Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/251

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CYPRIANUS
CYPRIANUS
233

function in the regeneration of liberty. (b) Episcopacy grew silently into an institution of the Roman empire, strong with the lasting virtues of Roman institutions, and only biding its time for recognition. (6) The Individual Independence, as he sketches it, of elected bishops preserved, while it remained, a grand democratic strength to what after a time sank to an oligarchic, and under the papacy to an administrative, magistracy. This must again be the key of church governments in states which have not that intimate union with the church which the ideal of a Christian nation requires. We here give references on the subject of this Independence, which to the policy of Cyprian's time was so essential (Ep. 55, xvii.; actum suum, etc., 72, iv.; quando habet, etc., 73, xxxvi.; nemini praescribentes, etc., 57, vi.; si de collegis, etc., 69, xvii.; statuat. Sentt. Epp. Praef. 6). There exists what may be called "resistance to Roman claims"; but Cyprian is totally unconscious of any claims made by the see, and resists Stephen purely as an arrogant individual.

Cultus.—There were two famous basilicas erected, one on the place of his martyrdom (in agro sexti), where was the Mensa Cypriani, from which Augustine often preached; the other on the shore (Aug. Conf. v.; ad Mappalia, Aug. vol. vii. App. p. 37; ad Piscinas, Victor Vitens. i. v. iv.). In this Monica spent the night of her son's departure for Italy, praying and weeping. In Sulpicius Severus (Dial. i. 3) his friend comes hither to pray on his way from Narbonne to Egypt. The adoration reached such a height that Gibbon is charmed to call him "almost a local deity." His feast and the gales which blew then were called Cypriani (Procop. Vand. i. 20, 21; Greg. Naz. Or. 18, ap. Ducange, s.v.). There are still on the "brink of the shore" the massive ruins of a church which must be St. Cyprian's. Davis (Carthage and her Remains, p. 389) describes them fully, and it is not hard to see how he has misled himself into not recognizing what they are. The relics of Cyprian were given (strange conjunction) by Haroun al Raschid to Charlemagne. The sequel may be seen in Ruinart, Acta Mm. Cypr. § 17, and in the epistle of J. de la Haye, prefixed to Pamelius's Cyprian, fol. b. 3.

Texts.—Of the MSS. and their connexions, and also of the edd., a good account is given by Hartel in his preface; cf. D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.). Besides the ed. in Patr. Lat. may be mentioned one by D. J. H. Goldhorn (Leipz. 1838), a useful text-book, well emended. But the best ed. now is by J. Hartel (3 vols. 8vo, 1868‒1871), in the Vienna Corpus Scriptt. Eccll. Latt., which contains all the works attributed to Cyprian, with the ad Novatianum, Auctor de Rebaptismate, Pontii Vita, etc., and Indices. It is a new recension, for which above 40 MSS. have been studied, classified, valued, and reduced to a most clear apparatus criticus, with keen attention to orthography, and almost always a judicious discrimination of the preferable readings; a valuable preface on the principles and history of the text formation.

[E.W.B.]

[The authoritative work on St. Cyprian is by the writer of this art. English trans. of several of Cyprian's works and his Epp. are given in the Ante-Nicene Lib. (T. & T. Clark). A simple monograph on his Life and Times is pub. in the cheap A. and M. Theol. Lib. (Griffith); and an Eng. trans. of his treatise On the Lord's Prayer by T. H. Bindley is pub. by S.P.C.K.; the text, with trans., has been ed. by Rev. H. Gee (Bell).]

Cyra. [ Marana.]

Cyriacus (19), 30th patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 595. He was previously presbyter and steward, οἰκονόμος, of the great church at Constantinople (Chronicon Paschale, p. 378). Gregory the Great received the legates bearing the synodal letters which announced his consecration, partly from a desire not to disturb the peace of the church, and partly from the personal respect which he entertained for Cyriac; but in his reply he warned him against the sin of causing divisions in the church, clearly alluding to the use of the term oecumenical bishop (Gregorii Ep. lib. vii. 4, Patr. Lat. lxxvii. 853). The personal feelings of Gregory towards Cyriac appear most friendly.

Cyriac did not attend to the entreaties of Gregory that he would abstain from using the title, for Gregory wrote afterwards both to him and to the emperor Maurice, declaring that he could not allow his legates to remain in communion with Cyriac as long as he retained it. In the latter of these letters he compares the assumption of the title to the sin of Antichrist, since both exhibit a spirit of lawless pride. "Quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in elatione sua Antichristum praecurrit, quia superbiendo se ceteris praeponit" (Greg. Ep. 28, 30). In a letter to Anastasius of Antioch, who had written to him to remonstrate against disturbing the peace of the church, Gregory defends his conduct on the ground of the injury which Cyriac had done to all other patriarchs by the assumption of the title, and reminds Anastasius that not only heretics but heresiarchs had before this been patriarchs of Constantinople. He also deprecates the use of the term on more general grounds (Ep. 24). In spite of all this Cyriac was firm in his retention of the title, and appears to have summoned, or to have meditated summoning, a council to authorize its use. For in A.D. 599 Gregory wrote to Eusebius of Thessalonica and some other bishops, stating that he had heard they were about to be summoned to a council at Constantinople, and most urgently entreating them to yield neither to force nor to persuasion, but to be steadfast in their refusal to recognize the offensive title (ib. lib. ix. 68 in Patr. Lat.). Cyriac appears to have shared in that unpopularity of the emperor Maurice which caused his deposition and death (Theophan. Chron. p. 242, a.m. 6094; Niceph. Callis.H. E. xviii. 40; Theophylact. Hist. viii. 9). He still, however, had influence enough to exact from Phocas at his coronation a confession of the orthodox faith and a pledge not to disturb the church (Theoph. Chron. p. 243, a.m. 6094). He also nobly resisted the attempt of Phocas to drag the empress Constantia and her daughters from their sanctuary in a church of Constantinople (ib. p. 246, a.m. 6098). Perhaps some resentment at this opposition to his will may have induced Phocas to accede more readily to the claims of Boni-