CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE

CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE, Bishop, St. (?–258). A rhetorician converted from paganism in the 240s, Cyprian was elected Bishop of Carthage in North Africa in 249 and presided over the African Church until his death by martyrdom. His writings deal chiefly with the Church, sacraments (q.v.), and hierarchy; and appear to have been translated early into Greek and to have exercised no little influence on Orthodox ecclesiology (q.v.).

Two issues in particular drew Cyprian’s attention, the confession of penitents who had fallen into apostasy (q.v.) during the persecution of the Emperor Decius (250–51), and the recognition of the sacraments (q.v.) of schismatic or heretical Christian communities. His replies have the virtue of clear thinking and a rigorously consistent and rhetorically effective presentation. In response to the first issue, Cyprian maintained that it was wholly the province of the Church’s bishops to pronounce the forgiveness of sin and to assign penances. This was over and against the claims being advanced by those who had suffered during the persecutions (the “confessors”) who argued that they alone had the moral right to pronounce on this issue. Regarding the second issue, he held that any who had left or were born outside the visible communion of the Church catholic, that is, belonged to communities not part of the united episcopate, were not to be reckoned as within the Church in any sense: “outside the Church there is no salvation.” The sacraments of dissidents therefore had no authenticity whatsoever.

Cyprian found an ally for this opinion in Firmilian of Cappadocia and an adversary in Bishop Stephen of Rome. The latter appears to have been the first to have appealed to his own authority (q.v.) as the unique successor of the apostle Peter. Cyprian, to the contrary, held that all bishops share equally in the “chair of Peter.” The controversy between the two thus appears as the first instance of that tension in the ecclesiology (q.v.) of the Church between a “papal” and an “episcopal and conciliar” vision that finds its ultimate expression in the division between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (qq.v.).