Cyprian is convinced that the bishop
answers to God alone. ‘So long as the bond of friendship is maintained and the
sacred unity of the Catholic Church is preserved, each bishop is master of his
own conduct, conscious that he must one day render an account himself to the
Lord’ (Epist. 55, 21) In his controversy with Pope Stephen on the rebaptism
of heretics he voices as the president of the African synod of September 256
his opinion as follows:
No one among us sets himself up as a
bishop of bishops, or by tyranny and terror forces his colleagues to compulsory
obedience, seeing that every bishop in the freedom of his liberty and power possess
the right to his own mind and can no more be judged by another than he himself
can judge another. We must all away the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
singly and alone has power to appoint us to the government of his Church and to
judge our acts therein (CESL 3, 1, 436)
From these words it is evident that
Cyprian does not recognize a primacy of jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome over
his colleagues. Nor does he think that Peter was given power over the other
apostles because he states: hoc errant utique et ceteri apostoli quod fuit
Petrus, pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis (De unit.
4) No more did Peter claim it: ‘Even Peter, whom the Lord first chose and upon
whom He built His church, when Pual later disputed with him over circumcision,
he did not claim insolently any prerogative for himself nor make any arrogant assumptions
nor say that he had the primacy and ought to be obeyed’ (Epist. 71, 3) (Johannes
Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc.,
1992], 2:375-76)