Charles Bobertz’s book re-examines the ecclesiology of Cyprian of Carthage through the lens of the patron-client system. Presenting evidence that Cyprian was from at least the equestrian class, Bobertz speculates that Cyprian’s wealth may have been seen as a bonus by the people of Carthage, over and above Cyprian’s merits as a bishop. What results is an intriguing monograph that traces a potential intertwining of the roles of bishop and patron in the 3rd-century church.

The first chapter provides full historical context of the patron-client system and will be helpful to anyone unfamiliar with this facet of Roman culture. This chapter could have found a place in an introductory Church history textbook, and it forms the foundation of the argument for the rest of the book. Patrons had a responsibility to provide for clients out of their own funds. Cyprian’s situation was unique because he was in hiding and not physically present, but the typical role of a bishop is to collect alms from the wealthier laity, and distribute the alms to the needy; Bobertz implicitly asserts that the very sacrament of penance and reconciliation is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a patronal letter of recommendation. The thesis of the book rests on these points.

Many of Bobertz’s arguments will challenge our current understanding of this period of church history. For example, Bobertz makes the claim that the authority to absolve sin in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation is the result of “pleading before God” on the part of the clergyman presiding over this sacrament. That is, the act of the presider is primarily to pray for the penitent’s forgiveness and to intercede for the penitent-- rather than seeing the authority to absolve as coming from apostolic succession and Jesus’ granting of the authority to bind and loose. Connected to this is the assertion that the authority to absolve sin is the act of a patron, rather than the act of an apostle, or the successor of an apostle. At a few points, the assertion is made that the “pleading” is a form of patronal recommendation, though Cyprian himself never spoke of the sacrament this way. This is a departure from our understanding of the primary sources as speaking of penance in sacramental terms; the bishop has the authority to offer the healing of absolution.

It may be true that the confessors were seen as intercessors, and claiming the ability to plead for the penitents, especially since it would have been understood that they were not successors of the apostles. Such an argument would have to be fleshed out, and it would have to be clarified whether the conflict between Cyprian as bishop and the confessors was not a conflict of competing patrons but rather a conflict over whether or not a living saint could do by intercession what a bishop could do by the authority of his office (binding and loosing).

Bobertz also addresses the disagreements between Cyprian and the faction that opposed him. The conventional understanding has been that this was about whether someone who was not a bishop (and therefore not within the succession from the apostles) had the authority to bind and loose. Bobertz works from the assumption that the issue at stake between Cyprian and the faction that opposed him was about patronage. I find this difficult to square with history: the reason that Felicissimus “was able to create such a successful opposition” was not that he had “been providing material assistance to some of the laity in Carthage,” (p. 115) but that he was offering easy reconciliation to the lapsed. Bobertz presumes that humility before God and clergy is the same thing as clientship, but this would be a dramatic reinterpretation of our understanding of that term. Confessors’ (Bobertz calls them martyrs) inability to absolve sin is not because they are outside the Church (p. 130); they cannot absolve sin because they are not the bishop. Consequently, they are outside the Church because they are usurping the bishop’s authority.

Bobertz speculates that Cyprian’s election was the result of the laity choosing for themselves a patron first, and then made him their bishop, and that Cyprian’s motivation for being the bishop included the “desire for status” (p. 30) of a patron. He ties this to Cyprian’s (purported) short time as a Christian, going so far as to say that, “while Cyprian was still very early in the faith, it was his glorious and magnificent benefactions which promoted him before his time” (p. 43). Unfortunately, Bobertz provides no evidence from the sources to support this statement, and the bishop-as-patron argument appears to be circular (Cyprian was a patron, therefore his election was the conscription of a patron, therefore Cyprian was their patron).

In the end, Bobertz has taken an interlude that could have been a footnote in a book about 3rd-century ecclesiology and developed it into a full-length monograph. The book is hurt by a shortage of arguments and evidence to support some of its assumptions. Bobertz needs the reader to accept that Cyprian himself understood his role as bishop in terms of patronage, but no evidence is given in which Cyprian uses any of the language of patronage. The research that went into this book would have made for an excellent short article on the social class of Cyprian, showing that he belonged at least to the equestrian class, but beyond that, the rest is speculation and falls short of a convincing thesis.