Ecumenical Commemoration
Bishop of Carthage & Martyr
September 15 · d. 258
also known as Cyprian of Carthage, Thascius Cyprian, St. Cyprian
Bishop of Carthage and the first Latin bishop-martyr to leave us his own library. A wealthy pagan orator converted in middle age, Cyprian led the African church through persecution and plague, fought bitterly over how to forgive Christians who had cracked under torture, and met his own death with two words. When the proconsul read his sentence, the bishop answered, "Thanks be to God," and walked out to the sword.
Cyprian was born about the year 200 into a rich pagan family of Carthage, the Roman metropolis of North Africa (today a suburb of Tunis in Tunisia). He made his living as a teacher of rhetoric, a man of property and reputation, and he came to Christ late and all at once. In a letter to his friend Donatus he described the change as a second birth: he had thought the gospel's demands impossible until the water of baptism washed the old self away and a new strength flowed in. He gave much of his fortune to the poor, and within two years the church of Carthage made him its bishop.
He had barely settled into the office when the emperor Decius ordered every citizen to sacrifice to the gods. The persecution fell hard, and many Christians, terrified, burned the incense or bought certificates saying they had. Cyprian went into hiding and governed his flock by a stream of letters, a course his critics never forgave, though he judged it his duty to keep the church's shepherd alive. When the storm passed, the hardest question remained: what to do with the lapsed, the brethren who had failed? Cyprian steered a middle road, neither slamming the door on the fallen nor flinging it open, and wrote his great little book On the Unity of the Church to hold the church together. "He can no longer have God for his Father," he warned, "who has not the Church for his mother."
Then plague came to Carthage, the great epidemic that still bears his name. While pagans threw the dying into the streets, Cyprian organized the Christians to nurse the sick, friend and enemy alike, and wrote On Mortality to steady the frightened. Persecution returned under the emperor Valerian. Cyprian was first exiled, then recalled to Carthage for trial. The proconsul Galerius Maximus pronounced the sentence: death by the sword. "Thanks be to God," said the bishop. On the fourteenth of September, 258, he was led out, knelt, bound his own eyes, and was beheaded among his weeping people.
How we know: Cyprian is one of the most thoroughly documented Christians of the third century, because three different kinds of evidence converge. First, his own writings survive in quantity: some eighty letters and a dozen treatises, including On the Unity of the Church and On the Lapsed, which let us hear him think through the crises as they broke. Second, his deacon Pontius wrote a Life of Cyprian shortly after the martyrdom, the first formal Christian biography composed after the Gospels.
Third, and most remarkably, the Acta Proconsularia, the official court record of his trial, preserves the exchange between the bishop and the governor almost word for word. Few ancient saints can be checked against a government transcript. Cyprian can, which is why his death is among the most securely attested martyrdoms of the ancient world.
Cyprian is commemorated on September 15 in this calendar; the Roman calendar joins him with Pope Cornelius on September 16, and he was in fact beheaded on September 14, 258. He is honored as a model of the pastor who does not abandon his people in spirit even when he must hide his body, and as the theologian who taught the Western church to think about the unity of the visible Church.
His warning that no one can claim God as Father who refuses the Church as mother has echoed through every later argument over schism. The "Plague of Cyprian," during which he turned his people into nurses for a city that hated them, is remembered as one of the early church's great works of mercy, and a reason the faith spread when the old gods offered nothing in the face of death.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church (De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate)(Latin, c. 251)
His most influential treatise, the source of his famous teaching on the Church as mother.
Public domain: CCEL, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 5
The Epistles of Cyprian(Latin, c. 250-258)
Eighty surviving letters, the running record of a bishop governing through persecution.
Public domain: CCEL, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 5
The Life and Passion of Cyprian, with the Acta Proconsularia(Latin, c. 259)
The earliest life and the verbatim trial record, bound together.
Public domain: CCEL, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 5
Cyprian the Bishop(English, 2002)
A modern reconstruction of Cyprian and the third-century African church.
Further reading. Cyprian's On the Unity of the Church, On the Lapsed, and his letters are gathered in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume five, alongside Pontius's Life and the Acta Proconsularia. For a modern account, J. Patout Burns, Cyprian the Bishop (Routledge, 2002), reconstructs the African church in his time.
Online resources. The Ante-Nicene Fathers volume containing Cyprian is free at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Almighty God, you gave your servant Cyprian boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
British (Received Pronunciation): Cornelius /kɔːrˈniːliəs/; Pontius /ˈpɒnʃəs/; Acta Proconsularia /ˈæktə ˌproʊkɒnsjʊˈlɛəriə/; Proconsularia /ˌproʊkɒnsjʊˈlɛəriə/
Readings for a Martyr
Jeremiah 15:15–21Psalm 34Revelation 7:9–17Luke 12:4–12