The Bishop of Carthage, one of the most illustrious in the early history of the church, and one of the most notable of its early martyrs, was born about the year 200, probably at Carthage. He was of patrician family, wealthy, highly educated, and for some time occupied as a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage. Of an enthusiastic temperament, accomplished in classical literature, he seems while a pagan to have courted discussion with the converts to Christianity. Confident in his own powers, he entered ardently into what was no doubt the great question of the time at Carthage as elsewhere. He sought to vanquish, but was himself vanquished by, the new religious force which was making such rapid inroads on the decaying paganism of the Roman empire. Caecilianus (or Caecilius), a presbyter of Carthage, is supposed to have been the instrument of his conversion, which seems to have taken place about 246. This edition contains all 82 epistles that the Bishop of Carthage wrote, as well as a big selection of his treatises.
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St Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage, developed a theory of church unity almost universally accepted up to the European Reformation: to be a member of the body of Christ you needed to be in communion with a priest who was in communion with a bishop who in turn was in communion with all other bishops of the world. But, how could you discern who was a legitimate bishop? And, on what kind of issue would it be right to break off communion? Additionally, could self-authenticating ministries, like those of martyrs and confessors who had suffered for the faith, supersede this order? Finally, did the Church need, and in what form, a universal bishop who could guarantee the integrity of the network of bishops?" "St Cyprian wrestled with these questions in his letters and treatises, translated in this volume and in its companion volume: On the Church: Select Letters. They are questions that continue to arise in various forms in the contemporary Church, and thus, these companion volumes are of ultimate value to the state of current Christendom."--BOOK JACKET.
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