Cyprian. St. Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus, one of the most illustrious Fathers of the church, was born about 200 A.D., probably at Carthage, of heathen parents. After being a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage, he became a Christian, and was baptised probably in 245 or 246. Immediately afterwards he gave to the poor the greater part of his considerable fortune, and devoted himself assiduously to the study of Scripture and the writings of the church's teachers, especially Tertullian. After being successively a deacon and presbyter, he was made a bishop in 248. His zealous efforts for the restoration of strict discipline soon brought him a host of enemies. In the Decian persecution, which at Carthage was especially severe, the heathen people cried incessantly 'Cyprianum ad leonem!' but Cyprian sought safety in flight, in his retirement still caring for his flock with the help of two vicarii, and distributing large sums of money among the poor. He returned to Carthage in 251, and the rest of his life was a constant struggle to hold the balance between the two extreme parties—the adherents of Felicissimus and Privatus on the one hand, who favoured laxity in the treatment of the Lapsed (q.v.), and those who would exercise the utmost severity, such as the followers of Novatianus, on the other. Cyprian was excommunicated by the Roman bishop Stephanns for his opposition to the Roman view of the validity of heretic baptism. He rejected this doctrine as making the sacrament merely mechanical, and laid stress on the personal piety of the priesthood and their special authority for its administration, asserting that baptism could only be a reality when accompanied 'with the full and entire faith both of the giver and receiver.' At a synod at Carthage in 256, he maintained that the Roman bishop, spite of the primacy of Peter, could not claim a judicial authority over other bishops. His principle, that 'a priest of God, holding the gospel and keeping the commandments of Christ, may be put to death, but cannot be overcome,' Cyprian himself illustrated, on the 14th September 258, when he suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Valerian.
His character and conduct have been very variously judged. Both in his own and later times he has been accused of cowardice and pride. His zeal, fidelity, and self-denial were undeniable, and his courageous martyrdom frees him from the reproach of cowardice. His writings are all directed to practical ends. The earliest complete editions of his works are by Erasmus (Basel, 1520), Pamelius (Antwerp, 1568), and Bishop Fell (Oxford, 1682); and the best is that of Hartel (3 vols. Vienna, 1868-71). They consist of a collection of Epistles, and a series of treatises, which are themselves pastoral epistles of a bishop to his flock (see the translation by Wallis, 2 vols. 1869). His best-known work, De Catholica Ecclesia Unitate, laid the foundation of the hierarchical conception of the church. Cyprian holds that the unity of the church is founded upon the episcopate, not of Rome, but of the universal Church. In the Church alone can salvation be obtained ('he cannot have God for his Father, who has not the church as his mother'). See the Lives by Poole (Oxford, 1840), Peters (Ratisbon, 1877), and Fechtrop (Munich, 1878); and Archbishop Benson's Cyprian: his Life, his Times, his Work (1897).