Pope Cornelius

Cornelius
Birth name	Cornelius
Papacy began	March 6 or March 13, 251
Papacy ended	June 253
Predecessor	Fabian
Successor	Lucius I
Born	??? ???
Died	June 253 Civita Vecchia, Italy

Styles of Pope Cornelius
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	Saint

Pope Cornelius was pope from his election on 6 or 13 March, 251 to his martyrdom in June 253.

Papacy

According to the Liber Pontificalis, Cornelius was a Roman by birth, and his father's name was Castinus. His predecessor, Fabian, was died, probably in prison, under the persecution by Emperor Decius on January 20, 250. By the beginning of March, 251, however, the persecution slackened, owing to the absence of the emperor, against whom two rivals had arisen.

Decius had targeted leaders of the Roman church, and the seat of the Roman bishop had thus remained vacant for more than a year. Now, under conditions of at least temporary safety, Cornelius was elected pope on either March, 3 or 13 of 250. His election, however, was a contentious one. Ever since the appearance of the first antipope, the future Saint Hippolytus, the Roman church suffered from serious internal divisions over the issue how to deal with serious post-baptismal sins. The recent persecution brought this issue again to the fore, especially as pertained to the sin of apostasy, as those who had compromised their faith in order to save their lives now sought readmission to church.

Cornelius' election was therefore opposed by Novatian, who maintained the view that not even the bishops could grant remission for grave sins such as apostasy, murder, adultery. He held that these could only be remitted at the Last Judgment. Cornelius on the contrary believed that bishops could grant remission for these grave sins.

It was possible to assemble sixteen bishops at Rome, and Cornelius was elected though against his will (Cyprian, Ep. lv, 24), "by the judgment of God and of Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people then present, by the consent of aged priests and of good men, at a time when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is the place of Peter, and the step of the sacerdotal chair were vacant".

With the help of Cyprian, his party prevailed, and he was elected pope. Novatian fled Rome, but his followers organized into Novatianism, a sect considered heretical by the rest of Christianity.

In Cyprian's writings supporting Cornelius, it appears that the Roman church of the time had 155 clergy and supported through its efforts some 1500 widows and poor

After serving two years, under the emperor Trebonianus Gallus, he was exiled to Civita Vecchia, where he died in June 253.

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We may accept the statement of the Liberian catalogue that he reigned two years, three months, and ten days, for Lipsius, Lightfoot, and Harnack have shown that this list is a first-rate authority for this date. "What fortitude in his acceptance of the episcopate, what strength of mind, what firmness of faith, that he took his seat intrepid in the sacerdotal chair, at a time when the tyrant in his hatred of bishops was making unspeakable threats, when he heard with far more patience that a rival prince was arising against him, than that a bishop of God was appointed at Rome" (ibid., 9). Is he not, asks St. Cyprian, to be numbered among the glorious confessors and martyrs who sat so long awaiting the sword or the cross or the stake and every other torture?

A few weeks later the Roman priest Novatian made himself antipope, and the whole Christian world was convulsed by the schism at Rome. But the adhesion of St. Cyprian secured to Cornelius the hundred bishops of Africa, and the influence of St. Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria, brought the East within a few months to a right decision. In Italy itself the pope got together a synod of sixty bishops. (See NOVATIAN.) Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, seems to have wavered. Three letters to him from Cornelius were known to Eusebius, who gives extracts from one of them (Church History VI.43), in which the pope details the faults in Novatian's election and conduct with considerable bitterness. We incidentally learn that in the Roman Church there were forty-six priests, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two ostiarii, and over one thousand five hundred widows and persons in distress. From this Burnet estimated the number of Christians in Rome at fifty thousand, so also Gibbon; but Benson and Harnack think this figure possibly too large. Pope Fabian had made seven regions; it appears that each had one deacon, one subdeacon and six acolytes. Of the letters of Cornelius to Cyprian two have come down to us, together with nine from Cyprian to the pope. Mgr. Merrati has shown that in the true text the letters of Cornelius are in the colloquial "vulgar-Latin" of the day, and not in the more classical style affected by the ex-orator Cyprian and the learned philosopher Novatian. Cornelius sanctioned the milder measures proposed by St. Cyprian and accepted by his Carthaginian council of 251 for the restoration to communion, after varying forms of penance, of those who had fallen during the Decian persecution (see CYPRIAN).

At the beginning of 252 a new persecution suddenly broke out. Cornelius was exiled to Centumcellæ (Civita Vecchia). There were no defections among the Roman Christians; all were confessors. The pope "led his brethren in confession", writes Cyprian (Ep. lx, ad Corn.), with a manifest reference to the confession of St. Peter. "With one heart and one voice the whole Roman Church confessed. Then was seen, dearest Brother, that faith which the blessed Apostle praised in you (Romans 1:8); even then he foresaw in spirit your glorious fortitude and firm strength." In June Cornelius died a martyr, as St. Cyprian repeatedly calls him. The Liberian catalogue has ibi cum gloriâ dormicionem accepit, and this may mean that he died of the rigours of his banishment, though later accounts say that he was beheaded. St. Jerome says that Cornelius and Cyprian suffered on the same day in different years, and his careless statement has been generally followed. The feast of St. Cyprian was in fact kept at Rome at the tomb of Cornelius, for the fourth century "Depositio Martirum" has "XVIII kl octob Cypriani Africæ Romæ celebratur in Callisti". St. Cornelius was not buried in the chapel of the popes, but in an adjoining catacomb, perhaps that of a branch of the noble Cornelii. His inscription is in Latin: CORNELIUS* MARTYR* whereas those of Fabian and Lucius are in Greek (Northcote and Brownlow, "Roma sotteranea", I, vi). His feast is kept with that of St. Cyprian on 14 September, possibly the day of his translation from Centumcellæ to the catacombs.

Veneration

In the Roman Catholic Church, he is commemorated along with Cyprian in a memorial on 16 September.

In iconography, Cornelius’ attribute was the horn (in reference to the Latin origin of his name –from “cornu,” “horn”). This could be either a battle horn or cow's horn.

Some of his relics were taken to Germany during the Middle Ages; his head was claimed by Kornelimünster Abbey near Aachen. In the Rhineland, he was also a patron saint of lovers. A legend associated with Cornelius tells of a young artist who was commissioned to decorate the Corneliuskapelle in the Selikum quarter of Neuss. The daughter of a local townsman fell in love with the artist, but her father forbade the marriage, remarking that he would only consent if the pope did as well. Miraculously, the statue of Cornelius leaned forward from the altar and blessed the pair, and the two lovers were thus married.

Cornelius, along with Quirinus of Neuss, Hubertus and Anthony the Great, was venerated as one of the Four Holy Marshals in the Rhineland during the late Middle Ages.

He was also a patron saint of farmers and of cattle, and was invoked against epilepsy, cramps, afflictions associated with the nerves and ears.

A legend told at Carnac states that its stones were once pagan soldiers who had been turned into stone by Cornelius, who was fleeing from them.

Roman Catholic Popes
Preceded by: Fabian	Bishop of Rome Pope 251–253	Succeeded by: Lucius I

External links

• "Pope Cornelius" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
• Letters of Pope Cornelius I

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