Nothing New in Your Absence

Cyprian to the elders and deacons, my brothers: greetings. [a]

So that you may know everything, dearest brothers, about what was written to me and what I wrote back, I have sent you a copy of each letter; and I believe my reply will not displease you.

But there is something else I ought to tell you in this letter. A very pressing matter has made me send a letter to the clergy who are staying in the city. And since a letter like that had to go by clergy, and I know that a great many of ours are away, while the few who are there are barely enough for the daily work of the ministry, some new men had to be appointed who could be sent.

Know, then, that I have made Saturus a reader, and Optatus the confessor a sub-deacon. Both of them we had already, by the common agreement of us all, placed next to the clergy. We entrusted the reading to Saturus on Easter Day, and more than once; and when we were carefully testing readers together with the teaching elders, we appointed Optatus out of the readers to be a teacher of the hearers. We examined first of all whether everything was found fitting in them that ought to be found in men who are being prepared for the clergy.

So nothing new has been done by me while you were away. What had already been begun on the advice of all of us together has now, under pressing necessity, been carried through.

I wish you always well with all my heart, dearest brothers; and remember me. Farewell.