Cyprian and Roman Carthage

by Allen Brent

Overview

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 pagan 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 seeks to contribute both to our understanding of Roman history in the mid-third century as well as the enduring model of church order that developed in that period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521515474
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/07/2010
Pages:	382
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Allen Brent is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He has published many books on the history of Christianity, most recently A Political History of Early Christianity (2009).

Table of Contents

List of plates viii

Preface xi

List of abbreviations xii

Introduction 1

1 Cyprian's life and controversies 2

2 Cyprian's background in Roman Carthage 23

3 Historiography in the age of Decius 76

4 Decius' religious policy and political rhetoric 117

5 The Decian persecution 193

6 The Church of the Martyrs 250

7 Stephen's challenge to the sacramentum unitatis 290

8 A final postscript: Cyprian's legacy 328

Works cited 330

Indices 343