The Judgment of Eighty-Seven Bishops on the Baptism of Heretics
The minutes of a council of bishops from Africa, Numidia and Mauretania held at Carthage under Cyprian. Each bishop in turn gives his opinion that those baptised by heretics must be baptised on entering the church.
The document records a meeting held on 1 September. It gives Cyprian’s opening words and then the opinion of each of the eighty-seven bishops by name, ending with his own. All agree that baptism given outside the church is no baptism. The text carries no year. It belongs to the dispute with Stephen I of Rome, who was dead by August 258, when Cyprian reported the execution of his successor Xystus (Letters 81.1 [80.1]), and Cyprian himself was in exile from 30 August 257 (The Proconsular Acts of Cyprian); the latest 1 September that fits is that of 256, the year usually given.
Cyprian’s opening speech does not name Stephen. It says that no one present sets himself up as “a bishop of bishops” or forces his colleagues to obey, since each bishop answers to Christ for his own decisions.
Cited in
- AD 251 to AD 258, firm date