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The edict of Calixtus I marks an important stage in the development of
the Church's discipline of penance as we know it. Thirty years later
one of his successors, St. Cornelius, developing the reform, brought
within the system the sin of apostasy. The action of Calixtus had led
to controversy; that of Cornelius provoked a schism
The persecution of the Emperor Decius, which had just ceased, had been
altogether novel in its systematic organisation, thanks to which hardly
any Christians escaped the test, save the tiny minority who had means
to fly the country. The result was an unprecedented crop of more or
less nominal apostasies, and the anomalous situation arose that in many
places the majority of the faithful, guilty of a sin the Church refused
to pardon, were out of the Church. It had long been the custom -- St.
Calixtus allows for its action in his decree -- that although the
Church did not reconcile such apostates through the Exomologesis, she
accepted them as reconciled at the intercession of their more steadfast
brethren, who in bonds awaited the martyr's death. This custom, owing
to the crowds of repentant apostates who now besieged the prisons where
the confessors were detained, suddenly threatened to break down the
reservation once and for all. If these thousands were to be re-admitted
at the prayer of the confessors, how could re-admission be refused any
longer to those who sought it by the harder road of the Exomologesis? A
further complication arose from the fact that not all these confessors
were as docile to authority as they were constant in faith. What
authority had allowed as a privilege, some of the confessors now began
to claim as a right, and their petitions to the bishops for the
reinstatement of the apostates took on more and more the appearance of
commands. Communicet ille cum suis is a text which St. Cyprian's
indignation has preserved. Not only the penitential discipline of the
time was shaken, but there were the beginnings of a threat to episcopal
authority also. As the bishops in the second century had had to defend
the tradition of authority against the usurpation of learning and of
private revelation, so now they faced a new menace which would
subordinate their authority to the prestige of individual confessors
and martyrs.
It was in Africa that the new troubles began, in the Church of Carthage
whose bishop at the moment (250) was St. Cyprian. He protested against
the threatened subversion of traditional practice. Such sinners were
not admitted to receive the Eucharist until, having performed the
appointed penance through the Exomologesis, the bishop and his clergy
solemnly laid hands on them. Wherefore he forbids his priests to admit
apostates to Communion on the simple presentation of the recommendation
of a confessor or a martyr, that is to say, without penance done,
without the Exomologesis and without the imposition of hands. The act
of the martyr is an act of intercession with the bishop -- an
influential intercession no doubt, but no more than that. This
intercessory procedure St. Cyprian proceeds to regulate. There must be
no more of the collective notes. The martyr must specify by name the
person for whom the indulgence is sought, and the person must be
someone really known to him. These petitions the bishop will examine
publicly, once peace is restored, and thereupon give his decision in
each individual case. An exception is made for the apostate in danger
of death whom a martyr has recommended and who cannot await the
bishop's decision. Him any priest or deacon may reconcile, receiving
the acknowledgement of his sin and imposing hands upon him.
These regulations brought to the surface the latent arrogance of the
innovators. One martyr sent to St. Cyprian a notification for the
reconciliation of all apostates wherever found. Priests were not
wanting to support this new revolt, and soon, in one town after
another, riots broke out as the crowds of apostates, armed with their
letters from the confessors, besieged the churches demanding
re-admission from the local clergy. St. Cyprian reminded the rebels
that it is the bishop who rules in the Church, and that episcopal rule
is the Church's foundation. Also he wrote to Rome an account of his
troubles, explaining his point of view and asking for the Roman
Church's support.
The Roman reply was encouraging. It explained that the mode of
procedure at Rome was substantially that adopted by St. Cyprian, and it
endorsed his contention that the bishop alone had jurisdiction in these
matters of discipline.
So far, at Rome, no trouble had arisen from any undue interference of
the confessors. In its place another question was beginning to arouse
discussion. This was the fundamental question, not of how the apostates
should be reconciled, but of whether they should be reconciled at all.
Calixtus I thirty years before had inaugurated the practice of
receiving repentant adulterers through the Exomologesis. Was it now
time to extend the same favour to repentant apostates too?
The Roman Church, at the moment of St. Cyprian's letter, was without a
head, for the pope, St. Fabian, had been arrested and put to death in
the January of 250, and the vigilance of the authorities had, so far,
prevented the election of a successor. The reply to St. Cyprian had,
then, been the letter of the clergy who governed the see during the
vacancy. It was actually written by the priest Novatian -- at that
moment the outstanding personality of Christian Rome. In many ways he
recalls St. Hippolytus, though he was cast in a smaller mould than that
great man. His surviving writings recall Tertullian in their doctrine
and in their manner of exposition. In the history of the development of
the philosophical explanation of Revelation Novatian has an important
place, and his influence on later thinkers was considerable. He is said
to have been harsh in disposition, and is accused of vanity. His
elevation to the priesthood had not been universally popular, and the
criticism continued now while he held the important position of
instructor to the catechumens. In the reply to St. Cyprian Novatian had
shown signs of a spirit more rigorous than that implied by the system
he described, of a fear that, in absolving the apostate, the Roman
Church was losing something of its prestige and strength.
This rigorist spirit was soon to have its opportunity. The persecution
ended. The bishops came back to their sees. In Africa a council of
bishops adopted St. Cyprian's provisional arrangement as henceforward
the permanent law of the Church in the mater. At Rome, after a vacancy
of fourteen months, St. Fabian was given a successor, the pope
Cornelius (March 5, 251), Novatian had been a candidate, and among his
helpers in what we might perhaps call his campaign, were two of St.
Cyprian's clergy, excommunicated by him for their share in the revolt
of the apostates, and come to Rome to intrigue against him. Novatian
was apparently to be the next pope. They joined themselves to him and
they shared his disappointment. For Novatian was bitterly disappointed,
and with a following among the clergy, the laity and the imprisoned
confessors, he now organised a Church of his own and found three
bishops to consecrate him. The new sect needed a principle by which to
justify its existence. It found it in the question of the treatment of
the apostates. Paradoxically, the man whom the envoys of the
unreconciled and rebellious apostates of Africa had supported, now
declared himself the patron of rigorism. The one point on which
Novatian now condemned the Church of Cornelius and of Cyprian was that
it offered pardon to the repentant apostates. Novatian not only would
refuse them pardon, but, developing his first severity, he denied there
was any possibility of their being pardoned at all, no matter what
their sorrow, no matter how severe the reparation they made.
The new pope, Cornelius, in the autumn of 251, summoned a council of
bishops at Rome -- sixty of them. The teaching of Novatian was
condemned and, with his supporters, he was expelled from the Church.
The policy of St. Cyprian, which the bishops of Africa had already
endorsed, was now adopted by the Roman Council too, and thereafter by
all the churches of the world.
The Novatian schism, a conflict of personal ambition to some extent,
had been much more the product of a conflict between the rigorism of
the Christian pharisees and the more merciful tendency of
constitutional authority. Something of that rigorist spirit was to be
found in every Church, and hence Novatian, beaten at Rome, and
disavowed in a series of echoing condemnations throughout the Church,
was yet able to organise a strong minority. The Novatian Church had its
hierarchy, its sacraments, its churches, its cemeteries. Its existence
was legally recognised by Constantine (326) and not until a century
later did it lose its last church in Rome. In the East and in Africa it
survived even longer, still divided from the Catholic Church by the one
belief that to absolve from crimes such as apostasy was beyond the
power of the Church, and as late as the beginning of the seventh
century it was still a useful occupation for an Alexandrian theologian
to write a lengthy treatise Against the Novatians.
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