Contemporary women do not emerge with any individuality in the writings of Cyprian of Carthage.  While his literary predecessor, Tertullian, whose attitudes have been much commented upon by modern researchers, [1]   had much to write about women, Cyprian’s output was far less extensive and has been less the subject of scrutiny by scholars. [2]   In fact, in her survey of women in early Christian literature, for example, Elizabeth Clark does not mention Cyprian at all. [3]   Where he is mentioned it is most likely to be with reference to his thinking or theology about women.  George Tavard’s comment is not untypical:  “Cyprian did not teach any original theology on the problem of women in the Church, he shows himself to be, in this as in most matters, a good witness of the African tradition.” [4]

The purpose of this paper is not to examine Cyprian’s theology or attitude towards women but rather to examine his relationship as bishop with women.  Thus, I am not so much concerned with where women fitted into his theology as much as I am with where they fitted into his pastoral ministry as bishop.  In other words, my interest is with how Cyprian dealt with women within his Christian community more than it is with his thinking about them.  It is this element of Cyprian’s pastoral ministry involving Christian women that has received almost no attention thus far in scholarly writing. [5]   This is not to say that the two are unconnected, for indeed they are, in many ways, inseparable.  It is just that the focus here is not on theory but on practice, or on how the theory was translated into practice.  The importance of women in terms of the pastoral care offered by clerics (especially bishops) rather than simply in terms of theological attitudes about them has been highlighted in recent years across the spectrum of early Christian literature.  As one example, I can point to the work of my colleagues Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, for whom this has been a topic of investigation, particularly focused on preachers and their congregations. [6]

REFERENCES TO SPECIFIC WOMEN BY CYPRIAN

Of the sixty-six possible surviving letters from Cyprian, all are addressed either to the clergy or the confessors of Carthage and Rome while he was in hiding during the Decian persecution, or to bishops during and after that time, with the exception of a few that are addressed specifically to all the lay people of a particular Christian community. Only one letter of Cyprian that we have today seems to have been sent to named lay persons. [7]   Thus, if we were to make the statement that Cyprian did not write any letters to specific women, we should not draw from that the limited conclusion that women did not feature in Cyprian’s pastoral practices.  Rather, we should reach the more general conclusion that individual lay people, both women and men, did not feature in his pastoral strategies as key agents.  What his letters do reveal is that, with the exception of circular letters to lay people or to everyone (both clerical and lay) in Carthage, Cyprian’s episcopal ministry exercised through his correspondence was a hierarchical one. [8]

Not only was no woman the recipient of a letter from Cyprian, but barely any women were mentioned by name in any of his writings.  The only women mentioned by name in his treatises are either biblical characters of ancient classical or mythological figures (if we accept Quod Idola Dii Non Sint as genuine). [9]   The only contemporary women mentioned by name in his letters appear at the end of one letter, the authenticity of which is not beyond dispute. [10]   Luc Duquenne makes the following comment on this letter:  “[i]l paraît bien authentique, mais son contenu est insignificant.” [11]   I would not agree with him that the contents of this letter are of no consequence, for it may be the only piece of information we have about the identity of women known to Cyprian.

Cyprian asked the recipients of the letter (Silvanus, Reginus and Donatianus) to pass on his greetings to Metucosa and Valeria, whom he described as “sanctissimas sorores nostras benedictas”.  We cannot be certain that these individuals were Carthaginian but, if the letter was written during the Decian persecution while Cyprian was in hiding, then there is every possibility that they were lay members of his church.  The three men had had their faith tested but now they were safe. [12]   It would seem that they were confessors but had outlasted the persecution or had been released early from prison for some reason (which was not altogether uncommon), because Cyprian held out to them not the hope of a martyr’s crown but the reward of virginity. [13]   This is a letter in which Cyprian was offering guidance for daily living.

Why were the two women not addressed as recipients along with the three men?  What is it that bound the five of them together in some fashion and yet distinguished the men from the women?  All are described as “in the race of sanctity.” [14]   If they were all in prison together one could understand Cyprian considering them as a group.  Since they were no longer in prison, though, we do not know what on-going connection existed.  Did they all now share accommodation?  Were they related?  At the end of the letter Cyprian referred to “uobis uirginitas.”  This certainly meant the men but did it include the women?  It may well have done, as Bévenot believed, [15]   but, given that only a line or two earlier, he had referred to the men in the second person and the women in the third person, [16]   the second person reference at the end may not have included the women.

So it would seem here that we have a reference to male virgins.  If we have also a reference to female virgins we are still left with the question of whether they all lived together for, as we shall see, the living arrangements of virgins was an issue for Cyprian. [17]   We should ask also whether Cyprian’s reference to virginity was simply an indication of unmarried status or whether it designated an embraced lifestyle.  The reference to the rewards for their virginity would suggest the second possibility. [18]   If these people lived together, do we find here an example of the early stages of the subintroductae that was to receive so much attention from someone like John Chrysostom in the late fourth century? [19]

Cyprian’s only other reference to a woman by name is found in Epistula 39, a letter addressed to the presbyters, deacons and people of Carthage and dated to early 251 while he was still in hiding. [20]   This reference, though, is not to a living woman but about one who died a martyr’s death.  One of the supporting reasons Cyprian offered for advancing Celerinus to the ranks of the clergy by appointing him to join Aurelius as lector was that he was the third generation in his family to suffer persecution. [21]   His uncles, Laurentinus and Egnatius, who had been soldiers, and his grandmother, Celerina, had been martyrs.  Cyprian informs us that she had died some time in the past. [22]   These martyrs were commemorated liturgically on the anniversary of their deaths.  It is tempting to suppose that the Basilica Celerinae mentioned in the fifth century by Victor of Vita was dedicated to this martyr, although, as Graeme Clarke points out, the Martyrologium Hieronymianum mentions at least two Celerinae. [23]

We know that martyrs (male and female alike) were highly regarded in Proconsular Africa by the early Christians.  Five of the twelve Scillitan martyrs had been women. [24]   Of those martyred in Carthage in 203 the best remembered were the well-born Perpetua and her slave Felicitas.  Even if the Basilica Celerinae was not built to honour this Celerina, it was built to honour a woman of that name who had most certainly been a martyr. [25]   Furthermore, our Celerina remained in the memory of Christians in Cyprian’s time, who honoured her liturgically each year. In martyrdom at least, Christian women in North Africa were highly regarded and remembered by name.  This ritualised pastoral care of the dead, if we may call it that, was not so much for the sake of the martyrs as it was for those who were encouraged to imitate them.  We shall have reason to return to Celerinus a little later.  However, it must be pointed out, Celerina was only mentioned by Cyprian because of her connection with her grandson.  No other female martyrs, such as the Scillitans or Perpetua and Felicitas, were named by the bishop.  These family martyrs were mentioned not only to be a reminder of how to model one’s own life, but also because they had gained Celerinus some credit in his being chosen for minor clerical office.

REFERENCES TO NON-SPECIFIC WOMEN IN CYPRIAN’S LETTERS

At this point, as I consider what the more generalised, nameless references to women made by Cyprian may tell us about the Church’s pastoral care of women, I shall focus here only on the letters and deal with his treatises later.  Much of the information Cyprian has left us about lay people in the North African churches could apply equally to women as to men.  That is not my concern here.  What I wish to focus on are the ways in which Cyprian dealt with women specifically.

In his earliest surviving datable letter, Cyprian, having left Carthage for a safe hiding place, wrote back to his presbyters and deacons to remind them to be diligent in their care for widows, the sick, the poor and strangers. [26]   It is obvious that in Carthage there was a well-established system of welfare for those in need.  Charity was an important feature of Cyprian’s pastoral care.  We know that widows had long been an organised group within the local church. [27]   Cyprian, however, tells us nothing about this organisation.  His concern for practical charity not only fulfilled the Scriptural injunction to care for widows, [28]   but it enabled Cyprian to cement his community’s loyalty to him through his exercise of patronage. [29]   Here we find an example of how he as bishop was to be involved in social welfare not personally but through the administration of the personnel of his church.

It would seem, though, that not all widows were so destitute.  In Cyprian’s letter thanking Cornelius of Rome for the information about the five Novatianists heading from there to Carthage, he expanded on that information by stressing that Nicostratus had embezzled church money and refused to return money deposited by widows and orphans. [30]   Novatus was said to have stolen from orphans, widows and the money entrusted to the church. [31]   The further charge against this presbyter was that he had caused his wife to abort by kicking her in the stomach. [32]

Even though by nature women may have been thought weaker than men, when it came to the matter of grace or of the gifts of the Spirit received in baptism, Cyprian believed that there was an equality between men and women.  These gifts were given without discrimination on the basis of gender, age or person. [33]   The question here, though, is what this baptismal equality between women and men meant for Cyprian in practice.  It would seem from the rest of the evidence presented in this paper that Cyprian’s practice did not match his theory too frequently.

From early in the Decian persecution we have a letter addressed to confessors in Carthage. [34]   Cyprian acknowledged a number of women confessors who had displayed courage beyond what women were thought to possess.  Even though this idea that women were somehow inferior was a typical attitude in the ancient world, [35] Cyprian saw no reason why every woman could not imitate these female confessors and share the crown of victory they were so close to achieving. [36]   The heroism of the confessors and martyrs (male and female alike), these “friends of God” as Peter Brown describes them, [37]   meant that there were other figures in the church who could rival the authority of the bishop.  Cyprian’s praise of them was in an effort to harness that authority and defuse any threat to the legitimacy of his sole authority.

However, in his next letter to these confessors, Cyprian issued a warning that sexual encounters between male and female confessors in prison not only polluted the new baptism of confession, but also caused scandal to others. [38]   Some see here a reference to the subintroductae, [39]   although there is no reason to suppose that all the confessors were consecrated to a life of virginity.  This may simply be promiscuity among a number of confessors.  Again we find Cyprian educating and exhorting the confessors to live their daily Christian lives in the context of their imprisonment.

One of the only references to lapsae in Cyprian’s letters, as opposed to his treatises, is to be found in the letter sent by him and forty-one episcopal colleagues to Cornelius of Rome in spring 253. [40]   Towards the end of the letter is the statement that if any bishop made a decision contrary to the recommendation of the synod (and it was a bishop’s right to do that) and did not readmit penitent sacrificati to communion, then he would have to answer for that before God.  The bishops referred to these sacrificati as brothers and sisters. [41]   Are we to conclude from this that in the many references to the lapsed ‘brothers’ Cyprian was not including or not thinking of lapsed women?  Or, if frater was used collectively, why did the bishops feel the need in this letter to acknowledge lapsae specifically?  The synods over which Cyprian presided were an example of the way in which bishops administered their churches in third-century North Africa.  They also give us some indication that there must have been a process of ritualised penance, although no information is given about the process was ritualised.

It would seem, at least as far as Cyprian would like to have claimed, that virginity as an embraced condition was popular in African Christianity.  He stated sometime after the synod of 251 that granting reconciliation to adulterers had not made virginity or chastity any less popular or glorious. [42]  From this Cyprian wanted to persuade bishop Antonianus that offering the hope of reconciliation to the lapsi would not make martyrdom any less attractive. [43]   A similar thought was expressed in the stinging rebuke to Florentinus (Puppianus). [44]   Cyprian boasted of the fact that confessors, bishops, virgins and widows accepted him as legitimate bishop.  His policy of granting reconciliation was not unpopular with them.  There is the obvious inference here that virgins and widows formed distinct groups and were held in high regard.

During the Valerianic persecution towards the end of his life, Cyprian wrote to a group of Numidian bishops banished to the mines.  He exhorted them to persevere in being exemplars of lived faith.  He praised those who joined the bishops in confessing their faith.  Among those he singled out for mention were virgins and children. [45]   We can presume that these virgins were women because of Cyprian’s next sentence where he stated that this group now had martyrs of every sex and age.  Of course, it could be that there were other, married women included among Cyprian’s reference to the faithful, but the virgins were singled out.  They were to receive a double reward:  to their yield of sixtyfold was added that of a hundredfold.  It is interesting that, while the children were said to have overcome their youth, here there is no mention of the virgins having overcome their natural female weakness.  It was not a point upon which Cyprian was inclined to dwell.  This letter, encouraging those in the mines to embrace their condition, is an example of Cyprian’s instructions for daily living.

The letter which undoubtedly has the most to tell us about Cyprian’s ideas of pastoral engagement with women and about his instructions for daily living is Epistula 4.  It can be dated to Cyprian’s time as bishop but not during his two extended absences from Carthage (250-251 and 257-258). [46]   Given the similarity between the response Cyprian gave in this letter to the problems presented and that given to the Decian persecution, it could be suggested that a date after the spring synod of 251 (but before the synod of 253 when the threat of renewed persecution saw a change in policy) would be a likely possibility. [47]   This seems to me to be a reasonable hypothesis.

It is worth pointing out that the problem discussed  (the treatment of virgins of questionable behaviour) was not one that had arisen within Cyprian’s own church; it had occurred in the church of bishop Pomponius, probably located within the province of Africa Proconsularis. [48]   What this letter establishes is that there was an order of virgins in at least one church outside Carthage, a church that would have been significantly smaller than the capital.

The response sent by Cyprian and several of his episcopal colleagues (together with a number of presbyters) indicates that these female virgins had made a commitment to a chaste life. [49]   They were not simply single women.  There is nothing in the letter to prove that all these women lived together as a community.  The fact that the deacon who was excommunicated was mentioned only in connection with one particular virgin could suggest that these women lived with their own families (or possibly even on their own) but not together. [50]   It is only a suggestion though.  A number of these virgins had been discovered sharing their beds with men and there had been embracing and kissing, but they denied that they had lost their virginity. [51]

Was this a case of these men visiting these virgins on an occasional basis or of boundaries being crossed by people who lived in the same accommodation? Elizabeth Clark and Graeme Clarke both think it was the latter. [52] This is a separate question from asking whether only the women all lived together.  We can agree with them in this instance because of Cyprian’s advice that not only should virgins not share the same bed with men, they should not live with them either. [53]   It is possible that Cyprian was criticising the practice of mixed communities of celibate people, but there is nothing to indicate that these men were dedicated celibates as well as the women. [54]   I am not convinced that we must believe that they were.  Perhaps Cyprian was advising Pomponius that virgins should not live in any household with men (married or unmarried) and that they should live either on their own or in communities of female virgins or in communities of women only (perhaps living with widows).

Pomponius, it would seem, had excommunicated everyone involved [55]   and had written to Cyprian for his advice about whether this was the right thing to have done, at least as far as the women were concerned. [56]   Cyprian supported the excommunication of the men.  With regard to the virgins he recommended that those who had performed penance and who were discovered (through physical examination by midwives) to have preserved their physical (if not spiritual) virginity ought to be readmitted to communion.  If any of the women were found in the same living arrangements in the future the advice was that they were to be excommunicated permanently. [57]   Those who were discovered to have lost their virginity were to continue with a more stringent penance for an appropriate period until being readmitted to communion after public confession of their sin.  Those virgins who showed no signs of remorse and had not separated from the men after Pomponius’ initial decision ought to remain excommunicated. [58]

What we read here is Cyprian’s obvious belief that the men were more to blame than the virgins, who were seen to have two mitigating conditions:  the weakness of their gender and their age. [59]   There is no sense that Cyprian blamed the virgins for tempting the men.

For Cyprian, a bishop’s pastoral care was twofold.  On one level, when dealing with failings, a bishop was to insist on ecclesiastical discipline as handed down by the apostles. [60]   Even if such a policy was seen to be harsh [61] (as the laxists also claimed about Cyprian’s treatment of the lapsi), it was the only way for them to attain the path to salvation and the only way for bishops themselves to be pleasing to Christ. [62] The second thing was for bishops to be vigilant in preventing such failings occurring in the first place. [63] The best way for this to happen was if virgins were under the guidance and control of bishops. [64]   For this to work, Church leaders need to be shining examples of the lifestyle they preached. [65]   While part of Cyprian’s solution was this challenge to male clerical leaders, most of his solution was not about putting in place a strategy that would curb the actions of any other libidinous men but of controlling the women.  This was obviously the easier method and reflected the fact that women in Roman-run societies were under male control.  McNamara makes the point that Cyprian’s praise of the presbyter’s wife was rare by this time. [66]

While Cyprian recognised here that a life of virginity would be rewarded, no where in this letter did he state that virginity was a better state of life than being married. [67]   At one point he did note that those unable to continue in a life of chastity would be better off marrying than being punished eternally for their sins. [68]   We are not justified, I believe, in reading into this particular statement any idea that virginity was a higher calling than marriage.  Marriage was certainly better than a pretend or false virginity, but about whether embracing and living out one particular lifestyle (marriage or true virginity) was better than the other, Cyprian had nothing to say.  It has to be admitted, though, that while he wrote of the rewards of virginity a number of times, he never referred to any rewards for living the married life.

Elsewhere, Cyprian mentioned the devotion of the daughter of the presbyter Numidicus who found her father half-dead after he had been burnt and stoned as a result of his witness to the faith.  She nursed him back to health.  Her mother had not survived being burnt. [69]   While this tells us something about Cyprian’s thoughts on the duties of children, he could use this example as a way of encouraging and exhorting others to care for the courageous confessors.

In Epistula 62, often dated to 253 but not conclusively so, [70]   Cyprian referred to the kidnapping of Christian men and women by barbarians. [71]   He was able to tell the eight Numidian bishops who had written to him how his local community had responded to this news and how generous they had been to raise a ransom. [72]   It appears that we have evidence here of Cyprian consulting with the lay members of his church.  I say this not because Cyprian’s report of this discussion had fathers and husbands imagining the captives as their own sons or wives (since we can be fairly sure that in Cyprian’s time there were married clergy), [73]   but because Cyprian himself wrote that the one hundred thousand sesterces was raised by both clergy and laity. [74]   Cyprian records the fact that these contributions came from both men and women. [75]   This would indicate that there were women of independent financial means in the Carthaginian church.  The most distressing point in the information from Numidia was that there were virgins among the captives. [76]   It is fairly clear that they were female consecrated virgins and the concern from Carthage was that they would be the target of sexual victimisation.  The ransom of captives was seen in late antiquity as a normal part of a bishop’s pastoral responsibilities of intercession.  What Cyprian tells us is that there was a heightened sense of responsibility when those captives included virgins.

When Cyprian referred to his consultation with the laity only fathers and husbands were mentioned.  This would suggest that it was only with men.  Since money was received from the wealthy women, we know that the consultation probably included women as well as men.  In thinking of the whole group, though, Cyprian seems to have been aware of or addressed himself to only the men.  The women became the forgotten part of the audience.

There is one more reference to wealthy women in one of Cyprian’s last letters.  He mentioned that the edict of Valerian which introduced the second stage of his persecution in 258 targeted clergy and socially distinguished Christians.  Women who owned property were to have it confiscated and were to be exiled. [77]   This tells us merely that the emperor believed that there were well-born Christian women and men in the empire.  It does not tell us that they were in Carthage specifically and so is not of much use to us.

REFERENCES TO WOMEN BY OTHERS AMONG THE LETTERS

Here I would like to consider the references to women, whether named or not, made by others whose letters are preserved in the Cyprianic corpus.  This has the benefit of providing some point of comparison and contrast with what we find in Cyprian’s own letters.   Epistula 8 was written in the first half of 250 at the height of the Decian persecution.  It is from the clergy in Rome to the clergy in Carthage. [78]   Both local churches were leaderless:  Fabian having been murdered and Cyprian having gone into hiding.  The Roman clergy took it upon themselves to advise their Carthaginian counterparts about how to act in place of the shepherd in watching over the flock. [79]   Part of that advice was for the Carthaginian clergy not to neglect “the needs of widows and others in distress who are unable to support themselves…” [80]   This was advice Cyprian himself had given already to his own community, as we noted above. 

We know from a letter to Antioch from Cornelius, elected bishop of Rome in March 251, that the Roman church supported over 1,500 such widows and others in distress. [81]   There is nothing in the Roman letter to Carthage to suggest that the Africans had been derelict.  It would seem that the Romans were simply reminding them that even during the current crisis (or, particularly because of that crisis) the biblical injunction to care for widows was not to be neglected.  Of course, the Scriptures usually referred to widows and orphans together, but the parentless received no mention in this letter.

In a letter dated to the middle of 250, [82]   Celerinus, who, as we have observed, was later to be appointed a lector by Cyprian, wrote from Rome to his friend Lucianus, imprisoned in Carthage during the Decian persecution.  As Lucianus was a confessor still in prison, Celerinus asked for his intercessory prayers on behalf of two women in Rome, Numeria and Candida. [83]   One of them had managed to avoid having to complete the sacrifice, probably by bribing an official to provide her with the necessary libellus, and the other, presuming she was the same woman Celerinus had mentioned earlier in the letter, by offering the sacrifice. [84]   They were, at the time the letter was sent, both engaged in penance and works of charity in the hope of receiving pardon for their lapse and readmission to communion.  Possibly as part of their penance, the two women were taking care of sixty-five people. [85]   Celerinus referred to them as  “our sisters” which would tend to suggest that they were not familial relatives. [86]   It would also suggest that they were Carthaginians, since they were well known to Lucianus.  Maybe the four of them had come across to Rome together some time earlier.  This suggestion is reinforced when we consider that the two women had met Statius and Severianus, two Carthaginian confessors, when these men arrived at Ostia, and had escorted them into the city.

Celerinus called one of the two women Etecusa. [87]   Bévenot suggested that this Etecusa could be a copying error and she could actually have been the same person as Metucosa in Epistula 82. [88]   It was Etecusa who bribed her way out of sacrifice (quia pro se dona numerauit ne sacrificaret) and on the basis of the use of numerauit the editor of one codex attached an incipit to the letter identifying numerauit with Numeria (and thereby identifying Etecusa with Numeria).  On the other hand, from the scansion of Numeria and Valeria (from Epistula 82), Bévenot suggested that they were the same person, which meant he identified Etecusa/Metucosa with Candida. [89]   Clarke reports all this without offering an opinion one way or the other. [90]   While I think Bévenot’s identification of Etecusa and Metucosa is plausible, I am not convinced that we must identify her with Candida. [91]   I think the identification must remain unsure.

At the end of the letter Celerinus informed Lucianus that Macarius and his sisters, Cornelia and Emerita, sent him greetings, as did Calpurnius and Maria. [92]   Again, it is impossible to tell whether these were Carthaginians who had come over to Rome or whether they were Romans whom Celerinus and Lucianus had met there.  Given that Saturninus, a Carthaginian confessor, is named in the middle of that group, I am inclined to think of them all as Carthaginians.

Among this group of lay Christians, quite possibly a group of friends (even if some of them were only new Roman friends), there is care for each other whether they are male or female.  There is no sense to me of any inequalities in their relationships based on gender.  The inequalities that were present (Lucianus’ privileged position as a still-imprisoned confessor and Numeria and Candida’s penitential position as lapsae) existed because of personal reactions to the persecution.

In his reply Lucianus made mention of the two sisters and indicated that, in obedience to the instruction of Paulus before he was martyred, all the confessors granted peace not only to these two but to all the sisters in need of reconciliation. [93]   Among those who seem to have been with him in prison but who had died recently, Lucianus mentioned Fortunata, Credula, Hereda, and Iulia as part of a group of seventeen which included Mappalicus. [94]   Lucianus also sent greetings to those he knew with Celerinus in Rome. [95]   Maris, Collecta and Emerita may be the same people as Macarius, Cornelia and Emerita. [96]   Calpurnius and Maria are mentioned together with Sabina, Spesina and the sisters Januaria, Dativa and Donata.  Other women mentioned are Colonia and the sisters of the Argentarii. [97]   Finally, Lucianus sent greetings on behalf of his sisters (sorores meae), Ianuaria and Sophia, to Celerinus. [98]

These two letters provide us with a glimpse of Christian women in the churches of Carthage and Rome in the middle of the third century.  They provide us with some insight into the lives and concerns of lay Christians in general.  Women were confessors and martyrs along with men.  Women as well as men lapsed under the Decian persecution.  Women were part of the social network of Christians as much as men were.  There is no sense that the two lapsed women were judged particularly harshly at all by Celerinus or Lucianus.  They both recognised their offences as serious but attempted to find whatever means were possible to help them.  We can contrast the easy familiarity of these two men with Christian women with Cyprian’s seeming lack of direct contact with lay people of either gender.  Perhaps this is due to the nature of our sources.  His correspondence indicates that much of his pastoral care of lay people was conducted through his clergy.  What the correspondence does not record is direct interaction.  We see here an example of Cyprian exercising his pastoral ministry of administering his church personnel so that they could be the direct pastoral care providers.

Lest we consider that while women were very much part of the Christian experience for lay people they were not for bishops, we can consider Epistula 24 from Caldonius to Cyprian. [99]   Writing about the middle of 250 while Cyprian was still in hiding, this senior African bishop consulted with Cyprian about the appropriate ecclesial response to those Christians who had sacrificed and who then, in answer to a later demand, refused to sacrifice a second time. [100]   Four individuals are named:  Felix and his wife Victoria, Lucius, and Bona, a married woman. [101]   Felix had been an assistant to the local presbyters in the time of Caldonius’ predecessor, [102]   and had been imprisoned with Caldonius before he, his wife, and Lucius were sent into exile.  Bona had been physically forced to sacrifice by her husband and then later, obviously after refusing to repeat her sacrifice voluntarily, was exiled.  Caldonius’ opinion was that their public witness to the faith in their second trial obtained for them the reconciliation with the church which became necessary after their apostasy at their first trial. [103]   What we obtain from Caldonius is further information that gender was not an issue when it came to bishops considering how to treat the lapsed.  He certainly gives us no clue as to his thinking about whether women were any more prone to lapsing than men.

As the crisis of authority between bishops and confessors about how to treat those who had lapsed during the persecution reached its climax, Caldonius and two other episcopal colleagues had gone to Carthage on Cyprian’s behalf.  They were there to administer the local church and investigate the activities of Felicissimus, a local deacon who, together with five rebel presbyters, had been promoting the laxist cause.  These bishops and two local presbyters, Rogatianus and Numidicus, wrote to Cyprian.  They had followed Cyprian’s instructions to excommunicate Felicissimus and anyone else who would persist in adherence to him.  Among those they named as being outside communion were Irene of the Rutili and Paula the seamstress. [104]   As Michael Sage notes, none of the five presbyters was singled out for excommunication. [105]

In a letter sent from Cornelius in Rome to Cyprian in the middle of 251, [106]   there is a warning about five Novatianists heading to Carthage.  One of them, Nicostratus, is described as defrauding both the church funds he administered and the funds of his secular patroness (patrona sua carnali). [107]   Clarke takes this as an implication that Nicostratus was this woman’s freedman. [108]

Late in Cyprian’s tenure as bishop, at about the same time when the gathering of the eighty-seven bishops met in September 256 to discuss the developments in the ‘re-baptism’ controversy with Stephen of Rome, Firmilian, the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote to Cyprian to offer him support.  In the course of that letter Firmilian mentioned the Cataphrygians (Montanists) [109]   and an incident which had occurred in his part of the world twenty-two years earlier.  An unnamed woman had presented herself as a prophetess, delivering ecstatic messages, as though from the Holy Spirit, and performing unusual feats. [110]   She had even deceived a presbyter and deacon into sexual encounters with her. [111]   As far as the bishop was concerned she was possessed by a demon.  An exorcist had been able to identify the spirit that possessed her as evil. 

This incident was thought worthy of mention by Firmilian because one of her activities was to preside at eucharistic and baptismal liturgies, following the approved rituals. [112]   He asked Cyprian rhetorically whether such a baptism by a demon through a woman could be valid, and his exasperated and incredulous tone provides his own answer. [113]   There is every likelihood that this woman was a Montanist. [114]   Firmilian makes it quite clear that it was her gender that made it obvious that her ministerial activity was demonic and therefore invalid. [115]   Kevin Coyle interprets it a little differently. [116]   The blame for the sexual misconduct of the clergy was laid on her.  Even though this letter tells us much about Firmilian’s thinking, what it also tells us about in practice was that there were women who sought to exercise a ministry of presiding and prosphesying in some early Christian communities.  It also tells us that this was denied them in those communities we consider today to be mainstream.

REFERENCES TO NON-SPECIFIC WOMEN IN CYPRIAN’S TREATISES

We find nothing in ad Donatum, [117] de Unitate, de Dominica Oratione, ad Demetrianum, Quod Idola Dii Non Sint, ad Fortunatum, de Zelo et Liuore, de Bono Patientiae [118] or ad Quirinum [119] of any interest to this study.

De Habitu Virginum is dated to 249, early in Cyprian’s episcopate. [120]   I would place it earlier than Epistula 4 only because it would be reasonable to expect Cyprian to have addressed the question of virgins sharing accommodation with men in the treatise if it was written later than the letter, and we find nothing much about it at all.  In many ways it ought to provide much useful information for this paper, for, as an ascetical and ethical treatise, the focus is on “practical rather than… speculative aspects” and the purpose was “to present to people instruction regarding their attitude toward a pagan world whose principles were at variance with Christian ideals.” [121]   Yet, what are we to make of Watson’s assertion that, because this treatise borrows from Tertullian’s six treatises concerning women, “[s]o composite an origin can hardly be that of a document framed to meet an actual need”? [122]   How are we to interpret his statement that it is “a very bookish production and one that shews no close touch with reality”? [123]

I would agree with Watson that we need not associate the writing of this treatise with any particular occasion but I would not agree with him that we could not associate it.  Keenan may have been right that Cyprian wrote as a new bishop in response to his awareness of a continuing laxity of lifestyle among virgins at Carthage. [124]   It may have been that he found the old ideas of Tertullian still to be useful for his own situation, at least as far as he was concerned, and modelled his own response on that of his master.  This is a different explanation than Watson’s idea that this work was written at leisure simply as an academic exercise.  Thus, the treatise is not simply a statement of Cyprian’s personal theological opinion but is a document that reflects his teaching to a section of his community.  In other words, writing the treatise was itself an exercise of pastoral ministry.

In fact, very little in the treatise concerns virgins specifically or exclusively at all, despite the fact that they receive mention at the beginning of the text.  The major source from which Cyprian drew was Tertullian’s de Cultu Feminarum, a work that was addressed to women in general rather than to virgins in particular. [125]   Furthermore, his comments, insofar as they were meant for virgins, were directed towards female virgins.  He was aware that the comments in the Gospel about a life of chastity were taken as referring only to men (Mt. 19:11-12).  He connected that idea with that found in Ge. 2:21-23.  For Cyprian, the second creation story meant that as woman was formed from man, whatever applied to men applied to women as well. [126]

After some introductory comments on the importance of ecclesiastical discipline, [127] Cyprian praised virgins for having chosen the higher calling and indicated that his advice to them was so that they could enjoy the rewards of their virginity by seeking to please only God. [128]   This is the essence of his argument, even though the context is different when contrasted with Tertullian.  He had argued that the married woman did not need beauty treatment or extravagant clothing as their husbands loved them already and that all they would succeed in doing would be to create problems by attracting other men. [129]   For Cyprian, the argument was that the virgin who was not looking for a husband must not look as though she were looking. [130]

The next seven chapters (nearly one-third of the total) deal with the question of how wealth was to be used.  The section is held together by the epanaphorous use of “locupletem te dicis et diuitem” in four successive paragraphs. [131]   While direct reference was made to virgins a number of times throughout this part of the treatise, the comments could have been directed to any wealthy Christian woman or indeed to any wealthy Christian person.  This is the case in chapter 8, which repeats the earlier central argument about women not needing to please anyone else but God, where Cyprian applied his comments about the need for moderation were applied explicitly both to virgins and to married women.  In other instances Cyprian merely took what Tertullian had written about women in general and applied it to the context of virgins in particular, as we find with the comments about not dressing like prostitutes. [132]

From this point Cyprian’s arguments change.  Not only do these luxury goods and extravagant practices (like dyed cloth, necklaces, ear rings, painted faces and dyed hair) waste what has been entrusted to the wealthy and make them look like the most immodest of people, they also alter what God has created. [133]   If God wanted women to wear purple wool, God would have created purple-fleeced sheep!  This argument against tampering with nature also was borrowed from Tertullian. [134]   It was a point not restricted to virgins; Cyprian realised it could be put equally as well to widows, married women and to all women in fact, which he did. [135]   So, even if women could claim that their beauty regime and wardrobe were not an exercise in tarting themselves up to win male approval, it was an insult to God to try to improve on creation.  Not only would they run the risk of not being recognised by God on the day of judgement, they would also run the risk of not being able to recognise God. [136]   Not only did these women pollute themselves, their practices would pollute others.  Here Cyprian referred to both married women and virgins.  The solution which the bishop threatened to impose was to treat these virgins as infected sheep and diseased cattle which had to be separated from the unspoilt flock lest they all suffer. [137]

This was Cyprian’s pastoral policy for dealing with virgins who would not follow his teaching.  The oneness and holiness of the Church were paramount.  Excommunication was the means of preserving something which was held in the highest regard.  The common good always came before individual liberty.  It was the same policy Cyprian had throughout his episcopate with every Christian, male or female, who damaged the Church’s unity.  They were to be given the opportunity to make amends for their error, but the Church’s patience in the face of persistent sin was limited.

It is interesting to note that Cyprian referred to the need to remove the ‘infected’ virgins lest they contaminate the others while they were together. [138]   Was this a reference to a living arrangement of a community of virgins?  It could well be.  While I have argued that there is nothing in Epistula 4 to prove that virgins lived in community, there is nothing to say that this was not the case at Carthage or that both practices did not exist in one or both churches.  I think it is possible that there was some form of communal life among virgins in Carthage based upon Cyprian’s comment in this treatise.  I would be a little reluctant to endorse Keenan’s observations that “[t]here is no question of community life… Consecrated virgins sought to attain their ideal, a life of close union with God, without resigning either home or liberty…” [139]

The treatise concludes with some other practical considerations.  Cyprian’s advice to virgins was to avoid situations that threatened their continence:  wedding receptions and mixed bathing at public baths. [140]   Like the martyrs, virgins were to follow the straight and narrow, hard and difficult path to glory. [141]   Virginity had many advantages, Cyprian exhorted in the peroratio; it freed women from the pains of childbirth and freed them from having to obey a husband.  Christ was their master. [142]   The need expressed in Genesis for the world to be populated no longer existed. [143]   Some could choose to occupy the better rooms in God’s house through asceticism. [144]   The last thing we learn from this treatise is that there were both older and younger virgins in Carthage. [145]

My interest is not in Cyprian’s theology of women or asceticism but in his pastoral practice as bishop.  What this treatise tells us is that he felt himself to have a responsibility for the Christian lives of the faithful.  As shepherd he thought it was his duty to regulate their lives.  Virgins might have been free from husbands but they were not free from bishops.  He exhorted them when he detected a problem and threatened them with the full rigour of ecclesiastical discipline if they failed to respond.  Maintaining the purity of the Church was Cyprian’s prime task as bishop.  Being interested in his pastoral practice means that one has to ask what the consequences were with the issuing of this treatise.  What impact did it have?  Unfortunately, we know nothing.  McNamara suggests that Cyprian had no more success than had Tertullian in getting these wealthy and independent women to curb their ways. [146]

De Lapsis was written in conjunction with the synod in Carthage after Easter 251 when Cyprian had returned to the city from hiding. [147]   In its opening lines he praised the confessors, both male and female, who had persevered in faithfulness during the trials of persecution. [148]   Of course, the fortitude and courage of the women confessors was unexpected, for their gender was understood to make them naturally weaker than men.  Some scholars attuned to feminist concerns find in this a patriarchal denial of the possibility of women possessing strength.  The fact that they seem to have actually possessed it needed to be explained away by men who were surprised and threatened by it. [149]   They could only possess it by somehow becoming masculine.  While Cyprian shared in the commonly-held view that women were naturally weaker, [150] his brief comment has no indication that he was anything but delighted (and doubly so) at the fact that there were women confessors and that they had overcome their natural weakness.  In faithfulness during the persecution women could achieve an equality with men.  Like these married women, there were also virgins and boys who, as confessors, celebrated a double victory of virtue as well. [151]   Cyprian once again was engaged in offering guidance for daily life through the offering of role models.  He was also cementing the support of the confessors in his struggle to maintain control over his church by praising their exploits.

Cyprian had to offer an explanation as to why so many Christians had lapsed.  For him the answer was that previous years of peace had made Christians lax. [152]   No Christian was spared his criticism:  bishops, clergy, lay men and women alike. [153]   The harshest criticism was reserved for self-serving bishops.  His comments on women were that they had become too concerned with their make-up and hair styles, attending to their natural appearance so as to attract better husbands.  This is hinted at in the opening lines of the paragraph.

In outlining the situation with lapsed Christians, Cyprian offered six examples of the ways in which some of them had been punished divinely.  This was to support his position that readmission to communion was not to be granted too readily to the lapsi.  Of the six examples, four involved females.  One was a woman who, appropriately enough for Cyprian, considering he believed her to have denied what had happened to her in the waters of baptism by participating in the sacrificial meal demanded by the emperor, died as a result of biting off her tongue while at the public baths. [154]   Another was a baby girl who had been given bread dipped in sacrificial wine by her nurse and later who, in Cyprian’s presence, under the influence of the evil she had ingested, when brought along to the eucharistic liturgy by her family, cried during the eucharistic prayer, refused to open her mouth to receive the consecrated wine, and choked and vomited when finally some was forced into her mouth. [155]   Another was a girl who crept into a eucharistic gathering and who was seized with convulsions after receiving the eucharist. [156]   The fourth was a woman who could not touch the consecrated bread she was carrying in a container (presumably taking it home, possibly for sick family members) because it burst into flames. [157]

Was Cyprian suggesting there were more lapsae than lapsi?  The answer is most likely not. [158]   Even if women were weaker that did not seem to offer them any mitigation for their failure in the face of persecution.  Even infancy offered no excuse!  The quite natural reaction of a child to being force-fed was taken to be a divine unmasking of guilt even in those too young to have any understanding or possibility of moral culpability.  Unlike the laxists, Cyprian felt that it was too soon for any other attitude towards those who had lapsed except for their removal from the community and the imposition of penance.  Cyprian himself in the treatise did not make any specific point out of the fact that these four individuals were female and that they outnumbered the men in his examples.  What he was interested in was making the case of the need for discipline and, in the context of the synod of 251, of influencing the administration of churches outside Carthage itself.

Some of the lapsed did not help their case for readmission to communion by their not showing appropriate signs of repentance.  This applied both to men and to women. [159]   A lapsed woman who wore her best dress and jewellery and who had her eyes painted and her hair dyed was not displaying mourning for her lost salvation.

As has been noted with a number of the letters, Cyprian’s de Mortalitate seems to have been intended for a male readership.  Written at the time of plague and in the face of a threat of renewed persecution, this time under Gallus, in 252, [160]   this treatise was intended to strengthen and support wavering Christian resolve and to offer a positive interpretation of the turmoil.  Cyprian contrasted the endurance and obedience of Abraham, who was prepared to sacrifice his son, with the Christian men of his own church who could not face the risk of property loss or torture or the death of wives and children. [161]   He encouraged them not to weaken but to accept loss as part of the battle for victory.  Even though the plague was claiming Christians as well as Jews and pagans rather indiscriminately, yet there were differences.  The Christian who died went to their reward while the others went to punishment.  Virgins who died in the plague went to glory and were spared the threat of being put into brothels which they would have faced if they had lived to endure the coming trials. [162]   Rather than fear death a Christian ought to look forward to it, for there was a great crowd in paradise who could have no more fear of death and who longed for those alive to join them.  Prominent were not only the martyrs, but the virgins who had triumphed by subduing lust through their strength of constancy and those who had been generous almsgivers. [163]

It would be natural to conclude that Cyprian’s comments were meant for women as much as for men, but he did not address them specifically as readers of his treatise.  There is also no indication that the virgins he held out as examples of detachment from earthly life were not of mixed gender.

In his treatise on almsgiving, which generally is dated to between 252 and 256, [164] Cyprian addressed himself again to a male readership.  They seem to have been the target audience in the back of his mind in some preconscious or subconscious way.  One would not say that women were excluded from being the recipients of Cyprian’s comments, they were just not included.  In other words, they were overlooked and forgotten.  This may tell us much about Cyprian’s attitudes.  What this suggests is that in this treatise written to his whole church community, Cyprian took lay men into his confidence or that they became partners or agents or subjects in some kind of dialogue, while lay women remained objects of the pastoral care of their menfolk.

We should not push this to extremes though.  In one instance in de Opere et Eleemosynis Cyprian addressed women directly. [165]   This suggests that, when he was conscious of it, this treatise was addressed to men and women alike; but he was not often conscious of it and most of the time operated from his natural mode of addressing his remarks to men.  In this one instance Cyprian directed his comments to wealthy Christians matrons.  He challenged them not to cover their eyes with cosmetics but with Christ, so that they could see God through their character and their good works of almsgiving. [166]

CONCLUSION

It is time to draw together this surprisingly large amount of evidence.  We could say that Cyprian exercised his pastoral care at a distance via correspondence.  This is true up to a point for the years when he was in hiding and for the churches outside Carthage to which he wrote throughout his episcopate.  For the years he was in Carthage we have next to no information about his activity as bishop.  Presumably he dealt with people and situations face-to-face and therefore the evidence of what he did has not been preserved.

If we accept the argument of Charles Bobertz, and it seems a credible one to me, there was a political motive in much of Cyprian’s pastoral ministry.  His praise of the confessors, both male and female, was offered in an attempt to hold onto their support and loyalty in the face of sustained criticism from some quarters within his church during his absence from Carthage while the Decian persecution was in progress.  His charitable care for widows and others in need also was designed to keep alive the patron-client bonds he had with his church.  This is not to say that the political motives were the only or even the primary ones, but they were a reality.

Cyprian’s praise of female martyrs and confessors was in line with the North African churches’ high regard for total Christian commitment.  As well, it was a means for women, about whom he shared the common male view that they were an inferior gender, to overcome their natural limitations.  Unlike Tertullian, a generation or two earlier, Cyprian did not dwell on the notion of female inferiority; it was simply accepted.  The martyrs and confessors, both female and male, were offered to the community as models for imitation.  Male and female heroes were important for these North African Christian communities.

It would be true to say that most of the evidence we have about Cyprian’s pastoral care activities is about people in need or people who had done something wrong.  If one may be permitted a personal observation at this point, this still is often the way it is with pastoral ministry today; people who are not in difficulty often tend to be overlooked to some degree because people in some sort of trouble take up all of one’s time.  They would not have been overlooked completely because we can presume that Cyprian spent time with women in his community in normal sacramental, liturgical or catechetical situations.  As well he would have spent time with them in moments of simple, everyday dialogue and encounter where he could listen to them, advise them, be advised by them, encourage them and even support them.  Although I have no doubt this took place, we have no evidence of it as we do with Celerinus and Lucianus.  The ordinary moments of pastoral care were not the topics that necessitated any correspondence from Cyprian and this part of his life remains hidden from us.

For women who lapsed during the persecution and for virgins who failed in their commitments to chastity, Cyprian’s pastoral care was to deal with them according to the demands of ecclesiastical discipline.  Such discipline was determined by an interpretation and faithful application of the teachings found in the Scriptures in the light of changing circumstances.  There is no sense in Cyprian that there was any discrimination in the treatment of the lapsi based on gender.  Women and men were subject to the same discipline.  Furthermore, his ministry as bishop was exercised not with regard to individuals but with regard to groups of individuals

As we have seen, widows were an important group who received Cyprian’s episcopal pastoral care.  Those who were in financial need were supported by their local church.  Those who were wealthy widows were called, like the rest of the better-off Christians, to be generous in their support of the poor.

Virgins were another group who demanded Cyprian’s attention as bishop.  Like confessors and martyrs, virgins were highly regarded and in Cyprian’s time this was a lifestyle embraced by both women and men.  The lifestyle of some female virgins became a concern for Cyprian, quite possibly very early in his episcopate.  As with many other women, Cyprian was critical of their desire to dress finely and present themselves attractively to others.  He was also critical of their living arrangements where there was the possibility of scandal or immoral behaviour.  Cyprian’s response was to express the desire to assume responsibility for the running of their lives.  Yet his recommendations to Pomponius dealt much more harshly with the men who created the problem than with the women.

When we consider the seven categories of pastoral care offered by Allen and Mayer (administration, education, direction for daily life, social welfare, mission, intercession, and the application of ritualised forms of care) [167]   we find Cyprian engaged in most of them in his pastoral ministry with women.  Only in the area of mission, which includes things like conversion and maintenance of orthodoxy, do I find nothing that is relevant to Cyprian and women.  This is not surprising.  As a bishop who lived at a time of persecution, his focus was naturally on keeping his church together and not so much on expanding its numbers.  They way he kept his church together was through the insistence on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.

Individual women may not emerge from the pages of Cyprian’s letters and treatises with much individuality, but collectively they were an important part of the local church of Carthage over which Cyprian had pastoral responsibility.  Cyprian expected a high standard of Christian commitment from his church and this applied equally to men and women.  Cyprian’s ecclesiology is probably best known in the context of the ‘re-baptism’ controversy late in his episcopate.  In his pastoral care of women, throughout his time as bishop, we find the same ecclesiology at work.  Not only was the Church one, it was to be pure and holy as well.  Those within the flock who became diseased were to be treated and if they responded positively to that treatment were to be reunited with that flock.  Those who did not respond positively lost salvation.  The questions of discipline and of maintaining the integrity of the community in the face of both external and internal threats were the primary focus of Cyprian’s episcopal activities.  

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Saxer, Victor, Vie liturgique et quotidienne à Carthage vers le milieu du IIIe siècle, e Vatican City:  Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1984 (2nd ed.).

Shaw, Brent D., “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 (May 1993), pp.36-45.

Tavard, George H., Women in Christian Tradition, Notre Dame, Ind.:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Tibiletti, Carlo, “Ascetismo e storia della salvezza nel De habitu virginum di Cipriano,” Augustinianum 19 (1979), pp.431-442.

Trevett, Christine, Montanism:  Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Turcan, Marie, “Être femme selon Tertullien,” Vita Latina 119 (Septembre 1990), pp.15-21.

Turner, C. H., Studies in Early Church History:  Collected Papers, Oxford:  Clarendon Pressm, 1912.

Watson, E. W., “The De Habitu Virginum of St. Cyprian,” Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1920-21), pp.361-367.

Witherington, Women in the Earliest Churches, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 59, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

---

Footnotes:

[1] For a review see Marie Turcan, “Être femme selon Tertullien,” Vita Latina 119 (Septembre 1990), pp.15-21.  For a bibliography see Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Rhetoric and Tertullian’s de Virginibus Velandis,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (forthcoming).

[2] Indeed, even Cyprian’s de Habitu Virginum is the only one of his treatises not to appear in the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina for some reason.

[3] Elizabeth Clark, Women in the Early Church, Message of the Fathers of the Church 13 (Collegeville, Minn.:  Liturgical Press, 1983).

[4] George H. Tavard, Women in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), p.100.

[5] Elsewhere I have recognised that ‘pastoral care’ is a term that can have shades of meaning and that I prefer to write about ‘pastoral ministry’ as a more inclusive term.  See Geoffrey D. Dunn, “The Carthaginian Synod of 251:  Cyprian’s Model of Pastoral Ministry,” in I concili occidentali III-V secoli, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, xxx Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Roma, 4-6 maggio 2000 (Rome:  Institutum Patristicum Augustinianmu, forthcoming).

[6] Pauline Allen, “The Homilist and the Congregation:  A Case-Study of Chrysostom’s Homilies on Hebrews,” Augustinianum 36 (1996), pp.397-421; eadem, “John Chrysostom’s Homilies on I and II Thessalonians:  The Preacher and His Audience,” Studia Patristica 31, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, papers presented at the 12th International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford 1995 (Leuven:  Peeters, 1997), pp.3-21; eadem, “The Identity of Sixth-Century Preachers and Audiences in Byzantium,” Mediterranean Archaeology 11 (1998), pp.245-253; eadem, “Severus of Antioch as Pastoral Carer,” Studia Patristica 35, ed. M. F. Wiles and E. J. Yarnold, papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford 1999 (Leuven:  Peeters, 2001), pp.353-368; Wendy Mayer, “Constantinopolitan Women in Chrysostom’s Circle,” Vigiliae Christianae 53 (1999), pp.265-288; eadem, “Female Participation and the late Fourth Century Preacher’s Audience,” Augustinianum 39 (1999), pp.139-147; Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom, Early Church Fathers (London:  Routledge, 2000); eaedem, “Through a Bishop’s Eyes:  Towards a Definition of Pastoral Care in Late Antiquity,” Augustinianum 40 (2000), pp.345-397.

[7] I accept the argument of G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, vol. 4:  Letters 67-82, Ancient Christian Writers 47 (New York:  Newman Press, 1989), pp.177-178, n.1, that the Magnus addressed in Ep. 69 is more likely an otherwise unknown bishop than a lay person.

[8] Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries, trans. J. A. Baker (Peabody, Mass.:  Hendricksons, 1997 [2nd Eng. ed.]), p.270:  “Cyprian’s ecclesiological thinking is thus at bottom sacral-juristic and sacral-political in character.  The high value which he sets on the episcopal office is the direct expression of his desire for order, understood in religious terms.”

[9] Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 2:  The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus (Utrecht:  Spectrum, 1952), pp.363-364; Michael M. Sage, Cyprian, Patristic Monograph Series 1 (Cambridge, Mass.:  Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975), pp.373-375; B. Altaner, Patrologie (Freiburg:  Herder, 1978 [8th ed.]), p.174.

[10] Cyprian, Ep. 82 (CCL 3C.660 [appendix 5]).  Clarke, Letters 4, pp.319-321, numbers this as Ep. 82.  He accepts it as genuine but undateable.  Maurice Bévenot, “A New Cyprianic Fragment,” Bulletin of the John Rhylands Library 28 (1944), pp.81-82, wrote that there was nothing about the letter which would exclude Cyprian from being its author.

[11] Luc Duquenne, Chronologie des lettres de S. Cyprien:  La dossier de la persécution de Dèce, Subsidia Hagiographica 54 (Brussels:  Société des Bollandistes, 1972), p.18 n. 5.

[12] Cyprian, Ep. 82 (CCL 3c.660).

[13] Ibid. (CCL 3c.660):  “… cum coeperit in uobis uirginitas honorari.”  See also Ep. 76.6 (CCL 3C.614); idem, de Habi. 21 (CSEL 3.1.202); Ps. Cyprian, de Cent. (PLSupp 1.53).  On the last see Pier Franco Beatrice, “Il sermone De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima dello Ps. Cipriano e la teologia del martirio,” Augustinianum 19 (1979), pp.215-243.  In Ep. 10.5.2 (CCL 3B.55), Cyprian contrasted the red rose of martyrdom with the white rose of good works (de opere).  There is no mention of virginity per se here where we might have expected it.

[14] Cyprian, Ep. 82 (CCL 3C.660):   “in cursu et stadio sanctitatis…”

[15] Bévenot, “A New Cyprianic Fragment,” pp.78-79.

[16] Cyprian, Ep.82 (CCL 3C.660):  “… Metucasam et Valeriam, quas uobiscum…”

[17] If they did all live together and were not family members, I would be inclined to date this letter before Ep. 4.

[18] Bévenot, “A New Cyprianic Fragment,” p.79, was of the opinion that they had dedicated themselves.

[19] Elizabeth A. Clark, “John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae,” Church History 46 (1977), pp.171-185; Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives:  John Chrysostom’s Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

[20] See G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, vol. 2:  Letters 28-54, Ancient Christian Writers 44 (New York:  Newman Press, 1984), p.177; Duquenne, Chronologie, p.145.

[21] Timothy David Barnes, Tertullian:  A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1985 [rev. ed.]), p.158, surprisingly makes the erroneous comment that “[t]he recent martyr Celerinus… emulated his relatives in dying for the faith.”  G. W. Clarke, “Some Observations on the Persecution of Decius,” Antichthon 3 (1969), p.64, observes, it is clear from Ep. 37.1.1 that Celerinus had been imprisoned in Rome.

[22] Cyprian, Ep. 39.3.1 (CCL 3b.189):  “Auia eius Celerina iam pridem martyrio coronata est.”  We know Celerinus was a young man when Cyprian wrote this letter (Ep. 39.5.2 [CCL 3b.192]) so we could estimate his date of birth to about AD 225 to 235.  Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1995), p.224, indicates that lectors were usually appointed in late adolescence.  His father’s date of birth would then be approximately AD 200 to 215.  This would be the earliest date for Celerinus’ paternal grandmother, Celerina, to have died.  This would make the persecution under the proconsul Scapula in AD 212 an alluring possibility.  Barnes, Tertullian, p.158, suggests she was more likely to have died during the reign of Severus Alexander.  W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, 1965), makes no mention of Celerina.

[23] Victor Vitensis, Hist. Persec. 1.9.  Clarke, Letters 2, p.191 n. 14.  Martyrologium Hieronymianum, IV Non. Feb. (PL 30.456); VIII Kal. Oct. (PL 30.491); and IV Kal. Oct. (PL 30.492) (which mentions a similar group to the one a few days earlier but without Celerina mentioned).

[24] Passio Sanctorum Scillitanorum 16:  Januaria, Generosa, Vestia, Donata and Secunda.  Even if one accepts only the list of six martyrs mentioned at the beginning of the passio, three of them (Donata, Secunda and Vestia) were women.  See Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1972), pp.86-88.

[25] On the relationship between the Basilica Celerinae and the Basilica Scillitanorum, mentioned together by Victor, see W. H. C. Frend, “The Early Christian Church in Carthage,” in Excavations at Carthage 1976 Conducted by the University of Michigan, vol. 3, ed. J. H. Humphrey (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press, 1977), p.23, and F. M. Clover, “Carthage and the Vandals,” in Excavations at Carthage 1978 Conducted by the University of Michigan, vol. 7, ed. J. H. Humphrey (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press, 1982), p.9, who consider them to be separate basilicas.  Liliane Ennabli, Carthage:  Une métropole chrétienne du IVe à la fin du VIIe siècle, Études d’Antiquités africaines (Paris:  CNRS, 1997), pp.32-34, considers them to be the same.  It is possible that the Scillitan martyrs and Celerina had been buried quite near each other.  It is also possible that the remains of one or other or both had been transferred to the site of the basilica.

[26] Cyprian, Ep. 7.2 (CCL 3B.39).

[27] E.g., Tertullian, de Virg. 9.2 (CCL 2.1219); de Praescr. 3.5 (CCL 1.188).  See Daniel L. Hoffman, The Status of Women and Gnosticism in Irenaeus and Tertullian, Studies in Women and Religion 36 (Lewiston, N.Y.:  Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), pp.163-164.

[28] Ex. 22:21; Dt. 14:29; 24:17; 26:12-13; Tob. 1:8; 2 Mac. 8:30; Is. 1:17; Jer. 22:3; Zech. 7:10; Acts 6:1-6; 1 Tim. 5:3, 16; Jas. 1:27.

[29] Charles A. Bobertz, “Cyprian of Carthage as Patron:  A Social Historical Study of the Role of Bishop in the Ancient Christian Community of North Africa,” (unpub. PhD diss. Yale University 1988), pp.131-132, and Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity:  Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, Wisc.:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), p.90.  Jo Ann McNamara, “Wives and Widows in Early Christian Thought,” International Journal of Women’s Studies 2 (1979), pp.575-592, makes no mention of Cyprian’s pastoral care of widows (or anyone else’s for that matter) but only of early Christian thinking about the desirability or otherwise of widows remarrying.

[30] Cyprian, Ep. 52.1.2 (CCL 3B.244):  “Nicostratum uero diaconio sanctae administrationis amisso, ecclesiasticis pecuniis sacrilega fraude subtractis et uiduarum ac pupillorum depositis denegatis…”

[31] Ibid. 52.2.5 (CCL 3B.247):  “Spoliati ab illo pupilli fraudate uiduae, pecuniae quoque ecclesiae denegatae…”

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid. 69.14.2 (CCL 3C.492).

[34] For the date of Ep. 6 see G. W. Clarke, “Praecedit Dissertatio Biographica/Chronologica de Cypriani Vita ac Scriptis quam Composuit,” in Sancti Cypriani Episcopi Opera, pars III, 3:  Prolegomena, Corpus Christianourm Series Latina 3D (Turnhout:  Brepols, 1999), p.692; Duquenne, Chronologie, pp.62-64.

[35] Peter Brown, The Body and Society:  Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York:  Columbia University Press, 1988), pp.10-12, indicates that this stereotypical view that womanly characteristics, like weakness, irrationality and lack of control, needed to overcome or avoided, was widespread in the ancient world.  Graham Gould, “Women in the Writings of the Fathers:  Langauge, Belief and Reality,” in Women in the Church, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, 1990), p.3, states that “[m]uch patristic teaching about women is affected by this tension between recognition of the equality of women with men in the Christian life and the influence of inherited beliefs about female inferiority on the language employed to describe the religious achievements of women.”  See Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church,” in Religion and Sexism:  Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp.150-183.

[36] Cyprian, Ep. 6.3.1 (CCL 3B.34).

[37] Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1978), pp.54-80.

[38] Cyprian, Ep. 13.5.1 (CCL 3B.76-77).

[39] G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, vol. 1:  Letters 1-27, Ancient Christian Writers 43 (New York:  Newman Press, 1984), p.258 n.25; Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives, p.81.

[40] See Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Censuimus:  Cyprian and the Episcopal Synod of 253,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique (forthcoming).

[41] Cyprian, Ep. 57.5.2 (CCL 3B.309):  “…fratribus et sororibus…”

[42] Ibid. 55.20.2 (CCL 3B.279).

[43] Ibid. 55.20.1 (CCL 3B.279).

[44] Ibid. 66.7.3 (CCL 3C.441-442).

[45] Ibid. 76.6.4 (CCL 3C. 614-615).

[46] Clarke, “Praecedit,” p.691.

[47] Idem, Letters 1, p.170.  Cf. Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu’à l’invasion arabe, t. 2:  St. Cyprien et son temps (Paris 1902), p.68; Sage, Cyprian, p.365.

[48] This is based on identifying the Pomponius of Dionysiana mentioned in Sententiae Episcoporum numero LXXXVII (CSEL 3.1.453) with this Pomponius, although this must be far from certain.

[49] Cyprian, Ep. 4.1.1 (CCL 3B.17).

[50] Ibid. 4.1.1 (CCL 3B.17); 4.4.1 (CCL 3B.22).

[51] Ibid. 4.1.1 (CCL 3B.17-18); 4.3.1 (CCL 3B.21).

[52] Clark, “John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae,” p.172 n.13; Clarke, Letters 1, pp.173-174 n.6.  Adalbert G. Hamman, “Ascèse et virginité à Carthage au IIIe siècle,” in Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes:  Miscellanea in onore di Victor Saxer (Rome:  Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1992), p.512, and Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song:  Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries (New York:  Harrington Park Press, 1985), p.113, are others who supports this position.  On p.114, McNamara suggests that this might only “have been a particularly adventurous fraction of the virginal community who sought boldly to alter their condition by living like men among men.”

[53] Cyprian, Ep. 4.2.1 (CCL 3B.19):  “… non dico simul dormire, sed nec simul uiuere…”

[54] Cf. Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives, p.81; Ben Witherington, Women in the Earliest Churches, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 59 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.203; Jean LaPorte, The Role of Women in Early Christianity, Studies in Women and Religion 7 (New York:  Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), p.77. 

[55] Ibid. 4.4.1 (CCL 3B.22).

[56] Ibid. 4.1.1 (CCL 3B.17).

[57] Ibid. 4.4.1 (CCL 3B.22-23).

[58] Ibid. 4.4.2 (CCL 3B.23).

[59] Ibid. 4.2.1 (CCL 3B.19).  The danger of their age (aetas adhuc lubrica) might not just be that they were very young but could be simply that they were at an age (which presumably would extend beyond their teenage years) when men would find them sexually attractive.

[60] Ibid. 4.1.2 (CCL 3B.18).

[61] Ibid. 4.5.2 (CCL 3B.25).  This could suggest a date for the letter in a time when Cyprian was conscious of the laxist threat to his leadership.

[62] Ibid. 4.5.2 (CCL 3B.26).

[63] Ibid. 4.2.1 (CCL 3B.18).

[64] Ibid. 4.2.1 (CCL 3B.19).

[65] Ibid. 4.3.3 (CCL 3B.21-22).

[66] McNamara, A New Song, p.101.

[67] Cyprian, Ep. 4.2.3 (CCL 3B.20); 4.5.1 (CCL 3B.25).

[68] Ibid. 4.2.3 (CCL 3B.20).

[69] Ibid. 40.1.1 (CCL 3B.193-194).

[70] G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, vol. 3:  Letters 55-66, Ancient Christian Writers 46 (New York:  Newman Press, 1986), pp.277-278.

[71] Cyprian, Ep. 62.1.1 (CCL 3C.385):  “…de fratrum nostrorum et sororum…”

[72] Ibid. 62.3.1 (CCL 3C.387).

[73] Ibid. 62.2.3 (CCL 3C.386).

[74] Ibid. 62.3.2 (CCL 3C.387).

[75] Ibid. 62.4.2 (CCL 3C.388).

[76] Ibid. 62.2.3 (CCL 3C.386-387).

[77] Ibid. 80.1.2 (CCL 3C.627).

[78] On the date of this letter see Duquenne, Chronologie, p.119; Clarke, “Praecedit,” pp.693-694.

[79] [Cyprian] Ep. 8.1.1 (CCL 3B.40).

[80] Ibid. 8.3.1 (CCL 3B.42):  “… siue uiduae siue thlibomeni qui se exhibere non possunt… utique habere debent qui eis ministrent…”

[81] Eusebius, H.E. 6.43.11.

[82] Duquenne, Chronologie, p.130; Clarke, “Praecedit,” p.694.

[83] [Cyprian] Ep. 21.2.2 (CCL 3B.112-113).  We find in Celerinus at this time an example of the widely held belief that confessors could effect the reconciliation of the lapsed with their communities, a belief that threatened Cyprian’s position as bishop and one which he sought to curb while in hiding.

[84] Ibid. 21.2.1 (CCL 3B.112); 21.3.2 (CCL 3B.114).

[85] Ibid. 21.4.1 (CCL 3B.114).  Of course, it could be that when Lucianus had been to Rome he had met these local Christian ladies.  While he returned home, Celerinus had remained in the imperial capital.

[86] Ibid. 21.2.2 (CCL 3B.112):   “… sorores nostras…”  On the basis of the reference to the sacrificata as “soror mea” (21.2.1 [CCL 3B.112]), Clarke, Letters 1, p.322 n.14, suggests there is reason for supposing some familial relationship (at least between her and Celerinus).

[87] Ibid. 21.3.2 (CCL 3B.113).

[88] Bévenot, “A New Cyprianic Fragment,” p.80.  He suggested that Metucosa could be a nickname based on the Greek verb metevcw, indicating that she still ‘shared’ in communion, at least as far was Celerinus was concerned.  Against this is the clear fact that Celerinus was aware that neither woman shared in communion and the fact that he had always called her by that name (semper appellaui), which would not make sense if she only received the nickname, as Bévenot claimed, in an “incident [that] was so recent.”  Of course, she may have received the nickname earlier in some other context.

[89] Ibid.

[90] Clarke, Letters 1, p.326 n.25.

[91] Metucosa’s companion in Epistulae 21 and 82 need not be the same person.  We could hazard a guess that she had more than one female friend.  Therefore there is no reason to have to identify Valeria with someone (Numeria) and therefore no reason to have to identify Etecusa/Metucosa with Candida.  The fact that Celerinus referred to ipsam Etecusam (or ipsa Metecusam) and that Candida was the one named last in the previous sentence may support Bévenot’s position.

[92] [Cyprian], Ep. 21.4.2 (CCL 3b.114-115).

[93] [Cyprian] Ep. 22.1.2 – 22.2.3 (CCL 3B.117-118).  At 22.2.1 it is clear that the confessors’ actions were on behalf of male as well as female lapsi.

[94] Ibid. 22.2.2 (CCL 3B.118).  In the sixth-century Kalendarum Carthaginensis there is a Mappalicus listed for XIII Kal. Maii (PL 13.1219).  In the earlier Martyrologium Hieronymianum there is a Mappalicus, a presbyter, whose anniversary in Africa is listed as XV Kal. Maii (PL 30.466).  On XIV Kal. Maii (PL 30.467) there is a Mappalicus in Rome.  There is another Mappalicus listed in Africa on IX Kal. Mart. (PL 30.459) together with a number of others on preceding days who, Clarke, Letters 1, p.337 n.20, suggests, may be those listed in Ep. 22.

[95] [Cyprian] Ep. 22.3.1 (CCL 3B.119).

[96] Clarke, Letters 1, pp.338-339 n.26.

[97] [Cyprian] Ep. 22.3.2 (CCL 3B.119).

[98] C. H. Turner, Studies in Early Church History:  Collected Papers (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1912), p.113, thought that Lucianus was so tired from his lack of food in prison that he was unable to write out the names of all the sisters to benefit from the confessors’ pardon.  He was not too weakened, though, to mention by name those to whom he sent greetings, so one has to doubt Turner’s explanation.

[99] Jo Ann McNamara, “Sexual Equality and the Cult of Virginity in Early Christian Thought,” Feminist Studies 3 (1976), p.149, has failed to notice that it was not Cyprian but Caldonius who described the situation.

[100] On the date see Clarke, “Praecedit,” p.695; Duquenne, Chronologie, p.138.  On Caldonius’ seniority see Cyprian, Ep. 57.incip. (CCL 3B.300).

[101] [Cyprian] Ep. 24.1.1 (CCL 3B.121-122).

[102] Clarke, Letters 1, pp.347-348 n.4.

[103] Cyprian’s response (Ep. 25 [CCL 3B.123-124]) was to support Caldonius.  There is no mention of any of the individuals concerned.  Cyprian took the opportunity at the end of the letter to inform Caldonius of the pressing matter of the confessors issuing libelli of readmission to communion to the lapsi.

[104] Ibid. 42 (CCL 3B.199).

[105] Sage, Cyprian, p.230.

[106] Clarke, “Praecedit,” p.699; Duquenne, Chronologie, p.31.

[107] [Cyprian] Ep. 50.1.2 (CCL 3B.238).

[108] Clarke, Letters 2, p.280 n.5.

[109] [Cyprian] Ep. 75.7.3 (CCL 3C.588).

[110] Ibid. 75.10.2-3 (CCL 3C.591).

[111] Ibid. 75.10.4 (CCL 3C.592).

[112] Ibid. 75.10.5 (CCL 3C.592).

[113] Ibid. 75.11.1 (CCL 3C. 592-593):  “Quid igitur de huius baptismo dicemus, quo nequissimus daemon per mulierem baptizauit?”  Cecil M. Robeck, Prophecy in Carthage:  Perpetua, Tertullian and Cyprian (Cleveland:  Pilgrim Press, 1992), p.153, states that Firmilian’s judgement was that New Prophecy was heretical.

[114] Cf. Anne Jensen, Gottes selbstbewusste Töchter.  Frauenemanzipation im frühen Christentum? (Freiburg:  Herder, 1992), pp.352-359.

[115] Christine Trevett, Montanism:  Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1996):  “… here was a woman, autonomous, false in her prophecy, demonic in her possession and sexually a threat to Christian men.”

[116] J. Kevin Coyle, “The Fathers on Women and Women’s Ordination,” Église et Théologie 9 (1978), p.72:  “The woman’s activities are thus repudiated, not because she is a woman, but because she is a heretic, and as such filled with a demon rather than with the Holy Spirit.”  However, it does seem that the only way she was known to be a heretic was because she was a woman trying to exercise ministerial leadership.

[117] The only mention of women was in the context of the depravities of the age when even mothers and sisters would attend gladitorial games to watch their sons and brothers shed blood (ad Dona. 7 [CCL 3A.7]).

[118] At de Bono 20 (CCL 3A.130), Cyprian mentioned that it was patience that protected the integrity of virgins, preserved the purity of widows and maintained affection in those married.  However, this treatise tells us nothing about Cyprian’s dealings with women.  We could infer that Cyprian needed to urge his community to patience because of their impatience at not being vindicated by God during the persecution.  Does that suggest that Cyprian’s words are an indication of what ought to have been rather than what was the case?

[119] There are references to women in ad Quir. 3.32 (CCL 3.125-128) and 3.46 (CCL 3.135-136) but they are merely extracts from Scripture.  While the fact that Cyprian chose these extracts for inclusion may tell us something of his attitude towards women, they tell us nothing about his pastoral practice as bishop.  All we may suppose is that his practice was guided by what he found in the Scriptures.

[120] Monceaux, Histoire littéraire 2, p.251; E. W. Watson, “The De Habitu Virginum of St. Cyprian,” Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1920-21), pp.361-363; Angela Elizabeth Keenan, Thasci Caecili Cypriani – De Habitu Virginum:  A Commentary with an Introduction and Translation, Catholic University of America Patristic Studies 34 (Washington, D.C.:  Catholic University Of America, 1932), p.4; Sage, Cyprian, p.381.  This makes sense to me when I look at a statement like “nulla sit uenia ultra delinquere, postquam Deum nosse coepisti.” (de Habi. 2 [CSEL 3.1.189]).  It is a sentiment we would expect to find in Tertullian’s de Pudicitia (see, for example, 16.5 [CCL 2.1312]) rather than in someone dealing with numerous lapsi of the Decian persecution.  A passage like de Habi. 6 (CSEL 3.1.192) – tunc plane quando in nominis confessione cruciatur – is based upon Tertulian, de Cult. 2.3.3 (CCL 1.356-357) rather than upon recent events.

[121] Keenan, De Habitu Virginum, p.33.

[122] Watson, “The De Habitu Virginum,” p.363.

[123] Ibid.

[124] Keenan, De Habitu Virginum, p.2.

[125] Ibid., pp.13-25; M. Galdi, “De Tertulliani de cultu feminarum et Cipriani ad virgines libellis Commentatio,” in Raccolta di Scritti in onore di F. Ramorino (Milan 1927), pp.539-567.

[126] Cyprian, de Habi. 4 (CSEL 3.1.190).  McNamara, A New Song, p.100, notes that Cyprian here was defending the idea of female virginity and chastity as being a valid lifestyle in the face of the discomfort this idea brought to men.

[127] Cyprian, de Habi. 1-2 (CSEL 3.1.187-189).

[128] Ibid. 3-4 (CSEL 3.1.189-190).  This is the only near explicit reference by Cyprian to the hierarchy of Christian life states.  If it is present elsewhere it is only implicit.  At the end of the treatise (21 [CSEL 3.1.202]) we find the reference to the hundredfold reward for martyrdom and the sixtyfold reward for virginity.

[129] Tertullian, de Cult. 2.4 (CCL 1.357).

[130] Cyprian, de Habi. 5-6 (CSEL 3.1.190-192).

[131] Ibid. 8-11 (CSEL 3.1.193-195).

[132] Tertullian, de Cult. 2.10,12 (CCL 1.364-366, 367-368); Cyprian, de Habi. 12-13 (CSEL 3.1.195-197).

[133] Cyprian, de Habi. 14 (CSEL 3.1.197-198).

[134] Tertullian, de Cult. 1.8.2 (CCL 1.350); 2.10.1 (CCL 1.364-365).  It is interesting to note that what appears to be a positive attitude in Tertullian about these things (Nimirum enim deus demonstrauit sucis herbarum et concharum saliuius incoquere lanas…) was expressed quite negatively by Cyprian (Neque enim Deus coccineas aut purpureas oues fecit aut herbarum sucis et conchyliis tinguere et colorare lanas docuit…).  Cyprian has not changed Tertullian around but read him as being ironic in his statement.  If Cyprian was right, then this is an example of how one must be careful to read Tertullian in context and not always at face value.

[135] Cyprian, de Habi. 15 (CSEL 3.1.198).

[136] Ibid. 17 (CSEL 3.1.199):  “…quando oculi tibi not sunt quos Deus fecit sed quos diabolus infecit.”

[137] Ibid. 17 (CSEL 3.1.200):  “…tamquam contactas oues et morbidas pecudes a sancto et puro grege uirginitatis arceeri…”

[138] Ibid.:  “…ne contagio suo ceteras polluant, dum simul degunt, ne perdant alias quaecumque perierunt.”

[139] Keenan, De Habitu Virginum, p.7.

[140] Cyprian, de Habi. 18-19 (CSEL 3.1.200-201).

[141] Ibid. 21 (CSEL 3.1.202).

[142] Ibid. 22 (CSEL 3.1.203).

[143] See Carlo Tibiletti, “Ascetismo e storia della salvezza nel De habitu virginum di Cipriano,” Augustinianum 19 (1979), pp.431-442.

[144] Cyprian, de Habi. 23 (CSEL 3.1.203-204).

[145] Ibid. 24 (CSEL 3.1.204).

[146] McNamara, A New Song, p.117.

[147] Sage, Cyprian, pp.231-233.  Cf. Charles A. Bobertz, “The Historical Context of Cyprian’s De Unitate,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 41 (1990), pp.107-111.  Clarke, Letters, 2, pp.301-302 n.15, in his discussion on Ep. 54.4 (CCL 3B.255), thinks that de Lapsis could have been both a homily to his church and a statement of his position for the synod of 251.

[148] Cyprian, de Laps. 2 (CCL 3.221).

[149] See Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion:  The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (London:  Routledge, 1997), pp.174-176, on the sermons of Augustine and Quodvultdeus on the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas; Brent D. Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 (May 1993), pp.36-45; McNamara, “Sexual Equality,” pp.153-154; Ruether, “Virginal Feminism,” pp.150-183.

[150] Jane F. Gardner, Being a Roman Citizen (London:  Routledge, 1993), pp.101-107.

[151] Maurice Bévenot, St. Cyprian:  The Lapsed, The Unity of the Catholic Church, Ancient Christian Writers 25 (New York:  Newman Press, 1956), p.79 n.11, understood their chastity as being the second virtue.  However, like the married women, it could be that they had first surmounted a natural weakness before confessing their faith.  I do not see Cyprian making any comment about them having a victory over their chastity (which makes no sense) or a victory over any threat to their chastity (which did not seem to feature in the Decian persecution as a peril faced by Christians).

[152] Cyprian, de Laps. 5 (CCL 3.223).

[153] Ibid. 6 (CCL 3.223-224).

[154] Ibid. 24 (CCL 3.234).

[155] Ibid. 25 (CCL 3.234-235).  See Victor Saxer, Vie liturgique et quotidienne à Carthage vers le milieu du IIIe siècle (Vatican City:  Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1984 [2nd ed.]), p.65.

[156] Cyprian, de Laps. 26 (CCL 3.235).

[157] Ibid.

[158] Idem, Ep. 55.13.2 (CCL 3B.270-271).  In the list of examples Cyprian offered Antonianus of the different categories of those who sacrificed, no women were mentioned apart from those wives who were either forced by their husbands to join them in sacrifice or protected by them because they sacrificed on their own.  Admittedly these are less concrete examples, but they must have been based on some actual instances.  A little later, at 55.15.1 (CCL 3B.272), Cyprian made the point, with regard to the libellatici, that if the Church did not offer them reconciliation they would take their wives and children into heresy and schism.

[159] Idem, de Laps. 30 (CCL 3.237-238).

[160] Sage, Cyprian, p.381.

[161] Cyprian, de Mort. 12 (CCL 3A.23).

[162] Ibid. 15 (CCL 3A.31).

[163] Ibid. 26 (CCL 3A.31).

[164] Sage, Cyprian, p.381; Duquenne, Chronologie, p.160; Michel Poirier, Cyprien de Carthage:  La bienfaisance et les aumônes, Sources chrétiennes 440 (Paris:  Les Éditions du Cerf, 1999), p.21.

[165] Cyprian, de Oper. 15 (CCL 3A.64-65) tells us only of Cyprian’s esteem for the widow in Lk. 21:1-4 and, by inference, of his esteem for the poor widows in his community.  It tells us nothing of his pastoral care for them and is of no use to us in this paper.

[166] Ibid. 14 (CCL 3A.64).

[167] Allen and Mayer, “Through a Bishop’s Eyes,” p.393.

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Rev. Dr. Geoffrey D. Dunn is a Senior Research Associate, Australian Research Council, working within the Centre for Early Christian Studies, McAuley Campus.