Cyprian and Roman Carthage

by Allen Brent

• ISBN13: 9780521515474
• ISBN10: 0521515475
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus believed fervently that his conversion experience had been a passage from the darkness of the world of Graeco-Roman paganism to his new vision of Christianity. But Cyprian's response as bishop to the Decian persecution was to be informed by the pagan culture that he had rejected so completely. His view of church order also owed much to Roman jurisprudential principles of legitimate authority exercised within a sacred boundary spatially and geographically defined. Given the highly fragmented state of the non-Christian sources for this period, Cyprian is often the only really contemporary primary source for the events through which he lived. In this book, Allen Brent contributes to our understanding both of Roman history in the mid-third century and of the enduring model of church order that developed in that period.

Table of Contents

List of plates	p. viii
Preface	p. xi
List of abbreviations	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
Cyprian's life and controversies	p. 2
Cyprian's background in Roman Carthage	p. 23
Historiography in the age of Decius	p. 76
Decius' religious policy and political rhetoric	p. 117
The Decian persecution	p. 193
The Church of the Martyrs	p. 250
Stephen's challenge to the sacramentum unitatis	p. 290
A final postscript: Cyprian's legacy	p. 328
Works cited	p. 330
Indices	p. 343
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