Cornelius (d. 253), pope and martyr. Nothing is known of his early life, but after a vacancy of a year due to the persecution of Decius, Cornelius, a member of the gens Cornelia, was chosen bishop of Rome by the clergy and people in 251. The main problem of his pontificate was not persecution but dissension within the Church concerning the reconciliation of those who had lapsed. Novatian, a gifted Roman priest, opposed his policy of leniency, maintaining that the Church had no power to pardon those who had lapsed during persecution, nor those who had committed murder and adultery, nor even, apparently, those who contracted second marriages. Novatian then set himself up as a rival bishop of Rome. Cornelius, strongly supported by Cyprian of Carthage, asserted that the Church indeed does have the power to forgive apostates and other sinners, and to admit them to communion after suitable penance has been done. A few letters of Cornelius to Cyprian survive with Cyprian's answers, some of which date from the time when Cornelius was banished to Civita Vecchia (Centumcellae), when the persecution was renewed in 253. Cornelius died soon after, probably through the hardships endured there; Cyprian called him a martyr; later accounts say that he was beheaded. He was buried at Rome in the crypt of Lucina, where his tomb can still be seen with the inscription ‘Cornelius Martyr’. A painting of Cyprian was added to the wall of the crypt in the 8th century: Cornelius and Cyprian are associated in the R.M., in the Canon of the Mass, and in their common feast in the Western Church, formerly on 14 September, now on 16 September. At the church of Portlemouth (Devon) there is a screen painting of Cornelius, vested as a pope, holding a triple cross and a horn.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Sept. IV (1753), 143–91
- Letters of Cornelius are 49–50 in the collected letters of Cyprian; also extracts in Eusebius, H.E., vi. 43
- see also A. d'Alès, Novatien (1925)
- J. Chapman, Studies in the Early Papacy (1928). For his death, burial, and inscription with the fresco see A. Wilpert, La cripta dei Papi e la cappella di santa Cecilia (1910, cf. Anal. Boll., xxix (1910), 185–6)
