CYPRIANUS

CYPRIANUS

743

part of the above section of correspondence isperceptible a reliance on the laity. The clergydo not reply to his letters' (ftp. 18), they defer tothe libelli, or use them against him (tip. 27). Intip. 17 he entreats the aid of the laity as againstthem. When the concurrence of the Africanand Italian episcopate is obtained (Ep. 43, iii.),and that of Novatian and the Roman clergy andconfessors (Epp. 30, 31), assuming a strongertone (Ep. 32), with his own clergy he requiresthem to circulate the whole correspondence,which is done (tip. 55, iv.), and excommuni-cation is announced against any who - shouldallow communion except on the terms agreed on.

About November, 250, persecution relaxed(possibly owing to the Gothic advance in Thrace),and though it was still unsafe for Cyprian toreturn, he endeavoured to deal with the distressof sufferers who had lost their all, and to recruitthe ranks of the clergy, and allay the excite-ment still prevailing among the lapsed, by acommission (vicarii) of three bishops, Caldonius,Herculanus, Victor, and two presbyters,Numidicus and Rogatian (Epp. 41, 26).

Declaration of Parties. —The excitement onthe question of the lapsed is evinced by twoclasses of stories then afloat as to judgmentsfollowing both on unreconciled offences, and onpresumptuous communion (De Lapsis, 24, 25, 26).Cyprian employed both to urge delay, but theydo not emanate from his party of moderation.At Carthage the party of laxity became promi-nent ; at Rome, that of exclusiveness.

(1.) The party of laxity was composed of con-fessors, spoiled by flattery (De Laps. 20), fashion-able lapsi, who declined all penance (Laps. 30),influential ones, who had forced certain clergy toreceive them, but also some clergy who unitedagainst Cyprian’s policy with the five presbyterswho had from the first resisted him. Of thesethree were undoubtedly Donates, Gordius,Fortunatus (Maran. Vit. Cyp. § xvii.; Rettberg,pp. U7—112). That the fourth was Gaius ofDidda, or Augendus, is but a guess. Theprincipal in position and ability was the presbyterNovatus (Rearson’s Jovinus and Maximus, andPamelius’ Repostus and Felix are impossible;we those names). That Cyprian’s five originalopponents still acted against him is shewn by‘ olim secundum vestra suffragia ” (tip. 43, v.),hough in 43, ii. he seems only to conjecturetheir complicity with Felicissimus. This manhad been associated by Novatus with himselfas deacon, in the management of a district calledMons (possibly the Bozra itself) (Epp. 52, 5$,36). Cyprian complains of not having been con-sulted in this appointment, which, owing to thethen position of the deacons, gave the party the-control of considerable funds. All the arrange-ments hitherto agreed on were disregarded bythem, Cyprian’s missives unanswered, and hiscommission of relief treated as an invasion of thediaconal office of Felicissimus, who announced,while other lapsi were at once received into com-munion, that whoever held communications withor accepted aid from the commission would beexcluded from communion or relief from theMons (Ep. 43, ii.; tip. 41, where the con-jecture in morte, or references to Monte inNumidia, or to the Montenses at Rome, who wereDonatists, and were never (anciently) confusedwith the Novatianists or called Montanistae,

are absurd ; though Hefele, NovatianischerSchisma , ap. Wetzer and Welte, K. Lexik. andConciles , t. ii. p. 232, countenances these confu-sions). It is with the name of Felicissimus thatthe lax party is generally connected (Ep. 43, iii.v. vii.), and he with a fellow deacon Augendus, arenegade bishop Repostus, and certain others,the five presbyters not among them, was pre-sently excommunicated. There is no evidence,nor any contemporary instance, to warrant thebelief that Novatus ordained Felicissimus deacon(see the MSS. reading tip. 52, “satellitem suumdiaconum constituit,” which Hartel has un-warrantably departed from), nor is there anysuch appearance of presbyterian principles inthis party, as divines of anti-episcopal churches,Neander, Rettberg, D’Aubigne, Keyser, havefreely assumed. The party were in episcopalcommunion, took part in the episcopal electionat Carthage, presently elected a new bishop forthemselves, and procured episcopal consecrationfor him. When Novatus visited Rome, he threwhimself into the election then proceeding, and,after opposing the candidate who was chosen,procured episcopal consecration for his nomineethere also. Felicissimus too must have been adeacon already, or he could not have involvedhimself and Novatus in the charge of defraudingthe church (tip. 52, i.; 50, i.)

(2.) The Puritan Party. —The strength of thePuritans, on the other hand, was in Rome. Agroup of confessors there, of whom the presbytersMovses and Maximus [see also Rufinus, Nico-stratus, Urbanus, Sidonius, Macarius, Cele-einus] were the chief, united with Novatian andthe clergy in approving Cyprian’s proposals.The modification of discipline by martyrs’ meritswas never countenanced here (tip. 28, ii.); never-theless, Moyses, before his death (which probablyhappened on the last day of the year 250), hadcondemned the extreme tendencies of Novatiantowards the non-reconcilement of penitents (seeValesius’ correct interpretation of Euseb. vi. 43,and Routh, R. S. iii. p. 81). While Cornelius atRome and Cyprian were moving towards greaterleniency than their resolutions had embodied, No-vatian, without questioning the hope of salvationfor the lapsed, was now for making their exclusionperpetual, and teaching that the purity of thechurch could not otherwise be maintained.

The earthly conditions of the invisible andvisible church had not yet been discussed as theDonatists compelled them to be, and Novatian’sgrowing error, though in the present applicationit completely severed him from Cyprian and thechurch, was not in principle different from thatwhich Cyprian (though without producing a; schism) held in relation to baptism. Early in; a.d. 251 the Roman confessors were liberated;they lost whatever influence Moyses had exer-cised on themthey had been drawn towardsNovatian, and when Novatus, arriving fromCarthage, attached himself to this party,because, though its puritanism was alien tohis own practices at home, it was the onlyopposition existing in the capital which threat-ened to overthrow the Cyprianic side, they wereat once organised into a party to secure theelection of a bishop of Rome, who would breakwith Cyprian* The moment for election wasgiven by the absence of Decius aud his lead-ing officers on the frontier or in Illyria on