Cyprian of Carthage

Lived

c. 210–258

Era

The fathers

Where

Carthage, North Africa

Tradition

The apostolic communities

What to do with those who failed under persecution

A wealthy rhetorician converted in middle age, bishop of Carthage within two years, who went into hiding during the Decian persecution and was beheaded in the next one.

Why it matters

The crisis of his episcopate was the lapsed: Christians who had sacrificed or bought certificates saying they had, and now wanted back. Against both the rigorists who would never readmit them and the confessors who readmitted them on their own authority, Cyprian insisted on penance and on the bishop's ordering of it. His account of the church's unity — the bishops holding one episcopate jointly — became the classic statement, and he applied it against Rome as readily as with it when he judged Rome wrong about rebaptism.

In the record

1. 64–313 AD Persecution

   Imperial persecutions

   Beheaded at Carthage; his episcopate turned on what to do with those who had complied

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.