Primary source · Latin
The Epistles of Cyprian
Cyprian of Carthage (and correspondents) · AD 250–258
What this text is
Eighty-odd letters from the decade of the Decian and Valerian storms — the richest surviving archive of any third-century church: the lapsed, the schisms, the plague, the rebaptism war, and the bishop’s own path to the sword.
Interlinear passages
Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.
Epistle 80 (to Successus) — the news of Xystus
XistumXystusautemmoreoverinincimiteriothe cemeteryanimadversumexecutedsciatis,know ye,etandcumwitheohimdiaconesdeaconsquattuor.four
Public-domain translations
R. E. Wallis (ANF, 1886)
Know that Xystus was martyred in the cemetery on the eighth day of the Ides of August, and with him four deacons. …Let all our people be intent not on the persecution but on martyrdom; and I bid you, dearest brother, ever heartily farewell.
Manuscript witnesses
Early Cyprianic codices (multiple ancient collections)
6th–9th c.Eighty-one letters in ancient numbered collections — the richest documentary archive of the third-century West.
Patrologia Latina, vol. 4 (Migne)
1844Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.
Provenance
Carthage, AD 249–258 — the working file of a persecuted church
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (ACW 43–47)G. W. Clarke, 1984–1989The standard annotated translation.
- Sancti Cypriani episcopi epistularium (CCSL 3B–3D)G. F. Diercks, 1994–1999The critical edition.