Editing Cyprian (section)

== Early life ==
Cyprian was born into a rich pagan [[Roman Africans|Roman African]]<ref name=EB1911/> [[Punic people|Carthaginian]] family sometime during the early third century. His original name was Thascius; he took the additional name [[Caecilia gens|Caecilius]] in memory of the [[priest]] to whom he owed his conversion.<ref name=Butler>[http://www.bartleby.com/210/9/162.html Butler, Alban. "St. Cyprian, Archbishop of Carthage, Martyr", ''The Lives of the Saints'', Vol, IX, 1866]</ref> Before his conversion, he was a leading member of a legal fraternity in Carthage, an orator, a "pleader in the courts", and a teacher of rhetoric.<ref name=Walsh>'' Butler's Lives of the Saints'', (Michael Walsh, ed.), New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991, p. 289.</ref> After a "dissipated youth", Cyprian was baptized when he was thirty-five years old,{{sfn|Benedict XVI|2008|p=51}} {{circa|245 AD}}. After his [[baptism]], he gave away a portion of his wealth to the poor of [[Carthage]], as befitted a man of his status.

In the early days of his conversion, he wrote an ''Epistola ad Donatum de gratia Dei'' and the ''Testimoniorum Libri III'' that adhere closely to the models of [[Tertullian]], who influenced his style and thinking. Cyprian described his own conversion and baptism in the following words:

{{blockquote|When I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, I used to regard it as extremely difficult and demanding to do what God's mercy was suggesting to me... I myself was held in bonds by the innumerable errors of my previous life, from which I did not believe I could possibly be delivered, so I was disposed to acquiesce in my clinging vices and to indulge my sins... But after that, with the help of the water of new birth, the stain of my former life was washed away, and a light from above, serene and pure, was infused into my reconciled heart... a second birth restored me to a new man. Then, in a wondrous manner, every doubt began to fade... I clearly understood that what had first lived within me, enslaved by the vices of the flesh, was earthly and that what, instead, the Holy Spirit had wrought within me was divine and heavenly.<ref>Cyprian, ''Ad Donatum'', 3-4</ref>}}