Concilium Iconiense contra Cataphrygas (notitia ex Baronio et Pagio)

Council of Iconium against the Cataphrygians

Held in the year 258, under Pope Stephen I.

The Council of Iconium was held in the year 258, or more truly 256, at Iconium in Phrygia, on the occasion of the Cataphrygian heretics, so that they might inquire what was to be decided concerning the validity of the baptism of these and of all other heretics. Bishops came to this synod from Cappadocia, Cilicia, Galatia and the other neighbouring Eastern regions; by all of them it was laid down and decreed that nothing of what had been done by heretics was to be accepted by the Catholic Church: that ordinations, baptism, the laying on of hands, or any other sacred rite whatever administered by heretics was invalid. Stephen, the Roman pontiff, excommunicates the Eastern bishops who laid this down and deprives them of the communion of the apostolic see; and he condemns the synod itself as erratic, as confirming an erroneous dogma contrary to the tradition of the apostles. The Easterners did send their legates to the Pontiff, to render an account in the pontiff's presence of the things done in the synod; but when they came to Rome they were neither received nor heard by the holy pontiff Stephen. For this reason Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote to Cyprian this following letter, which recounts the acts of this council and complains strongly about the legates not being heard. Baronius, year 258, 14, 15 and 16.

It is certain, says Pagi at the year of Christ 255, nos. 15 and 16, that the Council of Iconium, in which the rebaptism of heretics was decreed, was held before the pontificate of Stephen. For Firmilian expressly testifies to this in his letter to Cyprian, where he speaks thus of the synod of Iconium: All of which we confirmed long ago when we had assembled at Iconium, which is a place in Phrygia, those from Galatia and Cilicia and the other neighbouring regions coming together into one. Here the pronoun we is to be understood not of the person of Firmilian himself but rather of his predecessors, since Firmilian affirms that this synod was assembled long ago, and at the end of the same letter most plainly indicates the antiquity of this synod, as Valesius observed in his Notes on Eusebius, at book 7, chapter 7. For when Pope Stephen, writing to Cyprian, had set the ancient custom of the Church in receiving heretics against the asserters of the new dogma, Firmilian says that this argument may perhaps have force against the Africans, and shows in the same place how the Africans could refute it. He demonstrates that it has no force against the Easterners, among whom heretics had always been rebaptized, ever since the synod of Iconium, which had been convened on account of the Montanists. To these Valesius adds Dionysius of Alexandria, in his letter to Philemon, a presbyter of the city of Rome, which he wrote at the beginning of the pontificate of Pope Xystus, where he says: This too I have learned, that this custom was not now introduced for the first time by the Africans alone, but that long before, in the times of earlier bishops, the same was also sanctioned in the most populous churches, and in the councils of the brethren at Iconium and Synnada, and among very many others. Hence Valesius believes that the synod of Iconium was assembled towards the end of the time of Alexander Severus, when Firmilian had recently been promoted to the priesthood of the church of Caesarea, as Eusebius teaches in book 6, and therefore before the pontificate of Pope Cornelius. Thus far Pagi. Hardouin, in the Index of Councils, volume 1, affirms that the councils of Iconium and Synnada were held about the year 255. On these see also Augustine, book 3 against Cresconius, chapter 1, 3.