Das Bischofsmartyrium als Stellvertretung bei Cyprian von Karthago

Abstract

Twice in his life, Cyprian of Carthage was faced to the persecutors of Christians in the Roman empire. At the first time, under the reign of Emperor Decius, he escaped from Carthage and hid himself. Fulfilling his episcopal duties from afar, he was convinced that the bishop spiritually still was present to his community. Nevertheless, being back to Carthage, it had to be one of his first actions to apologise indirectly his own way of acting against serious critics in his speech De lapsis. Here, he claimed, that those Christians, who like himself had chosen to flee in the persecutions, in some way had performed a confession, yet not a public, but a private one. Developing his theology of the unity of the church, represented by the bishop as the vicar of Christ, in the following years, Cyprian learned to judge on the bishop's behaviour in another way: Now he taught, that it were not the confessing members of the community who glorified the bishop, but the other way round, the bishop had to clarify his community by his confession, given as representative of his community. It was this conviction, that made Cyprian ready to take the cross in the Valerian persecutions. This glorious dead was interpreted by Pontius on the one hand, by the acts of Cyprian, which were revised by a Christian, on the other hand. While Pontius levelled Cyprian's high theology of episcopal representation down to a mere theology of imitation, the redactor of the acts lets feel at least a glimpse of Cyprian's own intention.