Lucifer of Cagliari
Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia and the most uncompromising anti-Arian voice of the Latin West during the reign of Constantius II. He served as papal legate to the Council of Milan in 354 to 355 AD, where he refused to condemn Athanasius and was sent into exile in the East. From exile he wrote five furious pamphlets addressed directly to the emperor, works that quote enormous stretches of an Old Latin Bible and make him a leading witness to the Latin scriptural text before the Vulgate. After his release he consecrated Paulinus as bishop of Antioch, an act that hardened the Meletian schism, and his rigorist followers, the Luciferians, later refused communion with bishops who had lapsed at Ariminum.
Biography
Lucifer was bishop of Cagliari (Caralis), the principal see of Sardinia, and comes into view in the middle of the fourth century as one of the Western churchmen who resisted the pressure of the emperor Constantius II to condemn Athanasius of Alexandria. When Pope Liberius sought delegates to press the case for a fair hearing, Lucifer went east and then to the imperial court as a legate, joining the deacon Hilarius and others on the mission.
At the Council of Milan in 354 to 355 AD, Constantius required the assembled bishops to subscribe against Athanasius. Lucifer refused. The refusal, together with the resistance of Eusebius of Vercelli and Dionysius of Milan, led the emperor to send the dissenters into exile in the eastern provinces. Lucifer's stations included Germanicia in Syria, where he was placed under the Arian bishop Eudoxius, then Eleutheropolis in Palestine, and finally the Thebaid in Upper Egypt.
It was in exile that Lucifer wrote the works for which he is known: five pamphlets addressed directly to Constantius. Their titles are On Not Meeting with Heretics (De non conveniendo cum haereticis), On Apostate Kings (De regibus apostaticis), two books For Saint Athanasius (De sancto Athanasio), On Not Sparing Those Who Sin Against God (De non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus), and That We Must Die for the Son of God (Moriundum esse pro Dei Filio). Written in a blunt and vehement Latin, they defend Athanasius, denounce the emperor as a persecutor, and reject any accommodation with the Arian party. To build his case Lucifer strings together long passages of Scripture, and because he quotes an Old Latin text at such length he is now one of the most important witnesses to the Latin Bible as it stood before Jerome's Vulgate. When Constantius, having received the writings, sent to ask whether Lucifer stood by what he had written, Lucifer answered defiantly and held to every word. The exchange with the imperial agent Florentius survives, and we publish it.
The emperor Julian, on his accession in 361 AD, allowed the exiled bishops to return, and Lucifer was freed in 362 AD. Rather than go straight home he went to Antioch, where the church was divided between rival claimants and the wider question of how to receive those who had subscribed at earlier councils was under debate. There Lucifer consecrated Paulinus, the leader of the strict Nicene party, as bishop. The act set Paulinus against Meletius, whom another party supported, and entrenched the schism at Antioch that would trouble the Eastern church for decades. A council at Alexandria the same year had favored a more lenient policy toward the return of former subscribers, and Lucifer's consecration cut directly against it.
Lucifer then returned to Sardinia, where he died around 370 to 371 AD. After his death a body of followers known as the Luciferians carried his rigorism further, refusing communion with bishops who had lapsed into Arian subscription at the Council of Ariminum in 359 AD and been received back without penalty. The Book of Prayers (Libellus precum) of the presbyters Faustinus and Marcellinus is a petition presented on behalf of this party, and Jerome wrote a dialogue, the Altercation of a Luciferian and an Orthodox Christian, against them.
His memory was handled with reserve by later writers. Ambrose and Augustine treat him cautiously, wary of the schism that bore his name, and the question of whether his own conduct amounted to separation was raised in antiquity. He was never formally condemned, and in Sardinia he came to be venerated as a saint. The tension between these assessments has never been fully resolved, and the sources present it without settling it.
Why Lucifer Matters
Lucifer represents the most uncompromising strain of Western anti-Arianism during the crisis under Constantius II. Where others negotiated, subscribed under pressure, or sought formulas that might hold a divided church together, he refused any dealing with those he judged heretics and said so to the emperor's face. His five pamphlets are the fullest expression of this position, and they preserve a register of ancient Christian polemic that is rare in surviving literature: sustained invective directed by a bishop, from exile, at a reigning emperor, charging him with apostasy and comparing him to the persecuting kings of Scripture.
The pamphlets are also a textual witness of the first rank. To press his arguments Lucifer quotes Scripture at extraordinary length, transcribing whole chapters rather than isolated verses, and he does so from an Old Latin version rather than the Vulgate, which did not yet exist. Because his citations are so extensive and so continuous, they give modern scholars one of the best available samples of the Latin biblical text as it circulated in the West before Jerome, and they are used in reconstructing the pre-Vulgate readings of several books.
The consecration of Paulinus at Antioch in 362 AD marks the point where Lucifer's rigorism passed from words into an act with lasting consequences. By ordaining a rival bishop for the strict Nicene party he set his own uncompromising line against the more conciliatory policy adopted at Alexandria the same year, and he deepened a schism that outlasted him by two generations. The Luciferian party that formed after his death, refusing communion with bishops who had lapsed at Ariminum, carried the same principle to the point of separation. Their petition survives in the Book of Prayers of Faustinus and Marcellinus, and Jerome's dialogue against them shows the mainstream church setting itself against the movement. This aftermath is the cautionary side of his record, and it is inseparable from the resolve that made him a hero to the strict Nicene cause.
Complete Works in English
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