An AI illustration of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, with gold halos, a book and a martyr’s palm, beneath arches opening onto the Mediterranean.

Time after Pentecost

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

III class Red

Pope and Bishop, Martyrs

AI illustration · Ordo Veri · About the artwork ↗

From Ordo Veri · An essay

The Reins and the Heart

How Scripture Speaks Through the Body—and What We Lose in Translation

Why will we let a heart speak, but not a kidney? On the bodily language of Scripture, and what can disappear when a translation makes it easier.

Read the essay 10 min · Sources included

The daily readings and book editions are in preparation.

More from this day

The editors

Two words before the sword

Cornelius, bishop of Rome, died in exile in 253. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, had stood by him when a rival claimed his see, and wrote to him as a brother.

Five years later Cyprian stood before the proconsul of Africa. When the sentence was read, death by the sword, he answered with two words: Deo gratias. Thanks be to God.

He was led out to a field beyond the city. His people spread linen cloths on the ground before him, and he told them to give his executioner twenty-five gold pieces. It was the fourteenth of September, 258.

The Church has never separated the two bishops. Their names stand side by side in the oldest prayer of the Roman Mass.

Our sources
  • The Acts of Cyprian (Acta proconsularia)
  • Cyprian, Letters to Cornelius
  • The Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I)

In the other calendar

The Roman Calendar keeps the same feast today, as a memorial. Read the day in the Roman calendar

Commemorated: Saints Euphemia, Lucy and Geminianus.