The Lives and Times of the Popes - Saint Stephen I - A.D. 253

Saint Stephen I, a Roman, was archdeacon of the Church of Rome under Saint Cornelius and Saint Lucius, and succeeded them in the power of the keys. The period of the reign of Saint Stephen was also that of the remarkable question whether it was necessary to repeat the baptism given by heretics, in the event of their return to the faith. The dispute arose between two of the most eminent Christians, one of whom, Stephen, was the foundation-stone, and the other a principal pillar, Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. The traditions of the Church held that baptism, even when conferred by heretics, preserved its sacramental characteristics, provided that in conferring it all the evangelical forms had been preserved; and, consequently, when a heretic passed from the temples of error to the true sanctuary of truth, the baptismal ceremony needed not to be renewed. Nevertheless, by degrees, in some of the provinces of Africa and Asia, the contrary custom had prevailed amongst holy bishops and learned men; and it received weight and even an extraordinary importance from the example and authority of Saint Cyprian, who had succeeded in causing it to be recognized in several councils on both those continents.

Saint Cyprian supported his opinion by arguments so plausible that Saint Augustine confessed that he himself would have been misled by them had not the decision of the Church served him as both argument and rule. Stephen, who, as became a pontiff, supported the ancient and more sound doctrine, treated the custom as an innovation, and to all the attacks of Saint Cyprian he opposed the invulnerable buckler of tradition. He avoided parrying them by other arguments, lest on questions relating to the faith too much weight should be given to human reason, always too rash. Stephen was stern, more so than Cyprian had anticipated. Both were actuated by the same spirit, and strove, though by different ways, to attain to the same end. Cyprian was in error, yet sincerely sought the truth; Stephen was sternly strict, because he feared lest in respecting error he should nurture it.

The bishop said that in order to be convinced he awaited the sentence of the oecumenical Church. The pontiff anticipated it, and felt it within himself. Saint Augustine observes that his controversy displayed the two superior virtues of both disputants, charity and concord. Stephen, though persistent in his disapprobation of such a maxim, yet did not condemn its propagator, and sedulously avoided striking one of the most zealous supporters of the Church. Cyprian, in detaching himself from the head, had given the whole body a violent shock, yet ceased not to show himself faithfully united. He peacefully endured reproaches; he preached gentleness, docility, and integrity; and if he did not abandon the doctrines which he favored, he bore himself so humbly that it might be supposed that he had repudiated them. Those two illustrious men, divided upon the question of the first sacrament of the Church, were gloriously reunited to each other by the baptism of blood. Saint Vincent de Lerins says of Stephen I: “That great pope, whose prudence was as great as his sanctity, knew that piety can allow us to receive no other doctrine than that which is handed down to us from the faith of our predecessors, and that it is our duty to transmit it to others as faithfully and as purely as we have received it; that we are not to carry religion whithersoever we choose, but to follow it whithersoever it leads; that the property of Christian modesty is consistently to preserve the holy maxims left to us by our fathers, and not to hand down our own ideas to our posterity.” What was the result of this dispute? That which is usual in such matters: the old faith was recognized and upheld, and the innovation was rejected. The question was not decided until the Council of Nice, where the view of Stephen triumphed.

Novaes details the names of the writers on the question as to the sufficient or insufficient baptism of heretics returning to the true faith. It was Agrippinus, Saint Cyprian’s predecessor in the bishopric of Carthage, who first started this difficulty. Many authors, Italian, German, and French, have published important dissertations on the subject. Novaes declines to decide another question, namely, whether Stephen confined himself to threats or actually excommunicated Saint Cyprian.

In reply to Napoleon, on the subject of the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte, dated 25th June, 1805, Pius VII used these very words: “The disparity of creed between two baptized persons is not considered by the Church a fatal impediment to marriage, even though one of the parties be not in the Catholic communion.”

In two ordinations in the month of December, Stephen created three or four bishops, six priests, and five deacons. He governed the Church four years and about six months. The executioners of the persecutors seized him at the moment when he was celebrating the Holy Sacrifice in the catacombs, and beheaded him on the very altar.

Innocent XII, among the presents that he made to Cosmos III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was at Rome during the Jubilee of 1700, gave him the chair of Saint Stephen I, which the grand duke sent to the cathedral of Pisa. It was under the invocation of this pope and saint that the celebrated Tuscan order of knighthood was founded, the “Order of Saint Stephen, Saint and Martyr.”

The body of this saint was at first interred in the cemetery of Calixtus, but on the 17th of August, in the year 762, it was removed to the Church of Saint Stephen and Saint Sylvester, which Paul I caused to be erected, and which is now called the Church of Saint Sylvester in Capite, because in it is preserved the head of Saint John the Baptist.

After the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the Holy See remained vacant for twenty-two days.

- from "The Lives and Times of the Popes", by Alexis-François Artaud de Montor