Saint Cyprian was bishop of Carthage and a notable Early Christian writer of Berber descent, many of whose Latin works are extant. He was born around the beginning of the 3rd century in North Africa, perhaps at Carthage, where he received a classical education. Soon after converting to Christianity, he became a bishop in 249. A controversial figure during his lifetime, his strong pastoral skills, firm conduct during the Novatianist heresy and outbreak of the plague, and eventual martyrdom at Carthage vindicated his reputation and proved his sanctity in the eyes of the Church. His skillful Latin rhetoric led to his being considered the pre-eminent Latin writer of Western Christianity until Jerome and Augustine. The Plague of Cyprian is named after him, owing to his description of it.
“There is no salvation outside the Church.”
Salus extra ecclesiam non est.
Letter to Jubaianus (AD 256), Letter 73
Letter 1 Letter to Donatus, viii
Letters of Cyprian
“For the helmsman is recognized in the tempest; in the warfare the soldier is proved.”
Treatise VII - On the Mortality http://books.google.com/books?id=8fUYJKWWe80C&q="for+the+helmsman+is+recognized+in+the+tempest+in+the+warfare+the+soldier+is+proved"&pg=PA966#v=onepage
Treatise on Jealousy and Envy ch. ix
“No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
Habere non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.
De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate (AD 251), ch. vi.
“The frame wearied with labours lies prostrate on the ground, but it is no penalty to lie down with Christ. Your limbs unbathed, are foul and disfigured with filth and dirt; but within they are spiritually cleansed, although without the flesh is defiled.”
Humi iacent fessa laboribus viscera, sed poena non est cum Christo iacere. Squalent sine balneis membra situ et sorde deformia, sed spiritaliter intus abluitur quod foris carnaliter sordidatur.
Letter 76; Translated by Robert Ernest Wallis. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050676.htm>
Letters of Cyprian
Letter 43 To the Roman Confessors, that they should return to unity
Letters of Cyprian
