History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

bigami and trigami to ordination, maintained that a bishop could not be deposed, even though he

had committed a mortal sin, and appealed for his view to Rom. 14:4, to the parable of the tares and

the wheat, Matt. 13:30, and, above all, to the ark of Noah, which was a symbol of the church, and

which contained both clean and unclean animals, even dogs and wolves. In short, he considered

no sin too great to be loosed by the power of the keys in the church. And this continued to be the

view of his successors.

But here we perceive, also, how the looser practice in regard to penance was connected

with the interest of the hierarchy. It favored the power of the priesthood, which claimed for itself

the right of absolution; it was at the same time matter of worldly policy; it promoted the external

spread of the church, though at the expense of the moral integrity of her membership, and facilitated

both her subsequent union with the state and her hopeless confusion with the world. No wonder

the church of Rome, in this point, as in others, triumphed at last over all opposition.

§ 58. Church Schisms.

I. On the Schism of Hippolytus-. The Philosophumena of Hippol. lib. IX. (ed. Miller, Oxf. 1851,

better by Duncker and Schneidewin, Gött. 1859), and the monographs on Hippolytus, by Bunsen,

Döllinger, Wordsworth, Jacobi, and others (which will be noticed in chapter XIII. § 183).

II. On the Schism of Felicissimus: Cyprian: Epist. 38–40, 42, 55.

III. On the Novatian Schism: Hippol.: Philosoph. 1 IX. Cypr.: Epist. 41–52; and the Epistles of

Cornelius of Rome, and Dionys. of Alex., in Euseb. H. E., VI. 43–45; VII. 8. Comp. Lit. in §

200.

IV. On the Meletian Schism: Documents in Latin translation in Maffei: 

Osservationi Letterarie,

 Verona,

1738, tom. III p. 11 sqq., and the Greek fragments from the Liber de poenitentia of Peter of

Alexandria in Routh: Reliquicae Sacr. vol. II. pp. 21–51. Epiphan.: Haer. 68 (favorable to

Meletius); Athanas.: Apol. contra Arianos, § 59; and after him, Socr, Sozom., and Theod. (very

unfavorable to Meletius).

Out of this controversy on the restoration of the lapsed, proceeded four schisms during the third

century; two in Rome, one in North Africa, and one in Egypt. Montanism, too, was in a measure

connected with the question of penitential discipline, but extended also to several other points of

Christian life, and will be discussed in a separate chapter.

I. The Roman schism of Hippolytus. This has recently been brought to the light by the

discovery of his Philosophumena (1851). Hippolytus was a worthy disciple of Irenaeus, and the

most learned and zealous divine in Rome, during the pontificates of Zephyrinus (202–217), and

Callistus (217–222). He died a martyr in 235 or 236. He was an advocate of strict views on discipline

in opposition to the latitudinarian practice which we have described in the previous section. He

gives a most unfavorable account of the antecedents of Callistus, and charges him and his predecessor

with the patripassian heresy. The difference, therefore, was doctrinal as well as disciplinarian. It

seems to have led to mutual excommunication and a temporary schism, which lasted till a.d. 235.

Hippolytus ranks himself with the successors of the apostles, and seems to have been bishop of

Portus, the port of Rome (according to later Latin tradition), or bishop of Rome (according to Greek

writers). If bishop of Rome, he was the first schismatic pope, and forerunner of Novatianus, who

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Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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was ordained anti pope in 251.

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 But the Roman Church must have forgotten or forgiven his

schism, for she numbers him among her saints and martyrs, and celebrates his memory on the

twenty-second of August. Prudentius, the spanish poet, represents him as a Roman presbyter, who

first took part in the Novatian schism, then returned to the Catholic church, and was torn to pieces

by wild horses at Ostia on account of his faith. The remembrance of the schism was lost in the glory

of his supposed or real martyrdom. According to the chronological catalogue of Popes from a.d.

354, a "presbyter" Hippolytus, together with the Roman bishop Pontianus, the successor of Callistus,

was banished from Rome in the reign of Alexander Severus (235), to the mines of Sardinia.

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II. The schism of Felicississimus, at Carthage, about the year 250, originated in the personal

dissatisfaction of five presbyters with the hasty and irregular election of Cyprian to the bishopric,

by the voice of the congregation, very soon after his baptism, a.d. 248. At the head of this opposition

party stood the presbyter Novatus, an unprincipled ecclesiastical demagogue, of restless,

insubordinate spirit and notorious character,

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 and the deacon Felicissimus, whom Novatus

ordained, without the permission or knowledge of Cyprian, therefore illegally, whether with his

own hands or through those of foreign bishops. The controversy cannot, however, from this

circumstance, be construed, as it is by Neander and others, into a presbyterial reaction against

episcopal autocracy. For the opponents themselves afterwards chose a bishop in the person of

Fortunatus. The Novatians and the Meletians likewise had the episcopal form of organization,

though doubtless with many irregularities in the ordination.

After the outbreak of the Decian persecution this personal rivalry received fresh nourishment

and new importance from the question of discipline. Cyprian originally held Tertullian’s principles,

and utterly opposed the restoration of the lapsed, till further examination changed his views. Yet,

so great was the multitude of the fallen, that he allowed an exception in periculo mortis. His

opponents still saw even in this position an unchristian severity, least of all becoming him, who,

as they misrepresented him, fled from his post for fear of death. They gained the powerful voice

of the confessors, who in the face of their own martyrdom freely gave their peace-bills to the lapsed.

A regular trade was carried on in these indulgences. An arrogant confessor, Lucian, wrote to Cyprian

in the name of the rest, that he granted restoration to all apostates, and begged him to make this

known to the other bishops. We can easily understand how this lenity from those who stood in the

fire, might take more with the people than the strictness of the bishop, who had secured himself.

The church of Novatus and Felicissimus was a resort of all the careless lapsi. Felicissimus set

himself also against a visitation of churches and a collection for the poor, which Cyprian ordered

during his exile.

When the bishop returned, after Easter, 251, he held a council at Carthage, which, though

it condemned the party of Felicissimus, took a middle course on the point in dispute. It sought to

preserve the integrity of discipline, yet at the same time to secure the fallen against despair. It

therefore decided for the restoration of those who proved themselves truly penitent, but against

283

See the particulars in § 183, and in Döllinger’s Hippol. and Call., Engl. transl. by A. Plummer (1876), p. 92 sqq.

284

See Mommsen, Über den Chronographen vom Jahr 354 (1850), Lipsius, Chronologie der Röm. Bischöfe, p. 40 sqq.;

Döllinger, I.c. p. 332 sqq.; Jacobi in Herzog

2

 VI. 142 sqq.

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Cyprian charges him with terrible cruelties, such as robbing widows and orphans, gross abuse of his father, and of his wife

even during her pregnancy; and says, that he was about to be arraigned for this and similar misconduct when the Decian persecution

broke out. Ep. 49.

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