07 — The Letters and the Episcopate

The eighty-one-letter corpus, the bishop within the college of bishops, conciliarity, and the African councils of Carthage.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)

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

File	Summary
the-african-councils.md	The African Councils — Between 251 and 256 Cyprian convened at least six major councils of the bishops of proconsular Africa and Numidia at Carthage, addressing in succession the crisis of the lapsi, the question of plague and almsgiving, the cases of unworthy bishops in Spain, and — above all — the rebaptism of heretics, culminating in the Seventh Council of 1 September 256, at which eighty-seven bishops each delivered a personal sentence and the whole was recorded as the Sententiae Episcoporum. These councils are the most developed expression of regional conciliarity before Nicaea: the metropolitan presides, but no bishop rules another, and the decisions emerge from collegial deliberation rather than hierarchical decree. They prefigure — and directly inform — the canonical tradition of regional synods that the later ecumenical councils would confirm.
the-correspondence.md	The Correspondence — Cyprian’s eighty-one-letter corpus — sixty-five letters written by him and sixteen addressed to him or bearing on his affairs — is the largest and richest body of correspondence surviving from any pre-Nicene church, and our primary documentary window onto the mid-third-century episcopate. Mostly official and pastoral rather than personal, the letters reveal not only the crises of Cyprian’s decade as bishop (the Decian persecution, the lapsi, the Novatianist schism, and the rebaptism dispute) but the principles on which he exercised episcopal authority: in permanent consultation with his clergy and people, and in collegial communion with his fellow bishops across Africa and beyond. The corpus also opens onto Cyprian’s full range as a writer, for ten of his surviving treatises were composed during the same decade and address the same communities.

File

Summary

the-african-councils.md

The African Councils — Between 251 and 256 Cyprian convened at least six major councils of the bishops of proconsular Africa and Numidia at Carthage, addressing in succession the crisis of the lapsi, the question of plague and almsgiving, the cases of unworthy bishops in Spain, and — above all — the rebaptism of heretics, culminating in the Seventh Council of 1 September 256, at which eighty-seven bishops each delivered a personal sentence and the whole was recorded as the Sententiae Episcoporum. These councils are the most developed expression of regional conciliarity before Nicaea: the metropolitan presides, but no bishop rules another, and the decisions emerge from collegial deliberation rather than hierarchical decree. They prefigure — and directly inform — the canonical tradition of regional synods that the later ecumenical councils would confirm.

the-correspondence.md

The Correspondence — Cyprian’s eighty-one-letter corpus — sixty-five letters written by him and sixteen addressed to him or bearing on his affairs — is the largest and richest body of correspondence surviving from any pre-Nicene church, and our primary documentary window onto the mid-third-century episcopate. Mostly official and pastoral rather than personal, the letters reveal not only the crises of Cyprian’s decade as bishop (the Decian persecution, the lapsi, the Novatianist schism, and the rebaptism dispute) but the principles on which he exercised episcopal authority: in permanent consultation with his clergy and people, and in collegial communion with his fellow bishops across Africa and beyond. The corpus also opens onto Cyprian’s full range as a writer, for ten of his surviving treatises were composed during the same decade and address the same communities.

07 — The Letters and the Episcopate

See Also