Conciliar Acts 1

ON THESE WORDS OF THE COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE: 'For neither does any one of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops,' etc. (Acta Sanctorum, on the 14th day of September, vol. IV, pp. 300–315.) What St. Cyprian records concerning a 'bishop of bishops' and the use of tyrannical error to compel obedience—these very things can be received as spoken without any fault of a disturbed mind and without injury to the Pontifical Authority. For the holy Pontiff and Primate wished to admonish the assembled bishops to state freely each his own opinion. To this end, because he reckoned that it would most conduce to that liberty, he observed that they were all colleagues;

and although he himself held the primacy of Africa, yet neither he himself, nor any of the others who were present, was a bishop of bishops, nor was that power tyrannically arrogated to himself, so as to drive the rest by his terror to his own opinions... But what he adds in the same place concerning the judgement and power of each bishop—namely, that no one can be judged by another, nor likewise judge another—these things are to be referred to those same assembled men, and indeed in a sound sense, otherwise they manifestly contradict the deeds of St. Cyprian himself. Certainly St. Augustine, in number 695, cited by us, so understood those words: 'I think, surely, in these questions, which have not yet been discussed with the most refined perfection.'

Now it was most true that that question concerning the baptism of heretics—which up to that time no general Council had defined, and which rested upon custom alone—it is, I say, most true that this question could not be so decided by any one of the bishops assembled with St. Cyprian, that on account of his authority the rest should be compelled to recede from their own opinion. On the contrary, if anyone should contend that the Saint's words are to be taken generally, then he must say by what right or by what wrong the same Saint pronounced Fortunatus of Assuras, a bishop in the proconsular province (in Epistle 64), and Basilides and Martialis, bishops of the Spains (in Epistle 68),

rightly deposed on account of the crime of idolatry, and took care that they should be barred from their sees? And by the same right he addressed Epistle 67 to Stephen, the Roman Pontiff, that he should command Marcianus, bishop of Arles in the Gauls, to be cast down from his see and another to be substituted in it—if every bishop has, by license of his liberty and power, his own judgement, and so cannot be judged by another any more than he himself can judge another, and if therefore the judgement of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be awaited, who alone and only has the power both of setting them over the governance of His Church and of judging concerning their deeds? It cannot therefore be denied that the words of St.

Cyprian's words, urged against this point, are to be restricted to a sound sense, or else it must be said that, out of the ardour of contention, he here suffered something of human weakness. Equally, the case of Fortunatus proves nothing against the same primacy of the Roman Pontiff—of whom St. Cyprian complains in Epistle 55, that through Felicissimus and the other associates of the schism, he had sailed to Rome to St. Cornelius, in order to extort communion from him by his lies and calumnies; and being required, if he wished to lodge anything against the sentence passed upon them, to present himself at his (Cyprian's) tribunal.

For it must be noted that that Fortunatus was one of the five schismatical presbyters of Carthage, who—because of the schism stirred up with Felicissimus—had already before fled from the Church and been condemned by the African bishops, and then had been ordained by heretics and schismatics as a pseudo-bishop in Africa, as we have shown above; and so he could not here be held as a bishop. Moreover, St. Augustine testifies in Epistle 43 (otherwise 162) that even in his own time it was not permitted to presbyters and to the other clerics of inferior order to appeal to the Apostolic See; which, however, he affirms—both there and elsewhere—was permitted to bishops.

It had therefore been agreed among the African prelates that clerics inferior to the bishops should be judged each in his own province; and this, doubtless, with the Roman Pontiff assenting, lest appeals to the Apostolic See should be too frequent and give occasion to unjust accusations. But that this prohibition was no obstacle in the time of St. Augustine—so as to prevent him from acknowledging, both elsewhere often and in the cited passage, the power over the other bishops and the primacy of the Roman Church (in which, as he there says, the primacy of the apostolic chair has always flourished)—so too no conclusion can be drawn from the similar deed of St. Cyprian against the same primacy.

But it is false what Fell, the heterodox bishop in England (and after him the renowned Boysen), shamelessly imputes to the most holy prelate: namely, that in the judgement of that blessed martyr those are to be held for desperate and lost to whom the authority of the bishops in Africa seems less than even that of Cornelius himself, sitting on the chair of Peter at Rome. For if anyone should attentively consider the whole passage, he will confess that the authority of the bishops in Africa is set by St. Cyprian not against St. Cornelius, but against a few desperate and lost men—namely, the followers of Fortunatus and Felicissimus. For he subjoins:

'Now their case has been examined, now sentence has been pronounced upon them, nor does it befit the censure of priests to be reproached for the levity of a fickle and inconstant mind... If the number of those who passed judgement upon them the year before be reckoned together with the presbyters and deacons, more were then present at the trial and examination than are these same men who now seem to be joined with Fortunatus. For you ought to know, dearest brother, that after he was made a pseudo-bishop by the heretics, he has now been deserted by almost all.' Thus St. Cyprian there argued in nearly this way: it has been established that the clerics inferior to the episcopal order should plead their cause in their own diocese;

but the case of Fortunatus and Felicissimus and the rest having been discussed among us, and sentence already pronounced upon it, they are therefore not to be heard at Rome—unless perhaps someone should reckon those few desperate and lost men more to be believed than so great a number of the bishops in Africa and of the other clerics, who judged concerning them earlier, and were far more numerous than those who, now adhering to Fortunatus, have appealed to the Apostolic See. This I judge to be the genuine sense of the words:

but if anyone should contend that those words 'few desperate and lost' are to be taken not in the ablative (removing), but in the dative (giving) case, even so he will not thereby hammer out Fell's fabrication, nor prove the authority of the African prelates here equated to that of the Pontiff, since the sense may then be: 'unless perhaps those few schismatics suppose that the authority of the African bishops is less than that to which they ought to subject themselves and their opinions according to those things which have been decreed concerning appeals.' This is certain, that no comparison of the African sees with the Roman chair is there instituted, and that Fortunatus and his followers are called 'desperate and lost' on account of their heresies and crimes, not because they had appealed to the Pontiff.