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 CYPRIAN

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CYPRIAN

was to court death, to cause greater danger to others, and to leave the Church without government; for to elect a new bishop would have been as impossible as it was at Rome. He made over much property to a confessor priest, Rogatian, for the needy. Some of the clergy lapsed, otliers fled; Cyprian suspended their pay, for their ministrations were needed and they were in less danger than the bishop. From his retreat he encouraged the confessors and wrote elo- quent panegyrics on the martyrs. Fifteen soon died in prison and one in the mines. On the arrival of the proconsul in April the severity of the persecution in- creased. St. Mappalicus died gloriously on the 17th. Children were tortured, women dishonoured. Numi- dicus, who had encouraged many, saw his wife burnt alive, and was himself half burnt, then stoned and left for dead; his daughter found him yet living; he recovered and Cyprian made him a priest. Some, after being twice tortured, were dismissed or banished, often beggared.

But there was another side to the picture. At Rome terrified Christians rushed to the temples to sacrifice. At Carthage the majority apostatized. Some would not sacrifice, but purchased libelH, or cer- tificates, that they had done so. Some bought the exemption of their family at the price of their own sin. Of these Ubellatici there were several thousands in Carthage. Of the fallen some did not repent, others joined the heretics, but most of them clamoured for forgiveness and restoration. Some, who had sacri- ficed imder torture, returned to be tortured afresh. Castus and ^milius were burnt for recanting, others were exiled; but such cases were necessarily rare. A few began to perform canonical penance. The first to suffer at Rome had been a young Carthaginian, Celerinus. He recovered, and Cyprian made him a lector. His grandmother and two uncles had been martyrs, but his two sisters apostatized under fear of torture, and in their repentance gave themselves to the service of those in prison. Their brother was very urgent for their restoration. His letter from Rome to Lucian, a confessor at Carthage, is extant, with the reply of the latter. Lucian obtained from a martyr named Paul before his passion a commission to grant peace to any who asked for it, and he distributed these " indulgences " with a vague formula : " Let such a one with his family communicate". Tertullian speaks in 197 of the "custom" for those who were not at peace with the Chiu-ch to beg this peace from the martyrs. Much later, in his Montanist days (c. 220), he urges that the adulterers whom Pope Callistus was ready to forgive after due penance would now get restored by merely imploring the confessors and those in the mines. Correspondingly we find Lucian issu- ing pardons in the name of confessors who were still alive, a manifest abuse. The heroic Mappalicus had only interceded for his own sister and mother. It seemed now as if no penance was to be enforced upon the lapsed, and Cyprian wrote to remonstrate.

Meanwhile official news had arrived fmm Rome of the death of Pope Fabian, together with *n unsigned and ungrammatical letter to the clergy of Carthage from some of the Roman clergy, implying blame to Cyprian for the desertion of his flock, and giving ad- vice as to the treatment of the lapsed. Cyprian ex- plained his conduct (Ep. xx), and sent to Rome copies of thirteen of the letters he had written from his hiding-place to Carthage. The five priests who op- posed him were now admitting at once to commimion all who had recommendations from the confessors, and the confessors themselves issiied a general indulgence, in accordance with which the bishops were to restore to communion all whom they had examined. This was an outrage on discipline, yet Cyprian was ready to give some value to the indulgences thus improperly granted, but all must be done in submission to the bishop. He proposed that Ubellatici should be re-

stored, when in danger of death, by a priest or even by a deacon, but that the rest shotild await the cessation of persecution, when councils could be held at Rome! and at Carthage, and a conunon decision be agreed! j upon. Some regard must be had for the prerogative! J of the confessors, yet the lapsed must surely not be a placed in a better position than those who had stood I fast, and had been tortured, or beggared, or exiled. I The guilty were ttrrifietl by marvels that occurred. I A man was struck ilumi) on the very Capitol where he '] had denied Christ. Another went mad in the public | baths, and gnawed the tongue which had tasted the pagan victun. In Cyprian's own presence an infant who had been taken by its niu-se to partake at the heathen altar, and then to the Holy Sacrifice offered by the bishop, was as though in torture, and vomited the Sacred Species it had received in the holy chalice.- A lapsed woman of advanced age had fallen in a fit, on venturing to communicate unworthily. Another, on opening the receptacle in which, according to cus- tom, she had taken home the Blessed Sacrament for private Communion, was deterred from sacrilegiously touching it by fire which came forth. Yet another found nought within her pyx save cinders. About September, Cyprian received promise of support from the Roman priests in t"'o letters wTitten by the famous Novatian in the name of his colleagues. In the begin- ning of 251 the persecution waned, owing to the suc- cessive appearance of two rival emperors. The con- fessors were released, and a council was convened at Carthage. By the perfidy of some priests Cyprian was unable to leave his retreat till after Easter (23 March). But he wrote a letter to his flock denoun- cing the most infamous of the five priests, Novatus, and his deacon Felicissimus (Ep. xliii). To the bishop's order to delay the reconciliation of the lapsed until the council, Felicissimus had replied by a manifesto, declaring that none should communicate with himself who accepted the large alms distributed by Cyprian's order. The subject of the letter is more fully devel- oped in the treatise "De Ecclesite Catholicae Unitate" which Cyprian wrote about this time (Benson -nTongly thought it was WTitten against Novatian some weeli later).

This Celebrated pamphlet was read by its author to the council which met in April, that he might get the support of the bishops against the schism started by Felicissimus and Novatus, who had a large following. The imity with which St. Cyprian deals is not so much the unity of the whole Church, the necessity of which he rather postulates, as the unity to be kept in each diocese by union with the bishop; the unity of the whole Church is maintained by the close union of the bishops who are "glued to one another", hence who- soever is not with his bishop is cut off from the unity of the Church and cannot be imited to Christ; the type^ of the bishop is St. Peter, the first bishop. Protestant controversialists have attributed to St. Cyprian the absurd argimient that Christ said to Peter what He really meant for all, in order to give a tyjie or pictiu-e: of unity. What St. Cyprian really says is simply this,! that Christ, using the metaphor of an edifice, founds His Church on a single foimdation which shall mani-i fest and ensure its unity. And as Peter is the foimda-i tion, binding the whole Church together, so in eacll diocese is the bishop. With this one argmnent Cy- prian claims to cut at the root of all heresies am schisms. It has been a mistake to find anj- referenc( to Rome in this passage (De Fnit., 4).

Church Unity. — About the time of the opening o the council (2.51), two letters arrived from Rome One of these, announcing the election of a pope, St Cornelius, was read by Cy|)rian to the assembly; thi other contained such violent and improbable accusal tions against the new pope that he thought it better t' pass it over. But two liisliops, Caldoiiius and For tunatus, were disi)atched to Rome for furtlier infoij