Dr. Benjamin Safransky, lecturer in theology at Student Bill University, thanks for being

with us.

Oh, you're welcome, Simon.

I'm glad to be here.

And we'll talk about someone I take must be an important person to you because you wrote

a book about him, St. Cyprian of Carthage.

You wrote a book called St. Cyprian of Carthage and the College of Bishops.

Yeah, he's a very important figure and someone that is very close to my heart.

I'm glad to hear it.

Before we get into him and his relation to the kind of the challenges of today, he lived

in what we would call the third century, the two hundreds.

Can you give us some idea of who and the what's in the wares of St. Cyprian's life?

Yeah, absolutely.

St. Cyprian lived in the middle of the third century and we don't know a lot about him

from before his conversion to Christianity because he didn't like talking about it that

much.

He considered the new man that he became in his baptism to be the important kind of phase

of his life.

But he was an educated man, probably practiced law or one of the other rhetorical professions

became a Christian in the 240s and eventually bishop of Carthage in about 250 or 251.

Carthage is in Northern Africa in what is now Tunisia and at that time was the second

biggest and most prominent city in the Western Roman Empire behind the city of Rome.

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