LAPSI, Controversy of the. - In the 3rd century those Christians who apostatized from the faith during the persecution of Decius (250) were called lapsi. The controversy of the lapsi is the name given to the one that began in the Church when, the persecution having diminished in intensity, the lapsi asked for their reinstatement in the ranks of the faithful.
I. THE PERSECUTION AND THE LAPSI
It is well known that Decius' edict of persecution obliged not only all Christians, but also every person suspected of Christianity, to perform an act of adherence to the pagan cult. By this, anyone who had fallen under suspicion demonstrated that, however well founded, such suspicion was nevertheless groundless; and the Christian who abjured his faith, by virtue of Trajan's legislation, found himself forthwith absolved of the crime, which ceased with his apostasy. As in the past, the aim was not so much to punish this crime as to put an end to it. The watchword was to make not martyrs, but apostates (cf. Cyprian, Ep. 56, 2).
In fact, although many were the intrepid confessors of the faith who paid with their lives for their fidelity to Christ, the apostasies were also innumerable in certain Churches, according to the testimony of Cyprian (De lapsis, 7-8). Weakened by a long period of peace, numerous Christians could not withstand the thought of torture. To some of them it seemed easy to escape the rigors of the persecution by consenting to some act or gesture which, while for the representative of power it had the value of an apostasy, for the wavering believer did not constitute a formal abjuration. Thus there were apostates of different kinds: the "sacrificati," that is, those who consented to offer sacrifices in reality before the statues of the gods; the "thurificati," that is, those who merely burned incense before such statues and especially before those of the emperor; the "libellatici" or acta facientes, that is, those who had themselves entered in the public registers as though they had satisfied the prescriptions of the law, or merely had themselves issued certificates (libelli), as though they had obeyed the imperial orders.
II. THE CONTROVERSY
Toward the end of 250 the persecution diminished in intensity. Then, repentant, the l. asked to be reinstated in the ranks of the faithful. It must be recognized that the simultaneous presence of so great a number of l. in the Church constituted a new fact without precedent. New therefore appeared the question of how to deal with their request; whether, that is, to readmit them to the Church en masse, or instead to examine individual cases, requiring of each different proofs of conversion and a different kind of penance. Opposite opinions manifested themselves on the matter, and thus began the c. of the l.
In Africa, in fact, numerous confessors, emboldened by the authority that heroism had won for them in the Church, did not hesitate to give the l. letters of pardon (libelli pacis) that dispensed them from penance. There were then some priests who admitted these l. to Eucharistic Communion, without first requiring an adequate penance and without waiting for the imposition of hands to be first completed by the bishop and the clergy (cf. Cyprian, Ep., 15, 2). These were especially those priests who had opposed the election of Cyprian as bishop and of whom Novatus was the principal instigator.
In Rome, on the other hand, the request for reconciliation of the l. provoked a rigorist movement, which had wide following in various Churches and which took its beginning and name from Novatian (v.). Such a rigorist tendency already appears in the rather severe tone and in certain expressions found in the two letters that Novatian, in the name of the Roman presbyters, wrote to Cyprian (Epp. 30, 36) during the vacancy of the see of Rome. After the election of Cornelius as successor of Fabian had then taken place, this rigorism became the banner under which Novatian, disappointed at his failure to be elected, gathered his adherents, whom he set up as the Church of the cathari, or pure, against the laxist Church of Cornelius; they indeed, in order not to contaminate the Church, absolutely denied the l. any reconciliation.
Opposite to the laxism of Novatus and the rigorism of Novatian is instead the practice of St. Cyprian, fully shared by the Church of Rome and the Churches of the East.
From the refuge where he was hidden, Cyprian, as soon as he had news of the abuses being committed on the part of the confessors and of some members of the clergy, while he announced that every question concerning the l. would be resolved in an upcoming council that would have to adapt in uniform fashion the ancient principles of the Church to the various demands of the new times, meanwhile fixed in certain points the line of conduct that for the moment was to be followed. In the first place, the faculty of readmitting the apostates into the Church was claimed for the bishop; the idea of a mass reconciliation was rejected as absurd, since a suitable prior penance was necessary for each; he paid tribute to the confessors, together with invitations to prudence in issuing the libelli pacis; he gave wise counsel to the clergy, followed by severe admonitions toward the apostates; then, while affirming his compassion toward them and the invitation not to despair, he maintained regarding their reconciliation an attitude of prudent reserve; they could obtain it only in danger of death, and then, in the absence of the bishop, it could be granted by any priest or even by a simple deacon (cf. Epp. 15, 16, 17, 18). This norm of action of his Cyprian transmitted to the other bishops of Africa and to the Roman clergy then without a bishop.
In the spring of 251 Cyprian was able to return to Carthage. He then gathered the announced Council and thus the awaited decisions on the reconciliation of the l. were taken. They were shortly afterward set forth and commented upon by Cyprian himself, both in the De lapsis and in the letter to Bishop Antonianus, inclined toward Novatian (Ep. 55), and they are the following: those who had merely procured for themselves a certificate of sacrifice (libellatici) were admitted to penance and thus obtained reconciliation; those instead who had really sacrificed (sacrificati) had to do penance, but would not be reconciled except at the point of death.
However, in 252, since the edict of Trebonianus Gallus, who had succeeded Decius, made the renewal of the persecution imminent, the bishops of Africa gathered again in council, and with the intention of arming for the struggle all the faithful of good will, they brought about a mitigation in the discipline toward the l.; they decided therefore to give them pardon at once, provided that after the fall they had given proof of repentance and had done penance.
With the Churches of Africa the Church of Rome agreed in the discipline toward the l. For the time of the vacancy of the episcopal see, after the death of Pope Fabian, such concord results especially from the two letters sent by the clergy of Rome to Cyprian, drafted by the able pen of Novatian (Epp. 30 and 36). Although, as D'Alès notes (L'édit de Calliste, Paris 1914, p. 310), there are easily detectable in these letters the diplomatic formulas and the infinite precautions through which there shines «une affectation de sévérité et comme une sorte de regret de pardonner», in the end however the Roman clergy was in agreement on the two principal points of the line of conduct, as it had been set forth by Cyprian: an attitude of reserve toward the l. while awaiting the question to be resolved by a council in uniform fashion; the granting of pardon and reconciliation in danger of death.
In March 251 a successor was finally given to Pope Fabian in the person of Cornelius. He too, as already at Carthage Cyprian had done, immediately gathered a council at Rome to deal with the question of the l. In it it was decided, as Eusebius writes (Hist. eccl., 6, 43), «that the l. must be healed by the salutary means of penance». Cyprian, then, in his letter to Antonianus (Ep. 55, 6), declaring that «Cornelius with his fellow bishops agreed with us in the same sentence with equal gravity and salutary moderation», manifestly shows that the decisions of Rome on the reconciliation of the l. fully agreed with those already taken at Carthage.
The same conduct toward the l. followed at Rome and at Carthage is found in the Churches of the East. For the Church of Caesarea of Cappadocia, it is indicated by an incidental phrase, and therefore incomplete, that occurs in the letter of Bishop Firmilian to Cyprian, in which is manifested among other things the concern that the bishops of Asia, gathered in council, have because «lapsis quoque fratribus et post lavarum salutare a diabolo vulneratis, per paententiam medella quaeratur» (Ep. 75, 4).
On the practice of the Church of Alexandria the various fragments of letters of Bishop Dionysius shed light, reported by Eusebius or recently rediscovered, and especially that of the letter addressed to Fabius of Antioch, inclined, according to Eusebius himself (Hist. eccl., 6, 44), toward the schism of Novatian. Dionysius indeed affirms against Novatian the principle of the reconciliation of the l. provided that, repentant, they have done penance for their fault; he emphasizes the work of the martyrs or confessors, certainly more discreet than that of the confessors of Carthage; and to make his argument more pressing, he relates the story of the old Serapion, in which God himself had intervened to reconcile the dying apostate.
On the reconciliation of the l., therefore, and on the conditions that make it possible, the thought of the Church, through its representatives of Rome, Carthage, Caesarea and Alexandria, appears certain and concordant. Equally detested are the laxism of Novatus and the rigorism of Novatian, and the principle is affirmed that reconciliation can be granted to the l., provided that they have given proof of conversion and perform the prescribed penance.
III. DOCTRINAL EVALUATION
With regard to this discipline of reconciliation of the lapsed, however, the question arises, and not only since today, whether or not it represents an innovation with respect to the penitential discipline of the preceding era. Harnack answers in the affirmative, and with him many other liberal Protestants, who maintain that the reconciliation of the lapsed after the persecution of Decius represents a stage in the process of usurpation, on the part of the Church, of the power to absolve sins. The early Church, in fact, regarded itself as the Church of the saints and attributed to God alone the power to forgive sins. Callistus was the first to claim for the Church the faculty of granting pardon for the sins «moechiae et fornicationis» (Tertullian, De pudicitia, 1, 6), while still denying such pardon for the other grave sins. After the persecution of Decius, this power of remission was claimed by Cyprian and by Cornelius, also for the sin of apostasy. The discipline of reconciliation of the lapsed, therefore, in the 3rd century, represents an innovation, not only disciplinary but doctrinal.
Many Catholics too (Funk, Vacandard, Batiffol, Rauschen, Amann) support the thesis of innovation: evidently not doctrinal, since they hold firmly that the Church received from its divine founder (and has always been conscious of it) the power to forgive all sins; but only disciplinary. According to these authors, in fact, the Church, in the first centuries, to the faithful who stained himself with any of the graver sins (adultery, apostasy, homicide) denied its pardon forever, limiting itself to urging him to do penance and to obtain mercy and remission directly from God. It is with regard to this practical norm that, just as the edict of Callistus represents a disciplinary innovation, so the reconciliation of the lapsed granted at the time of the persecution of Decius represents an equal innovation.
Other Catholics, however (Esser, Stuffer, D'Alès, Galtier, Fabbri), while recognizing the existence of rigorist tendencies in certain particular Churches, deny that the sin of apostasy, as in general the triad of the gravest sins, was considered by the early Church as an irremissible sin; they deny consequently that the reconciliation of the lapsed in the 3rd century represents a disciplinary innovation, since it is nothing other than the application of the ancient principles of the Church and of traditional discipline to the various needs of new times (on this question v. PENITENZIALE DISCIPLINA). For the moment, let the following observation suffice: the fact that during the controversy of the lapsed none of the parties in question thought to invoke a supposed antecedent rigorism to strengthen its own position (neither Cyprian, to resist the claims of the lapsed to be readmitted into the Church en masse and without sufficient penance, nor Novatian, to oppose the supposed laxism of Cornelius), is a clear sign for concluding that such rigorism had no roots in the preceding penitential discipline and that it was therefore not in the tradition of the Church that the sin of apostasy should be entirely denied remission.