Life of Cyprian 1–17

Cyprian, devout bishop and glorious witness of God, wrote much through which the memory of his worthy name lives on; and the rich fruitfulness of his eloquence and of God's grace extends itself in such abundance and fullness of speech that perhaps it will not fall silent until the end of the world. Yet because this privilege too is owed to his works and merits, I have decided to write a few things in summary: not because the life of so great a man is hidden from anyone, even from the pagans, but so that an incomparable and great example may be handed on in undying memory to our descendants too, and that they may be guided by writing to imitate him. Surely it would be hard, when our forebears, out of veneration for martyrdom itself, gave such honor to lay people and catechumens who obtained martyrdom that they wrote down much, or, I might almost say, nearly everything, about their sufferings, so that these might come to the knowledge even of us who were not yet born, that the passion of Cyprian, so great a bishop and so great a martyr, should be passed over, who had things to teach even apart from his martyrdom, and that what he did while he lived should not be made known. These things are indeed so many, so great, and so wonderful that I am daunted by contemplating their greatness, and I confess that I am unequal to producing an account worthy of the honor his merits deserve, and unable to tell such great deeds so that they appear as great as they are, except that a glorious multitude of deeds is sufficient in itself and does not need another's praise. A further burden is added: you too long to hear much about him, or, if possible, everything, desiring with burning ardor at least his deeds, even though his living words have meanwhile fallen silent. If I say in this matter that we lack the resources of eloquence, I say too little; for eloquence itself lacks the fitting power to satisfy our longing in full measure. So we are heavily pressed on both sides: he burdens us with his virtues, and you weary us with your ears.

Where, then, shall I begin? Where shall I take up the beginning of his good deeds, except from the beginning of his faith and his heavenly birth? For the deeds of a man of God ought not to be counted from anywhere but from the moment he was born to God. Though he may have had his studies, and liberal arts may have imbued his devoted heart, I pass these over; for they did not yet serve any use except that of the world. After he had learned the sacred writings, and, the cloud of the world dispelled, had emerged into the light of spiritual wisdom, I will tell whatever I witnessed and whatever I learned from older people, asking this pardon: that whatever I say too little (and I must necessarily say too little) be counted against my ignorance rather than taken from his glory. Among the first rudiments of his faith he believed nothing else worthy of God than to keep continence. For only then, he thought, could heart and mind become fit for the full grasp of the truth, if he trampled the desire of the flesh with a strong and unbroken course of holiness. Who has ever recorded so great a wonder? The second birth had not yet given sight to the new man with the full splendor of the divine light, and already the mere preparation for the light was overcoming the old and former darkness. Then, what is greater, when he had learned certain things from the divine reading, not as befits a novice but in the haste of faith, he at once seized on whatever he found would help him to win the Lord's favor. Selling his property and distributing nearly the whole price to sustain the peace of many in need, he joined two good things at once: he despised the ambition of the world, than which nothing is more ruinous, and he fulfilled the mercy which God preferred even to his own sacrifices, and which even he who said that he had kept all the commandments of the Law did not do. And with an over-hasty swiftness of devotion he began to be perfect almost before he learned. Who, I ask, of the ancients did this? Who of the oldest elders in the faith, whose minds and ears the divine words had struck for many years, spent anything like what he accomplished by glorious and admirable works, still untaught in the faith and perhaps not yet trusted, outstripping the age of long experience? No one reaps as soon as he sows; no one has pressed a vintage from newly dug trenches; no one has sought ripe fruit from saplings only just planted. In him everything ran on incredibly. The threshing went before, if it can be said (for the thing surpasses belief), the threshing went before, I say, the sowing, the vintage before the vine-shoot, the fruit before the root.

The letters of the apostles say that neophytes should be passed over, lest, while the stupor of paganism still clings to minds not yet established, untaught novelty should sin in some way against God. He was the first, and I think the only, example that one can be advanced more by faith than by time. For though in the Acts of the Apostles that eunuch is described as baptized at once by Philip because he had believed with his whole heart, the comparison is not alike. For he was a Jew, and, coming from the Lord's temple, was reading the prophet Isaiah and hoped in Christ, though he did not yet believe that he had come; whereas this man, coming from the untaught pagans, began with a faith as mature as few perhaps have attained at the end. In short, there was no delay concerning God's grace, no postponement. I have said too little: he at once received the presbyterate or priesthood. For who would not trust every grade of honor to one who believed with such a mind? There are many things that he did while still a layman, and many when already a presbyter, many which, following the examples of the righteous of old with like imitation, he performed in winning God's favor as services of complete devotion. For this too was his habitual saying: if he read of anyone praised with God's commendation, he urged us to inquire for what deeds he had pleased God. If Job, glorious by some testimony, was called a true worshiper of God, with whom no one on earth could be compared, he taught that we should do whatever Job had done before, so that, while we do the like, we may call forth on ourselves a similar testimony of God. “Despising losses of his household property, he advanced so far in practiced virtue that he did not even feel the temporal losses of his piety. Want did not break him, nor pain; his wife's persuasion did not turn him aside, nor did the dreadful affliction of his own body shake him. His virtue remained fixed in its place, and his devotion, founded on deep roots, yielded to no assault of the tempting devil, so that he did not cease to bless his Lord with grateful faith even in adversity. His house was open to anyone who came: no widow was sent back with an empty lap; no one in need of sight was guided without him as companion; no one weak of foot was carried without him as bearer; no one stripped of help was protected from the hand of the more powerful without him as guardian. These things,” he said, “those ought to do who desire to please God.” And so, running through the examples of all good people, while always imitating the better, he made himself also worthy of imitation.

He had, moreover, a close companionship with one of us, a righteous man of praiseworthy memory, Caecilianus, a presbyter both in age and in rank at that time, who had turned him from the error of the world to the knowledge of the true Godhead. Him he loved with all honor and every respect, looking up to him with dutiful reverence, not as a friend equal to his own soul but as the parent of his new life. And he in turn, moved by his attentions, was so stirred by the merits of this boundless love that, when departing from the world and with his summons already near, he commended his wife and children to him, and made him whom he had made a partner in the fellowship of the faith the heir of his affection as well.

It would be long to go through each thing; to enumerate all is burdensome. As proof of his good works I think this alone is enough: that by the judgment of God and the favor of the people he was chosen for the office of the priesthood and the rank of bishop while still a neophyte and, as was thought, a novice. Even in the first days of his faith and in the untried age of the spiritual life, his noble nature shone out so that, though not yet in office, shining with the brightness of hope, he promised every confidence of the priesthood that was coming. I will not pass over this outstanding fact either: when the whole people, by the Lord's inspiration, leapt forward in love and honor for him, he humbly withdrew, yielding to older men and thinking himself unworthy of the title of so great an honor, so that he became the more worthy. For he is made more worthy who declines what he deserves. With what ardor the people then surged and tossed, longing with spiritual desire, as the outcome showed, not only for a bishop; for in him whom they then demanded in this way, by a hidden presentiment from God, they were seeking not only a priest but a future martyr. A great crowd of the brothers had besieged the doors of the house, and anxious love was going round every entrance. Perhaps that apostolic experience might then have befallen him, as he wished, of being let down through a window, if already then he had been made like the apostle in the honor of ordination as well. One could see all the others waiting for him to come out with eager and anxious spirit, and receiving him with great joy as he came. I say it unwillingly, but I must say it: certain people opposed him, even so that he might win. Yet with what gentleness of patience, how kindly, how mercifully he pardoned them, counting them afterward, to the wonder of many, among his closest friends and intimates. For who could not marvel at such forgetfulness in so retentive a mind?

From then on, who could tell how he conducted himself? What devotion he had, what vigor, how much mercy, how much strictness! So much holiness and grace shone from his face that it confounded the minds of those who looked on him. His countenance was grave and joyful; there was neither gloomy severity nor excessive affability, but a blend of both, so that one might doubt whether he deserved more to be revered or loved, except that he deserved both to be revered and to be loved. His dress, too, was not out of keeping with his face, itself moderate and middling. Worldly pride had not puffed him up, yet neither had an affected poverty made him shabby; for this kind of dress too is no less a form of boasting, which an ostentatious frugality displays in this way. And what did he do for the poor as a bishop, whom he loved as a catechumen? Let those see to it who preside in devotion, whether those whom the discipline of their own order has trained for the duty of good works, or those whom the common religion of the sacrament has bound to the service of showing love: the episcopal chair received such a Cyprian from himself; it did not make him so.

At once, for such merits, he also obtained the glory of proscription. For nothing else was fitting than that he who flourished in all honor of religion and faith in the secret hiding place of conscience should also be marked out by the publicly celebrated report of the pagans. He might indeed then, with the speed with which he always attained everything, have hurried on to the crown of martyrdom that was his due, especially since he was often demanded for the lion by repeated shouts, had he not needed to pass through all the ranks of glory and so come to the highest, and had not the falls that threatened needed the help of so fruitful a heart. For imagine him taken away then by the honor of martyrdom. Who would have shown the profit of grace advancing through faith? Who would have restrained virgins, as with a kind of bridle of the Lord's reading, to the discipline fitting for chastity and to a dress worthy of holiness? Who would have taught repentance to the lapsed, truth to the heretics, unity to schismatics, and peace and the law of the gospel prayer to the children of God? By whom would the blaspheming pagans have been overcome, with what they hurl at us turned back on themselves? By whom would Christians of softer feeling over the loss of their own, or, what is more, of weaker faith, have been consoled by the hope of what is to come? From whom would we have learned mercy, from whom patience? Who would have checked, by the sweetness of a saving remedy, the rivalry that springs from the poisonous malice of envy? Who would have raised up so many martyrs by the exhortation of the divine word? Who, finally, would have roused with the call of the heavenly trumpet so many confessors, sealed with a second inscription on their marked foreheads and kept alive as an example of martyrdom? It happened well, well, and truly spiritually then, that a man so needed for so many and such good things was kept back from the consummation of martyrdom. Do you want to know that his withdrawal was not fear? To give no other defense: he afterward suffered, and he would certainly have avoided that suffering as usual if he had avoided it before. There was indeed fear, but a just fear, a fear that feared to offend the Lord, a fear that preferred to obey God's commands rather than to be crowned in that way. For a mind dedicated to God in everything, and so bound over to the divine admonitions, believed that unless it obeyed the Lord, who then commanded it to hide, it would sin even by suffering itself.

I think that something more should still be said about the usefulness of the delay, although I touched briefly on it long ago. For while we dwell fully on what seems to have followed afterward, it follows that we prove that his withdrawal was not conceived out of human faint-heartedness but, as it truly is, was divine. The insolent and bitter raging of a hostile persecution had laid waste the people; and the cunning enemy, who could not deceive everyone by a single fraud, had thrown down individuals with various slaughter, by different kinds of cruelty, wherever a careless soldier had exposed his bare side. There had to be someone who could, applying the cure of heavenly medicine according to the nature of the wound, either cut or for a time soothe people who had been wounded and struck by the varied art of the attacking enemy. A man was kept who, besides his other gifts, was also of a spiritually balanced character, who could steer the church's middle course on a steady line among the rebounding waves of colliding schisms. Are not these, I ask, divine counsels? Could this have happened without God? Let those see to it who think such things can happen by chance. The church answers them with a clear voice, saying: I do not admit, I do not believe, that those who are needed are kept without God's will.

Let us run through the rest, however, if you agree. Afterward a dreadful plague broke out, and an excessive devastation by a hateful disease, which, carrying off by sudden onset countless people day by day, each from his own home, invaded house after house in turn of the trembling populace. All shuddered, fled, and avoided the contagion, and impiously cast out their own, as if, with someone who was going to die of the plague, one could shut out death itself as well. Meanwhile, throughout the whole city, street by street, lay no longer bodies but the corpses of very many, and by the sight of a fate they would share they appealed for mercy from those who passed by. No one looked at anything but cruel gain. No one trembled at the memory of a like outcome; no one did to another what he would wish to have done to himself. What the bishop of Christ and of God did amid all this, who surpassed the priests of this world as much in devotion as in the truth of religion, it would be a crime to pass over. He first gathered the people together in one place and instructed them on the benefits of mercy. He taught by examples from the divine reading how much the duties of devotion help to win God's favor. Then he added that it was nothing wonderful if we cherished only our own people with the due service of love; for that person could become perfect who did something more than a tax collector or a pagan, who, overcoming evil with good and practicing a likeness of the divine mercy, loved even his enemies, who prayed for the salvation of his persecutors, as the Lord warns and urges. “He continually makes his sun rise, and from time to time gives rains to nourish the seeds, showing all these things not to his own alone: and shall one who professes to be a son of God not imitate the example of his Father? It is fitting for us to answer to our birth, and those who are known to be reborn through God ought not to be degenerate, but rather to prove in the offspring the inheritance of a good Father by imitating his goodness.”

There were many other things, and great ones, which the need to keep the volume within bounds does not allow to be repeated in a long discourse. Of them it is enough to have said this much: if the pagans could have heard them from the rostra, perhaps they would have believed at once. What, then, would a Christian people do, whose very name is from faith? Duties were at once distributed according to the condition of people and their ranks. Many who, through the benefit of poverty, could not provide expense, provided more than expense, paying with their own labor a recompense dearer than all riches. And who, under such a teacher, would not hasten to find some part in such a service, by which he might please God the Father, and Christ the judge, and meanwhile the bishop? So, by the generosity of abundant works, good was done to all, not only to those of the household of faith. Something more was done than is recorded of the incomparable devotion of Tobit. Let him forgive, forgive again, and often forgive, or, to put it more truly, let him rightly concede that, though much was permitted before Christ, something more was permitted after Christ, to whose times fullness is due. He gathered only those of his own race killed by the king and cast out.

Upon these good and devout actions exile followed. For impiety always makes this return, repaying better things with worse. And what the priest of God answered when the proconsul questioned him, there are acts that record. Meanwhile he is shut out of the city, he who had done something good for the city's safety, he who had labored so that the eyes of the living should not suffer the horror of the infernal abode, he, I say, who, keeping watch in devoted vigils, had provided with a goodness (oh, the wickedness!) unthanked, that the deserted commonwealth and forsaken fatherland should not feel the loss of many exiles when everyone was abandoning the foul face of the city. But let the world see to it, for which exile is counted among punishments. To them the fatherland is very dear, and the name is shared; we abhor even our parents if they urge us against the Lord. For them it is a heavy punishment to live outside their own city; to the Christian this whole world is one home. Hence, though he had been banished to a hidden and remote place, mingled with the things of his God he cannot count it exile. Add that one who serves God wholly is a stranger even in his own city. For while, by the self-control of the Holy Spirit, he abstains from carnal desires, putting off the way of life of the former man, he is a stranger to earthly life among his fellow citizens, or, I might almost say, among his very parents. Moreover, even if this might seem a punishment in other cases, yet in such cases and sentences, which we endure as trials for proving virtue, it is not a punishment, because it is glory. But grant that exile is no punishment for us: let even their own conscience witness that it is the worst crime and the most extreme wickedness for those who can inflict on the innocent what they think a punishment. I will not now describe the charm of the place, and for the moment I pass over the provision of every delight. Let us imagine that place squalid in site, dismal to see, with no wholesome waters, no pleasant greenery, no nearby shore, but vast rocks among the inhospitable gorges of the forests in a desolate wilderness, removed in a pathless part of the world. Such a place might well bear the name of exile; but where Cyprian, the priest of God, had come, would not birds minister to him as to Elijah, or angels as to Daniel, if human service failed? Far, far be it from anyone to believe that anything would be lacking to even the least person, so long as he stood in the confession of the Name. So far is it from being true that the bishop of God, who had always devoted himself to works of mercy, lacked the resources of every honor.

Now let us take up with thanksgiving what I had put in the second place: that God provided, even to suit the mind of so great a man, a sunny and fitting place, a lodging as secluded as he wished, and whatever was promised beforehand to be added to those who seek the kingdom and righteousness of God. And to say nothing of the many brothers who visited him and the love of the citizens there themselves, which supplied everything he seemed to have been deprived of, I will not pass over God's wonderful visitation, by which he willed that his bishop in exile should be so assured of the passion to come that, with fuller confidence in the martyrdom that was approaching, Curubis possessed not only an exile but also a martyr. “For on the day on which we stayed in the place of exile” (for the kindness of his love had chosen me among his household companions as a voluntary exile; would that it had been permitted me in his passion too!) “there appeared to me,” he said, “before I was sunk in the rest of sleep, a young man of more than human size. When he was leading me, as it were, to the praetorium, I seemed to be brought before the tribunal of the proconsul as he sat. As soon as he looked at me, he at once began to note on a tablet a sentence which I did not know, for he had asked me nothing in the usual examination. But the young man who stood behind him read very attentively whatever had been noted down. And because he could not utter it in words from there, he showed by a declaring nod what was contained in the writing of that tablet. For, holding out his hand flat like a sword, he imitated the stroke of the usual execution, and so expressed what he wanted to be understood as plainly as clear speech. I understood that a sentence of suffering was to come. I began at once to ask and beg that a delay of even one day be granted me, until I could set my affairs in order in due form. And when I had repeated my prayers many times, he began again to note something on the tablet. I perceived, however, from the calm of his face, that the judge's mind was moved, as it were, by a just request. And the young man, who had already disclosed the sign of suffering by gesture rather than word, hastened to signify by a secret nod again and again, twisting his fingers one behind the other, that the delay asked for until the next day was granted. Although the sentence had not been read, and though I came to myself with a heart very glad at the joy of the delay received, yet I trembled so from the uncertainty of the interpretation that what remained of my fear still beat on my rejoicing heart with full dread.”

What could be clearer than this revelation, what happier than this favor? Everything that followed afterward was foretold to him beforehand. Nothing of God's words was diminished, nothing of so holy a promise cut short. Recognize each thing as it was shown. He asks for a delay until the next day, when the sentence of suffering was being considered, asking that he might set his affairs in order on the day he had obtained. This one day signified the year that he was to spend in the world after the vision. For, to speak more plainly, he was crowned on the very day, after a full year, on which this had been shown to him a year before. Though we do not read in the divine writings that the day of the Lord means a year, we take that time as due to the promise of future things. So it makes no difference if here a single year is shown under the sign of a day, for what is greater ought to be fuller. That it was shown by a nod rather than in speech was because the expression in words was reserved for the time to be fulfilled; for whatever is spoken is usually spoken in words when what is spoken is fulfilled. And indeed no one knew why this had been shown until he was crowned on the very day on which he had seen it. In the meantime, nevertheless, his coming suffering was known for certain to all; yet the exact day of the suffering was kept silent by all of them, as if, of course, they did not know it. I find something like this in the Scriptures too. For Zechariah the priest, because he had not believed when a son was promised him through the angel, became mute, so that he asked by a nod for tablets, to write his son's name rather than speak it. Rightly here too, where God's messenger expressed the bishop's coming suffering by a nod, he both admonished his faith and strengthened the priest. The reason for asking the delay came from ordering his affairs and arranging his will. But what affairs, or what will, had he to arrange except the state of the church? The delay was accepted for the chief purpose of arranging whatever had to be disposed concerning the last tokens of care for the poor. And I think that for no other reason, indeed for this alone, was leniency granted even by those who had banished him and were going to kill him: that he might be present and serve the poor present there with the last, and, to put it more fully, with all the resources of his final distribution. With matters so devoutly ordered and his will so arranged, then, the next day was drawing near.

News had already come from the City about Xystus, a good and peaceable bishop and therefore a most blessed martyr. The executioner was expected to come at any moment to strike the devoted neck of a most holy victim; and so all those days were spent in the daily expectation of dying, so that a crown could be credited to each one. Meanwhile many of eminent and most distinguished rank and birth, and noble in the world's terms, came to him, and because of their old friendship urged him again and again to withdraw; and, lest bare persuasion be too little, they even offered places to which he might withdraw. But he, with his mind already raised to heaven, had disregarded the world and did not assent to their flattering persuasions. He might perhaps have done then what many faithful people were asking, if he had also been commanded by a divine order. But that sublime glory of so great a man must not be passed over without praise either: when the world was already swelling and, relying on the emperors, panting for an assault on the Name, he instructed the servants of God, as occasion offered, with the Lord's exhortations, and encouraged them to trample on the sufferings of this time by contemplating the glory that is to come. Indeed, so great was his desire to preach that he wished the mark of suffering might come to him in such a way that he would be killed while speaking of God, in the very work of preaching.

These were his daily acts, destined to make the bishop a sacrifice pleasing to God, when suddenly, at the proconsul's order, the chief officer with his soldiers came unexpectedly upon him at his gardens (his gardens, I say, which he had sold at the beginning of his faith and which by God's kindness had been restored to him, and which he would certainly have sold again for the use of the poor, had he not wished to avoid ill will from the persecution); or, to speak more truly, he believed he had come upon him unexpectedly. For how could a mind always prepared be taken by surprise by an unforeseen assault? He went forth, then, sure now that what had long been delayed would be accomplished; he went forth with a lofty and upright spirit, showing cheerfulness in his face and courage in his heart. But, put off to the next day, he was returning from the praetorium to the chief officer's house, when suddenly a rumor spread through all Carthage that Thascius had now been brought out, whom everyone knew, both from his famous and glorious reputation and from the memory of his most illustrious work. From every side all ran together to the spectacle, glorious for us in the devotion of faith, and lamentable even for the pagans. Once received, however, and placed in the chief officer's house, he was held for one night in gentle custody, so that we, his table companions and dear ones, were with him as usual. Meanwhile the whole people, anxious lest anything be done during the night without their knowledge, kept watch before the chief officer's doors. Then the divine goodness granted him, truly worthy of it, that the people of God should keep vigil even at their bishop's passion. Perhaps, however, someone may ask what was the reason for his returning from the praetorium to the chief officer. And some claim that the proconsul at that time did not wish it, of his own accord. Far be it from me to complain of the proconsul's sluggishness or distaste in things done by God's providence. Far be it from me to admit into the conscience of a religious mind this evil, that a man's whim should decide about so most blessed a martyr. But that next day, which the divine favor had foretold a year before, had truly to be the next day.

At last another day dawned, that marked day, that promised day, that divine day, which, if the tyrant himself had wished to postpone it, he could never have done; a day glad with the knowledge of the future martyr, and, the clouds scattered throughout the whole circle of the world, radiant with a bright sun. He went out from the house of the chief officer, himself a chief officer of Christ and of God, hemmed in on every side by bands of a mixed multitude. So countless an army clung to his escort, as if they were coming in a body to storm death. On the way they passed the stadium. This happened well, and as if on purpose, that he who was running to the crown of righteousness, his contest completed, should pass by the place of a fitting contest. But when they came to the praetorium, since the proconsul had not yet come out, a more private place was given him. There, as he sat drenched with heavy sweat after the long walk (the seat happened to be covered with a linen cloth, so that even under the stroke of suffering he enjoyed the honor of the episcopate), one of the officers' orderlies, formerly a Christian, offered him his own clothes, as if he wished him to change his damp garments for drier ones; in fact, in the clothes he offered, he was seeking nothing else than to possess the sweat, already bloody, of a martyr setting out for God. Cyprian answered him and said: “We apply remedies to complaints which will perhaps not exist today.” Is it any wonder that he who had despised death in his mind despised fatigue in his body? What more? He was suddenly announced to the proconsul. He is brought out, led forward, asked his name. He answered that he was the man. And so far the words.

So the judge read from the tablet the sentence which he had not lately read in the vision: a spiritual sentence, not to be spoken lightly; a sentence worthy of such a bishop and such a witness; a glorious sentence, in which he was called the standard-bearer of the sect and an enemy of the gods, one who would himself be an example to his own, and that discipline would begin to be established by his blood. Nothing is fuller than this sentence, nothing truer. For everything that was said, though said by a pagan, is divine. Nor is it surprising, since high priests are accustomed to prophesy concerning the passion. He had been a standard-bearer, who taught about bearing the standard of Christ; an enemy of the gods, who ordered idols to be destroyed; an example to his own, who, as the first in the province, dedicated the first fruits of martyrdom for the many who would follow in the same way. And discipline began to be established by his blood, but the discipline of martyrs, who, rivaling their teacher in imitation of a like glory, also themselves established the discipline of his example with their own blood.