Abstract

The fact that Christians did not participate in sacrifice, at least as generally understood by their Greco-Roman contemporaries, was a key factor in the struggle between Christianity and Roman society before Constantine; a different resolution of this cultic tension was a necessary condition of the emergence of the Church as imperial religion in the fourth century. There is no single more important Christian theorist of sacrifice in the first few centuries than Cyprian of Carthage. His status as a wealthy member of the local Roman elite influenced this rapid rise, but also equipped him with a knowledge of civic and cultic practices that contributed to his own significant re-theorizing both of sacrifice and of aspects of Christian practice in terms of each other.

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