Appendix quarta: Oxoniensis editionis selectae in Cyprianum notae; J. M. Routh, notae; J. Trombelli, praefatio in Exhortationem ad poenitentiam

Crown, addresses the Christian thus: You have your own registers, your own calendars; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world; indeed you owe the contrary. The account books which contained the expenses incurred in relieving the poor were the census tables of the faithful. The martyrologies were their calendars. At about this time, at the beginning of Decius, Fabian is said to have appointed at Rome seven subdeacons, who were to oversee seven notaries and collect the acts of the martyrs in full. Moreover, that the passions and days of the martyrs were celebrated throughout Africa with an annual commemoration, Cyprian says in Ep. 39. And indeed, concerning the singular diligence of the ancient Eastern Church in this matter, there survives a famous monument, part of which Eusebius preserved, book 9, chapter 15, while the Most Reverend Ussher has recently published it entire; I mean the Letter of the Church of Smyrna written to the Churches of Pontus, on the Martyrdom of Polycarp. There, after they had gone through the Acts of his Martyrdom, the brethren promise, God willing, "to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already contended and for the training and preparation of those who are to come." And they report that his passion fell "on the second day of the month Xanthicus at its beginning, the seventh day before the Kalends of March, on the great Sabbath, at the eighth hour; he was arrested by Herod the irenarch, under the high priest Philip of Tralles, while Statius Quadratus was proconsul." Nothing more precisely attested than these words can be said or thought.

Letter 13.

We fight daily for our life. Rigault says that the author means eternal life, as above, p. 187: It befits the discipline and the life of all of us. But it is more obvious that we are daily exposed to death; whence Tertullian, in the book On the Spectacles, chapter 1, calls the Christians a race ready for death. And if anything ill-omened or fateful happened, "The Christians to the lion at once." The same, Apology, chapter 40.

Faith and birth received. Rigault says: He says faith received and birth received for the Christian faith taken up and Baptism taken up. So too Tertullian spoke of Baptism lost, in the book On Baptism; and in ancient inscriptions concerning the rites of the Great Mother: He received and obtained the taurobolium, and he performed the taurobolium, and somewhere also, He was tauroboliated. And just as they spoke of receiving rites, so also of handing them on. Ancient stones: They handed on the Leontica. They handed on the Coracica. They handed on the Patrica.

Attainment. Baptism. See book 3, To Quirinus, chapters 42 and 97.

Shine as lights. Pamelius notes that the Greek word φαίνεσθε is ambiguous; and moreover that Ambrose too, in his commentary, turned it to the imperative mood, which Cyprian uses here.

So that while they discuss you. Rigault says: While the heathen hold inquiry about you, while they investigate, while they examine, while they speak against you. Peter, Epistle 1, chapter 2 (1 Pet. 2): ἐν ᾧ καταλαλοῦσιν ὑμῶν. The Vulgate version: they disparage. The old glossaries: detrectare, λοιδορεῖν; detrectat, ἀπωθεῖ.

As of evildoers. ὡς κακοποιῶν.

Of the pre-eminent name. Namely, Christian. (Jas. 2:7), καλὸν ὄνομα.

When one is drunk to another. Rigault says: All editions before this, when some other, or, when some one is drunk. Thus far, then, a most faulty reading has corrupted an excellent sense of Cyprian. With how great shame to your name, he says, is sin committed, when someone, drunk and wanton after the waters, lingers? After the waters, that is, after baptism. He who has given his name to Christ, who has been dipped or baptized into the name of Christ, binds himself by this sacrament to be a frugal and temperate man. If, therefore, he afterwards appears drunk or worthless, he casts great disgrace and reproach upon his religion; for since temulentus is said from temetum, and temetum is diluted with water, this man contrary to nature comes forth from the waters drunk, from the laver wanton and base. He has renounced Satan, and returns into Satan's camp. He goes back to the place from which he was made an exile. With Rigault's leave I would say,

that it is not all the old editions but his own emendation that is most faulty, resting on no trust in the copies and on no support of reason. For in this place it is not the newly baptized who are in question, but confessors: those, namely, returning from the Proconsul's tribunal, not from the Church's baptistery. It is indeed customary that when Critics pursue a reading which seems clever to them, they abandon the genuine and obvious one.

From where, having been made an exile, etc. Pamelius says: You see that in express words it tends towards a rebuke of the exiles; and it alludes to that of 1 Pet. 2: For what glory is it if, when you sin and are buffeted, you endure it? inasmuch as they signify that those who had returned from exile without being ordered to were now being put to death, not as Christians, but as guilty men. Rigaltius wrongly turns these words in another direction, as if this were Cyprian's meaning: That confessors driven into exile indeed for the cause of Christ, but having conducted themselves there so wickedly that after their return they are condemned by the Judge, no longer as Christians but as guilty men. The offences which exiles had committed in a foreign Province, could the Proconsul of Africa punish them at Carthage?

Illuminated members. φωτισθέντα. For martyrdom is the Baptism of blood.

We had renounced the world. There is no need to give the same reminder again and again about the solemn formula of renunciation, used in the Church at all times.

Discipline in conduct. Rigaltius says: After these words, in the Reims codex these words are read: And although I have written most fully to our Clergy, both lately when you were still placed in prison and now again too, that if anything should be needed either for your clothing or for your food, it should be supplied: nevertheless I myself also, from the small funds of my own which I was carrying with me, have sent you 250, and another 250 as well I had sent recently. Victor too, made deacon from reader, who is with me, has sent you 425. And I rejoice when I learn that very many of our brethren in their love are vying with one another to come together and to help your needs with their contributions. I wish you, etc. This addition ought to be of all the greater value, the more plainly it offers us an example of Caecilian charity towards the brethren. For in other Epistles indeed we have him liberal from his own resources, but here even from his small funds, which he was carrying with him for his own needs; so that we may now understand that he relieved the needs of the brethren even out of his own necessities. For he was burdening himself, at his own expense, in what he needed. And nothing is heavier than a light purse for the journey. In the codices, however, which it has been my lot to see, these words occur nowhere.

Epistle 14.

We could file. Rigaltius says: The old glossaries: Limat [he files], ῥινίζει, ζητεῖ. Phaedrus: If he had subtly filed away the lie from its roots, he would not have overthrown the house with a deadly crime.

To Tertullus. Praised before, to be praised more often. Since he was a man of most notable fortitude and of outstanding diligence in caring for the affairs of the martyrs, no suspicion could lurk that he had suggested timid counsels to his Bishop. Thus Cyprian seizes every handle to defend his withdrawal.

Let them learn what Ecclesiastical discipline demands according to the teaching of the scriptures. Rigaltius says: He presses home what he had already advised in the preceding Epistle, that those who now glory in the title of confession should nonetheless be humble, modest, quiet; lest by their pride they provoke against themselves the savagery of the heathen, as against rebels and the contumacious, and so bring odium upon the Christian name. It will be worth the trouble to observe here once for all that our Caecilius in these Epistles strives above all for this, that he may make the people quiet and properly Christian. For he knew that very many, made troublesome by a wanton boasting of the Christian name, had so often stirred up even the powers of the world themselves, though very often occupied with other matters, that these had found it necessary to restrain the disturbers of public quiet most cruelly with penalties aggravated beyond measure. This had brought great disgrace upon the Christian faith. He knew this too, that in his Church a good many were too secure in their confidence in the saving washing, unmindful of discipline and of the whole brotherhood,

greedy for gain, eager for ambition, factious, given over to luxury, pleased with themselves in proud behaviour, displeasing to all, and in short Christians in name alone. Cyprian therefore says that these morals are the causes of such great griefs, by which the Church is crushed and ruined. But why do we wonder at this in the Church of now two centuries, when we so often hear or read that Paul reproached his Corinthians with even worse things?

To follies and discords. Rigault says: Cyprian takes precautions for those confessors, just as Septimius did for those blessed ones designated for martyrdom, who, he says, were tempted by the devil in the very prison by worthless splits, by partisan feelings, or by dissensions among themselves. These indeed brought many evils upon the Christian commonwealth. He here calls "follies" what Tertullian calls worthless splits, or worthless schisms.

But to that which our fellow presbyters wrote to me. Rigault says: namely, about the lapsed who are to be received to penance.

Nothing without your counsel and the consent of the people. Rigault says: That is, with the whole Church; just as the Apostles had done at that first Synod which is described in Acts 15:22. Then it pleased the Apostles and the Elders with the whole Church. "It seemed good to the Apostles and the elders with the whole Church." On that passage Chrysostom says excellently: "So as to show that it was not done tyrannically, that these things seemed good to all"; and a little later: "so there was no arrogance in the Church." So the Romans themselves below, Epist. 3: By a comparing of counsels with the bishops, presbyters, deacons and confessors, as well as with the laity who stood firm. We noted above that Cyprian had taken pains to avert ill will; here, however, he says that he decides nothing that concerns the principles of ecclesiastical discipline without consulting the people. For since the outward effect of the power of the keys consisted chiefly in this, that the People held those subject to censure as Heathens and Publicans, it was certainly not to be expected that all would desert friends, relatives and brothers struck by the thunderbolt of excommunication, or would admit again others whom they had cast out, until satisfaction had been given to them concerning their crimes or their penance. Further, it is to be observed here that in the case of the lapsed action was taken not according to the customs received in the Church, but with a leniency unheard of up to that time; and therefore it was all the more to the purpose that an account should be given of the innovated custom.

Letter 15.

An honourable petition. Immediately he calls it the desires of the martyrs. Whatever the martyrs granted in favour of the lapsed was wholly by way of intercession; which was indeed very honourable and not easily to be disregarded; yet it remained a petition throughout, and had force only by the prerogatives of favour. Cyprian treats the matter at length in the book On the Lapsed, p. 92 of this edition, and following. Do the martyrs command something to be done? he says; if the things are just, if lawful, if they are not to be done by the priest of God against the Lord Himself, the consent of the one who obeys is easy and ready, if the moderation of the one who asks has been religious, etc. The intercessions of the Martyrs were thought to avail very much with God, because they were called and believed to be friends of God in a special way. In the Church they had a prerogative, because, if the lapsed had been a scandal to her, the martyrs on the contrary lent out praise and honour to her at interest, and heaped it up. But it seems likely that here the modest and sober little petition which the Martyrs had first sent is in a special way called a petition worthy of them and honourable. It is further to be observed, as we have also noted elsewhere, that the commands of the martyrs who had departed from the living crowned held good in a very different way from those of the ones who, still surviving, were themselves in peril concerning their crown and their peace. The ancient simplicity of the martyrs is depicted in vivid colours by the Church of Lyons and Vienne, in the letter which they wrote concerning the passion of the martyrs under M. Aurelius to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia: "Having borne witness not once nor twice but many times, and having been taken back again from the beasts, and bearing the burns and the weals and the wounds all about them, they neither proclaimed themselves martyrs, nor indeed did they permit us

to address them by this name," etc. Moreover, the excellent martyrs did not enrich the lapsed as if with scattered largesse and gifts thrown out into the midst, nor did they bid them be secure and happy; but by admonitions and the offices of anxious piety they took care to restore them to good fruit: "For they did not take up a boast against the fallen, but in the things in which they themselves abounded, with this they supplied those who were more in want, having a mother's compassion, and shedding many tears for them before the Father," etc. Euseb., bk. 5, ch. 2. Finally Cyprian in this Letter, after making mention of the honourable petition of the Martyrs, passes on to penance performed, then reviews the exomologesis of the gravest and uttermost offence, namely Idolatry. Afterwards he records hands laid on by the bishop and clergy for penance, and finally he reports peace offered to the lapsed and the Eucharist given. In these words, which occur almost the same in the next Letter, a pattern of the whole ancient discipline of the Church is set out. The first step towards pardon and peace was if the guilty man was admitted to Penance; which was not accomplished without the laying on of hands, and exomologesis or confession. The second was completed by the course of the penance imposed, through the various periods of weeping, of hearing, and of standing together. The third was made by a second exomologesis, that is, a solemn and public confession of the sin after the penance had been completed. In the fourth place there followed the laying on of hands by the Bishop and clergy, granted anew as a token of reconciliation. When these had been duly performed, access to the mysteries of the Eucharist was at last thrown open. But the Martyrs were now bringing this about by a wondrous short cut of the ways, so that the lapsed, still almost belching up the deadly foods of idols, with jaws even now exhaling their crime and reeking of the fatal contagion, should forthwith rush upon the body of the Lord. The words are Cyprian's, book On the Lapsed, p. 92. That the suffrages of the martyrs in the case of the lapsed once prevailed in the Church we have shown from Tertullian, p. 93 of this work, whence it is rightly said below: Such things as your predecessors the martyrs granted in time past. But that Paulus, Aurelius and, above the rest, Lucianus were those who had exceeded measure in rashly granting certificates, Cyprian shows, Ep. 27, in Pamelius no. 23.

Of the gravest and uttermost offence. Rigault says: Elsewhere he said: Of eternal sin; he means Idolatry. A huge sin and one above all others. The principal crime of the human race. The supreme guilt of the world. The whole cause of judgement. Tertullian.

To offer for them. This reading is certainly the truer, and one which Ep. 2 supports, where mention is made of a synodical decree that no brother departing [this life] should name a Cleric to a guardianship or trusteeship: and if anyone had done this, the offering would not be made for him. So in the following Letter: It is offered in their name, and, let them be forbidden to offer. On the other hand, to offer peace is not so fittingly said.

Pardon can indeed be granted to the lapsed in this. Rigault says: In this, namely, that they press; that they hasten; that they wish to anticipate the times of penance.

Let the mother first receive. Rigault says: in the following Ep., Our mother the Church. Tertull., in the book To the Martyrs, Lady mother Church. Most prudently Cyprian reserves the desires of the martyrs concerning peace to be granted to the lapsed until that time when mother Church herself shall rejoice in peace. Lest, namely, while the heat of persecution was growing hotter, those fresh from their fall and at once admitted to peace should harm by their example the rest who were standing, who would then contend less steadfastly in the contest, as the sweetness of hoping for themselves too after lapse and ruin flattered them.

Promised abruptly and unworthily even by you. Rigault says: As before martyrs, he puts forward censorious words in such a way that they can be tempered by these following, or done by us.

That our Church should begin to blush even before the Gentiles themselves. Rigault says: So above, of whom the Church does not afterwards blush, namely before the gentiles. Now it came about that she blushed because of the dissolute morals of certain people, or because of discipline not at all kept, faith having been shamefully overthrown at the very outset of the contest.

Accepting persons. Rigault says: Matthew and Mark said, "to look at the face." 22:16, 12:14.