Acts of St Cyprian

tr. Owen, 1927

cyprian

I.

DURING the consulship of the Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, Valerian being consul for the fourth and Gallienus for the third time, on August 30 at Carthage in his private room Paternus the proconsul said to Cyprian the bishop: ‘The most sacred Emperors Valerian and Gallienus have thought fit to send me a letter, in which they have commanded that those who do not observe the Roman religion must recognize the Roman rites. I have therefore made inquiries concerning yourself. What answer have you to give me?’

Cyprian the bishop said: ‘I am a Christian and a bishop. I know no other God but the One True God, who “made heaven¹ and earth, the sea, and all that in them is”. This God we Christians serve, to Him we pray day and night for ourselves, and for all men,² and for the safety of the Emperors themselves.’

The proconsul Paternus said: ‘Is your will constant in this?’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘A good will, which knows God, cannot be altered.’

The proconsul Paternus said: ‘Can you then in accordance with the order of Valerian and Gallienus go into exile to the city of Curubis?’³

Cyprian the bishop said: ‘I will go.’

The proconsul Paternus said: ‘They have thought fit to write to me not about bishops only, but also about priests. I would know therefore from you who the priests are, who reside in this city.’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘It is an excellent and beneficial provision of your laws that informers⁴ are forbidden. They cannot therefore be revealed and reported by me. They will be found in their own cities.’

The proconsul Paternus said: ‘I will seek them out here to-day.’

Cyprian the bishop said: ‘Since our discipline forbids⁵ any one to offer himself unsought, and this is also at variance with your principles, they cannot offer themselves any more than I can report them; but if sought out by you they will be found.’

The proconsul Paternus said: ‘They shall be found by me.’ And added: ‘The emperors have also given instructions that in no place shall meetings be held, nor shall any enter the cemeteries.⁶ If therefore any fail to observe these beneficial instructions, he shall suffer death.’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘Do as you are instructed.’

II.

Then the proconsul Paternus ordered the blessed Cyprian to be banished.⁷ And as he stayed long time in exile, the proconsul Aspasius Paternus was succeeded in the proconsulship by Galerius Maximus, who ordered the holy bishop Cyprian to be recalled from banishment and brought before him.

When Cyprian, the holy martyr chosen by God had returned from the city Curubis, which had been assigned as his place of banishment by command of Aspasius then proconsul, by divine command⁸ he remained in his own gardens, whence he daily expected to be summoned, as had been shown him.⁹ While he still lingered in that place, suddenly on September 13 in the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus there came to him two high officials, one an equerry¹⁰ of the staff of the proconsul Galerius Maximus, and the other a member of the same staff, an equerry of the bodyguard. These lifted him into a carriage, placed him between them, and conveyed him to the house of Sextus, whither the proconsul Galerius Maximus had retired to recover his health.

And so the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul ordered Cyprian to be remanded till the morrow. For the time being blessed Cyprian withdrew under guard¹¹ to the house of a high official, equerry on the same staff of the illustrious Galerius Maximus the proconsul, and remained with him at his house in the street which is called Saturn’s between the temple of Venus and the temple of Public Welfare.¹² There the whole congregation of the brethren gathered: when this came to holy Cyprian’s knowledge he gave orders that charge should be kept of the young women, for all had remained in the street before the door of the official’s house.

III.

On the morrow, being September 14, a great crowd gathered in the morning to the house of Sextus in accordance with the command of Galerius Maximus the proconsul. And so the same Galerius Maximus the proconsul ordered that Cyprian the bishop should be brought before him on the morrow where he sat in the Hall Sauciolum.¹³ When he had been brought before him, Galerius Maximus the proconsul said to Cyprian the bishop: ‘Are you Thascius Cyprianus?’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘I am.’

Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: ‘Have you taken on yourself to be Pope¹⁴ of persons holding sacrilegious opinions?’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘Yes.’

Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: ‘The most sacred Emperors have commanded you to perform the rite.’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘I refuse.’

Galerius Maximus the proconsul said: ‘Consider your own interest.’

Cyprian the bishop answered: ‘Do as you are bid. In so clear a case there is no need for consideration.’

IV.

Galerius Maximus having conferred with the council gave sentence hardly and reluctantly in these terms: ‘You have long lived in the holding of sacrilegious opinions, and have joined with yourself very many members of an abominable conspiracy, and have set yourself up as an enemy of the gods of Rome and religious ordinances, nor have the pious and most sacred Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, the Augusti, and Valerian, the most noble Caesar,¹⁵ been able to recall you to the observance of their rites. And therefore since you have been convicted as the contriver and standard-bearer in most atrocious crimes, you shall be an example to those whom by your wickedness you have joined with you: discipline shall be vindicated in your blood.’¹⁶ With these words he read from his tablets the sentence: ‘It is our pleasure that Thascius Cyprianus should be executed by the sword.’

Cyprian the bishop said: ‘Thanks be to God!’

V.

After this sentence the crowd of brethren cried: ‘Let us also be beheaded with him.’ Hence arose an uproar among the brethren, and a great crowd accompanied him. So the same Cyprian was led forth on to the land of Sextus, and there he divested himself of his mantle,¹⁷ and kneeled upon the ground, and bowed in prayer to the Lord. And when he had divested himself of his dalmatic¹⁸ and handed it to the deacons, he stood clad in his linen garment, and prepared to await the executioner.¹⁹ When the executioner arrived he charged his friends that they should give to the same executioner twenty-five golden pieces.²⁰ Napkins and handkerchiefs were strewn before him²¹ by the brethren. Thereafter blessed Cyprian bound his eyes with his own hand, but, as he could not fasten the ends of the handkerchief for himself, the priest Julian and Julian the sub-deacon²² fastened them for him.

So the blessed Cyprian suffered, and his body was laid out hard by to content the curiosity of the heathen. Thence it was removed by night, and, accompanied by tapers and torches,²³ was conducted with prayers in great triumph to the burial-ground of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator,²⁴ which lies on the Mappalian way near the fishponds. A few days later Galerius Maximus the proconsul died.

VI.

The most blessed martyr Cyprian suffered on the 14th day of September under the Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belong honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Notes

made heaven, &c.: Exod. xx. 11; Acts iv. 24, xiv. 15.
for all men, &c.: cf. 1 Tim. ii. 1 foil.
Curubis: a town on the east coast of Tunis, about 50 miles south-east of Carthage.
Delatores, informers, were encouraged by Augustus, and still more by Tiberius, till they became a public danger. They were banished by Trajan (a.d. 98-117).
our discipline forbids: Christians were forbidden to court persecution: cf. Mart. S. Polycarp, iv. and Matt. x. 23, John vii. 1 &c. This sentence is quoted by S. Aug. c. Gaud. i. 31.40.
The cemeteries, which the Christians had in very early times acquired for themselves that they might not be buried with the heathen, were often used for worship, and especially for the celebration of the Eucharist at the graves of the martyrs.
ordered . . . to be banished. S. Augustine, Serm. 309, repeats this and many other statements from these Acta. This and the four following Sermons were delivered ‘on the birthday of Cyprian the Martyr’.
divine command: a quotation from the official records: it would not offend a Christian, remembering 1 Pet. ii 13-14, ‘Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors.’
as had been shown him: v. Introd. to these Acts, p. 93, for the vision to which this refers.
equerry: ‘strator,’ properly a groom who ‘sternit’, saddles, the horse and helps his master to mount, but generally used of an official, who had as little connexion with his original duties as our ‘equerry’. That it was an honourable office is shown by the use of it alone as a title of honour. He was frequently a ‘decurio’, or commander of a division of cavalry. He often had charge of prisoners, as appears from a law of Constantine quoted in the Oxford edition of Cyprian. Cf. marshal, which originally meant a ‘farrier’.
under guard: ‘ductus,’ technically used of a person led to prison.
temple of Public Welfare: ‘Salutaria’, the temple of Salus, the goddess who presided over the welfare of Rome.
Sauciolum: an obscure word. It was apparently used of the chamber in which prisoners were put to death (v. note in Oxford ed. of Cyprian). There are various readings, Sauciolo, Secutiolo, Saloutio.
Pope: Lat. papa, meaning father from Gk. πάπας. Originally used of all bishops, it became restricted to the Bishop of Rome in the West and of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople in the East; it was further restricted to the Bishop of Rome alone by the 9th century, perhaps earlier. In the East it is applied regularly to priests. Cf. p. 87, l. 4, where ‘father’ is in the Latin ‘papa’.
Caesar. The reigning Emperor, or Emperors, bore the title of Augustus; the title Caesar was often bestowed on the heir to the throne, or on others associated, but in an inferior position, with the Emperor.
You have long lived . . . your blood: Pontius, one of S. Cyprian’s deacons, who wrote his life, regards all these words of the proconsul as prophetic (see Life, ch. xvii); ‘standard-bearer,’ who taught men to bear Christ’s sign; ‘enemy of the Gods,’ who gave their idols to destruction; ‘an example,’ for he was the first of many witnesses; ‘discipline,’ not Roman, but Christian, vindicated and established in the blood of the martyrs.
mantle: ‘lacerna byrro,’ (or ‘birro’). The ‘byrrus’ was a woollen cloak used for bad weather, ‘lacerna’ being a general name for such a garment. It was often costly, and seems to have been specially worn by bishops. S. Augustine, Serm. 356, says, ‘Don’t offer me a costly byrrus; it may suit a bishop, but not a poor man, a poor man’s son, like Augustine’: cf. Palladius, Hist. Laus., ch. lxiii.
The dalmatic was a long-sleeved, usually white, tunic with a longitudinal stripe (‘clavus’) running downward from either side of the neck. It was in S. Cyprian’s time part of the dress of a Roman layman, of a stately and luxurious character, worn by persons in high position. About fifty years later it became the peculiar dress of the deacon.
executioner. ‘Spiculatores’ (‘speculatores’) under the Empire formed a special corps and served as a bodyguard to the Emperor. They sometimes acted as executioners; cf. Mark vi. 27, ‘Immediately the king sent an executioner (marg. ‘one of his guard’) and commanded his head to be brought.’
golden pieces: ‘aureos.’ The ‘aureus’ was equal to 25 denarii, 100 sesterces, value roughly £1. So S. Maximilian (Acta Maximiliani, ch. iii) instructs his father to give his new uniform to the executioner.
were strewn before him: to be preserved as relics. I have taken the translation from Mason.
The subdiaconate is the lowest of the major orders in the Western Church. There are recorded to have been among the Roman clergy just before Cyprian’s death 46 priests, seven deacons, and seven subdeacons, and this is the first mention of subdeacons. Cyprian speaks of them in his letters.
torches: ‘scolacibus,’ torches made of rope.
Procurator was the general name for the civil servants of the Emperor, from the highest to the lowest.