Thasius Cecilius, a celebrated Christian father, who suffered martyrdom during the persecution under Valerian and Gallienus. The precise date of his birth is uncertain, and little is known of his history until the period of his conversion to Christianity, A.D. 246, by Cecilius, an aged Carthaginian presbyter. It seems certain that he was then nearly fifty years of age; and the statements of Jerome and Lactantius, that he had previously reaped a considerable fortune as a Pagan rhetorician, is quite borne out by the florid style of his Christian oratory. At his conversion he is said to have sold his estate for the benefit of the poor, and devoted himself wholly to a life of asceticism and study; but at a later period of life we find him again in possession of his original property. His liberality and previous renown, as well as his zeal and eloquence in behalf of Christianity, seems to have paved the way for his rapid advancement in the church. At his baptism he had been ordained a presbyter; and two years had scarcely elapsed when he was forcibly installed archbishop of Carthage—the populace thronging the avenues to his house and effectually preventing his escape. In the third year of his administration, the severe edicts of Decius fell like a thunderbolt upon the Christians of Africa; and Cyprian found himself surrounded by multitudes who, to use his own expression, "fell off their own accord before the violence of persecution had struck them down," and in the recoil of their fickle enthusiasm now eagerly clamoured that he should be thrown to the lions. Prudence suggested the necessity of a retreat; and with this view he retired into an Cyprian, obscure solitude, from whence he could maintain a constant correspondence with the clergy and people of Carthage. In justification of what his enemies branded as a pusillanimous and criminal desertion of duty, Cyprian alleged the authority of a heavenly vision, which with him too often supplied the place of a second conscience. On his return to Carthage, internal dissension succeeded external persecution; and the eagerness of the Lapsed to be readmitted into the church, without the preliminary penance, occasioned more trouble to the archbishop than his hasty retreat from danger. Novatus and Felicitissimus, the rival candidates for the see of Carthage, headed the opposition; but Cyprian resisted the dangerous indulgence, while the schemes of the dissentients to provoke a schism with Rome were thwarted by the firmness of the primate Cornelius. The death of Decius, however, soon put an end to the brief period of external peace. The suspicions of Gallus were chiefly aroused against the hierarchy, and the martyrdom of Lucius quickly following the banishment of Cornelius was little calculated to soothe the minds of the African bishops. The fury of the people was, however, mainly directed against the Christian laity, who, in the midst of pestilence and the fierceness of persecutors, not only refused to join in the propitiatory Pagan sacrifices, but resolutely justified these calamities as judgments on the state religion, and boldly prognosticated the dissolution of the world. A short but troubled interval of rest ensued upon the accession of Valerian. Six years after, however, the latent spirit of persecution broke out afresh, and Cyprian, summoned before the proconsul Paternus, was presented with an imperial mandate requiring that he should abjure the Christian religion. Cyprian boldly replying that he was a Christian and a bishop, devoted to the worship of the true and only Deity, was immediately condemned to banishment. He was conducted without delay to Curubis, a maritime city of Zeugitania, about forty miles from Carthage. Here the exiled bishop enjoyed all the conveniences of life, and his solitude was often cheered by the letters, visits, and congratulations of the faithful. On the arrival of a new proconsul in the province, the fortunes of Cyprian began to wear a more favourable aspect. He was recalled from banishment; and though not yet permitted to return to Carthage, his own gardens in the neighbourhood of the capital were assigned for his place of residence. At length, exactly one year after his first apprehension, the imperial warrant arrived for the summary execution of the Christian teachers; and Cyprian, resisting the temptations to flight, returned to his gardens to await the ministers of death. On his apprehension he was conveyed not to prison but to a private house, where at an elegant supper his friends were permitted for the last time to enjoy the society of their spiritual father. In the morning he was brought before the tribunal of the proconsul, and commanded to offer sacrifices to the gods of Rome. His refusal was firm and decisive, and the magistrate pronounced with reluctance the sentence of death. Surrounded by his faithful presbyters and deacons, who assisted him in doffing his upper garment, and spread linen on the ground to catch the precious relics of his blood, the martyr covered his face with his hands, and at one blow his head was severed from his body (A.D. 258). His corpse remained for some hours exposed to the curiosity of the Pagans; but in the night it was removed, and transported in a triumphal procession, and with a splendid illumination, to the burial-place of the Christians.

The works of Cyprian are numerous and valuable, and some of them—as, for instance, the treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church—undoubtedly mark an epoch in the history of the questions of which they treat. All his writings bear evidence of having been written under strong emotion; and the disputes which marked the commencement of his ecclesiastical career imparted to his mind a tone of spiritual dogmatism, of which we find traces even to the close of his life. His tracts too not unfrequently degenerate from piety to enthusiasm, from righteous indignation to personal violence and malice. Among his principal works his treatise De Lapsis, i.e., concerning the treatment of those who, during the persecutions, had lapsed into idolatry, is greatly disfigured by a profusion of miraculous stories, which are curious as occurring in the works of a man too clear-headed to be deceived, and whose biography stands in marked contrast to the lives of the other Fathers in the prosaic and historical character of its details. His treatise De Unitate Ecclesiae Catholicae is interesting as marking the transition from the spiritual to the outward idea of church unity. Many of its most decisive passages, however, are controverted; but from an undisputed passage in his epistle to Cornelius, in which he styles "the chair of Peter the fountain of all ecclesiastical authority," it seems certain that he held the opinions expressed in his treatise. His more practical works, in regard to Martyrdom, Mortality, the Dress of Virgins, the Duty of Almsgiving, &c., are characterized by great firmness and earnestness, and are full of valuable incidental allusions to the manners and customs of his age. Most of his works have been translated into English. The great authority for his life is his biography by Pontius, a Carthaginian deacon.

belonging to Cyprus; hence used as an epithet of Venus, who is frequently styled in poetry the Cyprian Queen.