Letters 43.1–50.1

Cyprian to the whole people, greeting. Although, dearest brothers, Virtius, a most faithful and upright presbyter, and likewise Rogatianus and Numidicus, presbyters and confessors, illustrious in the glory of the divine favour, and also the deacons, good men devoted to the church's administration in every service, give you the full diligence of their presence together with the other ministers, and do not cease to strengthen each one with continual exhortations and also to guide and reform the minds of the lapsed with wholesome counsels, yet I, as far as I can, admonish you, and, as I can, visit you by my letters. By letters, I say, dearest brothers. For the malice and treachery of certain presbyters has brought it about that I have not been able to come to you before Easter Day; since, mindful of their conspiracy and keeping those old poisons against my episcopate, or rather against your vote and God's judgement, they are renewing their old assault on us and again reviving their sacrilegious machinations with their usual plots. And indeed, by God's providence, without our wishing or desiring it, indeed while we were pardoning and keeping silent, they have paid the penalty they deserved: not cast out by us, they have cast themselves out; they have passed sentence on themselves according to their own conscience; according to your divine votes the conspirators and criminals have driven themselves from the church of their own accord.

Now it has become plain where the faction of Felicissimus came from, on what roots and by what strength it stood. These men formerly gave encouragement and incitement to certain confessors not to agree with their bishop, nor to keep church discipline with faith and quiet according to the Lord's precepts, nor to keep the glory of their confession by an uncorrupted and unstained way of life. And as if it had been too little to have corrupted the minds of certain confessors and to have wished to arm a portion of the broken brotherhood against the priesthood of God, they have now turned to the ruin of the lapsed with their poisoned deceit, so as to call away from the healing of their wound those who are sick and wounded, and, through the calamity of their fall, less fit and less firm to take stronger counsels; and, breaking off the prayers and supplications by which the Lord must be appeased with long and continual satisfaction, to invite them to a deadly rashness by the lie of a deceptive peace.

But I beg you, brothers, be watchful against the snares of the devil, and, anxious for your salvation, keep guard more diligently against the deadly deceit. This is another persecution and another temptation; and these five presbyters are nothing other than those five leading men who were lately joined to the magistrates under the edict, to overthrow our faith and to turn the frail hearts of the brothers to deadly snares by betraying the truth. The same scheme, the same overthrow is now brought in again, to the ruin of salvation, by five presbyters joined to Felicissimus: that God is not to be entreated, nor the one who has denied Christ to beg the same Christ whom he had denied; that after the guilt of the crime penance too is to be taken away, and satisfaction is not to be made to the Lord through the bishops and priests of the Lord; but that, the Lord's priests being abandoned, a new tradition of a sacrilegious institution should arise against the gospel's discipline; and that, whereas it was once agreed both by us and by the confessors and the clergy of the City, and likewise by all the bishops placed either in our province or across the sea, that nothing should be innovated regarding the case of the lapsed unless we all met together and, having compared counsels, fixed a judgement tempered alike with discipline and mercy, rebellion should be raised against this counsel of ours, and all priestly authority and power be destroyed by factious conspiracies.

What punishment I now suffer, dearest brothers, that I cannot come to you myself at present, cannot approach each one myself, cannot exhort you myself according to the teaching of the Lord and his gospel! It was not enough, an exile already of two years, and the mournful separation from your faces and eyes, the continual grief and groaning that tortures me, alone without you, with constant lamentation, the tears flowing day and night, because it has not yet been granted to the priest whom you made with such love and ardour to greet you and to cling to your embraces. To our wasting spirit a greater grief has been added here, that in so great anxiety and need I cannot hasten to you myself, while, because of the threats and plots of the faithless, we take care lest at our arrival a greater tumult arise there, and lest the bishop, who ought to provide for peace and tranquillity in all things, should seem himself to have given occasion for sedition and to have inflamed the persecution anew. From here, however, most beloved brothers, from here I both admonish and counsel you not to believe ruinous voices rashly, not to lend your consent easily to deceitful words, not to take darkness for light, night for day, hunger for food, thirst for drink, poison for remedy, death for salvation. Let neither their age nor their authority deceive you, who, answering to the old wickedness of the two presbyters, as those tried to corrupt and violate the chaste Susanna, so these too try to corrupt the chastity of the church and violate the gospel truth with adulterous doctrines.

God cries out and says: “Do not listen to the words of the false prophets, for the visions of their heart deceive them. They speak, but not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who cast away the word of the Lord: Peace will be yours.” Those now offer peace who themselves do not have peace; those who had withdrawn from the church promise to bring back and recall the lapsed into the church. God is one and Christ is one, and there is one church and one chair founded upon Peter by the Lord's voice. Another altar cannot be set up, nor a new priesthood be made, besides the one altar and the one priesthood. Whoever gathers elsewhere scatters. Adulterous, impious, sacrilegious is whatever is instituted by human madness so as to violate the divine arrangement. Withdraw far from the contagion of such men, and avoid their words by fleeing them like a cancer and a plague, as the Lord forewarns and says: “They are blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.” They obstruct our prayers, which you pour out to God with us day and night so as to appease him with just satisfaction. They obstruct our tears, with which you wash away the guilt of the sin committed. They obstruct the peace which you truly and faithfully ask of the Lord's mercy; they do not know that it is written: “And that prophet or dreamer of dreams, who has spoken so as to make you stray from the Lord your God …” Let no one, brothers, make you stray from the ways of the Lord. Let no one snatch you, Christians, from the gospel of Christ; let no one take the sons of the church out of the church. Let those perish alone who have willed to perish; let those alone remain outside the church who have withdrawn from the church; let those alone not be with the bishops who have rebelled against the bishops; let those alone undergo the penalties of their conspiracy who formerly by your votes, and now by God's judgements, have deserved to undergo the sentence for their conspiracy and malice.

The Lord admonishes us in his gospel, saying: “You reject the commandment of God so as to establish your own tradition.” Let those who reject the commandment of God and try to establish their own tradition be rejected by you strongly and firmly. Let one fall be enough for the lapsed. Let no one throw down headlong by his trickery those who wish to rise. Let no one lay lower and press down those who lie fallen, for whom we pray that they may be raised up by God's hand and arm. Let no one turn away from all hope of salvation those who are half alive and pray to recover their former health. Let no one put out every light of the saving road for those who stagger in the darkness of their fall. The apostle instructs us, saying: “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and his teaching, puffed up with stupidity, withdraw from such a man.” And again he says: “Let no one deceive you with empty words; for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Do not, then, be partakers with them.” There is no reason why you should begin to be partakers of their depravity, deceived by empty words. Withdraw from such men, I beg you, and agree with our counsels, who pour out continual prayers to the Lord for you daily, who desire you to be recalled to the church through the Lord's clemency, who pray God for the fullest peace, first for the mother, and then for her sons. Join your prayers and supplications too with our prayers and supplications; unite your tears with our weeping. Avoid the wolves that separate the sheep from the shepherd; avoid the poisoned tongue of the devil, who, from the beginning of the world always deceitful and lying, lies in order to deceive, flatters in order to harm, promises good in order to give evil, promises life in order to destroy. His words shine clear now too, and his poisons are manifest: he promises peace so that peace cannot be reached; he promises salvation so that the one who has sinned may not come to salvation; he pledges the church, when what he is doing is that whoever believes him may perish from the church altogether.

Now, most beloved brothers, it is time that you who stand persevere bravely and keep with lasting firmness the glorious steadfastness you held in the persecution; and that you who have lapsed through the adversary's trickery take faithful counsel for your hope and your peace in this second temptation, and, so that the Lord may pardon you, do not withdraw from the Lord's priests, since it is written: “And any man who acts in pride, so as not to listen to the priest or the judge, whoever he may be in those days, that man shall die.” This is the last and final temptation of this persecution, and it too, under the Lord's protection, will soon pass, so that I may be restored to you after Easter Day with my colleagues; in whose presence, according to your judgement too and the common counsel of us all, as was once agreed, we shall be able to arrange and refine what must be done. But if anyone, refusing to do penance and make satisfaction to God, goes over to the side of Felicissimus and his satellites and joins himself to the heretical faction, let him know that afterwards he cannot return to the church and be in communion with the bishops and the people of Christ. I wish you, dearest brothers, good health always, and that you persist with us in continual prayers to entreat the Lord's mercy.

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. There came to us, dearest brother, sent by Novatian, Maximus a presbyter, Augendus a deacon, and a certain Machaeus and Longinus. But when we learned from the letter they brought with them, and from their own words and assertion, that Novatian had been made bishop, disturbed by the wickedness of an ordination unlawful and made against the catholic church, we resolved that they must at once be kept from our communion. And having for the present refuted and beaten back what they tried obstinately and stubbornly to assert, I and a great many colleagues who had gathered with me nonetheless awaited the arrival of our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, whom we had lately sent as envoys to you and to our fellow bishops who had been present at your ordination, so that, when they arrived and reported the truth of what had happened, the wickedness of the opposing party might be broken with greater authority and by clear proof through them. But our colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus arrived, who themselves also, to inform us from there, brought forward, in keeping with their gravity and faith, plain evidence and testimonies, so that there was no further need to hear those who had come sent by Novatian.

When, in the assembly, they burst out with spiteful abuse and turbulent shouts, demanding that the charges which they said they were bringing and could prove be examined publicly by us and the people, we said it did not befit our gravity to allow the honour of our colleague, already chosen and ordained and approved by the praiseworthy judgement of many, to be tossed about any further by the slanderous voice of rivals. And since it would be long to gather in a letter the arguments by which they were refuted and silenced and exposed as having made a heresy by their unlawful attempts, you will hear each point most fully from our fellow presbyter Primitivus when he comes to you. And so that their raging audacity should never cease, here too they are trying to pull the members of Christ into the parts of a schism, and to cut and tear the body of the catholic church, running about from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, seeking companions for their obstinacy and their error of division. To them we have given our answer once for all, and we do not cease to charge them to lay aside their ruinous dissension and contention, and to know that it is impiety to desert their mother, and to acknowledge and understand that, once a bishop has been made and approved by the testimony and judgement of his colleagues and the people, another can in no way be appointed. Accordingly, if they confess that they have taken counsel for themselves peacefully and faithfully, if they claim to be champions of the gospel and of Christ, let them first return to the church. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. As befitted servants of God, and especially just and peaceable priests, dearest brother, we recently sent our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, so that not only by the persuasion of our letter but by their presence and the counsel of all of you they might strive and labour, as far as they could, to bring the members of the divided body together into the unity of the catholic church and to join them with the bond of Christian love. But since the obstinate and inflexible stubbornness of the other party has not only refused the bosom and embrace of the root and mother, but even, as the discord grows and breaks out worse, has appointed a bishop for itself, and, against the sacrament of the divine arrangement and catholic unity once handed down, has made an adulterous and opposing head outside the church: having received letters both from you and from our colleagues, and our good colleagues, most dear to us, Pompeius and Stephanus having arrived, by whom all these things were firmly asserted and proved to us to our common joy, we have directed our letter to you, as the holiness and truth alike of divine tradition and church institution required. And, making these same things known to each of our colleagues throughout our province, we have directed that brothers with letters be sent back by them too.

Our mind and purpose, indeed, had already then been made known to the brothers and to the whole people here, when, after receiving letters lately from both parties, we read your letter and made the ordination of your episcopate known to the ears of all. Mindful also of our common honour, and keeping regard for priestly gravity and holiness, we rejected the things gathered with bitter accusations in the document sent by the other side, considering and weighing together what ought to be read and heard in so great and religious an assembly of brothers, with the priests of God sitting together and the altar set up. For things ought not to be easily brought forth and incautiously and rashly published which, written in a quarrelsome style, stir up scandal among the hearers and confuse with uncertain opinion brothers placed far away and across the sea. Let those see to it who, serving their own fury or lust and unmindful of the divine law and holiness, are eager meanwhile to bandy about what they cannot prove, and, since they cannot destroy and overthrow innocence, are content to sprinkle stains on it by lying report and false rumour. Certainly, as befits leaders and priests, we must take pains that, when such things are written by some, they are rejected by us. For where will be what we learn and teach, that it is written: “Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceit”? Likewise elsewhere: “Your mouth abounded in malice, and your tongue devised snares. Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you set a stumbling block.” Likewise what the apostle says: “Let no evil word proceed from your mouth, but a good one, for the building up of faith, that it may give grace to the hearers.” Moreover, we would be showing that such things ought to be done if, whenever such things have been written by the slanderous rashness of some, we allowed them to be read among us. And therefore, dearest brother, when writings came to me against you and against the fellow presbyters sitting with you, I ordered to be read to the clergy and people those that sounded with religious simplicity and did not resound with any barking of abuse and insults.

As for our having asked for the letters of our colleagues who were present there at your ordination, we were not forgetting the old customs or seeking anything new. For it would be enough for you to announce by letter that you had been made bishop, were there not on the other side a dissenting faction that, by its accusing and slanderous inventions, was disturbing the minds and confusing the hearts of colleagues and very many brothers alike. To quiet this we thought it necessary that the firm and solid authority of our colleagues writing to us should be secured for you; and they, proclaiming in their letters testimonies worthy of your character, life, and discipline, have removed every scruple of doubt and dissent even from your rivals, who rejoice in either novelty or depravity. And according to our counsel, weighed with wholesome reasoning, the minds of the brothers, tossing in this tide, have sincerely and firmly approved your priesthood. For this above all, brother, we labour and ought to labour: to take care to maintain, as far as we can, the unity handed down by the Lord and through the apostles to us their successors, and, as far as lies in us, to gather into the church the bleating and straying sheep whom the stubborn faction and heretical temptation of some separate from their mother; only those remaining outside who by their obstinacy or madness have refused and would not return to us, and who will themselves give account to the Lord for the division and separation they have made and for the church they have abandoned.

As for what concerns here the case of certain presbyters and of Felicissimus, so that you might know what has been done here, our colleagues have sent you a letter signed with their own hands; from their letter you will learn what they thought and what they pronounced after hearing them. But you will do better, brother, if you also order to be read there to the brothers the copies of the letters which, out of our common love, I recently sent you by our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus to be read, which I had written about the same Felicissimus and the same presbyters to the clergy here, and also to the people; they tell both the order and the account of what was done, so that both here and there the brotherhood may be instructed by us on everything. I have now also sent the same copies by the subdeacon Mettius, sent by me, and the acolyte Nicephorus. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cyprian to Maximus and Nicostratus and the other confessors, greeting. Since you have often learned from my letters, dearly beloved, what honor I have kept in what I say for your confession and what love for the brotherhood joined to us, I beg you to believe and to accept this letter of mine, in which I write to you and counsel you simply and faithfully for the sake of your conduct and your praise. For it weighs on me and saddens me, and the grief of a heart struck almost unbearably and nearly laid low grips me, now that I have learned that there, against the ordering of God, against the law of the gospel, against the unity of the catholic institution, you have consented to the making of another bishop; that is, to what is neither right nor permitted: that another church be set up, that the members of Christ be torn apart, that the one soul and body of the Lord's flock be mangled by a divided rivalry. I beg that at least in you this unlawful rending of our brotherhood may not continue, but that, mindful both of your confession and of the divine tradition, you return to the mother from whom you went out, from whom you came to the glory of confession amid the rejoicing of that same mother.

And do not think that you are defending the gospel of Christ while you separate yourselves from Christ's flock and from his peace and concord, since it better befits glorious and good soldiers to stay within their own camp and, placed inside, to deal with and provide for the things that must be handled in common. For since our unanimity and concord ought in no way to be split, and since we cannot leave the church and go out to you, we ask and entreat you, with what encouragements we can, rather to return to the church your mother and to your brotherhood. I wish you, dearest brothers, good health always.

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. I thought it both dutiful toward you and necessary, dearest brother, to write a short letter to the confessors who are there and who, led astray by the obstinacy and perversity of Novatian and Novatus, have withdrawn from the church, in which, out of our mutual affection, I might appeal to them to return to their mother, that is, the catholic church. I instructed the subdeacon Mettius to read this letter to you first, so that no one might pretend I had written anything other than what my letter contains. I have also instructed that same Mettius, sent by me to you, to act at your discretion; and if you think that letter should be entrusted to the confessors, then he is to deliver it. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by our fellow presbyter Primitivus, in which I learned that you were troubled because, whereas letters had been directed to you from the colony of Hadrumetum in Polycarp's name, after Liberalis and I had come to that place letters began to be directed there to the presbyters and deacons.

We want you to know and to believe for certain that this was done out of no fickleness or contempt. But when several of us colleagues who had come together had decided that, after our fellow bishops Caldonius and Fortunatus had been sent to you as envoys, everything should meanwhile be held in suspense until those same colleagues of ours returned to us, having either brought matters there to peace or found out the truth, the presbyters and deacons residing at Hadrumetum, in the absence of our fellow bishop Polycarp, did not know what we had agreed in common. But when we came there in person and our decision was learned, they too began to observe what the others did, so that in none of the churches here would there be any disagreement.

Yet some people now and then trouble minds and spirits with their talk, reporting certain things otherwise than the truth is. For we, giving an account to each person sailing from here, so that they might sail without any cause of stumbling, know that we urged them to acknowledge and hold to the womb and root of the catholic church. But since our province is widely spread, having Numidia and Mauretania joined to it as well, it was decided, so that a schism made in the City might not confuse the minds of those far away with uncertain opinion, that only when the truth of the matter had been ascertained by us through the bishops, and greater authority obtained for approving your ordination, and so every doubt shaken from each one's heart, should letters be written by absolutely all who are placed here, as they are now being written, so that all our colleagues might firmly approve and hold to you and to your communion, that is, both the unity and the charity of the catholic church. We rejoice that this has come about by God's doing and that our plan has proceeded with foresight.

For so now the truth and likewise the dignity of your episcopate is established in the clearest light, with the plainest and firmest approval, so that from the replies of our colleagues who wrote to us from there, and from the report and testimony of our fellow bishops Pompeius, Stephanus, Caldonius, and Fortunatus, the necessary origin and just grounds of your ordination, and also your glorious innocence, might be known to all. That we, together with our other colleagues too, may administer this steadfastly and firmly, and hold it in the harmonious unanimity of the catholic church, divine protection will bring about, so that the Lord, who deigns to choose and appoint priests for himself in his church, may also guard by his will and help those whom he has chosen and appointed, inspiring them in their governing and supplying them with vigor to curb the defiance of the wicked, and gentleness to foster the penance of the lapsed. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cornelius to his brother Cyprian, greeting. As great as was the anxiety and distress we endured over those confessors who had been ensnared and almost deceived and estranged from the church by the guile and malice of a crafty and practiced man, so great is the joy with which we are filled, and we give thanks to God almighty and to Christ our Lord, now that, having recognized their error and understood the poisonous cunning of the wicked man, like a serpent's, they have come back with a single will to the church from which they had gone out, as they themselves declare from their heart. At first, indeed, our brothers of proven faith, lovers of peace and desirous of unity, reported that their swelling pride was softening; yet the assurance was not strong enough for us easily to believe that they had suddenly changed. But afterward the confessors Urbanus and Sidonius came to our fellow presbyters, affirming that the confessor and presbyter Maximus … also wished to return to the church together with them. But since many things had gone before which had been planned by them, which you too have learned from our fellow bishops and from my letters, so that they should not be trusted rashly, it was decided that what they had sent word of by messengers should be heard from their own mouth and confession. When they came and were asked by the presbyters to account for what they had done, and finally for the fact that letters full of slanders and abuse had been sent frequently in their name through all the churches and had disturbed almost all the churches, they declared that they had been ensnared and had not known what was in those letters, but had only signed them; that, led around by his cunning, they had also committed themselves to schism and had been the authors of heresy, so as to allow hands to be laid on him as if for the episcopate. When these and other things had been reproached to them, they begged that they be blotted out and removed from memory.

When the whole proceeding had been reported to me, I decided to convene the presbytery. Five bishops were also present, who were there that same day too, so that, a plan being settled, what should be observed regarding their persons might be determined by the consent of all. And so that you might learn the sentiment of all and the counsel of each, we decided also to bring our opinions to your knowledge; you will read them attached. When this had been done, Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and a good many brothers who had joined them came into the presbytery, desiring with the most earnest prayers that what had been done before should pass into oblivion and no mention of it be made, just as if nothing had been either done or said, all being forgiven on both sides, and that they might now present to God a clean and pure heart, following the word of the gospel that the pure in heart are blessed, for they shall see God. As followed naturally, this whole proceeding had to be made known to the people, so that they too might see established in the church those whom they had so long seen, and grieved over, wandering and astray. When their wish was known, there was a great gathering of the brotherhood. There was one voice of all giving thanks to God, expressing the joy of their hearts with tears, embracing them as if on that day they had been freed from the punishment of prison. And to set down their own words: “We,” they say, “know that Cornelius was chosen bishop of the most holy catholic church by God almighty and Christ our Lord. We confess our error. We have suffered deception. We were ensnared by treachery and captious talk. For although we seemed to have had a kind of communion with a schismatic and heretical man, our heart was always in the church. For we are not ignorant that there is one God, and one Christ the Lord, whom we confessed, one Holy Spirit, and that there ought to be one bishop in the catholic church.” Who would not be moved by this profession of theirs, that what they had confessed before the power of this world, they should now, standing in the church, confirm? Therefore we ordered the presbyter Maximus to take up his place. To the rest, with the great approval of the people, we remitted everything done before, leaving it to God almighty, in whose power all things are reserved. These things, then, dearest brother, we have sent to you in writing at the same hour and moment, and I have at once dispatched to you from the station the acolyte Nicephorus, who was hurrying down to take ship, so that, with no delay, you might give thanks together with us to God almighty and Christ our Lord, as if present in this clergy and this assembly of the people. We believe, nay rather we now confidently trust, that the others too who are set in this error will soon return to the church, when they see their leaders acting with us. I think you ought, dearest brother, to send this letter also to the other churches, so that all may know that the guile and treachery of this schismatic and heretic are being brought to nothing day by day. Farewell, dearest brother.

Cornelius to his brother Cyprian, greeting. That nothing might be lacking to the coming punishment of this wicked man, though struck down by the powers of God, when Maximus and Longinus and Machaeus had been driven out from there, he has risen up again; and, as I indicated in my earlier letter, which I sent you by the confessor Augendus, I think that Nicostratus and Novatus and Evaristus and Primus and Dionysius have already arrived there. Let watch be kept, then, so that it becomes known to all our fellow bishops and brothers: that Nicostratus, guilty of many crimes, has not only committed frauds and plunder against his patroness according to the flesh, whose accounts he managed, but also, which is reserved for him to everlasting punishment, has carried off no small deposits of the church; and that Evaristus was with the author of the schism, and that Zetus has been appointed bishop in his place, successor over the people over whom he had previously presided. Novatus, for his part, has displayed here the same malice and insatiable greed that he always practiced there among you; so that you may know what kind of leaders and protectors this schismatic and heretic always keeps joined to his side. Farewell, dearest brother.