On the Unity
Cyprian of Carthage, De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage
Both sides of the next schism will quote this book. One of them will have read it.
- Catch rate
- 75 / 255
- Base research
- 150
- Stat total
- 248
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
A short treatise, and it does not pretend otherwise — but it has been argued over continuously for seventeen hundred years.
Cyprian was beheaded in 258 and everyone on every side of the next two centuries of African church politics wanted him on their side. A book carries the weight of who claims it.
This is the version that got handed on: the received text, copied without argument, quotable without a footnote. It defends better than the longer one for exactly that reason.
Cyprian was copied more than any Latin father before Augustine, and this short treatise is the one every argument about the church has quoted since — Catholics and Protestants alike, often at each other in the same century. It usually takes the floor first.
Cited for this book
Cyprian wrote it about one schism and was read into every schism after. The Donatists claimed him as their own and were not being ridiculous about it — he is African, he is a martyr, and he did once argue that baptism outside the church counts for nothing. Augustine had to take the man back off them a chapter at a time.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One Chair | Ecclesiology | Argument | 72 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 18 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 22 | Martyr’s Resolve | Ethics | Argument | 50 | 100% | 15 |
| 26 | Rule of Faith | Christology | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 30 | The Universal Church | Ecclesiology | Type shift | — | — | 10 |
| 34 | Produce the Records | Ecclesiology | Argument | 70 | 100% | 10 |
| 38 | Cross-Reference | Ecclesiology | rally | — | — | 10 |
| 42 | Consensus | Ecclesiology | Argument | — | 100% | 5 |
Read it: One Light, Everywhere Diffused
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“…yet, that He might set forth unity, He arranged by His authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from one. Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4 (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).
“As there are many rays of the sun, but one light; and many branches of a tree, but one strength based in its tenacious root; and since from one spring flow many streams… yet the unity is still preserved in the source.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 5 (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain). The ellipsis is a clause on the abundance of the streams.
“Separate a ray of the sun from its body of light, its unity does not allow a division of light; break a branch from a tree,—when broken, it will not be able to bud; cut off the stream from its fountain, and that which is cut off dries up.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 5 (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).
“He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 6 (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain, lightly modernized).
Carthage, 251, in the middle of a schism, written by a bishop who had spent the persecution in hiding and was hearing about it from men who had not.
This is the shorter recension — and the later one. Cyprian is the man who cut it.
Every image is from nature and every one runs the same way. Light divides without being divided; a cut branch simply will not bud. He is not threatening the schismatics. He is describing what he thinks has already happened to them.
He was wrong about rebaptism, and Augustine says so a hundred and fifty years later — and honours him in the same breath. If you are carrying On Baptism, read the two together.