Popes of the Lost Sheep

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 13, 2026 | In Lives of the Popes

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In the last three installments of this series, we moved quickly through the first seventy years, and then the next hundred years, and then the next fifty years of the papacy. That fast pace was due to lack of detail and documentation. This installment, by contrast, will cover just seven eventful years, from 251 to 257.

The three popes who reigned during this period all had to deal with serious divisions within the Church, especially over questions of how the Church should treat fallen-away Catholics who wished to return, as well as those who had been baptized by heretics and now wished to join themselves to the true Church.

A very important participant in these controversies, who corresponded with all three of these popes, was St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. On the first question, St. Cyprian was strong ally to Pope Sts. Cornelius and Lucius—indeed, Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian share a feast day—but on the second question, Cyprian famously clashed with Pope St. Stephen.

21—St. Cornelius (251-253)

St. Cornelius is one of the most famous early popes, commemorated alongside other Roman martyrs in the Canon of the Mass.

Cornelius’s short pontificate took place in the aftermath of the Decian persecution, which had claimed the life of his predecessor. In fact, the persecution had been so bad that no pope could be elected for fourteen months after the death of St. Fabian. During the interregnum, the Roman church was governed by a group of priests, the foremost of whom was Novatian, whose theology of the Trinity was influential, but whose pride and flawed ecclesiology shortly led him into schism.

During this time, a debate arose over how to handle the lapsi (fallen), those weak Christians who had given in to persecution and either offered pagan sacrifices, or purchased certificates saying that they had made such sacrifices, or simply denied their faith, but now wished to return to the Church. St. Cornelius, along with St. Cyprian of Carthage and St. Dionysius of Alexandria, said that such lapsed Christians could be received back into communion after doing suitable penance. Novatian, however, insisted that the Church had no authority to forgive apostates, although God Himself might possibly pardon them. Ultimately he would found a sect that taught that the Church could not forgive serious sins committed after baptism.

When Emperor Decius left Rome to fight off some rivals, that gave the Roman Church enough breathing room to hold an election, ending fourteen months sede vacante. St. Cyprian recounts that Cornelius was elected pope against his will not only by sixteen bishops, but “by the judgment of God and of Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people then present, by the consent of aged priests and of good men, at a time when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is the place of Peter, and the step of the sacerdotal chair were vacant”.

St. Cyprian goes on to praise St. Cornelius:

What fortitude in his acceptance of the episcopate, what strength of mind, what firmness of faith, that he took his seat intrepid in the sacerdotal chair, at a time when the tyrant [Decius] in his hatred of bishops was making unspeakable threats, when he heard with far more patience that a rival prince was arising against him, than that a bishop of God was appointed at Rome.

But as had happened with Pope St. Callistus before him, the rigorists refused to accept Cornelius’s election, and a few weeks later they consecrated Novatian as bishop of Rome. The majority, not only in Rome but among the bishops of the Eastern and African churches, supported Cornelius. He convened a synod of sixty Italian bishops, who acknowledged his election, excommunicated Novatian and his followers, and, to boot, took Cornelius’s side on the question of forgiving apostates.

St. Cornelius was sent into exile by Emperor Trebonianus Gallus. Before leaving Rome, he did one important thing: he moved the bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul from the catacombs in order to place them in safer locations. A Christian woman named Lucina buried St. Paul on her estate on the Via Ostiense, on which was later built the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. Cornelius put Peter’s remains near the site of his crucifixion, where St. Peter’s Basilica would later be built.

In exile, Pope St. Cornelius either died from hardship or was beheaded. According to St. Jerome, Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian were martyred on the same day in different years: September 14, 253 and 258. These friends share a feast day (although this is now celebrated on September 16).

We have a few writings by St. Cornelius. Eusebius excerpts one of the letters Cornelius wrote to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, urging him to take his side against Novatian (see Book 6, Chapter 43 of Eusebius’s Church History). Alongside a dramatic description of the schism, we learn that the Church in Rome had 46 priests, that Cornelius had over 150 clergy working for him, and that the Roman church fed over 1,500 needy people daily.

This letter recounts something Novatian did when celebrating Mass, which I find to be an extremely striking example of the utter folly and sacrilege of schism. Eusebius, indeed, comments that this practice was “the worst of all the man’s offenses”, quoting Pope St. Cornelius:

For when [Novatian] has made the offerings, and distributed a part to each man, as he gives it he compels the wretched man to swear in place of the blessing. Holding his hands in both of his own, he will not release him until he has sworn in this manner (for I will give his own words):

“Swear to me by the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that you will never forsake me and turn to Cornelius.”

And the unhappy man does not taste until he has called down imprecations on himself; and instead of saying Amen, as he takes the bread, he says, I will never return to Cornelius.

We also have two letters from Cornelius to Cyprian, and nine from Cyprian to Cornelius. Of these, the latter are the more interesting, and while written by Cyprian, give an insight into what he admired in Cornelius. Epistle 53 makes the argument for showing mercy toward repentant apostates. And in Epistle 56, written to Cornelius after the pope accepted exile for the sake of Christ, Cyprian praises his example given to the whole Church.

22—St. Lucius I (253-54)

Born in Rome, St. Lucius was, like his predecessor, exiled by Trebonianus Gallus, but he was allowed by the next emperor, Valerian, to return to Rome. And as with St. Cornelius, St. Cyprian wrote St. Lucius a letter congratulating him on having become a confessor (that is, one who has suffered for the Faith). In his letters to both popes, Cyprian wrote that God had allowed them and their followers to be exiled, rather than the Novatians, in order to show who were the real bishops and the real flock of Christ, counted worthy to suffer for His name. Thus we see that Pope St. Lucius continued St. Cornelius’s policies of mercy toward the lapsi and condemnation of the Novatians.

23—St. Stephen I (254-57)

St. Stephen was a son of a great patrician family, the Julii, and his ancestors had been Christian for generations. Pope St. Lucius is said to have picked Stephen (his archdeacon) as his successor.

Pope St. Stephen I interacted with St. Cyprian in at least three different affairs—the most important of which brought them into direct conflict.

In the first case, early in his pontificate, Stephen was asked by the bishop of Lyons to intervene against Marcion, the bishop of Arles, who was following Novatian’s doctrine and refusing deathbed reconciliation to the lapsi. The pope did nothing, so the bishops of Gaul asked Cyprian to write to Stephen. Cyprian requested that Stephen write “letters of plenary authority by means of which, Marcion being excommunicated, another may be substituted in his place”. We do not know how Stephen responded, but perhaps he fulfilled Cyprian’s request since no further complaints were made.

Secondly, two Spanish bishops, Martial and Basilides, had been condemned by the other Spanish bishops for denying the Faith (they were libellatici, meaning they had acquired certificates that said they passed the religious test required by the pagan emperor). The two appealed to Rome, and Stephen attempted to get the other bishops to restore them to their office. Some of the Spanish bishops in turn wrote to Cyprian, who convened a synod in which the African bishops condemned Martial and Basilides, while excusing Stephen, far away in Rome as he was, for having been deceived by the libellatici’s misrepresentation of the facts of the case.

Finally, Pope Stephen and Cyprian conflicted on the question of whether the baptisms administered by heretical groups were valid, and therefore of whether those who converted from heresy to the orthodox faith needed to be rebaptized.

In Rome, former heretics were not rebaptized, but simply received into the Church by the laying on of hands in absolution. But in Africa and parts of the East at this time, the predominant view was that heretics did not believe in the same God or the same Christ, and thus had invalid baptisms. Rebaptism of heretics was the standard practice in those regions, and as bishop of Carthage, Cyprian followed this view.

An exception to the African practice were the bishops of Mauretania, who followed the Roman custom. Pope Stephen sent them a letter in support. A Numidian bishop asked Cyprian for his opinion, after which there was a council at Carthage in 256, from which sixty-one African bishops wrote a letter to the pope defending their position as one on which bishops could legitimately disagree.

Pope St. Stephen responded with a decree that all bishops must follow the Roman custom or be excommunicated, along with some harsh language directed toward Cyprian. Cyprian then defended himself. While Cyprian was in the wrong here, we can at least say for him that unlike the rigorists who had conflicted with Stephen’s predecessors, Cyprian did not demand that all Catholics follow his view, but insisted on what he saw as the prerogative of each bishop to determine his own policy.

Nonetheless, Cyprian did not take kindly to Pope Stephen’s censure of him, writing to an African prelate in terms which suggest more than a desire for mere tolerance of varying disciplines: “You will note [Stephen’s] error more and more clearly: in approving the baptism of all the heresies, he has heaped into his own breast the sins of all of them; a fine tradition indeed! What blindness of mind, what depravity!”

We learn from complaints made by Pope St. Stephen’s opponents, Firmilian and Cyprian, what kind of claims he was making for the papacy in the middle of the third century. In a letter from Firmilian we read, for the first time, of a Roman bishop citing Matthew 16:18 (“On this rock I will build My Church”) to justify his authority over the wider Church. And at the aforementioned Council of Carthage, Cyprian refers to St. Stephen as “set[ting] himself up as a bishop of bishops” and “compel[ling] his colleague to the necessity of obedience.”

But on that point, we should remember that Cyprian himself had previously requested that Rome exercise authority over other bishops, and had accepted Rome’s authority over the African bishops in the matter of the lapsi. In the affair of the Novatians, Cyprian had referred to Rome as “the chair of Peter and…the principal church, whence episcopal unity has taken its rise”, and referred to the Romans as “they to whom faithlessness can have no access”.

Another even larger council was held at Carthage, the minutes of which were sent to Rome—but Stephen would not even meet with Cyprian’s messengers. After this, we have no information about how or whether the conflict between Cyprian and the pope was resolved. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the upshot of the debate:

Stephen died on 27 August, 257, and was succeeded by Sixtus II, who certainly communicated with Cyprian, and is called by Pontius [Cyprian’s deacon and biographer] ‘a good and peace-loving bishop’. Probably when it was seen at Rome that the East was largely committed to the same wrong practice, the question was tacitly dropped. It should be remembered that, though Stephen had demanded unquestioning obedience, he had apparently, like Cyprian, considered the matter as a point of discipline. St. Cyprian supports his view by a wrong inference from the unity of the Church, and no one thought of the principle afterwards taught by St. Augustine, that, since Christ is always the principal agent, the validity of the sacrament is independent of the unworthiness of the minister: Ipse est qui baptizat. Yet this is what is implied in Stephen’s insistence upon nothing more than the correct form, ‘because baptism is given in the name of Christ’, and ‘the effect is due to the majesty of the Name’. The laying on of hands enjoined by Stephen is repeatedly said to be in poenitentiam, yet Cyprian goes on to argue that the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands is not the new birth, but must be subsequent to it and implies it. ...Cyprian seems to consider the laying on of hands in penance to be a giving of the Holy Ghost. In the East the custom of rebaptizing heretics had perhaps arisen from the fact that so many heretics disbelieved in the Holy Trinity, and possibly did not even use the right form and matter. For centuries the practice persisted, at least in the case of some of the heresies. But in the West to rebaptize was regarded as heretical, and Africa came into line soon after St. Cyprian. St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Vincent of Lérins are full of praise for the firmness of Stephen as befitting his place. But Cyprian’s unfortunate letters became the chief support of the puritanism of the Donatists. St. Augustine in his ‘De Baptismo’ goes through them one by one. He will not dwell on the violent words quae in Stephanum irritatus effudit, and expresses his confidence that Cyprian’s glorious martyrdom will have atoned for his excess.

In the end, according to Sts. Jerome and Augustine, the Africans and the Easterners issued new decrees accepting Rome’s position. Even today, while the Eastern Orthodox cite St. Cyprian as a champion against papal authority—despite the fact that he clearly upheld it in general—they acknowledge that in the matter of the conflict, Rome was right and Carthage was wrong.

(Learn more about St. Cyprian, Pope St. Stephen’s contribution to our understanding of the sacraments, and the recurring controversy over rebaptism on our podcast Way of the Fathers.)