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222 First Council.—Cyprian returned to Carthage after Easter (Mar. 23) from his 14 months' absence (biennium), which seems to have been prolonged by a fear of the "faction" (Ep. 43, i.) rekindling persecution (Ep. 55, v.) by some demonstration. The bishops of the province met in April for the first council, held in Carthage, for half a century [  ], but the discussion on the lapsed was postponed by letters from Rome, which Cyprian laid before them, viz. Cornelius's announcement of his election (Ep. 45, ii.) and a temperate protest against it from Novatian (45, iv.) (Maran, p. lx. misinterprets this against the sense of Baluze, whom he edits). The protest was soon followed by a mass of charges, which Cyprian declined to submit to the council. This was excellent policy, but at the same time a curious exercise of personal authority in that earliest type of returning freedom—the church council. At the same time he made them dispatch two of their number, Caldonius and Fortunatus, to Rome, to report. Caldonius was instructed to procure attestations of the regularity of the ordination of Cornelius from bishops who had attended it (Ep. 44 and cf. 45, i.). Meantime, communications with the Roman church were to be addressed only to the clergy and not to Cornelius. (The statement of Lipsius, p. 204, on Ep. 45, v., is too strong.) He was also to lay before the clergy and laity, so as to guard them against clandestine influence, the whole correspondence about Felicissimus (Epp. 41, 43, 45. v.). The council, then reverting to its programme, was obliged to dispatch first the question of Felicissimus, since, if he were justified in his reception of the lapsed, no terms of communion need be discussed; but if the main issue went against him they could not on such ex post facto ground deal with him disciplinarily. His offence consisted not in his theory, which might conceivably be correct, but in his readmitting people whose cases had been by due notice reserved. Cyprian, to his honour and like a good lawyer, was not present during the trial of his opponent, who was condemned. He does not employ the first person in relating it (Ep. 45, v.), as he always does of councils which he attended, and from Ep. 48 we must conclude that he was at Hadrumetum at that very time. The programme of the council was again interrupted still more seriously. Two African bishops fresh from Rome, Stephanus and Pompeius, had brought evidence of the regularity of Cornelius's ordination (Ep. 55, vii.) as conclusive as the commissioners could have obtained, and the council had expressed itself as formally satisfied (Ep. 45, i.) when four new delegates from Rome (, not the confessor; Augendus, etc.) announced the consecration of Novatian to the Roman see. This surprise (for fuller details of which see Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Novatianus and Novatianism) was prepared by the party of severity, who were disappointed by the election of Cornelius, stimulated by Evaristus, whom Cyprian regarded as the author of the movement (Ep. 50), and directed in their action by Novatus, who, possibly without being a mere adventurer, nor on the other hand at all deserving Neander's characteristic exculpations, had no doctrine of his own to maintain, but came to Rome simply to endeavour to promote a supposed independence by frustrating the arrangements made by the bishops as to the reception or exclusion of the lapsed. At Carthage therefore he belonged to the broad party, at Rome to the narrow. It is a mistake to suppose that his change of party was unnoted; cf. Ep. 52, iii. (4), "damnare nunc audet sacrificantium manus," with Ep. 43, iii., "nunc se ad perniciem lapsorum verterunt," i.e. by indulgence. It is also a mistake (though Lipsius falls into it, and it is universal with the earlier writers) and introduces confusion into the history to assume that Novatus made several voyages to and fro. If his arrival be fixed soon after Mar. 5, A.D. 251, it will be found to solve the various problems. Their embassy to Carthage, rejected by the council ("expulsi" Ep. 50, not from Africa, as Pearson), appealed to Cyprian (Ep. 44). They were not prepared to find that he had moved towards leniency as much as Novatian to severity from their late common standpoint; and they are told plainly that their position must now be considered as external to the church. Accepting this, they proceed to construct a schismatic episcopal body with wide alliances. Somewhere close to this point the treatise de Unitate, or the germ of it, was first delivered in the form of a speech, or a read pamphlet, to the council. We give an outline of it later. Messengers to Cornelius (Primitivus, Mettius, Nicephorus, an acolyte) then convey full accounts of the procedure, and inform him of his general recognition as bishop. Simultaneously, 