The Church Fathers · c. 375–390
The Letters to Sympronian
Pacian of Barcelona · d. c. 391
What it is
Three courteous letters to a Novatianist who had written to say the catholic church had no right to forgive the lapsed. Pacian answers that the power to bind and loose was given without conditions, and defines himself in a phrase that outlived everything else he wrote: Christian is my name, Catholic my surname.
Why it lasted
The earliest use of catholic as a distinguishing surname rather than a description, in the middle of an argument about whether the church may forgive. The Novatianist schism was still running two centuries after Cyprian.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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