78. St. Cyprian

This volume contains his De mortalitate and Ad Demetrianum, both dealing with a Christian understanding of pandemic, a topic of international interest given the Covid experience of the last few years. The former addresses concerns within the Christian community about why they are suffering as though they were being punished equally with non-Christians and the second addresses non-Christian concerns that Christian non-participation in societal religious practice was responsible for the appearance of the pandemic. There is an extensive introduction to the two works that situate them within Cyprian’s literary output and within the history of pandemic. The reader is invited to take the sense of powerlessness that was experienced in the early days of Covid to appreciate afresh how threatened people must have felt in a world without the medical capacity to combat disease.
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