Barbarian Disturbances in North Africa in the Mid-Third Century

Abstract

Gibbon describes the years that correspond with the lifetime of Cyprian of Carthage thus: ‘the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity’. On the whole the impression to be gained from the extant correspondence of Cyprian of Carthage (the eighty-two letters are to be dated between the years c.249 and 258) is not of this kind and this evidence ought to act in some degree as a brake on exaggerated descriptions of the chaos of the period. Cyprian can assume, without the slightest hint of doubt, uninterrupted ease of communications all around the Mediterranean, freely cross-referring to other public letters of his on the assumption that they must have come the way of his correspondents. Similarly he is prepared to claim of an open letter written by the Roman clergy that it ‘has been circulated throughout the entire world and has reached the knowledge of every Church and of all the brethren’. The official correspondence which Cyprian conducted is indeed of notable breadth and frequency—among the letters which we chance to have figure communications with Christian communities in Spain, in Gaul, in Cappadocia (all suggesting previous correspondence with these areas), and of course in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. As Metropolitan of the African Church he sends to Rome on one occasion a list of all the orthodox African bishops and their sees, no doubt in order to keep the Roman records up-to-date—and also their address-list for their communications. Furthermore, after the abortively threatening persecution of Gallus the regular meetings in Carthage of the African synod appear to have been resumed. At Carthage, at any rate, life appears to have been little affected by the military and administrative débâcle that was becoming evident in imperial circles and from Cyprian’s point of view the Mediterranean world still appeared to be very much a unity.