The land of Carthage bore him, by whom may shine all that is anywhere; thence, from his homeland, came Cyprian, the ornament and teacher of the world. He is his fatherland's own martyr, yet in love and speech he is ours; his blood lies buried in Libya, yet his tongue holds sway everywhere; it alone survives the body, it alone knows not how to die, so long as Christ shall suffer the race of men to be and the world to flourish. While any book exists, while there are sacred archives of letters, every lover of Christ shall read you, O Cyprian, and learn what is yours. That Spirit of God, which had flowed as author into the prophets, by a heavenly impulse watered you from the wellsprings of eloquence. O kind of speech whiter than snow, O new sweetness!
As an ambrosial liquor soothes the heart, steeps the palate, penetrates the seat of the soul, warms the mind and roams through the limbs, so God is felt within and is set deep in the marrow. Whence have you given the earth this sudden good, O Father? Reveal it! The apostolic writings lacked a rich executor; one richly endowed with eloquence is chosen, to teach the world and, serving the volumes of Paul, to expound them, so that the more the raw hearts of men, refined, might know the work of fear, or the mystic and profound things of Christ. There was one young man most learned in the sinister arts: to break chastity by fraud, to count nothing sacred, often even to enter upon magical incantations among the tombs, by which he might loosen the marriage-bond of a wife inflamed with passion.
Christ suddenly restrains the madness of so great a wantonness, scatters the darkness from his breast, drives out his frenzy, fills him with love of himself, grants him to believe, grants him to feel shame for the deed. And now his countenance and bearing are other than they were: his face is stripped of its delicate skin, it passes into a stern look, his flowing locks are cut short to a brief crop. He himself learns to speak modestly, to seek hope, to keep the rule, to live by the righteousness of Christ, to penetrate our doctrine. By these merits, then, most worthy, the teacher is at length advanced to the episcopal throne and takes the highest seat. Valerian and Gallienus were the chief lords of power: together they decreed the penalty of death for one confessing God. They had ordered thousands of foul earthborn demons to be worshipped;
against this the teacher Cyprian was rousing the hearts of the people, that none might fall short of the honour of surpassing virtue, nor any degenerate man fear to receive the prize of faith. The torment was slight, he said, if only you weighed the things to come, which God himself has promised without end to brave men: that the hope of light and a perpetual day are bought at the price of pain, that every evil flies swiftly past with fleeting time, that nothing is grievous which the end accomplishes and grants in peace. He himself would be the beginning of a fair death and the leader of the bloodshed, and would submit his head to the sword, consecrating his blood; that whoever wished to join his soul to Christ should follow as his companion. When by these words he had prepared the hearts of the men, kindled for Christ, he is led before the others, bound, while the proconsul raged.
Hidden caverns lie deep within Tyrian Carthage, conscious of the gloom of Tartarus, cut off from the sun. Shut in these dens the holy Cyprian, both hands fettered with a chain, calls upon the name of the supreme Father: 'Almighty Begetter, God of Christ and Creator of the world; O Christ, parent of man, whom you love and forbid to perish! It is I whom you in your goodness, pitying me forgetful and steeped in serpents' venom and stained with manifold crimes, washed clean, and now you bid me become yours: I become another Cyprian, new out of the old, and no longer guilty or harmful as before.
If you have cleansed my clay-stained breast by an easy gift of grace, come gladly now that the darkness is scattered to these blind dungeons, snatch this soul from the body's prison and the bonds of the world; let it be granted me, with my blood poured out, to be offered to you, lest any clemency restrain the savage judge, nor let the tyrant's envy learn to grow mild and deny me the glory.
Grant also that none be slothful from the flock I ruled as yours, that none of your own fall, unable to bear the punishment, or waver; that I may render you the number whole and pay the debt I owe.' By these words he had moved the Lord; thence the Spirit flowed into the people of Carthage, the author, with goads of keener spirit, that their hearts kindled beneath should grow hot to seek the surpassing honour through the trial of blood, teaching them not to tremble, nor yield, nor be conquered by pain, but to be carried away by love of praise, to savour Christ and guard the faith. Report tells that a pit was ordered to lie open in the midst of a plain, filled near its high edges with steaming lime; the rebaked stones vomit fire, the snow-white powder burns, mighty to scorch what it touches, and the breath from its stench is deadly.
They relate that an altar was set up at the topmost edge of the pit, under this law: that the worshippers of Christ should either offer a grain of salt, or a liver of a pig in sacrifice, or else of their own accord rush headlong into the depths of the pit. Three hundred leapt forth eager together in swift course; the parching liquid devoured them, plunged into the dusty whirlpool, and wrapped their headlong mass to the very bottom. Whiteness covers their bodies; whiteness bears their souls on high; hence it earned to be called 'the white mass' through every age. Meanwhile Thascius, the more joyful for the day of his own people, is set far off before the fury of the untamed proconsul. He had been ordered to declare by what creed he lived: 'A worshipper of the One,' he said, 'I deliver the consecrated mysteries of saving Christ.' The other replies to this:
'There is now charge enough; Thascius himself confesses it, he himself denies the thunderbolt of Jove. Make ready the steel, executioners; let the enemy of idols pay the penalty by the sword.' He gives God his due thanks and sings in triumph. Mournful Africa wept that the man departed, by whose teaching she was made more cultured, in whose eloquence learned she boasts; soon, weeping, she raised a tomb and consecrated his ashes. Cease to mourn so great a good: he holds the kingdoms of heaven, yet no less hovers over the lands, nor withdraws from this world: he discourses, he speaks, he treats, he teaches, he instructs, he prophesies.
Nor does he rule the peoples of Libya only; he goes out even to the rising of the sun and to its setting; he cherishes the Gauls, he instructs the Britons, he presides over Spain, he sows Christ among the farthest Iberians; in short, he is a teacher on earth, the same too a martyr in the heights; here he instructs men, from there as a patron he gives holy gifts.