03 — The Lapsed

The crisis of the lapsi and the libellatici, De Lapsis, the confessors and their “letters of peace,” and the graded discipline of penance worked out in the African councils.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)

Part of the St. Cyprian of Carthage Reference Guide. This section contains two content files:

File	Summary
de-lapsis-and-the-libelli.md	De Lapsis and the Libelli — The Decian persecution of 250 produced a wave of apostasy that left the African church, on the persecution’s easing, facing a crisis more damaging than the persecution itself: how to receive back the multitude who had fallen, when the confessors who had suffered were issuing indiscriminate “letters of peace” bypassing the bishop and the clergy entirely. Cyprian’s treatise De Lapsis (On the Lapsed), read to the Carthaginian council of 251, named the fall for what it was, condemned the false security of instant pardon, and insisted that only penance — real, penitential return — could restore the fallen to the Church’s communion. This file treats the classes of the lapsed, the treatise’s argument, and the crisis of the libelli pacis.
the-discipline-of-penance.md	The Discipline of Penance — De Lapsis set the theological argument; the African councils of 251 and the years following worked out the penitential discipline in practice — a graded system of examination and restoration that distinguished the sacrificati from the libellatici, reconciled the dying by compassion, and firmly located the authority to restore the lapsed not in the confessors who had suffered but in the bishop who held the one episcopate. This file traces the discipline of penance as Cyprian constructed and administered it, its roots in the tradition of exomologesis, and its lasting influence on the canons of Ancyra, Nicaea, and the Canonical Epistles of Peter of Alexandria.

File

Summary

de-lapsis-and-the-libelli.md

De Lapsis and the Libelli — The Decian persecution of 250 produced a wave of apostasy that left the African church, on the persecution’s easing, facing a crisis more damaging than the persecution itself: how to receive back the multitude who had fallen, when the confessors who had suffered were issuing indiscriminate “letters of peace” bypassing the bishop and the clergy entirely. Cyprian’s treatise De Lapsis (On the Lapsed), read to the Carthaginian council of 251, named the fall for what it was, condemned the false security of instant pardon, and insisted that only penance — real, penitential return — could restore the fallen to the Church’s communion. This file treats the classes of the lapsed, the treatise’s argument, and the crisis of the libelli pacis.

the-discipline-of-penance.md

The Discipline of Penance — De Lapsis set the theological argument; the African councils of 251 and the years following worked out the penitential discipline in practice — a graded system of examination and restoration that distinguished the sacrificati from the libellatici, reconciled the dying by compassion, and firmly located the authority to restore the lapsed not in the confessors who had suffered but in the bishop who held the one episcopate. This file traces the discipline of penance as Cyprian constructed and administered it, its roots in the tradition of exomologesis, and its lasting influence on the canons of Ancyra, Nicaea, and the Canonical Epistles of Peter of Alexandria.

03 — The Lapsed

See Also