- the fugitives, like Cyprian himself, who went into hiding, had their prop-
erty confiscated, but made no public denial (3, 4, 10); - the ordinary faithful (stantes), who were not cowed but were saved by
the bell (2.23–34; 3.1–5); - the potential lapsi,who considered denial but were not required to make
a decision (28.107); - thelibellatici,who got a false certificate of sacrifice through bribery
(27.1–5)—what Cyprian calls a “confession of apostasy” (professio denegan-
tis); - thesacrificati,who acceded, many of them rushing to offer sacrifice before
they were arrested, encouraging their friends to join them, dragging along
their children, and generally behaving like eager defectors (7–9); these are
the “apostates and renegades” (apostati, perfidis,33.16).
Cyprian defends his rigorous conditions for accepting back the defec-
tors against a softer line supported by surviving confessors. This, together
with his own flight, put him in a weak position at the time, though he
was later to soften his views in the face of a devastating plague and the
threat of new persecutions. He provides a number of insights into defection.
For some defectors, the impression is that ties to friends and the desire to
protect families were paramount (9.1). In chapter 6, Cyprian details the signs
of a church gone slack. Among these signs are marriage to pagans, which
would have posed a dilemma in times of public pressure, and the accu-
mulation of property and wealth, fear for the loss of which was one of the
main reasons for defection (11.1ff). Clearly, too, some Christians (the lapsi)
later wished to recant their public defection and return to the church,
which, with appropriate acts of repentance, they were allowed to do. Defec-
tion, that is, was not necessarily final.
Another intriguing example crops up in the account of the Martyrdom
of Pionius,which took place around 250 CE, where it is recorded that there
were deserters (10.5–6, 12.2, 20.3), some of whom voluntarily offered sac-
rifice (4.3) and others of whom, like the leader Euctemon, tried unsuc-
cessfully to persuade the rest to follow him (15.2, 16.1, 18.13–14; Musurillo
1972, 137–67). Pionius himself despised learned pagans, and warns against
Jews who, in his view, took advantage of Christians in distress by inviting
them to take shelter in the synagogue. He deeply suspected their motives,
and warned Christians against consorting with the killers of Christ. But that
may be no more than an expression of his ingrained suspicions, and the Jews
may kindly have been offering a refuge to Christians in a time of peril.
What the motives of these Jews were, we cannot know. Harking back
to the accounts of Jewish involvement in the death of Polycarp a century
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