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Cyprian of Carthage, the leading African Bishop. Cyprian had a very exalted view of the episcopal office, and emphasised the dignity of every bishop in his own church. He accepted the special standing of the see of Rome, ‘the chair of Peter, the primordial [or “principal”] church, the very source of episcopal unity’. But Cyprian did not mean by this that other bishops were subordinate to the Pope. He himself, like many other bishops in the early Church, used the title ‘Pope’, which only came to be confined to the Bishop of Rome from the sixth century. Christ had indeed founded the Church on Peter, but all the Apostles and all bishops shared fully in the one indivisible apostolic power. There were, therefore, limits to Cyprian’s deference to Rome, and that deference was to be stretched to its limits within a couple of years, with the election as pope of an aristocratic Roman, Stephen.
    Stephen (254–7) was a member of the Julian family, and he was a bishop in the mould of Pope Victor, not Pope Cornelius. He was imperious, impatient, high-handed. He quickly got himself into Cyprian’s bad books by rashly readmitting, not merely to communion but to office, a Spanish bishop who had been deposed for lapsing into paganism during the Decian persecution. Further provocation came when Stephen failed to take action against a Novatianist Bishop of Aries who was refusing the sacraments to the repentant lapsed even on their deathbeds. The Bishop of Lyons reported the matter to Cyprian – an interesting comment in itself on their understanding of shared episcopal responsibility for all the churches, as opposed to an exclusively papal role. Cyprian had then vainly pleaded with Stephen to excommunicate the Bishop of Aries. Therequest was of course also a tacit acknowledgement of Rome’s superior jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the Pope evidently resented Cyprian’s interference. The final breach came when Stephen intervened directly in Africa, and challenged Cyprians practice about the rebaptism of heretics. Though Cyprian was a moderate in his willingness to receive back the repentant lapsed, he refused to recognise any sacraments administered in the hard-line breakaway churches of the Novatianists, who had established themselves in Africa. Converts baptised by Novatianist clergy were now seeking admission to Catholic communion: they were rebaptised as if they were pagans.
    Behind Cyprian’s practice here was a stern doctrine which denied that any grace could flow to human beings outside the visible communion of the Catholic Church. Rome took the milder view, which would eventually become the accepted teaching, that every baptism was valid provided it was duly performed in the name of the Trinity, whatever the status of the minister, and whether or not he was in heresy or schism. Stephen therefore ordered that returning schismatics should not be rebaptised, but simply admitted again to the Church by the laying on of hands.
    Cyprian, however, refused to accept this ruling, and organised two synods of African bishops to condemn it. The Pope was not mentioned, but it was obvious who was the target of Cyprian’s remarks in his preamble that ‘none of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or exercises the powers of a tyrant to force his colleagues into obedience’. 11 Not surprisingly, the clergy he sent to Rome to inform the Pope of these moves were turned away unheard. Enraged by the African bishops’ temerity, Stephen wrote to the churches in Asia Minor who followed Cyprian’s tougher line on rebaptism of heretics, threatening to cut off communion with them, though he died before he could carry out this threat.
    The incident had a broader significance. Though his letter does not survive, we know from Cyprian’s comment on it that Stephen had backed up his condemnation of the African churches with an appeal to Matthew 16: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.’ During Pope Cornelius’