Primary source · Latin
Lucifer of Cagliari, the Pamphlets
Lucifer of Cagliari · c. AD 355–361
What this text is
Five treatises of magnificent invective — On Not Meeting with Heretics, On Apostate Kings, That One Must Die for the Son of God — addressed to the emperor himself, who is compared unfavourably to Pharaoh. The exile who would not soften a syllable; his rigorist following (the Luciferians) carried the corpus until a thin medieval line preserved it.
Profile of Lucifer of Cagliari →
Public-domain translations
Working translation (from the Latin, CCSL 8)
Do you think, Constantius, that we fear your sword? We must die for the Son of God rather than betray the faith of Nicaea. (Moriundum esse, condensed)
Manuscript witnesses
Vatican tradition (single early-medieval line)
9th–10th c.The pamphlets survive in one slender manuscript line kept at Rome — a corpus too fierce to copy widely.
CSEL 14 (Hartel) / CCSL 8 (Diercks)
1886 / 1978The modern texts behind the titles cited here.
Provenance
Written in eastern exile, hurled at the court of Constantius
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Luciferi Calaritani opera quae supersunt (CCSL 8)G. F. Diercks (ed.), 1978Critical edition.
- Faith in Formulae (on the fourth-century creeds and parties)— see Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 1988R. P. C. Hanson's standard history, unsympathetic to no party — frames Lucifer's rigorism critically.