His Letters.

        Into these twelve momentous years Cyprian crowded a great deal of writing in the Christian cause. The collection of his letters contains eighty-one pieces, sixty-five of which are from Cyprian's hand. The others are letters to him or to persons near him. There are also twelve more formal literary works of his, the treatises — all, of course, more or less closely related to practical church problems of the day.

        The letters written or received by Cyprian during the years of his episcopate mirror the march of events in Rome and Carthage that decade in a most illuminating way. We find ourselvs right in the midst of the problems and controversies that beset those two great centers of Western Christianity, and we hear the words of their great leaders, Cyprian, Cornelius, Novatian, and a number of others, as well as Firmilian of Caesarea. A wealth of scholarly labor has established in general the years from which these letters come, and the chronological arrangement of them is perhaps the most readily comprehensible.[93]

        Letters 5-43 belong to the time of Cyprian's concealment, or flight, covering about fifteen months, from December of A.D. 249 to March of 251. Even the exact order in which these thirty-nine letters were written has been pretty generally agreed upon by scholars. Cyprian was able from his place of concealment to communicate not only with his own diocese but, through it, with the Roman church, to which he sent a number of letters in the course of these fifteen months, and no less than thirteen of his letters to his own people he collected and instructed them to f ward to the Roman church (Nos. 5-7 and 10-19). This little group may therefore be regarded as the nucleus of the wh collection.

        Two important matters appear now and again in these thirty-nine letters. One was the behavior of Cyprian in going into hiding in the time of persecution. The Roman clergy wrote to the clergy at Carthage on this matter, pointing out that a good shepherd gave his life for his sheep, but on this point Cyprian was able to satisfy them. They were the more easily satisfied since Cyprian agreed with them about the other matter-their attitude toward those who had lapsed in the persecution.

        This was a point that divided the churches of both Carthage and Rome. There was a group in each church that believed that those who had fallen away from the faith in persecution should not be readmitted to the church at all. Such people were led in Rome by Novatian, and in Carthage by Felicissimus. Cyprian held that such persons should upon proper conditions be readmitted to the church, and this was the view of the majority of the Roman clergy. Felicissimus, however, found so many supporters for his position in the church at Carthage that a schism arose there on the subject, which caused Cyprian, hampered by his absence from the scene, the greatest difficulty.

        A second group of twenty letters (Nos. 44-61, 64, 66) can be referred with confidence to the period from the spring of 251 to the summer of 253. They comprise the letters exchanged between Cyprian and two bishops of Rome, Cornelius and his successor Lucius. About the time the persecution relaxed and Cyprian returned to Carthage, Cornelius was chosen bishop of Rome (March, 251) in the face of the strong opposition of Novatian and his followers, who immediately countered by electing Novatian bishop. The situation was made more acute by the Carthaginian presbyter Novatus, who took the side of Novatian. But Cyprian sided with Cornelius, who came to be the recognized bishop. It was the natural for Cyprian to do this, as Cornelius and he were in agreement about the way the lapsed should be treated.

        A third group of letters, Nos. 67-75, come from the time of Stephen, who succeeded Lucius as bishop of Rome in A.D. 254 and continued in that office until 257. Whether schismatics, like the former followers of Novatian, should be admitted to the church without rebaptism was now questioned and on this matter Cyprian and Stephen differed sharply, Cyprian holding they should be rebaptized, but Stephen maintaining that, as they had been baptized once, the impartation of the Holy Spirit through the laying-on of hands was enough. In the spring of A.D. 255 a council of African bishops was held in Carthage, and another a year later was attended bseventy-one bishops from Africa and Numidia.

        On September 1, 256, a third council of bishops of Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania was held; and it voted that returning schismatics should be rebaptized but favored tolerance if an indi- vidual bishop thought differently. Firmilian of Caesarea wrote Cyprian to express his agreement with him, but Stephen, as we have seen, went so far as to excommunicate the African bishops who had refused to accept his ruling on the matter.

        A fourth group of letters, Nos, 76-81, belongs to the year of Cyprian's banishment, August, 257, to September, 258. No. 81 was written not long before his execution.

        There remain only seven letters, 1-4, 62, 63, and 65, that cannot be exactly enough dated to be fitted into this reconstruction of his correspondence. The whole series gives us an amazingly clear picture of Christian thought and action in Cyprian's day and on the rapid movement of events, seen for the most part through the eyes of an able, energetic, educated, devoted, and, on the whole, considerate Christian man. For the history of the church in the middle years of the third century they are of the utmost value.