Back to the Library
The Church Fathers · 1 September 256
The Opinions of the Eighty-Seven Bishops
Sententiae Episcoporum
The Council of Carthage
Read elsewhere
What it is
The minutes of a council on whether converts baptised by heretics must be baptised again. Each bishop speaks in turn and is recorded by name and see, and Cyprian opens by saying that no one sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or compels his colleagues by terror.
Why it lasted
The oldest verbatim record of a Christian council, and Cyprian's opening statement is the text every later argument against papal supremacy has reached for.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next