S2026:E187
I was recently going through some old books and found a slim volume entitled The Osterley Selection from the Latin Fathers, edited by Joseph Crehan of Heythrop College, was compiled chiefly for seminarians, especially late vocations, at Campion College, Osterley, a Jesuit formation house in the Archdiocese of Westminster that closed in 2004. The 1949 preface praises the great classical authors—Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Virgil—yet insists that Christian writing shows a different kind of beauty. Pagans, it says, wrote with studied grace; Christians with passionate conviction. The volume includes selections from Ambrose and Augustine, Tertullian, Vincent of Lérins, Jerome, and others.
It occurred to me that I might offer a podcast of the first reading and see how it goes. Some of you get Patristic readings in the office of readings in the Liturgy of the Hours but do you hear them? That’s another question. There are 42 brief readings in the book by authors whom you will more than likely recognize. I propose to read an English translation, make some comments and read the Latin.
Today we hear from the Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Cyprian of Carthage
St. Cyprian was bishop of Carthage from 248 to 258. He had survived the persecution of Decius by going on the run until the death of that emperor in 251. When after some years’ respite a new persecution broke out in 257, under Valerian, he was arrested and sent into exile. The year following, he was brought back to Carthage and tried on September 14th, 258. The scene of his martyrdom was, as we are told by the deacon Pontius in his We of Cyprian, a valley surrounded by wooded hills on the estate of Sextus. Some of the spectators climbed trees when they found that the size of the crowd or the distance kept them from a good view.
St. Cyprian of Carthage stands as one of the most lucid episcopal witnesses of the third century, a man whose theology was forged in persecution and whose blood sealed his teaching. In Cyprian, doctrine, discipline, and martyrdom converge in a single, luminous testimony. J. N. D. Kelly, on Cyprian’s authority and legacy:
“No Latin Father before Augustine exercised so decisive an influence on Western ecclesiology as Cyprian.”