By the early third century of the Common Era, the Roman provinces of North Africa were filled with “cities.” Quite literally hundreds of towns of various sizes and pretensions, but urban centers nonetheless, stretched from the Atlantic coast of the Mauretanias eastward all the way to the olive lands of Tripolitana.1 In addition to these centers, villages, and hamlets, farmsteads and the growing villa-culture spread over the countryside. Transhumant pastoralists worked on and beyond the fringes of the provinces. Fortified farmsteads were established in the pre-desert zones near the limits of Roman control. But when one’s focus is narrowed to the spread of Christianity in the African provinces, this fundamental rural background fades largely from view, as the evidence for the early Christian period is almost exclusively urban. Indeed, it tends to be for this period elsewhere as well: what evidence does survive elsewhere suggests that the spread of Christianity into the countryside was both slow and irregular, albeit with some notable exceptions (e.g., in Phrygia, especially in the Upper Tembris Valley and in Eumeneia and its surrounding district).
Those African cities are often remarkably well-preserved and, by the beginning of the third century, already equipped in large part with their full tally of monumental urban facilities and elegant town houses with brilliant mosaic floors. These urban amenities might include a colonnaded forum bordered by porticoes and shops or furnished with a market pavilion, a basilica for law courts, a curia for the town council, generous baths and palaestra with the occasional plunge swimming-pool. More wealthy cities might have had a library, nymphaea and public fountains, and other luxury facilities for public entertainment (odeon, stadium, theater, circus, amphitheater, hippodrome). Port cities like Carthage could be equipped with harbor installations, warehouses, and arcades. The paved city streets might boast an imposing and commemorative archway. Above all, there were temples, frequently more than one and — especially those fronting on the forum — often raised high on an artificially elevated podium. These temples were often lavishly embellished with variegated marble — unmistakable and dominating from any angle. All around were other signs of religious sentiment: altars and dedications, statues and shrines, inscriptions testifying to promises made and fulfilled. Urban Christians who worked and walked daily among these monuments must have been made acutely aware of the religious traditions and pious practices of their fellow townspeople, practices their Christian faith specifically repudiated. Indeed, many contemporary Christians regarded these rituals not just as idolatrous but as positively diabolical.
The surplus wealth that funded all these urban embellishments came from the flourishing agriculture of the countryside. Cereals and grains came from the rich, broad river valleys of Tunisia and the great plains stretching through Northern Algeria westward. Other produce came from cattle-ranching, orchards, viticulture, and bee-keeping. Garum (fish sauce) was prepared in coastal towns; dates and olive oil came from further inland in the drier regions and above all from Tripolitana to the east; timber and fine woods were extracted from the mountainous regions. The trans-Saharan caravans brought ivory and slaves, as well as exotic animals, for the export market (ostrich, leopard, giraffe, bear, tiger, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, elephant). The short sea-lanes from the African coast to the ports of Italy, especially Ostia, helped supply an insatiable Italian and specifically Roman market. In addition, luxury materials, like colored marbles from the Numidian mines, were in high demand; there was a thriving industry in African red-slip pottery popular throughout the Mediterranean.
All this agricultural industry and urban development had been greatly advanced by a network of roadways and bridges that opened up the countryside. The construction of aqueducts and reservoirs supplied water for the towns, and the skillful management of the intermittent rainfall in marginal regions extended the area for viable agriculture. While many of the engineering projects were carried out by personnel from the resident legion (III Augusta) — based by the third century at Lambaesis in Numidia — the legionary soldiers and their detachments were still required for intermittent guerilla warfare, to protect the developed areas from periodic raids and marauding skirmishes by belligerent border tribes.2 The Fossatum Africae was also in place, a dry moat with occasional crossings, designed to control and funnel the annual migration of the flocks and herds of transhumant pastoralists in these border regions. The southern frontier system also included a series of fortified farms, watchtowers, and fortresses.
The indigenous population — and previous immigrant groups, including Punic and Greek — had by now been supplemented by the steady influx of entrepreneurial Italians, Spaniards (especially in the west), and wealthy Romans investing in lucrative African estates, and the establishment of a series of veteran colonies of discharged soldiers. While other languages were clearly spoken — and persisted — Latin had begun to dominate as the language of administration, education, and high culture.
The initial evidence suggests that there was a Greek-speaking component in the African church of the early third century just as there was in contemporary Rome. In the vision reported by Saturus, Perpetua addresses the Carthaginian bishop Optatus and the presbyter-teacher Aspasius in Greek, and they hear the angels in Paradise intoning the Sanctus in Greek.3 Their contemporary Tertullian went to the trouble of composing a Greek version of several of his works.4 That Greek element is quickly lost from view, nor does any hint of a Punic element appear throughout the century. On present testimony by mid-century, a Latin-speaking church emerged with its own accepted Latin version of the Bible and its liturgy conducted in Latin. While earlier in the century Tertullian was prepared on occasion to criticize the Latin version of the biblical text he had before him, Cyprian simply accepted his scriptural text as it stood. One cannot tell whether the contents of the capsa of the Scillitan martyrs (“books and letters of a just man named Paul”) were in Greek or already in Latin; this will be discussed below.5
Knowledge of the presence of Christianity in North Africa comes fully formed, as it were, not in an account of evangelization but in those Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs (July 17, 180), twelve martyrs (seven men and five women) arraigned in Carthage before the proconsul. The location of the hometown of these martyrs is obscure. It must be technically within the province of Proconsularis, falling within the jurisdiction of the proconsul at the time, but inscriptional evidence from Simitthu (Chemtou) — an epitaph with the ethnic Iscilitana — suggests that the location of Scil(l)i should be, broadly, somewhere towards the upper reaches of the Bagrada (Medjerda) River.6 The implication is clear: there was a well-established spread of Christianity already by 180 C.E., not just within the confines of the conurbation of Carthage and its immediate territory. And it is highly unlikely that, hailing from such a location, the twelve Scillitani should be skilled in Greek as well as in Latin: those scriptures they carried with them had, therefore, probably already been translated into Latin. By what means and on what timetable Christianity had reached the African coastline and then penetrated well inland can only be conjectured. However, it would be reasonable to conjecture that some Christians had reached Africa a good half-century or more before the report of the Scillitan martyrs. A large seaport like Carthage would attract visitors and immigrants from all directions, but this would be particularly true of Rome and Italy, given the short traveling distance and the strong economic ties. The African church, while clearly aware of the Roman church and its policies, was quite independent: it was no mere Roman daughter-church. Yet it had no pretensions to a (legendary) apostolic foundation.
Equally startling is the literary output of Tertullian (fl., 197 C.E.–220s C.E.). Beginning late in the second century, this Carthaginian Christian shows himself fully aware of contemporary ecclesiastical issues and currents, ready to debate the major theological questions of the time, often while attacking perceived heretical teachers (e.g., Marcion, Hermogenes, Valentinian, Praxeas). He was not concerned just with local issues: as the third century began, he represented an ecclesiastical community neither isolated nor unsophisticated. He showed that he and his fellows were open to the international pull of Montanist revivalism, the New Prophecy.
Tertullian was notoriously triumphalist in his claims of the spread of Christianity (e.g., “Such are our numbers, amounting to almost a majority in every city”),7 and he attested to Christians in Numidia and Mauretania as well as in the proconsular towns of Thysdrus and Hadrumetum8 and in Uthina.9 The closest statistics available are for three councils of bishops. Cyprian reported a meeting had convened under Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage (220s or 230s), and later sources specify seventy participants.10 Cyprian also referred to the ninety bishops who met under Cyprian’s predecessor, Donatus, in the earlier 240s11 to condemn their fellow bishop Privatus, along with his episcopal supporters. The minutes of the council meeting held in the autumn of 256 record the opinions of eighty-seven bishops. These were bishops loyal to Cyprian’s stance against recognizing heretical baptism; the correspondence preceding the meeting indicates other dissenters who were prudently absent.12 Each bishop is identified with the name of the city whose Christian community he represented.
While this evidence is striking enough to give a notion of the numbers of those prosperous African small towns and centers that had a Christian conventiculum by mid-century — well in excess of one hundred is a very safe conjecture — that unfortunately tells little of the relative size of such communities despite Tertullian’s stridently iterated assertions. By contrast with, for example, the ecclesiastical organization of the contemporary Egyptian church, most Christian communities in Africa appear, on the evidence, to have been led by a bishop, irrespective of size. The distribution of those communities, however, is relatively clear, thanks to the minutes of the council of 256:13 sparse in the Mauretanias as well as in Tripolitana, but clustered closely in the fertile tracts of Africa Proconsularis and the populous centers of Numidia (where at least twenty-five locations have been identified by modern researchers).
Tertullian and Cyprian certainly demonstrated a high level of literary competence — indeed, brilliance in the case of Tertullian. The delicately mannered and cultured apology of the Octavius of Minucius Felix (c. 230) in all probability reflects the polite literary and educated circles of Cirta in Numidia (though its literary setting is Rome and Ostia). But these three writers seem to have had few Christian peers. Certainly some of Cyprian’s correspondents reveal much lower standards of literary competence.14 It was to be another half-century before the rhetorically trained and articulate Arnobius and Lactantius emerged from the African church in the early fourth century. The grounds are missing for positing too sanguine a picture of the social levels to which Christianity may have reached generally over the century in the region, despite its remarkable geographical spread. The description of Perpetua at the beginning of the century (a well-educated Roman matron of good family)15 seems to carry a studied emphasis on her exceptional status. In mid-century, Cyprian’s personal wealth (suburban estate) and elite social standing (to the end he enjoyed old friends among the high-born local pagan aristocracy)16 appear to be without parallel among his contemporary African Christians: he was, self-consciously, a persona insignis,17 a figure of eminence; ultimately he went to his martyr’s death with the capital punishment appropriate for an honestior, by beheading instead of condemnation to the mines or the beasts. Nevertheless, this was a highly organized church, with a strong metropolitan leadership based in Carthage (though regional councils could also be held), with a structured and salaried clerical hierarchy, and an elaborate system of charitable support.
The nearest snapshot we have of a typical African Christian community — the congregation at the major Numidian town of Cirta — comes right at the beginning of the fourth century embedded in a record of court proceedings.18 The clergy consisted of a bishop and at least two presbyters, two deacons, four subdeacons, seven lectors, and in excess of six gravediggers, as well as elders (seniores): there was a church-house19 which also had a well-equipped dining area. There was also a cemetery (area martyrum) which had a large cottage. The church paraphernalia, in addition to chalices, lamps, lampstands, candelabra, and other gold, silver, and bronze items, also had in store eighty-two women’s tunics, thirty-eight veils, sixteen men’s tunics, thirteen pairs of men’s shoes, and forty-seven pairs of women’s shoes, and nineteen rustic coplae (cloaks?), all presumably donations for charitable distributions. This congregation also possessed as scriptures one unusually large bound book, which might have been a lectionary, as well as thirty other books, two smaller books, and four fascicules.20 The professions of two of the lectors are given: one was a marble cutter; the other was a teacher of Latin letters whose father was a local decurion of indigenous descent.21 One of the gravediggers describes himself as an artisan. In the court proceedings we also hear of a successful fuller (definitely not an approved upper-class profession) named Victor, who could afford a donation of twenty folles. The Carthaginian Lucilla, a wealthy and influential woman of the highest class (clarissima femina), also figured in the narrative through her contribution of no fewer than four hundred folles.22 Throughout, such gifts to the church are assumed to be intended for distribution to the poor, little old widows, or simply to the people — and not to be pocketed by the clergy as bribes.23 This type of ecclesiastical establishment, with this sort of (modest) social mix and these sorts of resources, partly to meet the needs of a significant body of indigent followers, may reasonably be assumed to have been duplicated — scaled proportionate to population — throughout similar urban centers of Africa by the end of the third century.
This first section provides a quick summary but minimal analysis of the known clashes between Roman authorities and the Christian communities in Africa in the first half of the third century.
“Persecution” of Christians by Roman officials through the course of the second century had been sporadic and unsystematic, basically local in range. It is best seen in the context of the occasional harassment of many of the other exotic groups that were regarded as equally deviant (astrologers, soothsayers, and magicians, for instance). However, Christians had been considered troublesome enough to have been brought to the attention not just of Roman provincial governors, or of the Roman urban prefect, but on rare occasions of Roman emperors themselves (Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius). This was common enough that early in the third century the jurist Ulpian was able to demonstrate the punishments deemed appropriate for Christian adherents by drawing up a register of imperial responses to referrals by provincial governors and to complaints or queries by provincial councils.24 By that date, the accumulation of case histories with imperial authority was adequate to merit systematic description. Even so, the intermittent and regional nature of the outbreaks needs to be emphasized. Christians were ipso facto potentially on the wrong side of the law, but some local circumstances were required to realize that potentiality: especially popular agitation arising from religious fervor or from superstitious fear occasioned by earthquake, drought, flood, plague, or famine, or, occasionally, in response to Christian enthusiastic provocation. Pressure from below gave rise to troubles, rather than imperial initiative breaching the limits of the generally prevailing, but nevertheless fragile, Roman tolerance. The official attitude was passive until forced to confront particular cases, and its activation was normally confined to the local and provincial level. As the heroization of the past age of martyrdom gained pace in the post-Constantinian era, the Christian literary sources have a strong tendency to universalize these local outbreaks. No solid grounds can be found, however, for the conclusion that the second-century pattern of local conflict did not continue into the first half of the third century.
Throughout the first half of the third century, this intermittent trouble is casually evidenced: the sources being so fitful, allowance must be made that they provide only a sample of what Christians may have experienced elsewhere. Thanks to Eusebius of Caesarea, a fundamental source, moreover, the record is notoriously biased towards eastern evidence. Additionally, victims belonging to other Christian sects may well have been crowded out of that imperfect record. With martyrdom valued as the supreme sign of the elect, memory of these sectaries was promptly erased in what emerged as the orthodox tradition. The orthodox solemnly and consistently argued, in their attempt to lay claim to the spiritual high ground, that there could be no true martyrdom outside the church. Thus in the latter half of the second century, Montanists, Marcionites, and other non-orthodox groups could lay claim to “innumerable martyrs,”25 but knowledge of individuals comes typically through efforts to discredit their spiritual credentials.26 A century later, the martyrdom of Pionios (250) casually — but significantly — includes (without elaboration) a Marcionite martyr and a Montanist confessor.27 Such sectaries, generally suppressed, have to be added mentally to the register of Christian victims. In all this, the frequent occurrence of confessors (that is, released Christians) as distinguished from perfected martyrs is noteworthy. The discretionary powers of provincial governors, who wielded the authority to order capital punishment, could be crucial to the outcome of a confrontation. A period of imprisonment after an initial hearing (with pressure to recant) appears to have been standard procedure. In the earliest surviving African record of a trial of Christians, “The proconsul Saturninus said: ‘Take a reprieve of thirty days and think it over.’ ”28 This delay would be followed, in a significant number of cases, by eventual release of the Christian as hopelessly recalcitrant — or as a renegade.29 Thus, arrest for Christianity did not inevitably lead to a martyr’s death: adventitious circumstances such as the hostility of a crowd or the strength of the religious sentiments of a governor could be determinant.
Under Septimius Severus, the spotlight fell on Egypt and Africa, but that focus may be due to the vagaries of the surviving documentation.30 When the procurator Hilarianus was acting proconsul in Africa Proconsularis,31 a group of five youthful catechumens and their teacher were condemned to death by fighting the beasts in the amphitheater of Carthage32 at games celebrating the birthday of Geta, the emperor’s younger brother. The condemned were two slaves, Revocatus and Felicity, Saturninus, and Secundulus (who actually died in prison before the public execution of the others),33 along with the twenty-two-year-old Perpetua highlighted in the account as being “of good family, well-educated, and a married Roman matron.”34 Their teacher, Saturus, was not arrested with his catechumens but voluntarily surrendered himself to join them.35 The dream account of Saturus adds four named others, seen to be already in the garden of Paradise, “Jucundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who were burned alive in this same persecution, together with Quintus, who had actually died as a martyr in prison.”36 The visionary also recognized in Paradise “many of their brethren, including martyrs.”37 The extraordinary document of their trial preserves the record of their imprisonment written by Perpetua herself; it includes four of her dreams38 and Saturus’s account of his vision.39 This account offers a remarkable insight into the contemporary mentality of such martyrs: their sense of privileged spiritual access (a prophetic dream, on request, to determine whether they would indeed suffer or be reprieved),40 their sense of spiritual powers (Perpetua’s deceased brother Dinocrates was released from his sufferings by her prayer),41 their sense of spiritual superiority (they act as mediators of the contention between their bishop Optatus and their presbyter Aspasius),42 and their sense of immediate election to Paradise.43 Apart from graphically perceiving the stark realities of their periods of imprisonment (awaiting formal trial before the acting proconsul and, then, after condemnation, awaiting the games at which they would be executed), the reader also notices conflicts within Perpetua’s family: her father attempted to dissuade her (“I grieved for my father’s sake because he alone of all my kindred would not be rejoicing at my suffering”),44 but one brother was also a catechumen (her younger brother had died, it seems, unbaptized),45 and both her mother and her (absent) husband were presumably already Christian. Other-worldly aspirations are highlighted by her preparedness to abandon her infant son at the breast (as well as by Felicity’s abandonment of her newborn child). The crowd in the amphitheater is variously shown to be sympathetic and hostile.46 The grounds for condemnation are importantly and unequivocally reported by Perpetua: “The procurator Hilarianus … said: ‘Have pity on your father’s white hairs, have pity on your infant son. Perform sacrifice (fac sacrum) for the well-being of the emperors.’ And I replied: ‘I will not.’ Hilarianus said: ‘Are you a Christian?’ And I replied: ‘I am a Christian….’ Then Hilarianus pronounced sentence on us all and condemned us to the beasts.”47 The sequence of official thinking is clear: so long as Perpetua was prepared to conform to accepted public Roman ritual ceremonies, she could go free (whatever the beliefs — and indeed practices — she might privately continue to maintain). The exclusivity of Christian worship was the sticking point. That avenue refused, condemnation followed precisely on the grounds of her persistent Christian adherence. Had it emerged during the questioning that she was Jewish, for example, her refusal to sacrifice would not have resulted in condemnation.
Many have attempted to link the apparently unrelated incidents in Egypt reported by Eusebius and those in Africa recounted by Perpetua with a compressed and confused passage in Historia Augusta. It has Septimius, with Caracalla, journeying from Syria through Palestine on their way to Alexandria (in 199) and “on their way he established many privileges for the Palestinians. He forbade under severe penalty that people should become Jews. He also decreed the same concerning Christians.”48 However, if such a linkage is to be made, there are clear chronological difficulties: the purported imperial embargo does not find any resonance elsewhere in the surviving sources. Indeed, Tertullian, in 212, could wax eulogistic on Septimius’s favorable personal relations with Christians (including imperial protection of Christian men and women of senatorial status). Moreover, not all of the known victims fall into the envisaged category (perhaps of converts and their teachers).49 The Historia Augusta passage is best regarded as spurious, an invention reflecting its author’s late fourth-century preoccupations and prejudices, and the temptation to link these incidents should be resisted accordingly. They can be considered as typical of the perils that potentially could befall any openly enthusiastic converts and staunch Christian adherents alike. The charged atmosphere in which Christians found themselves living was guaranteed to generate eager talk about the coming of the Antichrist and perfervid millenarian expectations.50
However, Tertullian’s On the Crown (datable to a time before late 211)51 focuses on a soldier, who may be a Carthaginian, brought to trial,52 imprisoned, and awaiting the largesse of martyrdom.53 He had ostentatiously refused to wear the ceremonial laurel crown, which drew the complaint of pusillanimous Christians for “jeopardizing for them a peace so long and so good.”54 This would indicate that not many incidents like that of Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions in the interim, since c. 203, were known to Tertullian and his audience.
Under early Caracalla, it was no different. Tertullian bore incidental testimony to lethal danger in Numidia and Mauretania,55 as well as continuing stress in Africa Proconsularis itself.56 One martyr, Mavilus of Hadrumetum, was condemned to the beasts.57 Likewise again for Africa, Cyprian in early 251 incidentally mentioned the illustrious martyred forebears of the young military confessor Celerinus: his grandmother, Celerina, and his two uncles (paternal and maternal), Laurentinus and Egnatius, both also soldiers.58 We must assume that their deaths occurred in the reasonably distant past, though within no more than two generations, and presumably in Carthage, because their anniversaries were annually commemorated there. Cyprian, in On the Lapsed (251), could blame the long peace for its lulling effects in stultifying the faith of those who had recently lapsed in the Decian persecution.59 Such scattered incidents were endemic, liable to occur anywhere at any time: though these incidents may have become infrequent, Christians still had to live out their lives against a background of insecurity and some peril.
That pattern of peril was quietly changing. There is much less evidence of outbreaks of popular hostility against Christians in the thirty-five years or so before 250. This may have been the result of Christianity becoming a more familiar part of the kaleidoscopic religious landscape, thereby less secretive and less feared. In parallel, fewer Christians are known to be arraigned for trial. But appearances can be deceptive and perception distorted by the tyranny of the sources: scant western evidence survives for the period between Tertullian and Cyprian, and much of what does exist (e.g., via the papal calendars) is unreliable.60
Origen, writing towards the end of the 240s, confirms the general impression of the peace of this period for Christians, though he anticipates a return of imperial suppression in response to recent turmoil.61 Likewise, writing with hindsight after the devastation of the persecution of Decius, Dionysius of Alexandria also refers to the preceding principate of Philip as having been “more kindly” towards Christians.62 Overall the record of persecution, as it survives, would indicate an increasing acceptance of the Christian presence in the empire as the first half of the third century progressed and a corresponding reduction of the physical molestation of the Christian communities.
A summary account of the course of the persecution will be followed by detailed analysis justifying the construction of that summary. Sources are abundant, comprising principally the correspondence of Cyprian63 and his treatise On the Lapsed, the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria,64 the Passion of Pionios, and the forty-five extant Decian libelli from Egypt.
By autumn 249, Emperor Decius was securely in power after his usurpation. Not very long afterwards, orders went out from Rome to all the provincial governors of the empire that a universal sacrifice was to be offered to the gods of empire. This proclamation might have been scheduled for January 3, 250, at the public civic ceremony of the vota solemnia, the annually celebrated sacrifices for the emperor’s personal welfare.65 Victims are attested before the month of January 250 was over.66 On the face of it, this gesture was decidedly old-fashioned, modeled on a supplicatio: in times of public distress in the distant past, the people of Rome were bidden to come forward as a body to throng all the temples and shrines of the tutelary deities of the state. The scale of the Decian operation, however, was entirely unprecedented: it was to be a religious rally by the inhabitants of the entire empire to win the favor of its protecting gods and their support for the new emperor. His dynasty was to inaugurate Rome’s second millennium (the millennial games and pageants having been celebrated with much pomp and fanfare the previous year, 248). So far as the evidence goes, which gods were to be honored was left unspecified; variants in local civic divinities were allowed, such as the Nemeseion in Smyrna, the Serapaeum in Alexandria, the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva in the more Romanized cities, or indeed some more personal cult. In a revealing vignette of this persecution, the proconsul of Asia vainly urged the Christian Pionios to offer the sacrifice to whatsoever deity he cared to have in mind — to the air, if he liked.67 Some publicly accepted gesture of religious obeisance had to be performed by pouring a libation and tasting sacrificial offerings.68 The emperor cult was involved only insofar as it had always been used, as a means of testing Christian obstinacy or proving apostasy: Pionios was urged to sacrifice at least to the emperor.69 Honor to the gods was the object of the action; it did not necessarily entail abjuration of private beliefs or local cult practices, which were legion throughout the length and breadth of the empire, Christianity included. Decius’s edict, however, provided a foretaste of that autocracy which would mark fourth-century imperial government. Directives were being issued from above that affected the lives of the entire population as the central authorities grappled with the problems of commanding and controlling an unwieldy and extremely diverse empire. The Decian edict is a presage of those centralist pressures for conformity and homogeneity. Christians, certainly, would have experienced it as a dramatic — indeed, drastic — departure from the more tolerant attitude towards their religion that had characterized the previous years; the preceding regimes now appeared benign by contrast, and Philip was credited with Christian sympathies.70 For a significant shift had occurred: henceforth, the religious sentiment of the imperial court — rather than that of the local populace — would determine the well-being or suffering of Christians. Decius’s decree marked a watershed. The sources are repetitious in declaring the suddenness and unexpectedness of the outbreak of persecution for Christians.
Still, an attack on Christianity as such was clearly not the object of the legislation. By this date, however, bishops could be figures of prominence, especially in the major metropolitan cities where they were known to command sizeable congregations. They were promptly put under pressure to lead their followers to the pagan altars. Christians, therefore, quickly became victims by their refusal to comply. Jews appear to have been exempted, as was by then traditional in Roman governance.71 As the year 250 progressed, local officials and governors regularly imposed various pressures to conform, such as tortures, confiscations, exile, and periods of imprisonment with varying degrees of deprivation; the death penalty was rarely used. As before, the patience (or piety) of the governor and the variable mood of the local populace, which he prudently assuaged, could still be determining factors. Though incontestably a period of intense anxiety and extreme apprehension for most confessing Christians, the Decian persecution — the first of the “General Persecutions” — was in fact less lurid than later accounts of martyrdom and even many modern accounts might lead a reader to believe.
One of the remarkable features of the Decian orders was certification — the issuing of certificates (libelli), signed by official witnesses, bearing testimony to the recipients’ having complied with the orders, and no doubt protecting them from further harassment. This process was not unlike the issuing of taxation receipts. Copies of forty-five such certificates have been recovered from Egypt.72
There are no good grounds for believing that only Christian suspects were required to acquire and produce such documents. The implications for the imperial government must have been immense and, in many less urbanized or bureaucratized districts, nearly insurmountable. Still, the process indicates that Decius’s intentions were far from idle: the depth of traditional piety involved in imposing and enforcing the edict ought not to be underestimated. To issue those certificates and to supervise the sacrificial actions, panels of local commissioners were established, varying in size and composition from place to place.73 A fixed date74 was also set locally by which the inhabitants were to have presented themselves; thereafter the commissioners would have had to deal with latecomers, defectors, or defaulters drawn to their attention. The recalcitrant were left to languish in prison, awaiting trial before the higher magistrate to whom their cases were referred. All indications are that after a lapse of twelve months from the date set for the sacrificial rites, the various commissions were dissolved, Christians still imprisoned were released, and exiles were recalled. Refugees began to return, and those who had lain concealed in hiding were free to emerge. By March 251, bishops were planning to hold post-persecution council meetings. By that date all danger had clearly passed, though Decius did not die until May or June of that year.
Decius might have been surprised by his posthumous reputation in the Christian tradition; Lactantius called him an execrable animal.75 Matters of state more pressing than the fate of a relatively few Christian recusants had claimed his attention. He may even have regarded his religious program as generally successful. After all, so many pagans as well as lapsing Christians throughout the empire had honored the empire’s gods, difficult though it may be to understand that the gods were honored by lapsing Christians’ patently false declaration that they had always respected the gods and practiced their cult.
Attention is now directed to a fuller analysis of Decius’s orders, their implementation, and their victims.
The wording in several passages of Cyprian’s letters certainly leaves the impression that all inhabitants, regardless of sex, age, and citizen status, were probably enjoined to perform the sacrificial rites involved. One of his letters reveals that entire households, having lapsed, sought re-admittance to communion “up to twenty and thirty and more at a time who claim to be the relations, in-laws, freedmen, and domestics of the person holding a certificate of forgiveness” (issued by one of the martyrs).76 Freedmen and domestics could well encompass the servile classes. A similar inference could be drawn from a later letter: the case of a Christian who sacrificed in person but as proxy “for his entire family, thereby protecting his wife, his children, and his entire household.”77 Even babies were not exempt.78 This was a religious rally on the grandest of scales.
The Egyptian certificates that have been published were issued between mid-June and mid-July 250: that was a good six months since the promulgation of the edict, at least in some other parts of the empire.79 Might certificates, then, belong to a second and more intensive stage in Decius’s persecution when documentation was required? The evidence for Rome indicates that certification was required there by at least March: Numeria, in bribing her way out of actually sacrificing before Easter (April 7, 250), had thereby committed a sin entailing her exclusion from communion.80 She must have acquired an incriminating certificate,81 an action regarded by many (at least in the west) as tantamount to apostasy. Similarly, by May 250, Cyprian could mention grades of apostasy (i.e., libellatici vs. sacrificati)82 and later explain “those who had stained their hands and lips with sacrilegious contagion or had none the less contaminated their conscience with impious certificates.”83 That he mentioned this casually, not as a recent new wave of perils for Christians, suggests a significant and importunate group of purchasers of certificates in Carthage by May 250. Certification was part of the routine of this persecution in his experience.
It is possible, given the locality of the known Egyptian libelli (Theadelphia, Alexandru Nesus, Philadelphia, Oxyrhynchus, Arsinoe, Narmouthis, Thosbis),84 that it took some time for Decius’s orders to penetrate into these up-river areas and for a local date then to be set for their implementation. Parallel delays in the promulgation of Diocletian’s first edict against Christians are attested: February 23, 303, in Nicomedia; June 5, 303, at a town near Carthage.85 If this was so, Christians in this locality may well have had advance warning of the coming trial from their brethren down on the coast, and may have been able to make themselves scarce. This would reduce considerably the likelihood of finding any apostate Christians among the finds of the Egyptian libelli.
The sources provide a glimpse of the workings of local commissions. The appointed magistrates were flocked by crowds anxious to prove (correctly or not) their religious loyalties;86 at times Christians of prominent station were pushed forward, urged on by pagan inciters to demonstrate their own compliance.87 Smoking altars were set up around the forum to help cope with the numbers, but characteristically, in the larger and Romanized town centers, long and slowly moving processions wound their way up to the altars set before the Capitoline temples.88 When the pilgrim reached an altar, he (or she) placed on it a portion of ritual meat in offering, poured there a little wine in libation, and tasted a morsel of the sacrificial meats provided. Some apostates were so eager to establish their pagan loyalties that they brought their own offerings and victims with them.89 The pilgrim then would present a certificate to the commission; it was often prepared by a notary for the illiterate and the speaker of only a native language. It was read out,90 the petitioner acknowledged it as his or her own,91 and one or more of the commissioners then duly signed it as witnesses in the appropriate place on the document.
The sources also provide evidence of clandestine evasions of the orders. Many Christians did not perform the actual pagan rites enjoined upon them but bribed the official or officials concerned and purchased their certificate. They could thereby secure immunity from the edict’s penalties, and, they thought, retain their Christian faith unimpaired.92 Writing a good generation or so earlier, Tertullian testified that bribing one’s way out of the clutches of a persecutor was common and acceptable practice for Christians, though one which, with his rigorous temperament, he personally disapproved.93
In the minds of the libellatici, or purchasers of certificates, during the Decian persecution, passing money over to a commissioner or to an intending informer in order to secure freedom from threatened molestation (as Tertullian testifies Christians had done in the past) differed in no significant way from passing over money, either in person or through a deputy,94 to a local official in order to secure a certificate and thereby exemption from offering sacrifice. But to the legally minded ecclesiastical authorities, at least in the west (the eastern sources are comparatively meager), the purchase was significant. For Christians the statement in the certificate was tantamount to a formal declaration of apostasy; any Christian who acknowledged a certificate was, technically, guilty of denying the faith. They joined the ranks of the lapsi, the fallen.95
Other Christians took flight in order to escape detection by authorities or delation before a commission. Even bishops fled from distant provinces to be lost in the crowds of Rome;96 and, for example, sixty-five refugees from Carthage were cared for by the two sisters of Celerinus in Rome.97 Christians also hid among the crowds in Carthage; they required special funds for their needs98 and might find shelter in Christian homes, where they were protected, with some irony, by the libellatici.99 Elsewhere, Gregory Thaumaturgus took to the safety of the Pontic hills,100 and many Egyptians fled to “the Arabian mountain” for refuge, but faced other perils.101
When the persecution died down, Cyprian could muster a “copious number of bishops” for his African Council, held in the first half of 251, and these bishops were “whole in soul and body.”102 The charity of hospitable Christians had ensured that even the main figures in the church, the bishops, had managed to escape in safety and to avoid spiritual compromise. Little evidence suggests that any systematic search had been made for them. The authorities appear to have relied on delation as the main weapon for subsequent detection. If inhabitants were poor, insignificant, and unobtrusive, they were unlikely to be the victims of delation. Even if they were delated, their few goods and personal insignificance hardly justified the expenditure of resources in dealing with them. Very many Christians were poor and insignificant, and thus many escaped. These were the stantes, the steadfast; they were the silent, and characteristic, heroes of the persecution of Decius.103
When a recusant was detected by or reported to a commission, when a well-known Christian was arrested by searching soldiers or was hounded by neighbors to sacrifice and publicly refused, when an enthusiastic Christian defiantly flaunted a refusal to comply, or when persons who had initially sacrificed subsequently presented themselves voluntarily in order to repudiate the earlier actions, then the task of the local officials was clear. After verifying the facts, and possibly putting some pressure on the recalcitrant to relent,104 they referred the case to the local governor to deal with as he came on the rounds of his assize conventus. For however tempted they may have been to act beyond their authority, the matter was strictly beyond the legal competence of such minor magistrates; the penalties liable (which the edict may not have specified) could be capital. After an initial ordeal and confession, the Christian could face a period in prison, awaiting trial, that was followed by appearance before the governor’s tribunal. At the trial, the judge might exercise his rightful discretion and dismiss the case,105 or he might sentence the accused to some form of exile and confiscation of property. Because the empire preferred apostates (who honored the gods) to martyrs (who defied its authority), torture and further periods of imprisonment under conditions of varying stringency might also be employed. Under such circumstances, obstinacy might be repaid in the end by death in prison,106 or, in relatively rare cases, by a death sentence, or by eventual dismissal as a hopeless case. Defiant Christians were not automatically punished with death. Christians were not being extirpated, but induced by variable means and at variable levels of intensity to conform, and, even then, some of those apprehended were simply dismissed in despair or contempt.
Cyprian’s writings provide rich details that illuminate these events for Africa: flight, trials, exiles, confiscations, imprisonments, tortures, and a mob lynching.107 All were there, to be sure, with their attendant fears and horrors; but deaths were relatively few, and none can be identified with certainty as the consequence of a legal condemnation. The best commentary is found in Letter 22 in the Cyprian collection, which supplies all of the named victims (seventeen in total) except for the pair Castus and Aemilius, who died undergoing tortures and probably at this period.108 Two of the prisoners are said to have died while being interrogated, and thirteen were starved to death. The writer, a confessor named Lucianus, expected to share the same fate.109 This letter remains a humbling reminder of the haphazard nature of the evidence: had Cyprian not had occasion to include a copy of it with his correspondence, no detailed and personalized knowledge of the harsh realities of the sufferings being endured in Carthage would have been possible.110
To judge from the list of the victims provided, by no means can one say that all Christians “died in prisons dark, by dungeon, fire, and sword.” Yet the memory of the nightmare, if not of the details of this persecution, lived vividly on, and understandably so.
Churches everywhere were left with the devastation of the fallen within their ranks. For Cyprian “the wild tempest had overwhelmed not only the majority of our laity,” but “it had included in its destructive wake even a portion of the clergy.”111 In Smyrna not only had the bishop apostatized112 along with many of the Christian brethren,113 but Pionios was urged to obey and offer sacrifice like everyone else,114 and the proconsul could declare that many others had offered sacrifice and were alive.115 Alexandria in turn saw many defections, especially among the more socially eminent, including those in official employ.116 Smyrna and Alexandria might have been typical of the cities in at least the eastern empire. In Italy and Africa, whole communities were led by their bishops into apostasy,117 and apostate bishops subsequently fought for reinstatement118 or joined schismatic groups.119 Decius’s religious rally had left behind a long-lasting legacy of disorder and disarray within the Christian ranks. Bitter dissension over the proper conditions for readmitting the fallen divided the churches everywhere, and bishops were challenged for spiritual leadership by the surviving (and, by definition, inspirited) confessors.
Dionysius, writing from Alexandria in the early 260s, addressed a festal (presumably Easter) letter to Hermammon and the brethren in Egypt. This was penned during “the peace of Gallienus.”120 It expanded on the congenial (but rhetorically unexceptional) theme that emperors enjoy peace, health, and prosperity (as, currently, did Gallienus) while they engage the favors and prayers of Christians but are beset with wars, plagues, and disasters when they persecute them.121 Dionysius illustrated this interpretation of imperial history not only from the recent reigns of Decius, Valerian, and the Macriani, but also from the reign of Gallus, Decius’s immediate successor (mid-251 to mid-253). Gallus was blessed — tendentiously — with an initial period when his reign progressed well and affairs went as he wished; subsequently he was unwise enough to drive away the “holy men” who were mediating before God for his peace and well-being. Consequently, when he banished them, he also banished their prayers on his behalf.122
After carefully clearing Egyptian Christians of any taint of complicity in the (by then defeated) cause of the Macriani, Dionysius concluded his whole argument that Gallienus had not persecuted like his predecessors and as a result was successfully completing his ninth year as emperor.123
Unfortunately, Dionysius left entirely unspecified the identity of the holy men and what precisely Gallus did to them when he is said to have “hounded them out” and “banished” them. While such vagueness is not untypical of the panegyric mode in which his festal letters were couched, some named identities might have been expected if these heroes were Egyptian. Two candidates from overseas Rome can be supplied.
Cornelius, the Bishop of Rome, was exiled to Centumcellae (Cyprian did not know of his confession until late spring 253), and there he died while apparently still in office, at least before June 25, 253, which was the commencement date of his successor’s pontificate. That successor, Lucius, was also promptly relegated upon his election to office, sharing his punishment with companions.124 Cyprian could write not too long afterwards congratulating them on their release.125 Their recall may possibly lie behind Valerian’s much exaggerated reputation for initially regarding Christians with favor.126 No information survives about the circumstances that gave rise to these relegations, but the periods of exile of these “holy men” would indeed have coincided with the collapse and downfall of Gallus’s principate and would have lent credence to Dionysius’s loaded version of history.
Elsewhere, in a letter written in the summer of the previous year, 252, Cyprian addressed Cornelius (at that time still in Rome) as leading a church he regarded at the time as greatly flourishing — i.e., not threatened with difficulties.127 Yet Cyprian had this to say of himself: “In recent days, also, just as I am writing this letter to you, there has been once again popular outcry in the circus for me to be thrown to the lion: this has been occasioned by the sacrifices that the people have been ordered by a public edict to celebrate.”128 Obviously Cornelius (the addressee) and the Roman church were not affected in the troubles, which were a local outburst, and the edict was presumably proclaimed by the local proconsul. The order might have been for a public expiation against the plague, at a ceremony in the circus. The notable absence of the leader of the Christians, who were popularly blamed for the visitation of the plague through their failure to worship “Roman gods,” enraged the crowd.129
The following year, 253, the Christians of Carthage had anxious premonitions of a threatened persecution, manifested by frequent ominous signs and minatory visions,130 but, so far as we know, these apprehensions were never actualized. The letters in which the warning was given are datable to May 253, at the onset of another summer, bringing with it the threat of further deaths in Carthage by the devastating plague — and the prospect of similar terrifying scenes in the circus of Carthage.131
No other church reported similar troubles. Lactantius notably failed to dilate on any “persecution of Gallus,” though it would have been congenial to his theme.132 There are no indicators of a “persecution of Gallus,” or a continuation of Decius’s edict. Instead, the evidence reflects the intermittent local troubles and isolated incidents to which especially prominent church leaders were constantly liable under the stress of local circumstances, especially at a particular season of social and political instability and insecurity. Because of their unnerving experiences under Decius, however, this was a time of heightened apprehensions for many Christians, and particularly so in Africa.
So far as can be judged, Valerian and Gallienus started off their principate with a tolerant attitude towards Christians. This was probably not a delicately modulated policy but simply the consequence of other and more pressing matters of state commanding their attention.133 That did not mean, however, that Christians were assured of going unmolested. They were still individually liable to hostile attack. For example, a papyrus of February 28, 256,134 reveals orders to arrest from the Egyptian village of Mermertha one “Petosorapis, son of Horus, Christian.” That wording could mean that the man’s Christianity provided the grounds for his arrest. In the course of the following year, as the regime approached the completion of its first quinquennium, that laissez-faire imperial attitude was modified. The date is summer of that year, 257; the orders conveyed to the proconsul in Africa by imperial litterae were implemented on August 30 in Carthage.135 While the precise and immediate circumstances that may have triggered the dispatch of these litterae remain unknown, two precious documents convey more generally the official reasoning that lay behind them.
Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, in the course of defending his actions under persecution against defamation from a brother bishop named Germanus, had occasion to quote the official court records of his trial before Aemilianus (at the time vice-prefect of Egypt) in Alexandria. He was accompanied by a presbyter, three deacons, and a visitor from Rome. Dionysius claimed for Christians the right to worship only the god in whom they believed. Aemilianus exiled the group to Cephro in Libya and forbade them to hold Christian assemblies or to enter the cemeteries.136 The official concerns were two: that worship be given to known gods who preserved the empire; and that public conformity in religion be displayed as part of the process of winning that preservation of the state. The “unnatural” gods and “unnatural” religious assemblies of Christians were, as a corollary, to be forbidden. Dionysius’s attempt to sidestep the imperial demands is telling: Christians were already praying without ceasing for the continued security of the empire, and to the one God that mattered. Thus both sides understood the underlying objective to be maintaining peace with the divine. Both sides also appear to have agreed in closely interpreting the course of contemporary history theologically.
The court records (dated August 30, 257) of Cyprian’s appearance before the proconsul in Carthage are also preserved. The proconsul Paternus demanded that Cyprian participate in the Roman religious rites. Cyprian refused to do so but explained that he did pray to the one, true God for the well-being of the emperors. He was ordered into exile at Curubis. When asked to name his clergy, Cyprian explained that Paternus would easily find them himself: Roman law prohibited informers, and Christian practice forbade voluntary surrender. A general warning not to hold meetings or enter the cemeteries concluded the proceedings.137
The same stress on public conformity in acceptable ritual action can be discerned in the proconsul’s statements. Cyprian’s defensive insistence that Christians pray without ceasing for the well-being of the emperors’ persons indicates what he too perceived to be the imperial motivation behind that stress on ritual conformity. Only the higher clerical orders, those involved in performing the “unnatural” Christian rituals, were targeted, and Christians’ ritual assemblies themselves and their sacred grounds were proscribed. The imperial administrators seem increasingly concerned that Christian rituals, far from being merely harmless aberrations, were positively offensive to the “natural gods.”
The implementation of these orders is exemplified in Africa by the exile of Cyprian (to Curubis) and of the bishops Agapius and Secundinus in Numidia.138 Much will have depended on the initiative and zeal of the individual governor, the eminence of those local clerics too much in the public eye to allow them to be overlooked, and popular hostility against Christians in a particular area, which led to the reporting of Christian law-breaking or the whereabouts of Christian clergy. Numidia again reveals the hardships and ordeals that could confront clergy and laity as a result. Cyprian’s correspondence discloses the exile and condemnation to the mines of nine named bishops, along with presbyters and deacons, together with laity (including women and children):139 deaths had already occurred.140 The surviving version of Gallienus’s rescript of toleration also implies that Christian places of worship and cemetery grounds might have been subject to sequestration.141 The imperial attack had shifted from individuals to the corporate life and property of the Christian communities.
Subsequently the Roman senate appears to have written to Valerian, then in the East, requesting clarification and guidance in the implementation of the imperial orders. Cyprian summarized the contents of the imperial reply. Christian bishops, presbyters, and deacons were to be executed immediately. High-ranking laymen were initially to lose their status and property, and to be executed if they persisted. Matrons were to be dispossessed and exiled. Members of the imperial staff were to lose their property and sent to work as prisoners on agricultural estates.142
The fact that the Senate had written to the emperor requesting guidance in dealing with prominently recalcitrant Christians (whether notables of the church or of society and of Caesar’s own household) suggests that conscientious enemies of Christianity could be found within the conservative upper social circles of Rome: Valerian himself need have been no different. The virulence is reflected in orders requiring the recall and retrial of clergy already sentenced in the first stage. Thus the African bishops Agapius and Secundinus were brought back from exile to their execution,143 as was Cyprian himself. Harsher treatment was meted out to already confessed (and presumably sentenced) members of the imperial staff. The emperors and their agents had decided that Christian religious leaders should be extirpated and that Christians in positions of prominence must not appear to repudiate “Roman ceremonies” with impunity. The proconsul in Africa, putting into effect the new ordinances on September 14, 258, in Carthage, may have echoed some of the phrases in the preamble of the imperial rescript itself. He denounced Cyprian for leading a conspiracy in opposition to the “Roman gods and to their sacred rites.” Since the emperors had “been unable to bring him back to the observance of their sacred rituals,” he was ordered to be executed immediately.144
For the Roman governing circles, at least, it still remained incomprehensible that Roman citizens should fail so conspicuously in their civic duty of honoring their Roman gods and observing their sacred rites. The traditional mode of thinking focused on “civic duties” rather than “civil rights.” Cyprian, himself of the local curial aristocracy but now a Christian bishop, highlighted this clash of perceived duties and theological stances. So Cyprian confronted his executioner on September 14, 258, and became the proto-episcopal martyr in Africa (as his biographer, somewhat tendentiously, claimed).145
Unusually rich testimony for the implementation of Valerian’s rescript elsewhere in the African provinces has survived. For Africa Proconsularis, the Passio of Montanus and Lucius records the deaths in prison of two recently baptized Christians;146 of a presbyter, Victor;147 of Quartillosa, her husband and her son;148 of Bishop Successus, Paulus, and their companions;149 as well as of Lucius, Montanus, Flavianus, Julianus, and Victoricus (presumably all clerics). For Numidia, the Passio of Marian and James reports many in prison (in Cirta) to be sent on eventually for trial (and death) before the governor at Lambaesis: altogether there were the bishops Agapius and Secundinus;150 the deacon James, the lector Marian, along with others of the clergy;151 lay martyrs,152 including Aemilianus, an equestrian, and Tertulla and Antonia.153 If the “titles of glory” annotated against the names of the African bishops in the Judgments of the Eighty-seven Bishops from a year earlier are to be trusted, five subsequently became “martyr,” seven “confessor and martyr,” and no fewer than twenty-four “confessor.”154
The terms of Valerian’s rescript to the Senate in 258 gave rise to a deeply divisive and bloody conflict. Eusebius reported how that division and conflict was resolved: Valerian was captured and enslaved by barbarians; his son, Gallienus, immediately put an end to the persecution.155 Valerian’s ignominious capture is best dated to early summer 260. Eusebius certainly placed the imperial edicts revoking the previous orders against Christians as an immediate reaction to the disaster. This theological reading of the dire event by the imperial authorities may have been Eusebius’s own interpretation. No doubt prudential counsels were also proffered against exacerbating internal strife and divisions (as Valerian’s second rescript had been doing) in an empire that must have seemed at the time perilously fragmenting.
Too much might be made of Gallienus’s ordinance: in strict legality Christians were only returned to their status before Valerian’s orders were issued — that is, they were still potentially liable, as Christians, to fall foul of the law. In revoking those earlier orders and by that very act positively permitting unmolested Christian worship, however, Gallienus in effect also conceded a major degree of official tolerance: some forty years of relative peace for the churches then followed from this significant move. To those minds inclined to read the events of 257-260 theologically, the Christians’ god may finally have appeared to be a god of vengeful power, a power to be treated with the same caution due Rome’s protectors. The realities of the civil place of the Christian churches within the social organization of the empire had at last come to be officially recognized: a growing church would be a familiar, if still minor, presence in very many communities (especially urban) in Africa, as elsewhere.
Civil peace did not ensure internal peace within the Christian communities. In 251, when the persecution of Decius had died down,156 the churches everywhere were faced with the vexatious issue of penitential discipline. How were they to treat the large numbers who had apostatized in one way or another under the persecution? Working guidelines had been drawn up, where circumstances allowed, for dealing on a temporary basis with the urgent cases of the dying157 until collegiate resolutions were possible. The remarkable feature discernible in many churches of the time, though, is the habit of conciliar consultation, which the stirring ecclesiastical events of the 250s disclose everywhere. It was a reflex that must have become habitual over the preceding half-century or so.
Only tantalizing glimpses can be caught of earlier conciliar decisions taken in North Africa itself. They dealt with a wide spectrum of issues: the treatment of adulterers,158 the question of “re-baptism,”159 down to quite minor general regulations.160 Though the view is partial, it makes clear that a pattern of regular consultation and conciliar resolution over major issues of discipline and doctrine had been well-established in North Africa before the 250s.
Before Easter of 251, invitations had gone out to North African bishops to attend a council in Carthage.161 No doubt the bishops were given some indication in advance of the major items to be discussed and were themselves given the opportunity to raise questions for resolution.162 Cyprian, as Bishop of Carthage, appears to have been in charge of arranging such matters.163 After celebrating the great Easter festival with their own people,164 bishops set out on their journey to Carthage, accompanied perhaps by one or two of their presbyters and deacons.165 The attendance figures are unknown, but on a number of occasions Cyprian stressed the generous tally of venerable bishops who gave their approval to the resolutions passed in this year.166 Absentees would receive copies of the conciliar resolutions after the meeting itself was over.167 And while it is clear that the bishops were the ones who sat in debate and passed those resolutions,168 their attendant presbyters and deacons and a large body of the laity were present as well.169 The assemblies could run into the several hundreds. The physical and financial resources of the church in Carthage must have been significant to house and care for the delegates.
The bishops so assembled in Carthage were faced with pressing and urgent questions. Some were disciplinary: they confirmed the excommunication of the party of Felicissimus and the five rebel presbyters in Carthage who had admitted the lapsed to communion without requiring formal repentance;170 they expelled two lapsed bishops who had allied themselves with the heretical church of Privatus of Lambaesis in Numidia;171 and they confirmed the removal of a lapsed bishop who refused to submit to penitence.172 The central issues of penitence for apostates (in their various grades) most exercised the bishops. Cyprian’s Letter 55 helpfully rehearses those resolutions and the reasoning that lay behind them for an African bishop who was not in attendance. Cyprian makes clear the nature and the outcome of the debate: it was a “healthy compromise”173 between the extremes of unrealistic rigorism and polluting laxity. The debate itself was no mere formality: its quality, earnest concerns, and high seriousness emerge clearly and impressively from the summary presented in Letter 55. Cyprian, for one, would appear to have changed his mind significantly as a result of it, moving substantially away from the severe program he had announced only weeks earlier in his formal tractate, On the Lapsed. There he had provided no hint of the special concessions to the libellatici that were approved as a major resolution of this council.174 Indeed, in Letter 55, he was obliged openly and at length to defend that shift in stance, by then plainly visible and under criticism.175 Copies of these important resolutions were promptly communicated to Rome.176 It would be reasonable to assume that copies would also find their way to churches in Spain and Gaul that would later communicate with Cyprian about implementing similar policies.177 All the churches there were confronted with the identical problems. Cyprian could later claim the support of the Italian council meeting under Cornelius: its resolutions on the penitential question harmonized with those of the Africans.178 Cornelius, in turn, included in the dossier he dispatched over to Fabius in Antioch copies of the minutes of both the Italian and the African councils of 251.179 In this way the findings of this African council would have been disseminated widely in turn among the eastern churches, since Fabius was in active communication with the major churches there.180 Despite the tyranny of long distances and the delays in hazardous communications, the churches everywhere were busily seeking to keep in close contact and, if possible, harmonious step with one another. They freely exchanged their own views and passed on those of others, putting especial weight upon resolutions that had been approved by bishops meeting together in council.
In the following year, 252, an African council was certainly in session at Carthage on the Ides of May.181 It firmly rejected Privatus’s attempt to have his case reconsidered, and a list was drawn up of the orthodox bishops in North Africa (tainted neither by lapse nor heresy) that was sent over to Cornelius in Rome for his guidance and information.182 As likely as not this council was attended by sixty-six bishops, who resolved on two matters drawn to their attention by Bishop Fidus, who was unable to attend. These were a violation of the new penitential regulations drawn up the previous year and the propriety of baptizing newborn infants before the eighth day. The bishops resolved these matters; they were both plainly conscious of the weight of their collective authority and fully aware of their powers to police the regulations they had established in council.183
Fidus had signified in a letter to his fellow bishops points that were disturbing him and thus would become, he expected, items on the council agenda of 252. In a similar way, six bishops wrote to Cyprian about an anomalous penitential case and requested that he discuss the matter fully with many of his colleagues.184 Cyprian promised that a firm ruling would be reached at the meeting of bishops that was to be convened after the Easter celebration was over. This would have been the Council of 253, attended by forty-two bishops drawn heavily from proconsular sees and largely from districts not too far distant from Carthage.185 Haste and apprehension may have limited the size and distribution of this attendance. The question of relaxing penitential rigor for the lapsed demanded quick and urgent resolution in the face of a feared renewal of persecution.186 Carthage was a city doubly to be avoided: it had not only persecution but plague hanging over its crowded alleyways. The smaller assembly of bishops manifested no sense at all of any diminution in the authority of their collective decisions. They wrote Letter 57 to inform Cornelius that they had profoundly modified the agreed policy by readmitting to communion all remaining penitent lapsed. No further matters that were discussed are known: after reaching this conclusion, the bishops may have dispersed promptly in order to get back to their own threatened flocks and to prepare, if need be, for battle or for flight. Cyprian himself proceeded to cancel his planned trip to Thibari so as not to be any distance or length of time away from his own people.187
Councils were proving themselves to be a vital instrument for reaching settlement on vexatious disputes. Up to this point, meetings in different parts of the empire had reached — independently or by consultation — similar decisions on the most pressing issues. A question still remained to be faced: What was to be done when such regional councils came to sharply divergent conclusions?
This conflict arose shortly afterwards over the question of “re-baptizing” heretics and schismatics. By the year 252, Cyprian had to face the affront that in his own city, as a consequence of conflict over the penitential regime, two rival bishops had been installed, one rigorist, the other laxist. Over in Rome, Cornelius had to contend with a rigorist anti-bishop, Novatian. The two rigorist groups, moreover, were coordinating their attacks on the concessions made to the penitent lapsed. It was not long before the question was to be raised: Did converts from these sects, when they wished to join the “mainstream” church, stand in need of its efficacious baptism? This question raised a series of fundamental issues: the location of the Holy Spirit, who was empowered to bestow that Spirit, the boundaries of the church as an exclusive source of salvation, the essential purity of the church preserved free from pollution, and the role of local church traditions in determining common discipline.188 The high seriousness and intensity with which this issue was debated is revealed in a veritable flurry of correspondence189 and the calling of no fewer than three African council meetings to discuss the matter.190 In opposition, Stephen of Rome staunchly defended his own church’s hallowed traditions against African innovation. His tactics managed to estrange not only Egyptian191 but also eastern bishops.192 Stephen abused Cyprian as being “a bogus Christ, a bogus apostle, and a crooked dealer.”193 Regional church councils had indeed reached sharply divergent views.
Documentary and literary evidence proves the existence of third-century church-houses, meeting halls, areae (burial grounds), and martyria (shrines) in Africa, but they are all lost. Church buildings would have been razed everywhere during the Great Persecution.194 Lost as well was the evidence for practices that might have been read from the nature and appearance of Christian building complexes, cemeterial structures, and martyrs’ shrines, along with their decorative schemes and symbols, from baptisteries and the liturgical spaces, from episcopal cathedrae, presbyteral seating, the lector’s raised pulpit, ecclesiastical altars, liturgical vessels, and vestments. The realia of third-century Christian life in Africa are beyond recall. What does survive, in compensation, is a remarkable body of literature that illuminates the rich intellectual and spiritual lives of third-century African Christians.
One category of church writing continued from the second-century tradition and can be construed as a process of self-definition as Christians endeavored to delineate their own particular identity with all its attendant ambiguities. They wished at the same time to be distinguished from and to participate in their Greco-Roman society. They wished to inherit as part of their patrimony the Jewish scriptures but at the same time to distinguish themselves from their Jewish brethren with whom they shared these same texts and this same past. They wished to define their (“orthodox”) doctrine and practice in opposition to myriad Christian variations they represented as breakaway sects and deviant heresies — with most of whom, however, they shared a great deal in common.
Achieving this identity in separation was the task of apologetic writers, well represented in Africa across the century by Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, and then Arnobius and Lactantius. Their writings show an increasing tendency to represent Christians as morally ideal members of Greco-Roman society, attaining in practice the philosophically approved virtues to which pagans merely aspired in theory. While they uniformly rejected crude polytheistic idolatry, they asserted a theological monotheism with which, philosophically, many non-Christians might have had much sympathy. It nevertheless remains unclear how far these works merely satisfied the sense of self for a Christian readership — or reached beyond, to a non-Christian audience. It may be significant that in the Greek East, where Christianity appeared as the century progressed increasingly more established as an accepted constituent of society, no urgent need was felt to produce this particular category of literature beyond the middle of the third century (after Origen’s response to Celsus). Methodius revived the genre in responding specifically to the polemic of Porphyry (now lost) and Eusebius of Caesarea to both that of Hierocles as well as that of Porphyry (in several voluminous works).
This apologetic endeavor can also be viewed as part of a wider movement towards the cultural accommodation of Christianity to its Greco-Roman setting and away from its Semitic origins. Re-formulating and re-presenting Christianity in Hellenic terms and in acceptable Greco-Roman rhetorical discourse was a process vital for the long-term survival of Christianity in its adopted setting. The Christian literary output of third-century Africa ought to be regarded, therefore, not so much as separable from the mainstream of the contemporary Greco-Roman rhetorical culture but rather as a significant constituent of that culture, itself in the process of transformation.
Another type of literature continued from the second century was the Adversus Judaeos genre, again represented in Africa by works of Tertullian and the anonymous Against the Jews.195 Less was written on this theme in the contemporary Greek East, possibly because there the Jewish Diaspora was more comfortably integrated into its social setting and may have been perceived by Christians less as a dramatic threat. Even so, Christians felt a manifest urge to establish a separable identity and to lay claims to the inheritance of the biblical past. In both regions the output in the Adversus Haereses genre showed no diminution. It was most voluminous against individual leaders, doctrines, and sects, whether in specific treatises (Tertullian being particularly prolific) or in the flurry of epistolary exchanges and conciliar debates and resolutions, which were richly documented in the corpus of the Cyprianic correspondence, Judgments of the Eighty-seven Bishops, and the anonymous On Rebaptism. Such polemic and controversy was frequently the vehicle for arriving at dogmatic definition — this was a religion in which (right) belief was a crucial feature. To judge by the literary output, this activity would seem to have been much more an obsession with Christian writers than martyrdom or persecution ever was. The chance survival of Origen’s Discussion with Heracleides provides a particularly illuminating and lively vignette of this characteristic preoccupation of the third-century church. Africa was no exception.
To be sure, the potential threat of persecution, under which Christians lived their third-century lives, clearly waxed and waned, given the record of what can be reconstructed of events, but it is difficult to assess in what way such a threat (erratic or not) may have psychologically impinged on Christians’ daily consciousness. Here and there, particularly after the 250s, there would be surviving confessors — especially enrolled among the clergy — to remind communities of the stark realities of persecution. Certainly the output of protreptic literature on martyrdom can be traced to periods of actual or perceived persecution. Indeed, they are often the major source of information, notably the works of Tertullian at the beginning of the century and Cyprian in the 250s. Even if the theology of martyrdom scarcely progressed beyond that of the second century, the supreme religious valuation placed on confession and martyrdom produced other forms of popular literature. Heroic martyr-acts, some much closer to the forensic protocols than others, circulated widely. In this, Africa was peculiarly productive. While there are non-Christian predecessors to this genre, much stimulus was gained by the self-awareness of the confessors themselves. They were alert to the fact that they would be remembered liturgically on their anniversaries and that their inspirited dreams, words, and deeds would be popularly recalled as models of Christian heroism year after year. Out of Africa also came the first Christian biography, Pontius’s Life of Cyprian, which was stimulated precisely because the subject was, as the work proudly proclaims, the proto-episcopal martyr of Africa. Soon this genre would spawn fourth-century narratives of ascetic lives, the mirror image of third-century martyrs’ lives. Persecution may well have loomed larger in the mind than the historical phenomena may seem to have warranted, but this literature should nevertheless be read against a background of many other activities.
All those tracts and homilies directed towards the moral life and spiritual guidance of Christians that occupied so much of the literary effort of Tertullian and Cyprian (exemplifying the strong pastoral bent of western churchmanship) were not the productions characteristic of a beleaguered church, panicked before persecuting demons. In all their pages of exhortations, injunctions to go out and preach to the heathen are conspicuously absent; this was a church driven not by a missionary imperative to incorporate those outside, but rather by the urge to build up the moral probity and spiritual status of the Christian assembly.
Finally, it must be recalled that so much ecclesiastical life was conducted around the Mediterranean by means of correspondence, whether by routine letters of communion (and excommunication), letters recognizing new bishops, encyclical reports of synods and councils, the exchange of ideas (and disagreements), and (at least from Alexandria) regular festal letters announcing the date of Easter. So much has been lost. For example, Eusebius was able to compile a collection of over a hundred letters by Origen:196 only two are now extant, one to Gregory Thaumaturgus, and one to Julius Africanus. Of Gregory’s own correspondence,197 only the Canonical Epistle survives; and of Julius Africanus’s letters but two examples, one of which is fragmentary. Thanks to Eusebius’s Church History, books six and seven, there have been preserved fragments of most (but not entirely all) of the great epistolary output of Dionysius of Alexandria and one brief letter. Thereafter, for example, there still exist only scraps of all of the papal correspondence throughout the century, one letter of Firmilian of Cappadocian Caesarea, in Latin translation,198 three letters attributed to Novatian,199 one brief letter and some fragments from Peter of Alexandria, and the letter of the four Egyptian bishops. These few remains make all the more precious the collection of over eighty documents associated with Cyprian of Carthage to remind us both of what has been lost and of the vigor of life in this level of ecclesiastical society. It is a sobering thought that the historical understanding of third-century church life would be transformed were other decades illumined in the same lively light as the single decade of Cyprian’s life as a Christian in Carthage.
It distorts perceptions of third-century Christians to leave them in constant fear of persecuting dungeons, fire and sword. Other serious matters also preoccupied their minds and engaged their energies.
1. This chapter is, in part, an abbreviated version of “The Third Century” in “Third Century Christianity,” in The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 12, The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193-337, 2nd ed., ed. Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, and Peter Garnsey (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 589-671.
2. Cypr. Ep. 62 illustrates the endemic dangers by its arrangements for ransoming of captives.
3. Pas. Perp. 13.4, 12.2.
4. Tert. Spec., Bapt., Virg., Cor., and cf. Hieron. Vir. ill. 53 on the Exst.
5. Libri et epistulae Pauli uiri iusti. Act. Scil. 12, Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 88.15 [180 C.E.].
6. The evidence is fully discussed by Serge Lancel, Actes de la conférence de Carthage en 411, SC nos. 194, 195, 224, 373 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1972), 4:1456. The area is some 150 km. west of Carthage and 60 km. south of the nearest port. It was, however, the site of an important marble quarry which served Rome and other markets beyond Africa.
7. Cum tanta hominum multitudo, pars paene maior ciuitatis cuiusque, Tert. Scap. 2.10 (CCSL 2:1128.42-43).
8. Tert. Scap. 3-4.
9. Tert. Mon. 12.3.
10. Aug. Unic. bapt. 13.22; Cresc. 3.3.3; cf. Cypr. Ep. 71.4.1.
11. Cypr. Ep. 59.10.1.
12. Cypr. Sent.
13. Cypr. Sent.
14. Notably Ep. 21, 22, 26, 78, 79 and some of the sententiae of Sent.
15. honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta, Pas. Perp. 2.1, Musurillo, 108.5-6.
16. plures egregii et clarissimi ordinis et sanguinis, sed et saeculi nobilitate generosi, qui propter amicitiam eius antiquam…. Pont. Vita Cypr. 14; CSEL 3.3: cv. 22-23.
17. Cypr. Ep. 8.1.1.
18. Act. Zeno.
19. domum in qua christiani conveniebant, Act. Zeno. 3; CSEL 26:186.20.
20. Act. Zeno. 3-5.
21. origo nostra de sanguine Mauro, Act. Zeno. 1; CSEL 26:185.12-13.
22. Act. Zeno. 6; CSEL 26:189.4-8. For a valuation of these sums, see p. 43, n. 41.
23. Act. Zeno. 18.
24. Lact. Inst. 5.11.19.
25. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 5.16.20-22.
26. For example, in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 5.18.5-10 (Montanists), Tert. Prax. 1.4.
27. Pas. Pion. 21.5-6, 11.2.
28. Act. Scil. 13: Saturninus proconsul dixit: Moram xxx dierum habete et recordemini. Musurillo, 88.16-17.
29. Tert. Scap. 4 provides, among many other instances, some pertinent illustrations.
30. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.1-5 and Tertullian’s writings especially Cor., Scorp., and Scap. and the Pas. Perp.
31. 203, but 202 or 204 are also possible: the date is traditionally remembered as March 7.
32. Though the location is not actually attested in Pas. Perp., the shrines commemorating the martyrdom are found in Carthage.
33. Pas. Perp. 14.
34. “honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta.” Pas. Perp. 2.1; Musurillo, 108.5-6.
35. Pas. Perp. 4.5.
36. Iocundum et Saturninum et Artaxium, qui eadem persecutione uiui arserunt, et Quintum, qui et ipse martyr in carcere exierat. Pas. Perp. 11.9; Musurillo, 120.11-13.
37. Et coepimus illic multos fratres cognoscere sed et martyras, 13.8; Musurillo, 122.9-10. Tert. Scorp. 1.11 may refer to them: “Some Christians the fire has tested, others the sword, others the beasts, while yet others are still hungering in prison, having had in the meantime, through clubs and claws, a foretaste of their martyrdom.” Alios ignis, alios gladius, alios bestiae Christianos probauerunt, alii fustibus interim et ungulis insuper degustato martyrio in carcere esuriunt. CCSL 2:1070.11–1071.14.
38. Pas. Perp. 3-10.
39. Pas. Perp. 11-13.
40. Pas. Perp. 4.
41. Pas. Perp. 7-8.
42. Pas. Perp. 13.
43. Pas. Perp. 10-14.
44. Et ego dolebam casum patris mei quod solus de passione mea gauisurus non esset de toto genere meo. Pas. Perp. 5.6; Musurillo, 112.17-19.
45. Pas. Perp. 7-8.
46. For example, Pas. Perp. 17, 18.9, 20.2, 21.7.
47. Et Hilarianus procurator, qui tunc loco proconsulis Minuci Timiniani defuncti ius gladii acceperat, Parce, inquit, canis patris tui, parce infantiae pueri. Fac sacrum pro salute imperatorum. Et ego respondi: Non facio. Hilarianus: Christiana es? Inquit. Et ego respondi: Christiana sum. Et cum staret pater ad me deiciendam, iussus est ab Hilariano proici et uirga percussus est. Et doluit mihi casus patris mei quasi fuissem percussa; sic dolui pro senecta eius misera. Tunc nos uniuersos pronuntiat et damnat ad bestias. Pas. Perp. 6.3-6; Musurillo, 112.27–114.7.
48. in itinere Palaestinis plurima iura fundauit. Iudaeos fieri sub gravi poena uetuit. idem etiam de Christianis sanxit. Hist. Aug. Septimius Severus 16.8–17.1.
49. Leonides, Origen’s father, Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.2.2, 13; Tert. Scap. 4.6.
50. At this season, Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.7 (the writer Judas); Hipp. Dan. 4.18 (Syria), 4.19 (Pontus); Tert. Marc. 3.24 (Palestine).
51. A work of Tertullian’s Montanist period, dated to the time of a military donative by joint Severan emperors, Cor. 1.1.
52. reus ad praefectos. Tert. Cor. 1.2 (CCSL 2:1039.14).
53. donatium Christi in carcere expectat. Tert. Cor. 1.3 (CCSL 2:1040.21).
54. tam bonam et longam pacem periclitari sibi. Tert. Cor. 1.5 (CCSL 2:1040.29).
55. Nam et nunc a praeside Legionis, et a praeside Mauretaniae uexatur hoc nomen, sed gladio tenus. Tert. Scap. 4.8 (CCSL 2:1131.51-53).
56. Tert. Scap. passim.
57. Tert. Scap. 3.5 (there are textual uncertainties).
58. Cypr. Ep. 39.3.1. Celerinus himself was not yet old enough to qualify for the presbyterate, Ep. 39.5.2.
59. Cypr. Laps. 9.
60. Lib. Pont. 16-20.
61. Contra Celsum 3.15. This reference may be to the revolt of Pacatianus, which was put down by Decius in 248.
62. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.41.9.
63. Especially Ep. 5-41.
64. Largely preserved as extracts in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6 and 7.
65. Though attractive, this connection is an entirely speculative setting.
66. Fabian, Bishop of Rome, Jan. 19 or 20, Lib. Pont. 21, Mart. Hieron. XIII Kal. Feb.
67. Pas. Pion. 19-20.
68. Or burning incense, Cypr. Ep. 55.2.1.
69. Pas. Pion. 8.4.
70. Dionysius, in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.10.3; 6.34; Orac. Sibyl. 13.88.
71. Pas. Pion. 3.6; 4.2-11, 13-14.
72. See John R. Knipfing, “The Libelli of the Decian Persecution,” The Harvard Theological Review 16, no. 4 (1923): 345-90. Nos. 35-36 were re-edited at P.Mich. III.157-58, with further five published in PSI VII.778, SB VI.9084, P.Oxy. XLI.2990, P.Oxy. XVIII.3929, P.Lips. II no. 152 (2002).
73. Cyprian identified a group of five commissioners for Carthage. Ep. 43.3.1; 56.1; 67.6.2.
74. dies … praestitutus, Cypr. Laps. 3 (CCSL 3:222.49).
75. Lact. Mort. 4.
76. Late enim patet quando dicitur “ille cum suis” et possunt nobis et uiceni et tirceni et amplius offerri qui propinqui et adfines et liberti ac domestici esse adseuerentur eius qui accepit libellum. Cypr. Ep. 15.4 (CCSL 3B:89.67-70).
77. Qui ipse pro cunctis ad discrimen accedens uxorem et liberos et domum totam periculi sui pactione protexit. Cypr. Ep. 55.13.2 (CCSL 3B:271.217-19).
78. Cypr. Laps. 9, 25.
80. Cypr. Ep. 21.2.1, 3.2.
81. Compare the description in Cypr. Ep. 55.14.1-2.
82. Cypr. Ep. 15.3.1.
83. Item cum conperissem eos qui sacrilegis contactibus manus suas atque ora maculassent uel nefandis libellis nihilominus conscientiam polluissent. Ep. 20.2.2 (CCSL 3B:107.25–108.27).
85. Feb. 23, 303, in Nicomedia: Lact. Mort. 13.1; June 5, 303, at Tibiuca near Carthage: Pas. Fel. 1.
86. Cypr. Laps. 8, 25.
87. Dionysius, Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.41.11.
88. Cypr. Ep. 8.2.3; 21.3.2.
89. Cypr. Laps. 8.
90. Cypr. Ep. 30.3.1.
91. Cypr. Ep. 30.3.1; 55.14.1.
92. Cypr. Ep. 55.14.
93. Tert. Fug. 5.3, 12-14.
94. Cypr. Ep. 30.3.1; 55.14.1 for deputies.
95. So, firmly, Cypr. Laps. 27-28.
96. Cypr. Ep. 30.8.1.
97. Cypr. Ep. 21.4.1.
98. Cypr. Ep. 7.2.
99. Cypr. Ep. 55.13.2.
100. Relying on Gregory Nyssa, de uita b. Gregorii Thaumaturgi, PG 46:945.
101. Dionysius, in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.42.
102. Copiosus episcoporum numerus, quos integros et incolumes fides sua et domini tutela protexit, Cypr. Ep. 55.6.1 (CCSL 3B:261.79-80).
103. Cypr. Laps. 3.
104. Pas. Pion. 15-18.
105. For some African instances see Cypr. Ep. 29.1.1 (Optatus); 38.1.1 (Aurelius); 21.4.2 (Saturninus); and for Rome, Cypr. Ep. 39.1.1-2 (Celerinus).
106. For example, Mappalicus, Cypr. Ep. 10.
107. Cypr. Ep. 40.1.1.
108. Cypr. Laps. 13.
109. Et ideo, frater carissime, saluta Numeriam et Candidam, quas secundum Pauli praeceptum et ceterorum martyrum, quorum nomina subicio, Bassi in pignerario, Mappalici in quaestione, Fortunionis in carcerem: Paulus a quaestione, Fortunata, Victorinus, Victor, Herennius, Credula, Hereda, Donatus, Firmus, Venustas, Fructus, Iulia, Martialis et Ariston, qui deo volente in carcerem fame necati sunt; quorum et nos socios futuros intra dies audietis. Iam enim ut iterato reclusi sumus sunt dies octo in die quo tibi litteras scripsi. Cypr. Ep. 22.2.2 (CCSL 3B:118.32-41).
110. The letter was a response to Celerinus’s petition that the confessors intercede for his two sisters, who had failed in Rome. It may have been provided to Cyprian by Celerinus himself, who later supported the bishop’s rejection of the very privileges he was seeking. Cypr. Ep. 39.
111. Sed quoniam infesta tempestas, quae plebem nostram ex maxima parte prostrauit, hunc quoque addidit nostris doloribus cumulum ut etiam cleri portionem sua strage perstringeret. Cypr. Ep. 14.1.1 (CCSL 3B:79.4-7).
112. Pas. Pion. 15.2.
113. Pas. Pion. 12.2.
114. Pas. Pion. 4.1.
115. Pas. Pion. 20.3.
116. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.41.11.
117. Cypr. Ep. 55.11.1-2 (Trofimus, in Italy); 59.10.3 (Repostus, in Africa Proconsularis).
118. Cypr. Ep. 65; 67.
119. Cypr. Ep. 59.10.2.
120. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.22.12.
121. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.1, 10, 22.12–23.4.
122. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.1.
123. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.23.4.
124. Cypr. Ep. 61.1.1.
125. Cypr. Ep. 61.
126. As witnessed by Dionysius of Alexandria in the same — tendentious — festal letter to Hermammon, Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.10.3.
127. Cypr. Ep. 59.19.
128. his ipsis etiam diebus quibus has ad te litteras feci ob sacrificia quae edicto proposito celebrare populus iubebatur clamore popularium ad leonem denuo postulatus in circo. Cypr. Ep. 59.6.1 (CCSL 3C:347.165-67).
129. See, for example, Cypr. Demet. 2, 5.
130. Cypr. Ep. 57; 58.
131. See the contemporary descriptions in Cypr. Mort. 14; Pont. Vita Cypr. 9.
132. Lact. Mort. 4-5.
133. See Dionysius in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.10.3.
134. P.Oxy. XLII.3035.
135. Act. Procon. 1.1.
136. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.11.6-19.
137. Act. Procon. 1.
138. Pas. Mar. Iac. 3.
139. Cypr. Ep. 76-79.
140. Cypr. Ep. 76.1.2.
141. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.13.1.
142. Cypr. Ep. 80.1.2.
143. Pas. Mar. Iac. 2.5–3.7.
144. Diu sacrilega mente uixisti et plurimos nefariae tibi conspirationis homines adgregasti et inimicum te diis Romanis et religionibus sacris constituisti, nec te pii et sacratissimi principes Valerianus et Gallienus Augusti et Valerianus nobilissimus Caesar ad sectam caeremoniarum suarum reuocare poterunt. Act. Procon. 4; CSEL 3.3: cxii.23–cxiii.5.
145. Cyprianus … sacerdotales coronas in Africa primus imbueret … ex quo enim Carthagini episcopatus ordo numeratur, numquam aliquis quamvis ex bonis et sacerdotibus ad passionem venisse memoratur. Pont. Vita Cypr. 19; CSEL 3.3: cix.18-23.
146. Primolus and Donatianus, Pas. Mont. Luc. 2.
147. Pas. Mont. Luc. 7.2.
148. Pas. Mont. Luc. 8.
149. Pas. Mont. Luc. 21.8.
150. Pas. Mont. Luc. 3.
151. Pas. Mont. Luc. 10; 11.3.
152. Pas. Mont. Luc. 5.10; 9; 10.
153. Pas. Mont. Luc. 11.
154. On the “titles of glory,” see G. F. Diercks, “Les tituli gloriae,” in CCSL 3E:xli-xlii.
155. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.13.
156. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.1.
157. For example, Cypr. Ep. 20.2-3.
158. Cypr. Ep. 55.21.1.
159. Cypr. Ep. 70.1.2; 71.4.1; 73.3.1, the heretical church of Privatus, Cypr. Ep. 59.10.1.
160. Cypr. Ep. 1.1.1, 1.2.1 — clerics not to be nominated as legal guardians or trustees.
161. Cypr. Ep. 43.7.2.
162. Cypr. Ep. 56.3; 64.
163. Cypr. Ep. 56.3.
164. Cypr. Ep. 56.3.
165. Cypr. Ep. 59.15.1.
166. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.1; 59.1.1.
167. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.1.
168. Cypr. Ep. 59.14.2.
169. As later, Sent. proem.
170. Cypr. Ep. 59.1.1, 9.1.
171. Cypr. Ep. 59.10.2.
172. Repostus of Satunurca, Cypr. Ep. 59.10.3.
173. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.1.
174. For details, see pp. 321-22.
175. Cypr. Ep. 55.3.2–7.3.
176. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.2.
177. Cypr. Ep. 67; 68 — he has received a copy or synopsis of at least one conciliar document from Gaul in Ep. 68.1.1.
178. Cypr. Ep. 55.6.2.
179. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.43.3.
180. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.46.3.
181. Cypr. Ep. 59.10.1.
182. Cypr. Ep. 59.9.3.
183. Cypr. Ep. 64.
184. Cypr. Ep. 56.
185. Cypr. Ep. 57.
187. Cypr. Ep. 58.1.1.
188. For details, see below, pp. 187-89.
189. Witnessed by Cypr. Ep. 69-75.
190. See Cypr. Ep. 70; 72 and the special muster of 87 signatories at the meeting of September 256.
191. Dionysius, in Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 7.5.3-6.
192. Cypr. Ep. 75 from Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia.
193. Cyprianum pseudochristum et pseudoapostolum et dolosum operarium dicere. Ep. 75.25.4 (CCSL 3C:603.508-9).
194. For the evidence, see L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press, 1996).
195. CSEL 3.3:133-46.
196. Eus. Caes. Hist. eccl. 6.36.3.
197. Hieron. Vir. ill. 65.
198. Cypr. Ep. 75.
199. Cypr. Ep. 30, 31, 36.