Cyprian's letters please help

[fineca]

Please let me know where I could read St.Cyprian’s letters online in the original (I guess Latin) since I have found two very different translations of one passage, namely:

“With a false bishop appointed for themselves by heretics, they dare even to set
sail and carry letters from schismatics and blasphemers to the chair of Peter and
to the principal Church, in which sacerdotal unity has its source; nor did they take
thought that these are Romans, whose faith was praised by the preaching Apostle,
and among whom it is not possible for perfidy to have entrance.”

from this passage there is this shorter and quite different translation:

“Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence apostolic faith is derived and whither no errors can come”

(Epistulae 59 (55), 14, [256 A.D.]).

which is the more faithful translation? where can I read the original?

Thanks!

 

[Contarini]

Please let me know where I could read St.Cyprian’s letters online in the original (I guess Latin) since I have found two very different translations of one passage, namely:

“With a false bishop appointed for themselves by heretics, they dare even to set
sail and carry letters from schismatics and blasphemers to the chair of Peter and
to the principal Church, in which sacerdotal unity has its source; nor did they take
thought that these are Romans, whose faith was praised by the preaching Apostle,
and among whom it is not possible for perfidy to have entrance.”

from this passage there is this shorter and quite different translation:

“Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence apostolic faith is derived and whither no errors can come”

(Epistulae 59 (55), 14, [256 A.D.]).

which is the more faithful translation? where can I read the original?

Thanks!

Unfortunately the only online source I know for Cyprian’s Epistles in Latin is the Patrologia Latina, which is available by subscription only. So unless you are near a library that subscribes (I used to have access as a grad student at Duke, for instance), you’re out of luck there.

What are your sources for these two passages? You give no citation or context, which makes it hard to help you. The “Ante-Nicene Fathers” series (19th-century Protestant, but the most easily available edition) has this translation of the entire passage:

To these also it was not sufficient that they had withdrawn from the Gospel, that they had taken away from the lapsed the hope of satisfaction and repentance, that they had taken away those involved in frauds or stained with adulteries, or polluted with the deadly contagion of sacrifices, lest they should entreat God, or make confession of their crimes in the Church, from all feeling and fruit of repentance; that they had set up50 outside for themselves-outside the Church, and opposed to the Church, a conventicle of their abandoned faction, when there had flowed together a band of creatures with evil consciences, and unwilling to entreat and to satisfy God. After such things as these, moreover, they still dare-a false bishop having been appointed for them by, heretics-to set sail and to bear letters from schismatic and profane persons to the throne of Peter, and to the chief church whence priestly unity takes its source;51 and not to consider that these were the Romans whose faith was praised in the preaching of the apostle, to whom faithlessness could have no access.52 But what was the reason of their coming and announcing the making of the pseudo-bishop in opposition to the bishops? For either they are pleased with what they have done, and persist in their wickedness; or, if they are displeased and retreat, they know whither they may return. For, as it has been decreed by all of us53 -and is equally fair and just-that the case of every one should be heard there where the crime has been committed; and a portion of the flock has been assigned to each individual pastor, which he is to rule and govern, having to give account of his doing to the Lord; it certainly behoves those over whom we are placed not to run about nor to break up the harmonious agreement of the bishops with their crafty and deceitful rashness, but there to plead their cause, where they may be able to have both accusers and witnesses of their crime; unless perchance the authority of the bishops constituted in Africa seems to a few desperate and abandoned men to be too little,54 who have already judged concerning them, and have lately condemned, by the gravity of their judgment, their conscience bound in many bonds of sins. Already their case has been examined, already sentence concerning them has been pronounced; nor is it fitting for the dignity of priests to be blamed for the levity of a changeable and inconstant mind, when the Lord teaches and says, “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay.”

In this edition the letter is numbered 54, but the editors note that the Oxford edition gives it the number 59.

This obviously agrees with your longer version better, and indeed the shorter sounds more like a summary or paraphrase.

However, it’s worth noting that some of Cyprian’s writings have come down to us in several editions. His treatise “On the Unity of the Church,” for instance, has two different readings in different manuscripts for a key passage on the chair of Peter. This has caused endless wrangling between Protestant and Catholic patristics scholars!

Also note that the footnotes to the online edition I cited are very polemically Protestant. . . . As I said, it was the 19th century!

Edwin