Les Chrétientés d’Occident et leur évêque au IIIe siècle: Plebs in ecclesia constituta (Cyprien, Ep. 63) (review)

Students of Christianity in Roman Africa have much for which to thank Yvette Duval. Her exquisitely researched and finely documented articles and books have brought together rich resources and perceptive analyses. This new volume is no exception. Working backwards from her Chrétiens d’Afrique à l’aube de la paix constantinienne: Les premiers échos de la grande persécution (2000), she now treats the organization of African Christianity in the third century as revealed by the correspondence of Cyprian of Carthage who wrote during a period of both tremendous growth and terrible persecution.

The volume is primarily new material with some reorganized and updated data. It is a helpful complement to J. Patout Burns, Jr., Cyprian the Bishop (2002) and helps readers make sense of the context of Cyprian’s letters beyond the helpful introductions and notes in Graeme Clarke’s work in the Ancient Christian Writers series vols. 43–44 and 46–47 (1984–1989). If fact, for all but the cognoscenti, having copies of the letters at hand when reading is a necessity.

Part I, Évêchés et conciles, treats the density and distribution of dioceses and bishops in third-century Africa, similar to the work of Serge Lancel’s in Actes de la Conférence de Carthage en 411, Sources Chrétiennes 373 (1991) on the fifth century. Duval discusses the sources for knowledge of councils and their deliberations before and during Cyprian’s episcopate.

Part II, La communauté chrétienne sous l’autorité de l’évêque, contains some of the most interesting material, especially her treatment of Cyprian’s expansive use of the term frater for all baptized Christians, including those who have gone astray, and plebs, not as laity, contra Alexandre Faivre (Les laics aux origenes de l’Église [1984]; The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church [1990]), but as the assembled community of the stantes, those who remained faithful in persecution. Here she examines the situation of Germinius Victor, condemned for making a presbyter executor of his will.

Part III deals specifically with the clergy: the election of bishops, including the role of the plebs, and the appointment of local clergy, from which process the voice of the plebs seems absent but the voice of God very present. Here Duval takes the career of Celerinus, an African soldier who became a confessor at Rome, as her example. He abandoned his original position of supporting confessors who issued letters of reconciliation to the lapsi and became an advocate of Cyprian’s position that he alone had the right to judge cases individually at the end of his exile. Cyprian made him a lector in Carthage without the usual consultation of clergy.

The final part of the book is devoted to the exercise of jurisdiction within the Christian community: who exercises it and under what conditions. One might expect some hierarchy, including bishops as well as provincial and plenary councils, but the power structure is not the sole organizing principle. The first portion of the chapter deals with cases in which the plebs had some role, including the reconciliation of lapsi, at least for laity and lower clergy. The plebs do not seem to have a role in the judgment of schismatics and heretics, save in their subsequent reconciliation. While the plebs could not judge, it could sanction those clergy judged by bishops. Here Duval focuses on Cyprian’s letters to communities in Spain. There bishops had been deposed as lapsi, new bishops had been installed, and the former bishops attempted to regain their sees. Cyprian advised the communities who appealed to him to spurn those who had been deposed lest the evil of their former leaders infect the Eucharists of the community making them displeasing to God. Finally the chapter treats a...