The Primacy Text

Cyprian, De Unitate 4 (Primacy Text recension)

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage

Two extra sentences about Peter, and seventeen centuries of people arguing about who put them there.

Catch rate: 70 / 255
Base research: 142
Stat total: 232

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.

Stamina56

Contend70

Defend54

Popularity52

Total232

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 56

The longer of the two versions of chapter 4 — two extra sentences, and they are the two everybody argues about. It says more than the received text does.

Contend 70

Fairly high. "The primacy is given to Peter… there might be shown one Church of Christ and one See." That sentence has been carried into more arguments than the rest of the treatise put together.

Defend 54

And this is what it costs. Every copy of these lines has to be defended before it can be used, because for four hundred years the standard edition printed them in brackets and called them a forgery. Low Defend on a text nobody lets you simply cite.

Popularity 52

These two sentences get quoted constantly, and always with an argument attached about who wrote them. A text you have to defend before you can use it reaches the floor slower than one you can simply cite.

Cited for this book

For centuries, editors printed these two sentences in brackets and called them a forgery. The scholar Maurice Bévenot showed that both versions of this chapter are Cyprian’s own. So the real question is why a bishop went back and cut one of his own strongest lines.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

The Primacy Text→
Lv 24

On the Unity→
Lv 32

Cyprian’s 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
8	Martyr’s Resolve	Ethics	Argument	50	100%	15
14	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
19	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
20	Produce the Records	Ecclesiology	Argument	70	100%	10
50	Speak Latin	History	Status	—	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“And the primacy is given to Peter, that there might be shown one Church of Christ and one See; and they are all shepherds, and the Rock is one, which is fed by all the apostles with unanimous consent.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4, Primacy Text recension (trans. R. E. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain). Both recensions are now generally held to be Cyprian’s own.public domain

One Chair

EcclesiologyArgument · power 72 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe church is one thing, and a man who walks out of it does not take it with him. Cyprian died for that in 258 — and a century and a half later both sides of a schism were quoting him at each other.

Strong against

×2.5An Apology of the Church of Englanda book · why?

Jewel cites Cyprian in the Apology for the same point: the apostles were equal, and the bishop’s office is one. He reads it against the pope’s claim.

×2.5The Institutes (1559)a book · why?

Calvin quotes this chapter of Cyprian’s against the papacy (Institutes 4.6.4). He reads it as a call to unity and finds no pope in it.

×2The Conscience of the Giveran argument · why?

Cyprian taught that the church is one, and that nobody who leaves it takes it with him. A congregation that splits over a minister’s sin leaves the body it meant to keep pure.

×2The Traitor’s Handsan argument · why?

Cyprian taught that the church is one. Breaking away over other people’s sins divides the body Christ made one.

“Eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
Martyrdom of Polycarp 9 (public domain trans.).public domain

Martyr’s Resolve

EthicsArgument · power 50 · 100% accurate

In the game"Eighty and six years…" Strikes half again as hard when the book is nearly spent.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning… as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter.”
Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 32 (trans. Thelwall, ANF 3, public domain).public domain

Produce the Records

EcclesiologyArgument · power 70 · 100% accurate

In the gameName your bishops back to an apostle. Smyrna could: Polycarp was placed there by John. Rome could: Clement was ordained by Peter. A book or group that cannot has answered the question.

Strong against

×2Gos. Barnabasa book · why?

Tertullian asked for a line of bishops back to an apostle. The Gospel of Barnabas has none: nobody had heard of it before the late Middle Ages.

×2Gos. Judasa book · why?

Tertullian’s test: show your line of teachers back to an apostle. The Gospel of Judas came from a second-century sect, and no church received it from anyone who knew Judas.

×2Gos. Thomasa book · why?

Tertullian’s test: name your bishops back to an apostle. The churches of Smyrna and Rome could. No church ever received the Gospel of Thomas from Thomas.

×2Hidden Sparkan argument · why?

Tertullian asks for names, not beliefs. A teaching that arrived in secret has no list to hand over.

×2Letter to Floraan argument · why?

It claims a tradition handed down privately. Tertullian asks who handed it, and no name is ever produced.

×2On the Unitya book · why?

Jerome reports that Cyprian read Tertullian every day and would say, “Give me the master.”

×2Thirty Aeonsan argument · why?

Tertullian’s answer to a secret handover: the churches with the clearest lists teach none of this.

Read it: Three Sentences He Later Cut

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.

“Upon him, being one, He builds His Church, and commits His sheep to be fed.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4, the Primacy Text recension (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).

“And the primacy is given to Peter, that there might be shown one Church of Christ and one See; and they are all shepherds, and the Rock is one, which is fed by all the apostles with unanimous consent.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4, Primacy Text (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).

“Who deserts the chair of Peter, upon whom the Church is founded.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4, Primacy Text (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).

“Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity.”
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 4 — this sentence stands in BOTH recensions (trans. Wallis, ANF 5, public domain).

Notes

Three sentences. That is the entire difference between this copy and the shorter one, and people have been fighting about them for four hundred years.

Both recensions are Cyprian’s own. He wrote this one first and cut it four or five years later, while Stephen of Rome was quoting his own words back at him in the quarrel over rebaptism.

⚑ The nineteenth-century editors who printed this text also called it “beyond all question spurious.” That verdict does not stand. Following Perler and Bévenot, the long recension is Cyprian revising Cyprian.

Now read the fourth passage, which is in both. Whatever he was doing with Peter, he was not making him the other apostles’ superior — he says so in the copy that is supposed to be the Roman forgery.