Cyprian the Bishop

J. Patout Burns's Cyprian the Bishop is a scholarly study of the third century North African bishop's ecclesiology and pastoral leadership during the crisis of Christian persecution and the resulting lapsi controversy over readmitting those who had renounced their faith under duress. Burns's authority rests on close reading of Cyprian's own extensive surviving correspondence and treatises, primary documentation unusually rich for this early period of church history. As an academic monograph focused specifically on Cyprian's own theological development and pastoral practice, it is authoritative on his thought and its institutional consequences for the early North African church, and it is properly read alongside the broader patristic scholarship on how Cyprian's positions were received and contested by contemporaries.