Father Cyprian, Church Fathers were all Ex-Pagans Part IIIby Bolder Landry
"I have never seen wild beasts that were so cruel to each other as these Christians."-Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman General and Historian Thasius Caecilius Cyprianus (c. 200-258), was the bishop of Carthage in the third century. He was the first Christian priest to suffer death in Africa. His condemnation resulted from inciting and ordering his fanatical followers to desecrate, vandalize and destroy the pagan altars, temples and statues. He is the man responsible for cutting the noses, ears, arms, legs, and heads of so many pagan statues that one sees in European museums. Rome has many of them. His biographer, Pontius, says he was the "The officer of Christ . . . who commanded the idols to be destroyed." (Life and Passion of Cyprian.) Museums of Cairo and Alexandria, which I have visited many times, are replete with disfigured statues. We can scarcely say that the persecution against Christians was widespread or brutal. A more relevant question is whether Cyprian suffered as a Christian or as a malicious desecrator and destroyer of sacred property. He was born a pagan and inherited considerable wealth. On September 14, 258, he was beheaded; before the ax came down he said, "God be thanked." He is the only one of the fathers who received the halo of the saints. St. Cyprian groans with complaints of general apostasy because of the first general persecution. In his De Lapsis (On the Lapsed), he decries the clergy: "There was no piety in priests, no sound faith in ministers, no mercy in any, no discipline in morals . . . They despised and reviled their superiors, cursed each other with foul names, and quarreled with fierce hatred." Creating the supernatural priesthood, which Jesus fought all his life, was his own doing. When the Decian persecution broke out in 249, Cyprian retired to safety, but his subordinate, Novatus, braved the onslaught. Cyprian describes Novatus as one "raging with rapacity of insatiable avarice, inflated with arrogance of sedition . . . a torch and a fire to blow up the flame of sedition . . . whirlwind and a tempest to make shipwreck." (The Story of Christian Origin.) The moral laxity of the Church of his time is clear: Cyprian says, "Among the priests there was no sound faith . . . bishops . . . forsook their thrones, deserted their people, wandered about over foreign provinces, hunted the markets for gainful merchandise, while the brethren were starving in the Church." (Ibid.) St. Peter, the first pope, had died about 200 years earlier, and we are told that in Cyprian's time there was no pope. In his letters to the bishops of Rome, Cornelius (251-253) and Stephen I (254-257), Cyprian shows that "all Christian bishops . . . equally received the name of pope (papa), and addressed each other as colleagues." (Encyclopædia Britannica Vol. 6, p. 746.) For nearly 100 years a few bishops tried to establish themselves as Sovereign Pontiffs, but were told "to mind their own business by other bishops." The whole story can be read in the Ecclesiastical History of Bishop Eusebius (V.34). The title "Pontiff," declares historian McCabe, "is a fitting symbol of the paganization of the Church, the imitation of the pagan priesthood." (The Evolution of Christian Doctrine p. 58.) We have now reached the middle of the third century, and we have the assurance from Saint Cyprian that there is no pope. From the very beginning of Christianity, with the exception of St. Peter, there had been many attempts at the papal throne, and each attempt was bitterly fought by bishops and Church Fathers until the beginning of the Dark Ages. As I said earlier, bishops considered each other as independent rulers bound to work democratically. In 252, Cyprian came up against the papal ambition of Cornelius. Cyprian gave him a thrashing, as the Asiatic bishops had done to the pretender Pope Victor in the year 190. The whole sordid story is in letters LV and LXVII in the Migne collection in the British Museum in London. Elevated to the episcopal dignity immediately after his conversion, Cyprian soon became known as a "malicious desecrator and destroyer of sacred property" (pagan temples). Salvaged pagan statues shown with their noses, arms, legs, and heads stricken off are evidence of the hatred of the "saintly man."
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