskilfully and improvidently, and such as were either proud, or not pertaining to the matter, or contrary to himself; called what was constancy in Stephen hard obstinacy, and was the adviser to the bishops that they should turn away from the teaching of Stephen: On account of which, says he, leaving error behind, let us follow the truth. Assuredly he who weighs these things will never think that they proceeded out of the mouth of him who not only before this time, but continually afterwards also, appears to have been illustrious for holiness of life, zeal for concord, gravity of mind, and the voluntary and long-continued endurance of arduous and difficult things. Therefore Augustine also more than once signified that that epistle was suspected by him (Against Cresconius, book 2, chapter 31, etc.), and others have believed that the same was fabricated by the Donatists on account of its patronage of their cause (see Missori, Critical Disputations on the Epistles of Cyprian and Firmilian, p. 264).

III. For the rest, Cyprian, thinking that in the rescript of Stephen not some law was imposed upon him, but the judgement of a private man presented, judged that trial ought to be made a third time as to what the African Church thought concerning the baptism of heretics. A third council therefore was proclaimed for the Kalends of September (September 1), that out of Mauretania also and the rest of the Churches which were more distant, bishops might be able to be present in great numbers. Now that controversy, having crossed the sea, had already pervaded the East also, and in many churches disputation was carried on with no slight dissension for either opinion. Letters also had been sent to Stephen which reported that it was already the custom of many bishops that they dipped with baptism a second time heretics returning to the Church. Which was so grievous to Stephen that

he threatened many that unless they came to their senses he would withdraw from their communion (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 5). Yet it was not granted to Stephen to put an end to the terror (or error), which not long after was taken away by the authority of Xystus his successor and the labour of Dionysius of Alexandria. For if we believe Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 5), in this year Stephen, having discharged the pontificate for two years, departed on the fourth day before the Nones of August (August 2), on which day in the ancient Martyrologies his memory is celebrated, and Xystus succeeded him.

IV. Meanwhile bishops from every side had assembled at Carthage for the synod, eighty-five in number, and among them Natalis of Oea had brought the mandates of the bishops Pompeius of Sabrata and Dioga of Leptis Magna, who had remained at home: on whose account eighty-seven bishops were reported to think the same thing. Those who were of another opinion did not set foot outside their own borders. Now there are extant the acts of that council, which exhibit to us the order of the things done. And first very many bishops are said to have assembled on the Kalends of September from the province of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania, with presbyters and deacons, the greatest part of the people also being present. Before these were read the letter of Jubaianus to Cyprian, and that which Cyprian had sent to Jubaianus, and that which again he had received from the same man: wherein the rescript of Stephen also, as I suppose, was contained. After which Cyprian says: "You have heard, most beloved colleagues, what our fellow-bishop Jubaianus wrote to me, consulting our poor ability concerning the illicit 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 ought to be baptized and sanctified with the baptism of the Church. Likewise there has been read to you another letter also of Jubaianus, whereby in accordance with his sincere and religious devotion, writing back to my epistle, he not only agreed, but confessing also that he had been instructed, gave thanks. It remains that concerning this very matter we each bring forward what we think, judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently. For neither does any of us set himself up to be a bishop of bishops, or by tyrannical terror drive his colleagues to the necessity of obeying, seeing that every bishop according to the license of his liberty and power has his own proper choice, and can as little be judged by another as he himself cannot judge another. But let us all await the judgement of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who one and alone has the power both of setting us over the government of His Church, and of judging concerning our act." Thence they came to delivering their opinions: and first of all Caecilius of Biltha uttered his, whom the rest followed according as each was senior, and although different men employed different words, not a single one dissented from the opinion of Cyprian. And therefore Cyprian last of all says: "The epistle which was written to our colleague Jubaianus expresses my opinion most fully, that heretics, being called according to the evangelical and apostolic attestation both adversaries of Christ and

antichrists, when they come to the Church, must be baptized with the one baptism of the Church, that from adversaries they may be able to become friends, and from antichrists Christians." Now these things you may think to have been written more from the opinion of the ancients than from our own.

V. What was established or done after these things by the Fathers, we are plainly ignorant. For those who think that envoys were sent to Rome to the Supreme Pontiff to inform him concerning the decrees of the synod can bring forward no letter written for that cause. And those who say that the deacon Rogatianus was sent as an envoy by Cyprian all the way into Cappadocia to Firmilian bishop of Caesarea, that he might instruct him, whom he knew to be of the same opinion, concerning the agreement of the African synod, have neither a Greek letter of Firmilian nor a Latin one of Cyprian to show; and the Latin letter of Firmilian which they exhibit (among the Cyprianic ones, Epistle 75) was known neither to Dionysius of Alexandria, nor to Eusebius, nor to Augustine himself. Moreover it is of such a sort as not a holy man commended by many, but a worthless and infamous heretic could have written: so abusive and wicked is it against Stephen the successor of the Apostle Peter (see Missori, ibid., p. 18, and the notes of the same, p. 112). I for my part should judge that it proceeded from the same man who fabricated the epistle of Cyprian to Pompeius also. For it was very much to the interest of the Donatists, who strove to disparage the authority of the Supreme Pontiff and to shun his judgement, that examples of this sort should be extant. Nevertheless it is credible that Cyprian wrote at this time the Epistle to Magnus which is extant, since therein he touches upon and explains in like manner whatsoever had anywhere been disputed concerning the baptism of heretics. Magnus—whosoever at length he was, whether someone of the people or one initiated in sacred orders, for Cyprian calls him "son"—had asked him, I say, whether those also who came from Novatian must in like manner be baptized; to whom Cyprian says (Epistle 69, printed 81): "So far as the capacity of our faith goes, and the holiness and truth of the divine Scriptures suggest, we say that all heretics and schismatics altogether have nothing of power and of right. On account of which Novatian neither ought nor can be excepted, so that he himself also, standing outside the Church and acting against the peace and love of Christ, should not be reckoned among adversaries and antichrists." Magnus had propounded another question also, concerning those who had been baptized near death, which Cyprian settles thus: "You have inquired also, dearest son," says he, "what seems to me concerning those who obtain the grace of God in sickness and weakness, whether they are to be held legitimate Christians, for the reason that they have not been washed with the saving water, but poured over (perfusi): in which matter our modesty and reserve prejudges no one, so as to hinder each one from thinking what he deems right, and from doing what he has thought right. We, so far as our poor ability conceives, judge that the divine benefits can in nothing be mutilated and weakened, nor can anything less happen there where with the full and whole faith both of the giver and of the receiver there is received what is drawn from the divine gifts." The last

words also of the epistle represent that customary modesty of Cyprian and his singular zeal for concord: "I have written back, dearest son," says he, "to your letter so far as our small ability availed, and I have shown what we, so far as in us lies, think, prescribing to no one, so that each president should not determine what he thinks right, being about to render an account of his act to the Lord."

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 256.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The consuls M. Valerius Maximus and Manius Acilius Glabrio mark this year: in which year Aspasius Paternus was designated proconsul of Africa. In the same year Xystus, who had been substituted in the place of Stephen, having himself also received a letter concerning the controversy of baptism from Dionysius bishop of Alexandria (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 5), the dissension being at length taken away, seems to have pacified Africa and the East, being called on that account by the deacon Pontius (in the Life of Cyprian, no. 14) "a good and peaceful priest," who nevertheless holily defended the opinion of Stephen, and made it common to the universal Church, as was fitting. That the same was received and confirmed in Africa also by a new decree, Jerome seems to indicate when he says (Dialogue against the Luciferians, no. 23): "Blessed Cyprian endeavoured to flee broken cisterns, and not to drink of strange water; and therefore reprobating the baptism of heretics he directed an African synod upon this matter to Stephen, then bishop of the city of Rome: yet his endeavour was in vain: finally those very bishops who had determined with him that heretics must be rebaptized, returning to the ancient custom, issued a new decree." To the same point look the words of Vincent of Lérins: "What lastly of the African council or decree itself—what was its force? By God's gift, none: but all things, as though dreams, as though fables, as though superfluous, were abolished, repealed, trodden underfoot." Save that so great a matter was unknown to Augustine, who wrote thus concerning Cyprian: "Assuredly even to one man speaking and demonstrating the truth, so holy a soul, so peaceful, could most easily have consented; and perhaps it was done, but we do not know"—to whom nevertheless one may oppose the very silence of Cyprian, who afterwards said nothing in between concerning that question, nor recounted the epistles which, written in full with the highest zeal, he had previously published abroad.

II. And assuredly Cyprian had turned his diligence and care elsewhere: namely, that if by chance in that dissension any stain of envy had infected any minds of his clergy and people, he might cultivate and confirm them when recalled to their old union. Wherefore he composed by lamplight that most beautiful little book which he entitled On Jealousy and Envy, embracing above all the evils which flowed from envy as though from a fountain into the life of men. "Widely," said he (On Jealousy and Envy, p. 597), "extends the manifold and fruitful destruction of jealousy. It is the root

of all evils, the fountain of disasters, the nursery of offences, the matter of faults. Thence hatred arises, thence animosity proceeds. Jealousy inflames avarice, while a man cannot be content with his own, seeing another richer. Jealousy rouses ambition, while a man beholds another higher in honours. When jealousy blinds our senses, and reduces the secret places of the mind under its own sway, the fear of God is despised, the teaching of Christ is neglected, the day of judgement is not foreseen. Pride puffs up, savagery embitters, treachery transgresses, impatience shakes, discord rages, anger boils over, nor can he any longer restrain or rule himself who has come under another's power. Hence the bond of the Lord's peace is broken, hence fraternal charity is violated, hence truth is adulterated, unity is rent, men leap forth to heresies and to schisms, while priests are disparaged, while bishops are envied, while a man either complains that he himself was not rather ordained, or disdains to bear another set over him." These things writes Cyprian, designating, I suppose, the recent bitternesses of minds, which both he had beheld unwillingly, and rejoiced very much to see taken away.

III. Amidst these things, Caecilius bishop of the Bittenses, who in the preceding year had been present at the council, having returned to his own church, had found a certain opinion—which might seem to have sprung from the Encratites, abstainers from wine—gradually disseminated: namely, that water, not wine, ought to be offered and consecrated in the Sacrifice. Turning away from so great a novelty, since he wished altogether to take it away, he thought that the matter would succeed more happily if he consulted Cyprian and could interpose his authority. And therefore, having sent an accurate letter to him concerning the whole business, he received a long epistle from Cyprian, which might bring an end to that opinion and plainly recall all to the ancient custom. That epistle (Epistle 63) is entitled "On the Sacrament of the Cup of the Lord," wherein Cyprian shows this above all, that it was instituted and prescribed by our Lord Himself that bread and wine should be offered in the sacrifice: even as had been foretold by many prophecies also of the divine Letters. And nevertheless he teaches that water must be mingled, wherein he judges that the people are signified: "For because," says he, "Christ bore us all, Who also bore our sins, we see that in the water the people are understood, while in the wine is shown the blood of Christ. Now when in the cup water is mingled with wine, the people are united to Christ, and the multitude of believers is coupled and conjoined to Him in Whom it has believed." He rejects the difficulty of those who feared "lest through the taste of wine they should smell of the blood of Christ." He wishes letters to be written to his colleagues, "that everywhere the evangelical law and the Lord's tradition may be observed, and that no departure be made from that which Christ both taught and did." Finally he concludes the epistle with these words: "It is agreeable therefore to our religion and fear, and to the place itself and the office of our priesthood, dearest

brother, in mingling and offering the cup of the Lord to guard the truth of the Lord's tradition, and at the Lord's admonition to correct what previously seems to have been erred in among certain persons: so that when He begins to come in His brightness and heavenly majesty, He may find us holding what He admonished, observing what He taught, doing what He did." Moreover, from the same epistle one may learn this also, that the use of unleavened bread (azyma) in the sacrifice was common among the Africans: for he recounts bread for the sake of so great a matter, making no mention of leaven, as "united and joined together" out of flour and water (see Ciampini, On the Perpetual Use of Unleavened Bread, chapter 3, p. 45): which obtained in the age of Augustine also.

IV. Towards the close of the year it was reported to Cyprian that Geminius Victor, bishop of the people of Furni, who in the preceding year had come to the synod, had died of disease. That was indeed grievous to Cyprian, because he had lost a colleague; yet this was much more grievous, that at the same time he had learned that he had departed from life in such a manner that he previously named the presbyter Geminius Faustinus guardian in his will. For Cyprian knew that long ago in a council of bishops it had been established (Cyprian, Epistle 1, printed 66; see the Bollandists, tome 4 of September, p. 211): "That no one should appoint a guardian or curator from among the clerics and ministers of God in his will." To which decree this cause had been subjoined: "Seeing that each one honoured with the divine priesthood, and set in the clerical ministry, ought to serve only the altar and sacrifices, and to give his time to prayers and supplications." Nor indeed was the punishment unknown which the same bishops had sanctioned against those who neglected the law; for they who had voted that that should be lawful for no one, had added: "And if anyone has done this, no offering shall be made for him, nor shall the sacrifice be celebrated for his repose. For neither, said they, does he deserve to be named at the altar of God in the prayer of the priests, who has wished to call away the priests and ministers from the altar." Therefore Cyprian, who well remembered that it behoved him to be the avenger and maintainer of the sacred canons, without any delay wrote an epistle to the clergy and people abiding at Furni, wherein having made mention of the old law he commands thus: "And therefore since Victor, against the form lately given in council by the priests, has dared to appoint the presbyter Geminius Faustinus guardian, there is no reason why an oblation should be made among us for his repose, or any prayer be frequented in his name in the Church: that the decree of the priests religiously and necessarily made may be observed by us, and at the same time an example be given to the rest of the brethren, that no one call away the priests and ministers of God, who give their time to His altar and the Church, to secular troubles. For it will be able to be observed for the future that this be done no more regarding the person of clerics, if what has now been done is punished." Furthermore, since Cyprian remitted nothing of that severity of the law, not even he himself must be thought to have undertaken the guardianship of the wife and children of the presbyter Caecilius, by whose labour he himself had been made a Christian, and whom he respected as the parent of his new life. Pontius indeed writes concerning him in these words (in

the Life of Cyprian, no. 4): "Finally that man, won over by his services, was so far moved by the merit of his immense love, that when departing from the world, as his summons was now at hand, he commended to him his wife and children, that him whom he had made a partaker in the fellowship of the sect he might afterwards make the heir of his affection." For the rest, I should believe that Cyprian satisfied his Caecilius in such a way that in love and zeal he was like a parent to his house, yet sought out and set over it upright and suitable men outside the clergy as curators of the family estate and guardians of the children.

V. The year had not yet elapsed when letters were brought through into Africa that the Church at Rome was in great peril; that Valerian Augustus, who previously favoured the Christians wonderfully (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 10), having been alienated by the guile and fraud of Macrianus, whose counsels he used, was threatening destruction; that many had already been cast into chains; and that edicts would shortly be sent into the provinces against the Christian name. Indeed, when the peril of so great a disaster was reported, many were terrified and cast down by the fear of death; nor yet were there wanting those whose cheerfulness shone forth, and roused the virtue of the rest to glorious martyrdoms. There was also one who desired something to be written by Cyprian whereby the minds of all might be inflamed with the zeal of an unconquered confession. Furthermore Cyprian, who always performed these things of his own accord, that he might instruct the people with an exhortation suitable to the time, did so much the more when asked, and sent forth the Epistle to Fortunatus, which is the second On the Exhortation to Martyrdom, filled with most holy teachings which could kindle every slothful and remiss man with the desire of so happy an end. Now he had made twelve heads of that treatise, subjoining to each one the authorities of the divine Letters which might explain and confirm the titles of the several heads, so that each one might have matter, as it were, ready not only for reading and meditating, but also for conversing and writing. "And lest," says he (p. 260, printed 708, ed. Baluze), "I should extend my discourse to a great length, dearest brother, and weary the hearer or reader with the abundance of a wider style, I have made a compendium: that having set forth titles which each one ought both to know and to hold, I might subjoin the chapters of the Lord, and establish that which I had set forth by the authority of the divine reading, so that I may seem not so much to have sent you my own treatise as to have afforded matter for those who treat thereof." In a word, he says that he looked to this also: "That in an exhortation so necessary, which makes martyrs, the delays and tardinesses of our own words must be cut off, and the windings of human speech withdrawn, and those things alone set down which God speaks, wherewith Christ exhorts His servants to martyrdom." That this epistle was written to Fortunatus bishop of Thuccabori is sufficiently ascertained to me. For Cyprian calls him "brother," and one by the name of Fortunatus, of Thuccabori, is cited among the bishops who had lately assembled at Carthage for the council. Yet you would rightly judge that copies of the same were sent to others also, that it might be of use to as many as possible.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 257.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. Again the Augusti were made consuls, Valerian for the fourth time and Gallienus for the third time, whom already the conspiracies of the barbarians and the commotions of the Persians were calling forth to wars. Yet in the City there remained those who took up the hatred of Valerian against the Christians, and satisfied his cruelty. And already at Rome martyrs were numbered who, having first snatched the laurel, had marked out for the rest the way to heaven with their blood. Yet in Africa hitherto private letters alone increased the terror, nor had anything been publicly announced: so that the bishops seem to have had sufficient time to spend in exhorting the people to constancy, and in confirming their minds by the bestowal of the divine mysteries. For this above all was a matter of care, and Cyprian had formerly brought forward this cause especially for receiving the lapsed, lest they should be exposed unarmed to the attacking enemy: "For how," said he (Epistle 57, printed 55, To Cornelius), "do we teach or provoke them to shed their blood in the confession of the name, if we deny to them, when about to go to war, the blood of Christ? 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 in the Church the cup of the Lord?"

II. Yet at length the edicts themselves of the Augusti were brought to Carthage to the proconsul Aspasius Paternus, whereby it was commanded (in the Proconsular Acts of the martyrdom of Cyprian; concerning Paternus see Lupus, Epistle of Severus, § 3, p. 8), "That those who did not practise the Roman religion ought to acknowledge the Roman ceremonies." Nor is there any doubt that it was prescribed to Paternus that he should assail first the bishops and presbyters and the whole clergy, and forthwith banish those of them whom he found resisting. For afterwards also, when it came to slaughter and blood, it appears that the bishops and their college were first destined to death (Cyprian, Epistle 80, printed 82). Therefore at Carthage Cyprian went down into the arena before the others, being about to be an example to many as to how they might triumph over the enemy. Assuredly Nemesianus and his fellow-confessors pay him this praise in the epistle whereby they reply to his most sweet letter (Epistle 77, printed 78, among the Cyprianic ones): "You yourself also know, dearest one," say they, "that it was our desirable prayer that we might see you, our teacher and lover, arrive at the crown of a great confession. For as a good and true teacher, what we your disciples following you ought to say before the governor, you first pronounced in the records of the proconsul; and sounding the trumpet, you roused the soldiers of God equipped with heavenly arms to the battle of the engagement, and fighting in the first line you slew the devil with the spiritual sword; you also ranged the bands of the brethren on this side and on that with your words, so that snares were spread on every side for the enemy, and the sinews of the carcass itself of the public enemy were cut and trodden underfoot." In what month Cyprian was led into custody, we have not received from our ancestors. Yet that on the third day before the Kalends of September (August 30) he was brought forth, and stood in the council-chamber before the proconsul, the Proconsular Acts testify. And this man indeed, after he had Cyprian in his sight: "I have inquired

therefore," says he, "concerning your name: what do you answer to me?" Now to him Cyprian, whom continual labours and long discipline had equipped for that battle, answered: "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." And when the proconsul had asked him whether he persevered in the same will, he subjoined: "A good will, which knows God, cannot be changed." And therefore Paternus, who knew the constancy of the man, dismissing windings, says: "Will you be able therefore, according to the command of Valerian and Gallienus, to set out as an exile to the city of Curubis?" To whom Cyprian says: "I set out." There the proconsul, having premised that he had commands not only concerning bishops, but concerning presbyters also, says: "I wish therefore to know from you who are the presbyters who abide in this city." To which Cyprian: "By your laws you have well and usefully decreed that there should not be informers. And therefore they cannot be uncovered and informed against by me. But in their own cities they will be found." Nevertheless the proconsul pressed earnestly, saying: "I today make inquiry in this place." Yet Cyprian on the contrary says: "Since discipline forbids that anyone should offer himself of his own accord, and this displeases your censure also, neither can they themselves offer themselves, but when inquired after by you they will be found." In these words Paternus acquiesced, and said that he would find the presbyters. Yet he added that some other things also had been commanded him by the Augusti: "They have commanded also," says he, "that in no places shall assemblies be held, nor shall men enter the cemeteries. If anyone therefore does not observe this so wholesome command, he shall be punished with death." And the reply of Cyprian was: "Do what has been commanded you." And this was the end of his confession; for thenceforth the proconsul commanded him to be deported into exile.

III. Cyprian arrived at Curubis, a town situated on the promontory of Mercury, after the Ides of September (September 13), and had among his household companions a voluntary exile, the deacon Pontius (Pontius, in the Life of Cyprian, no. 12), who afterwards wrote his Life, after he had in vain desired to be the companion of his death. On the first night which was spent at Curubis by Cyprian, a vision was presented to him while sleeping, whereby a sure hope of martyrdom was given to him. Nor did he conceal the matter from his companions, nay, as Pontius witnesses, he accurately set forth all things in these words (ibid.): "There appeared to me," says he, "when not yet lulled to sleep by the quietness of slumber, a young man enormous beyond measure; who as he led me as though to the praetorium, I seemed to myself to be brought near to the tribunal of the proconsul then sitting. As soon as he looked back upon me, he straightway began to note down upon a tablet a sentence which I did not know, for he had inquired nothing of me by the accustomed interrogation. However, the young man who stood behind his back very curiously read whatsoever had been noted down, and because he could not utter it thence in words, he showed by an expressive gesture what was contained in the writing of that tablet. For with his hand spread out and flattened

after the manner of a broadsword (spatha), imitating the stroke of the accustomed capital punishment, he expressed what he wished to be understood as clearly as plain speech. I understood that there would be a sentence of passion. I began forthwith to ask and beg that a delay of even one day might be granted to me, until I should arrange my affairs in legitimate order; and when I had frequently repeated my entreaties, he had begun again to note down I know not what upon the tablet. Nevertheless I perceived from the serenity of his countenance that the mind of the judge was moved as though by a just petition. Moreover that young man also, who a little while before had betrayed the token of my passion by gesture rather than by speech, hastened by a secret nod repeatedly to signify with his fingers twisted one behind another that the delay which was asked for until the morrow had been granted. I, although the sentence had not been read, even though I rejoiced with a very glad heart for the joy of the delay received, yet trembled so with fear of the uncertain interpretation, that the remnants of dread still beat with utter terror against my exulting heart." Now the event showed that that day which was granted to him for setting his affairs in order was a year, at the expiration whereof Cyprian consummated his martyrdom on the same day, which was the eighteenth day before the Kalends of October (September 14). Moreover the affairs which he desired previously to set in order pertained to the solace of the needy, and the care of the confessors, and the sum of the Church: which the same man settled to the greatest good of all, partly through epistles, partly by the labour of those who frequently went to him.

IV. Now while Cyprian was in exile at Curubis, not at Carthage only, but in other cities everywhere, bishops, presbyters, and deacons were dragged to the tribunals, whom the judges, as soon as they had professed that they were Christians, condemned to the mines—which at that time were quarries of marble, such as used to be dug out chiefly in Numidia, whence there are still so many Numidian columns in the City, which the stranger admires (see J. Castalio, in Gruter's Lampas, tome 4, p. 5). And there is extant, to testify to that harshness, the letter of Cyprian written to his fellow-bishops Nemesianus, Felix, Lucius, another Felix, Litteus, Polianus, Victor, Jader, and Dativus, likewise to his fellow-presbyters and "to the deacons and the rest set in the mine": whose hardships also he so describes as to endeavour to lighten them by the comparison of their approaching happiness. "O feet happily bound," says he (Epistle 76, printed 77), "which are loosed not by the smith, but by the Lord! O feet happily bound, which are directed in the saving journey to paradise! O feet tied for the present in the world, that they may be always free with the Lord! O feet lingering in the meantime in fetters and cross-bars, yet about to run quickly by a glorious journey to Christ! Let envious or malignant cruelty hold you here as much as it wills in its bonds and chains; quickly from the earth and from those punishments shall you come to the kingdoms of the heavens. In the mines the body is not cherished with a bed and mattresses, but it is cherished with the refreshment and solace of Christ. On the ground lie the limbs weary with labours, yet it is not a punishment to lie with Christ. Without baths the limbs are squalid, unsightly with filth and dirt, yet that is spiritually washed within which without is carnally defiled. Bread is scanty there, yet not by bread alone

lives man, but by the word of God (Matt. 4:4). Clothing is wanting to the shivering, yet he who puts on Christ is both abundantly clothed and adorned. The hair of the half-shorn head bristles, yet since Christ is the head of the man (1 Cor. 11:3), whatsoever that head is, it must needs be comely which is distinguished on account of the name of the Lord." Moreover, suspecting that they grieved and were distressed because in that prison-house they could not perform sacred rites, he wiped away that trouble and mourning also: "Nor in that matter either, most beloved brethren," says he, "can any loss either of religion or of faith be felt, that there now the faculty is not given to the priests of God of offering and celebrating the divine sacrifices. Nay, you celebrate and offer a sacrifice to God both precious and glorious alike, and one that will profit you very much unto the repayment of heavenly rewards," and what follows. Furthermore, those unconquered confessors say that they abide at the Mine of Sigus (Epistle 79, printed 80, among the Cyprianic ones), that is, near Sigus, a town of Numidia between Macomadia and Cirta; and assuredly those bishops themselves were all Numidians, and two years before had been present at the Council of Carthage: Nemesianus of Tubunae, Felix of Bagai, Lucius of Theveste, Felix of Bamaccora, Litteus of Gemellae, Polianus of Milev, Victor of Octava, Jader of Midili, and Dativus of Badiae, all of whom you may recognize in the commentary which we have prefixed to the Annals.

V. Hitherto the heathen fury had broken forth against the bishops and the clergy. Yet shortly it easily overflowed upon the people also. For because, as Aspasius the proconsul had proclaimed at Carthage, the Augusti by their sanction forbade that assemblies should be held, or that anyone should enter the cemeteries, it was necessary that many should be accused on that score, and after discharging an illustrious confession be led into custody. Whereunto pertain the things which Bishop Cyprian writes to the confessors at the Mine of Sigus: "Finally," says he (Epistle 76, printed 77; see the Bollandists, tome 3 of September, p. 483), "a manifold portion of the people, following your example, has confessed alike with you, and alike has been crowned, knit to you by the bond of the strongest charity, and separated from their presidents neither by prison nor by the mines. In whose number virgins also are not wanting, to whom the hundredfold has been added to the sixtyfold fruit, and whom a twofold glory has carried forward to the heavenly crown. In boys also a virtue greater than their age has transcended their years by the praise of confession, so that every sex and age adorns the blessed flock of your martyrdom." These things Cyprian at Curubis had written to the confessors, which were of the greatest solace to them. For the rest, he had given not a letter only, but relief also by bringing aid, which they assuredly most lovingly profess in the epistle sent to Cyprian (Epistle 77, printed 78, among the Cyprianic ones) that they received: "Those condemned with us therefore," say they, "give the greatest thanks to you before God, most beloved Cyprian, because by your letter you have refreshed failing breasts, have cured limbs wounded with clubs, have loosed feet bound with fetters, have levelled the hair of the half-shorn head, have enlightened the darkness of the prison, have brought down the mountains of the mine to a plain, have even set fragrant

odours to our nostrils, and have shut out the foul smell of smoke. Moreover both your ministry has accomplished, and that of our most beloved Quirinus has followed up, that the things which you sent to be distributed by the subdeacon Herennianus and the acolytes Lucianus and Maximus and Amantius should supply whatsoever things had been lacking for the necessities of our bodies." Who that Quirinus was, who joined his zeal with Cyprian that more bountiful help might be given to the confessors, is less ascertained: unless he is to be held to be the man to whom Cyprian had dedicated the books of Testimonies against the Jews, whom I should believe to have been a sufficiently wealthy Carthaginian citizen and an old friend of Cyprian. This also is obscure, what end those confessors had. That the greater part died in the prison-house seems to me probable. For when Cyprian had secretly sent money thither again, three bishops only replied—Felix, Jader, and Polianus (Epistle 79, printed 80, among the Cyprianic ones)—making no mention of their companions, because perhaps they had previously written to him concerning their death. For the rest, there is extant also the letter of Bishop Lucius to Cyprian giving thanks both in his own name and in that of the brethren (Epistle 78, printed 79, among the Cyprianic ones), because together with Quirinus he had transmitted some gift to them. Wherefore one may also suspect that the confessors, having increased in number, were afterwards divided into several prison-houses, and that therefore in their letters the names of the other bishops are wanting, because they were no longer together. Yet whatsoever end at length was put to the life of so great confessors, already from the times of Ado the Roman Church honours their memory on the fourth day before the Ides of September (September 10), and testifies that they consummated the contest of a glorious confession. To these very times I think must be referred the deacon Timothy, who in Mauretania, having long been shut up in prison, and then burned with fire, accomplished his martyrdom. With many praises now not the Latins only, but the Greeks also extol him in their calendars on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January (December 19).

VI. For the rest, in so great a tumult of Africa Cyprian at Curubis so kept his post that in mind, thought, services, and labour he seemed to be present wheresoever calamity pressed the Christians, and the hatreds of their adversaries brought them into peril. And we have indeed very few epistles of his from this time, yet it must be confessed that very many were written by him throughout the whole of Africa, since it is established that a letter was sent by the same man into Italy also (in the Acts of the Martyrs, Oxford edition, p. 53) to Augustinus and Felicitas, who at that time died at Capua. The same man is thought to have sent forth a little work also To the Martyrs, different from that which we recounted above entitled On the Exhortation to Martyrdom. For Pontius, who makes mention of it, shows that he indicates another when he adds (in the Life of Cyprian): "Who finally animated with the incentive of the heavenly trumpet so many confessors marked with the second inscription of branded foreheads, and reserved alive as an example of martyrdom?" Certainly in the epistles of Cyprian which are extant, the branded (stigmatici) are not recounted: which mark perhaps was burned upon the confessors later, after

their labour had been interrupted and they were commanded to return each to his own home.

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR 258.

CYPRIAN BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

I. The consuls were M. Aurelius Memmius Tuscus and Pomponius Bassus: at which time Valerian, having traversed Illyricum, had arrived at Byzantium, while at Rome Cornelius Saecularis was discharging the prefecture of the City. Meanwhile Cyprian, still in exile at that time at Curubis, eagerly awaited the wished-for day of his martyrdom, and at the same time, so far as was lawful, took care of the Church and of all the needy and unfortunate. Indeed, while the affairs of the Christians seemed to be in a milder state, Galerius Maximus was given as successor to the proconsul Aspasius Paternus. When this man came to Carthage, he recalled Cyprian from Curubis, and commanded him to retire to his gardens very near the city, which he had indeed sold when he became a Christian, in order to distribute the money raised therefrom to the needy, yet afterwards, left to him thus by will, I suppose, by the man who had bought them, had already received back. There, as though in free custody, he remained in such a manner that he was informed daily concerning the state of his Church, and had men of his household ready for service to set out at his nod whithersoever he wished. And therefore, since he desired above all to know what was being done at Rome, and what were the fortunes of that Church, he easily found men to sail forthwith to Rome and shortly bring back sure tidings. Which things the same man immediately afterwards—since already in Africa also the clerics above all were set, as he himself says, under the stroke of the contest—wrote thus to Successus bishop of Abbir Germaniciana (Epistle 82): "Now know that those have come whom I had sent to the City for this purpose, that in whatsoever manner a rescript had been issued concerning us, they might bring through to us the truth ascertained by themselves. For many various and uncertain things are tossed about in rumours; but the things which are in truth are thus: That Valerian has written back to the Senate that bishops and presbyters and deacons shall forthwith be punished with death; that senators, moreover, and men of egregious rank and Roman knights, having lost their dignity, shall also be despoiled of their goods, and if after their possessions have been taken away they persevere in being Christians, shall be punished with death also; that matrons, after their goods have been taken away, shall be banished into exile; and that whosoever of Caesar's household (Caesariani) either had confessed previously or shall confess now, shall have their property confiscated, and being bound and enrolled shall be sent to Caesar's estates." And these things indeed pertained above all to the City, wherein assuredly before the others Xystus had been slaughtered: "Moreover know," says he, "that Xystus was punished with death in the cemetery on the eighth day before the Ides of August (August 6), and with him four deacons. Moreover the prefects in the City press on daily in this persecution also, so that if any are presented to them, they are punished with death, and their goods are claimed by the treasury." Yet Valerian had already given like commands to the governors of the provinces, concerning which he had written at the same time to the Senate, which at that time either were being brought through to Carthage, or had already been brought through: "The Emperor Valerian," says he, "subjoined also

to his oration a copy of the letter which he wrote concerning us to the governors of the provinces; which letter we daily hope to come, standing according to the firmness of faith for the endurance of passion, and expecting from the help and indulgence of the Lord the crown of eternal life."

II. These things Cyprian had written out of his gardens to Successus, that he might transmit them to the rest of his colleagues and to all the Churches, when the proconsul Galerius betook himself to Utica, being about to make there a beginning of slaughter and capital punishment against the Christians. When Cyprian learned this—who held this in his prayers, that in the midst of his own Church, and before those whom he himself had instructed for martyrdom, he should first pour forth his life—bearing it very ill that it should be snatched away from him to leave that last example to his Church, he formed the design of withdrawing so long as the proconsul was absent from Carthage; and concerning this very design, sending his last letter to his Church out of the hiding-place which he had sought, he rendered an account thus (Epistle 81, printed 83): "When it had been brought through to us, dearest brethren," says he, "that court officers (commentarienses) had been sent to conduct me to Utica, and by the counsel of those dearest to me I had been persuaded to withdraw in the meantime from our gardens, since a just cause intervened I consented, for the reason that it is fitting for a bishop to confess the Lord there in that city wherein he presides over the Church of the Lord, and for the whole people to be made illustrious by the confession of their president present with them. For whatsoever at that moment of confession the confessor-bishop speaks, under the inspiration of God he speaks with the mouth of all. Otherwise the honour of our so glorious Church will be mutilated if I, a bishop set over another Church, having received sentence upon my confession at Utica, shall set out thence a martyr to the Lord: seeing that both for myself and for you I entreat with continual prayers, and wish with all my vows, and ought to confess among you, and suffer there, and set out thence to the Lord. We await therefore here, set in a hidden retreat, the arrival of the proconsul returning to Carthage, being about to hear from him what the emperors have commanded upon the name of Christian laymen and bishops, and about to say what at the hour the Lord wills to be said." Thus far Cyprian, who also did not cease for the last time to exhort his own people that, mindful of the things which they had often heard from him, they should keep quietness and tranquillity, and beware lest they create peril for anyone, and lest anyone offer himself of his own accord at the tribunal of the heathens.

III. Now at Utica the proconsul, when Cyprian was not found, did not suffer his axes to be idle for long. There were at Utica in chains Christians three hundred in number, many from that same place or from the neighbouring cities, many also Carthaginians; for Prudentius calls them disciples of Cyprian (Peristephanon, Hymn 13, v. 88). That they were of both sexes and of every age, we read in an ancient sermon which long bore the name of Augustine before it. Furthermore, the same author describes the kind of death also: "Not the old man," says he (Sermon 317, in the Appendix of the Works of Augustine), "broken by years now declining,

with withering throat, withdrew his trembling neck; not the old woman, worn out by sex and age, fled the right hand of the bloody executioner; not the sweetness of this life recalled the youths from the crown. The bloody executioner did not shrink from the limbs of dying, palpitating little ones; but if perhaps any of the infants gaping after their mothers' breasts were able to escape the sword of the persecutor, crushed by the fall of the corpses they died amidst their mothers' sweet embraces." Yet Prudentius says that he received by report (ibid., v. 76) that those martyrs, when with an altar set up on the one side, and a smoking lime-pit on the other, they were commanded either to sacrifice to the gods or to cast themselves into the quicklime, three hundred together cheerfully leaped forth at a swift run, and being all consumed by the lime, were thenceforth called the "White Mass" (Massa candida); and Ado also received this, and transferred it into his Martyrology (on the eighth day before the Kalends of September, August 25). For the rest, Augustine was ignorant of this end of theirs, and in the sermon which he delivered (Sermon 306, chapter 2, in the same Collection, vol. IV of Augustine, p. 263), On the Birthday of the Martyrs of the White Mass, brought forward this cause of a name of that sort: "It was called a Mass," says he, "from the multitude of their number, and White from the brightness of their cause." Now it seems to me probable that the report which had come to the ears of Prudentius arose thence, because the corpses of the martyrs had been cast into that lime-pit that they might be consumed more quickly. Yet their memory long remained, among the Carthaginians above all, which, as appears from the calendar of that Church, they celebrated after the Ides of August; and it remains in the Roman Church, which now for a long time honours them on the ninth day before the Kalends of September (August 24), and formerly commemorated the same on the fifteenth day before the Kalends (August 18).

IV. At length the proconsul left Utica polluted with so many slaughters, and for the sake of his health betook himself to a suburban estate of Carthage, which place they called Sextum. And no slower did Cyprian return out of his hiding-place into his gardens: "Meanwhile there assembled," says Pontius (in the Life of Cyprian, no. 14), "many of egregious and most illustrious rank and blood, and noble also by the nobility of the world, who on account of his old friendship repeatedly advised retirement; and lest bare advice should be too little, offered places also into which he might retire. Yet he, with his mind lifted up in suspense to heaven, had already neglected the world, nor did he consent to their flattering persuasions." Amidst these things, while he now thought of nothing else than the wished-for end of life, and rejoiced that the time of being unbound was at hand, that now free and blessed he might arrive at the heavenly fatherland: "Suddenly," as we read in his Acts, "on the Ides of September (September 13), when Tuscus and Bassus were consuls, there came to him two chief officers (principes), one a groom (strator) of the office of the proconsul Galerius Maximus, and the other an equerry (equistrator) from the guards of the same office: who also lifted him into a carriage, and set him between them, and brought him to Sexti." Yet the proconsul did not wish Cyprian to be brought forth before him on that day, but put him off until the morrow, which was the anniversary of that day whereon at Curubis he had learned in a vision by a sure token concerning his martyrdom. Now he was led away to the house of the groom (strator) in the nearest village, which was called the village of Saturn, between the "Venerean and Salutarian" streets—which I should believe to have been frequented

streets of that district—and was lodged with him. When the Christians learned these things published abroad at Carthage, almost all of them, anxious and solicitous in the peril of their public parent, flocked thither: of whom in that village before the house of the groom there was so great a multitude, that Cyprian commanded the maidens who had come together with the rest, spending the night before the doors, to be guarded by trustworthy men. On the following day, whereon Galerius had commanded his court officers and the remaining throng of attendants and lictors to be present at Sexti, Cyprian was at length presented before him. The proconsul sat before the tribunal in the court called Sauciolum—for thus they called it from the punishment of criminals (see the Second Council of Mâcon, chapter 19); over against him stood Cyprian, upon whom the faces of all were turned. Indeed the proconsul, casting his eyes upon him, says: "Are you Thascius Cyprian?" (in the Proconsular Acts, nos. 3 and 4)—whence namely we know that he was of the Thascian gens. To whom when Cyprian had answered: "I am," he added: "Have you presented yourself as pope to men of a sacrilegious mind?" To these words again Cyprian says: "I have." And the proconsul added: "The most sacred emperors have commanded you to perform the ceremonies." Cyprian: "On the contrary, I do not." And he says: "Take thought for yourself." To whom Cyprian: "Do what has been commanded you; in so just a matter there is no taking of thought." Then the proconsul according to custom called in his assessors to council, and when they had agreed among themselves concerning the condemnation of Cyprian, presently the same man, before he recited the sentence from the tablet, spoke a preface of such a sort that, as abusive as it was, so much did it extol the perpetual labours and constant virtue of the most holy bishop: "Long," says he, "have you lived with a sacrilegious mind, and have gathered together to yourself very many men of a nefarious conspiracy, and have set yourself up as an enemy to the Roman gods and the sacred laws; nor have the pious and most sacred princes Valerian and Gallienus Augusti and Valerian Caesar been able to recall you to the sect of their ceremonies. And therefore, since you have been caught as the author and standard-bearer of most wicked crimes, you shall yourself be a warning to those whom by your wickedness you have gathered together with you: discipline shall be sanctioned by your blood." And having premised these words, he pronounced the decree thus: "It is our pleasure that Thascius Cyprian be punished with the sword." And the last word of Cyprian was: "Thanks be to God."

garment awaited the executioner (spiculator); and when he was present, Cyprian turning to his own people commanded twenty-five gold pieces (aurei) to be given to him; and now he covered his eyes for himself with a headband, which since he himself could not tie fast, the presbyter Julianus and the subdeacon Julianus bound fast for him with their hands, while others in the meantime spread linen cloths and napkins underneath wherewith to catch the blood of the martyr. Thus was that sacred head cut off, which had been the greatest ornament and the highest bulwark of the Carthaginian Church. The lifeless body lay in public even until night, while the heathens themselves flocked together from every side to gaze upon it. Thence having taken it up by night, the Christians with great pomp after the manner of a triumph, with wax tapers and torches shining before, bore it away to the grounds (areae) of the procurator Macrobius Candidianus, which were on the Mappalian Way near the fish-ponds. Next in that place a distinguished church was dedicated to his honour, and another no less famous was founded at the very ground where he had consummated his martyrdom, concerning which we have spoken elsewhere (on the bishops of Carthage). "Thus at length was it accomplished," says Pontius (in the Life of Cyprian, no. 19), "that Cyprian in that very city wherein he had so lived, and wherein he had been the first to do many glorious things, should also be the first to adorn the insignia of the heavenly priesthood with his glorious blood." Concerning his glory among posterity what need is there for me to speak, since it has traversed the whole world, nor can any region be found to which the name of Cyprian has not reached? Nevertheless it is pleasing to write down the last verses from the heptameter poem of Prudentius, which represent to us that glory as very ancient and widely diffused (Hymn XIII, v. 96; see also Buonarroti, Observations on Ancient Glass, p. 142):

Mournful Africa wept that the man passed away, by whose teaching she was made more cultivated, and in whose eloquence, having become learned, she glories for herself; presently weeping she built a tomb, and consecrated his ashes. Cease to weep for so great a good: he holds the kingdoms of heaven, nor does he any the less fly over the earth, nor depart from this world: he discourses, speaks out, treats, teaches, instructs, prophesies. Nor does he rule the peoples of Libya only; he goes forth even to the rising of the sun and even to its setting. He cherishes the Gauls, instructs the Britons, presides over Hesperia (Italy), sows Christ among the furthest Iberians. In fine, he is a teacher on the ground, and the same a martyr also in the realms above: here he instructs men, thence as a patron he gives pious gifts.

Africa preserved the relics of the most holy martyr until the year 806, in which year the envoys of the Emperor Charles Augustus transferred them into the Gauls (Ado, in the Martyrology, on the 14th day of September, etc.).

VI. After the death of Cyprian there was very little quietness at Carthage, since not long afterwards the proconsul Galerius Maximus died (Proconsular Acts of Cyprian, no. 5), and in his stead the procurator of Caesar began to discharge the office (see Passion of Saints Montanus and Lucius, nos. 2 and 6), who, being hostile to the Christians, filled all things again with terror, and being the author of a popular tumult also, sought thence causes for harassing the Christians. And therefore concerning designating a successor to Cyprian no deliberation and no assembly could be held within a year. Which happened at Rome also in like manner: for in the place of Xystus, who had departed as a martyr in this year, Dionysius was not proclaimed until after almost a whole year.