Cyprian's last letter
Martyrdom of Cyprian
Cyprian is exiled in 257 AD under the emperor Valerian and returns to Carthage in 258 AD knowing that return means death. Valerian's second edict mandates the execution of bishops.
He does not flee. He waits in his garden.
When the soldiers come, they find him there. He is taken before the proconsul Galerius Maximus. The exchange is brief and formal. The proconsul tells him to sacrifice. Cyprian says he will not. The proconsul says he will be beheaded. Cyprian says thanks be to God.
He asks to be allowed a moment to arrange his affairs. He gives twenty-five gold coins to his executioner — a gesture of generosity toward the man about to kill him. He removes his outer garment himself. He asks the deacons to bind his eyes.
He kneels. He is beheaded.
The crowd of Christians who had come to be with him — who had spent the night outside his house when the soldiers arrived — rushes forward to catch his blood in cloths. They carry his body by torchlight to the cemetery, singing.
Cyprian had written extensively about martyrdom — about what it meant, what it cost, what it produced. He had counseled others through persecution. He had written On Mortality during the great plague, helping people face death with equanimity.
In the end he was given the opportunity to demonstrate that he meant every word.
He did.
“Let us arm ourselves with all our strength, and let us be prepared for the struggle with an uncorrupted mind, with sound faith, with devoted courage.”
— Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, c. 257 AD
“Because it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer on his behalf,”
Cyprian spent years writing about martyrdom and then was required to demonstrate it. There is a particular weight to that — the theologian who must live his theology, the pastor who must walk through what he counseled others to walk through.
He gave twenty-five coins to his executioner. He thanked God for the sentence. He arranged his own burial logistics.
None of this is the behavior of a man performing courage. It is the behavior of a man who had been thinking about this day for a long time and had settled, somewhere along the way, into a peace that the proconsul could not revoke.
Live consistently enough that your death would be the last coherent expression of how you lived. Not a sudden performance of courage at the end, but the natural conclusion of a life already given.