Broken by the Torments

Cyprian to his brothers Fortunatus, Ahymnus, Optatus, Privatianus, Donatulus, and Felix: greetings. [a]

You have written to me, dearest brothers, that while you were in the town of Capsa to ordain an overseer, our brother and colleague Superius laid a case before you. Our brothers Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus had been seized earlier in the persecution. They confessed the name of the Lord, and they beat down the violence of the magistrates and the attack of a raging mob. Afterward, though, when they were tortured before the proconsul with savage suffering, the sharpness of the torments defeated them. Their agony was dragged out, and they fell from the height of glory they were climbing toward in the full strength of their faith. The fall was a grave one, and it came not by their own will but by force. Since then they have not stopped repenting; they have kept it up now for three years. You thought it right to ask me whether it is good to receive them now into the common life of the church.

As for my own judgment, I think the Lord’s mercy will not be lacking to men like these. They are known to have stood in the battle line. They confessed the name. With a faith that did not shake, they beat down the violence of the magistrates and the rush of the raging mob. They went to prison. They held out a long time under the threats of the proconsul and the war cries of the crowd around them, while torments wrenched them and tore them, going over the same ground again and again. If at the last moment the weakness of the flesh defeated them, what they had already earned may be pleaded on their behalf.

It may be enough for such men to have lost their glory. We ought not, on top of that, to shut the door of pardon against them and cut them off from their Father’s love and from our own fellowship. For asking the Lord’s mercy it should be enough, I think, that for three years without a break they have grieved, as you write, and mourned their sin bitterly.

I certainly do not think that peace is being granted carelessly or too quickly to men whose brave soldiering shows, as we can see, that they were not missing from the battle, and who, if the struggle came at them again, would be able to win their glory back. The council decided that those doing penance who fall dangerously ill should be helped and granted peace. If that is so, then surely these men ought to come first in receiving peace. We can see that they did not fall through weakness of mind. They went into the fight, they were wounded, and it was weakness of the flesh that kept them from carrying off the crown of their confession — all the more so because they wanted to die and were not allowed to be killed. The tortures worked over their worn-out bodies long enough to exhaust the flesh, which is weak, but not to conquer their faith, which cannot be conquered.

You have written, though, asking me to give this matter full consideration together with a good many of my colleagues, and a subject this weighty does call for fuller and more careful counsel from a conference of many. Just now almost all of them are at home with their own brothers for the first celebrations of Easter. Once they have finished the festival among their own people and have begun to come to me, I will go over it at greater length with each one, so that on the question you have put to me a settled opinion, weighed in a council of many priests, may be fixed among us and written out to you.

I wish you always well, dearest brothers, from my heart. Farewell.