(From the collection of Councils, edited by Joannes Dominicus Mansi, vol. I.) This Council of Carthage was held at Carthage after Easter, in the year of the Lord 254, and was convened on the authority of Bishop Cyprian. At its beginning, the legates whom Novatian had dispatched with letters written to the African church are excommunicated by Cyprian.
But the fathers gathered in synod reject the letters of these men—which the men themselves were publicly urging to be read in the council, letters most full of calumnies and lies against holy Cornelius—the cause of the schism having been fully made known from the letters of Cornelius and from the report of certain bishops of that same church returning from Rome, as unworthy to be read and heard in so sacred an assembly of priests (Cyprian, Epistles 41, 42, and 55). Felicissimus, the unhappy author of the African schism, and those five Carthaginian presbyters, deserters of the faith and schismatic sectaries, concerning whom Cyprian writes (Epistle 40),
having already been twice excommunicated before, are present in this sacred assembly of bishops to plead their cause, are heard, and at last are excommunicated for the third time. This is plainly established from Cyprian's Epistles 52 and 55, as well as from the synodal letters written to Cornelius, which St. Cyprian indeed mentions in Epistle 42, but which have perished through the injury of time. It was decreed in this council that the lapsed who do penance should indeed be received into the communion of the Church, but should not be admitted before the time of satisfaction is fulfilled, except in urgent necessity. Cyprian indicates this in Epistle 52, written to Antonianus, in these words:
"According to what had nevertheless been determined beforehand, the persecution having subsided, when the opportunity of assembling together was given, a copious number of bishops—whom their faith and the Lord's protection had preserved whole and unharmed—we came together into one place; and the Scriptures having long been brought forth from both sides, we weighed the matter with a temperate moderation, so that neither should all hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they fail the more through despair and, because the Church was closed to them, follow the world and live after the manner of the heathen;
nor, on the other hand, should the evangelical censure be loosed, so that they should rashly leap forth to communion; but rather let the penance be prolonged for a long time, and let the paternal clemency be sorrowfully entreated, and let the causes and wills and necessities of each be examined." See Baronius, in the year of Christ 254, from number 83 up to 90 exclusive. LABBE. This council was celebrated in the year of the Lord 255, on the Ides of May, at Carthage in Africa, in the case of the two schismatics, namely Felicissimus and Novatian, of whom the former obstinately defended that absolutely all the lapsed ought to be received at once without penance.
But Novatian, declining too much into the other extreme, with no less obstinacy asserted that none of those who had lapsed should be received into the Church. To determine this controversy, therefore, by the authority of Bishop Cyprian, forty-two bishops of the African Church are gathered, who, proceeding by the middle way, defined that to the lapsed who petition for return to the Church, peace and reconciliation are to be granted, if they have fulfilled the penance imposed upon them.
And they decreed that this should ordinarily be observed, unless either an imminent danger of death at life's end, or a pressing persecution by tyrants — which the Holy Spirit had revealed to Cyprian would come — should demand the indulgence, relaxation, and dispensation of the penances enjoined or yet to be enjoined. Privatus, a crafty old heretic, in order to plead his own cause, attempted himself to enter this synod with his followers; but because he had often before been condemned, he was driven back.
For which reason that man, having gathered certain associates, set up a certain Fortunatus, a fugitive and one excommunicated, as a pseudo-bishop against Cyprian; and then at once, through Felicissimus and a great band of schismatics sent off to Pope Cornelius, in order to turn aside the suspicion of schism and heresy, they very eagerly sought the communion of the Apostolic See. But when they had sailed to Rome and had repeatedly demanded to be heard and received by the pontiff Cornelius, and had tried to lay their complaints against Cyprian before him, they were at once rejected by him; for through letters written by Cyprian he had already sufficiently come to know these authors and champions of schism and heresy, fugitives and absentees.
See Baronius, year 255, number 5 and following. The synodal letter sent to Cornelius is found among Cyprian's works, his Epistle 54, which we have here conveniently transcribed. — A divine and sacred provincial synod, gathered at Carthage, called the new city of Africa, assembled by the holy martyr Cyprian, who was its bishop, together with eighty-four other bishops, which rejected Novatus as one denying repentance to those who had fallen. (The Greek that precedes says the same.) ARGUMENT.
The African bishops set forth to Cornelius that an imminent persecution was foreshown by God through frequent revelations, and that therefore they judged that peace ought not to be deferred for those who had not ceased to do penance. Cyprian, Liberalis, Caldonius, Nicomedes, Caecilius, Junius, Marrutius, Felix, Successus, Faustinus, Fortunatus, Victor, Saturninus, another Saturninus, Rogatianus, Tertullus, Lucianus, Eutyches, Amplus, Sattius, Secundinus, another Saturninus, Aurelius, Priscus, Herculanus, Victoricus, Quintus, Honoratus, Montanus, Hortensianus, Verianus, Iambus, Donatus, Pompeius, Polycarpus, Demetrius, another Donatus, Privatianus, another Fortunatus, Rogatus, and Monulus, to their brother Cornelius, greeting.
I. We had indeed decided some time ago, most beloved brother, by shared counsel among ourselves, that those who had been tripped up by the adversary in the assaults of persecution and had fallen, and had defiled themselves with unlawful sacrifices, should do full penance for a long time, and that, if the peril of sickness pressed upon them, they should receive peace at the very stroke of death. For it was not right, nor did fatherly love and divine mercy permit, that the Church should be closed to those who knock, and that to the grieving and the suppliant the help of saving hope should be denied, so that those departing from the world should be sent to the Lord without communion and peace; since He Himself permitted it and gave the law (Matthew).
(Matthew xvi, 19) that what is bound on earth should be bound also in heaven, but that things which had first been loosed in the Church could be saved there too. But indeed, since we see that the day of yet another assault has begun to draw near, and we are admonished by frequent and constant revelations that we be armed and ready for the contest which the enemy proclaims against us; let us also prepare, by our exhortations, the people committed to us by the divine favor, and let us gather within the Lord's camp all the soldiers of Christ whatsoever who desire arms and demand the battle.
Under the compulsion of necessity we have judged that peace ought to be given to those who have not departed from the Church of the Lord, and who from the very first day of their lapse have not ceased to do penance, to lament, and to beseech the Lord; and that they ought to be armed and equipped for the battle that is imminent. II. For we must obey just revelations and admonitions, so that the sheep be not abandoned by their shepherds in time of peril; but that the whole flock be gathered into one, and the army of the Lord be armed for the contest of the heavenly warfare.
For with good reason was the penance of the grieving drawn out for a longer time, that aid might be given to the weak at their departure, as long as quiet and tranquility were present, which allowed the tears of those long lamenting to be deferred, and aid to be brought belatedly to those dying in their infirmity. But now peace is necessary not for the weak but for the strong; communion is to be given by us not to the dying but to the living: so that those whom we rouse and exhort to battle we may not leave unarmed and naked, but may fortify them with the protection of the blood and body of Christ; and since the Eucharist is made for this purpose, that it may be a safeguard to those who receive it, let us arm with the bulwark of the Lord's fullness those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary.
For how do we teach or summon them to shed their blood in confession of the Name, if we deny the blood of Christ to those who are to go to war? Or how do we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom, if we do not first admit them in the Church, by the right of communion, to drink the cup of the Lord? III. There ought to be a difference, most beloved brother, between those who have either apostatized and, returning to the world which they had renounced, live in a heathen manner, or have become deserters to the heretics and daily take up parricidal arms against the Church;
and between those who, not departing from the threshold of the Church, and continually and sorrowfully imploring the divine and fatherly consolations, now profess that they are ready for the fight, and for the name of their Lord and for their own salvation are resolved to stand bravely and to do battle. In this time we give peace not to the sleeping but to the watchful; we give peace not for delights but for arms; we give peace not for repose but for the battle-line.
If, according to what we hear, hope, and believe of them, they stand bravely and overthrow the adversary along with us in the encounter, we shall not regret having granted peace to men so brave; nay rather it is the great honor and glory of our episcopate to have given peace to martyrs, that we priests, who daily celebrate the sacrifices of God, may prepare for God His offerings and victims. But if — which may the Lord avert from our brethren — any one of the lapsed should deceive us, so as to ask for peace deceitfully and to receive communion in the time of impending battle with no intention of fighting, he deceives and beguiles himself, who hides one thing in his heart and proclaims another with his voice.
We, in so far as it is granted us to see and to judge, behold the face of individuals; we cannot search the heart and discern the mind. Concerning these the Searcher and Knower of hidden things will judge — He who is soon to come and to judge the secret and hidden things of the heart. But the evil ought not to harm the good; rather the evil should be aided by the good. Nor on that account is peace to be denied to those about to be martyred, because there are some who will deny; since for this reason peace must be given to all who are to go to war, lest through our ignorance that one begin to be passed over who is destined to be crowned in the battle. IV. Nor let anyone say: 'He who attains martyrdom is baptized in his own blood, nor is peace from the bishop necessary for him who will have the glory of his own peace,'
and who is to receive a greater reward from the Lord's favor. In the first place, he cannot be fit for martyrdom who is not armed by the Church for the battle; and the mind fails which the Eucharist, not received, does not lift up and kindle. For the Lord says in His Gospel: 'But when they deliver you up, take no thought what you shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak: for it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you' (Matthew x, 19). But when He says that the Spirit of the Father speaks in those delivered up and set in confession of the Name,
how can he be found ready or fit for confession who has not first, having received peace, received the Spirit of the Father, who Himself, strengthening His servants, speaks and confesses in us? Then further, if, having left all his possessions, he flees, and being placed in hiding-places and in the wilderness chances to fall among robbers, or dies of fevers and sickness: will it not be charged to us that so good a soldier, who forsook all that was his, and, despising home and parents or children, chose to follow his Lord, departs without peace and without communion? Shall not either slothful negligence or cruel harshness be ascribed to us on the day of judgment,
that we shepherds were unwilling either to care for the sheep entrusted and committed to us in peace, or to arm them in the battle-line? Shall it not be cast upon us by the Lord, what He cries out and says through His prophet: 'Behold, you consume the milk, and clothe yourselves with the wool, and slay what is fat; and you feed not my sheep; what was sick you have not strengthened, and what was ill you have not made whole, and what was bruised you have not comforted (Ezekiel xxxiv, 3, etc.), and what went astray you have not called back, and what perished you have not sought, and what was strong you have worn out with labor: and my sheep were scattered because there are no shepherds, and they became food for all the beasts of the field:
and there was none who sought, nor any who called back. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hands, and I will turn them away that they feed not my sheep, and they shall feed them no more, and I will deliver my sheep out of their mouth, and I will feed them with judgment' (Ibid. 10, etc.). V. Lest, therefore, by our own mouth, by which we deny peace, by which we set the harshness rather of human cruelty than the divine and fatherly mercy, the sheep committed to us be required back from us by the Lord:
it has seemed good to us, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit and by the Lord's admonition through many and manifest visions, since the enemy is foretold and shown to be threatening us, to gather the soldiers of Christ within the camp, and, the cause of each having been examined, to give peace to the lapsed — nay, to supply arms to those about to fight: which we believe will also be pleasing to you, in contemplation of fatherly mercy. But if any of our colleagues should arise who, with the contest pressing, thinks that peace ought not to be given to the brothers and sisters, he will render an account on the day of judgment to the Lord, either of his unseasonable severity or of his inhuman harshness. We, as befitted faith and charity and solicitude, have brought forth what was in our conscience:
that the day of the contest has drawn near, that a violent enemy quickly rises up against us, and that a battle is coming not such as has been, but much heavier and fiercer; that this has frequently been shown to us from on high; that concerning this we are often admonished by the providence and mercy of the Lord; of whose help and goodness we who trust in Him can be assured, for He who in time of peace foretells to His soldiers the coming battle will give victory to those who fight in the encounter. We desire that you, most beloved brother, may ever be in good health.