Satis Cognitum
An encyclical letter of Leo XIII on the unity of the church. It sets out the Catholic teaching that Christ made Peter and his successors the centre of that unity, and supports it with passages from the Fathers, Cyprian among them.
Leo XIII issued the letter at a time when he was appealing to Christians separated from Rome to return to communion with it. It argues that the church Christ founded is one visible body, one in faith, in government and in communion, and that the bishop of Rome holds by divine appointment the office that keeps it one.
It is cited in this history as a statement of how the Catholic Church reads Cyprian. In section 15 the pope quotes the fourth chapter of On the Unity of the Church as proof that Christ chose Peter and his successors as the principle and centre of unity, and elsewhere he quotes Cyprian’s words about the chair of Peter and the principal church. Other traditions read the same chapters differently, and a document of 1896 is evidence for the Catholic reading, not for what Cyprian meant in 251.
Cited in
- AD 251 to AD 258, firm date