A Rhetorician Made New
Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus was born around 200 to a wealthy pagan family, probably at Carthage, the chief city of Roman Africa. He became a celebrated teacher of rhetoric and lived, by his own account, a life of comfort and display. In middle age, around 246, he was won to the faith through an elderly presbyter named Caecilianus, whose name he took as his own. He sold much of his property for the poor and pledged himself to celibacy.
Soon after his baptism he wrote To Donatus, describing his conversion. He had thought it impossible, he says, for a man to be born again and put off his old habits. Then the water of the new birth washed away the stain of his former life, and a light from above poured into his cleansed heart. The passage is moving, and it is also telling. For Cyprian, as for most catholic writers of his age, the new birth came through the water of baptism.
He read Scripture eagerly and became a devoted student of Tertullian, his fellow Carthaginian. According to Jerome, Cyprian read him every day and would ask for his works by calling for the master. Within two or three years of his conversion, around 248, the people of Carthage chose him as their bishop, over the objections of some senior presbyters.
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