St. Cyprian Analysis

When people speak of mass death and illness they hardly speak as zealously as St. Cyprian spoke when we explained his thoughts about a plague sweeping Rome. During such a hectic time to be alive he turned to religion to rationalize why this epidemic was taking place. Rather than use this situation to validate that there is no god and lose all faith St. Cyprian takes a different approach. Instead, he sees this mass illness as justified suffering that his religion requires in order to achieve some sort of reward. This epidemic is killing many people, this would normally be seen as a terrible thing but St. Cyprian does not value life in this world. He sees life as a burden or pain, which explains why he says many Christians were “being liberated from the world.”1 Again he reassures himself that he has the correct set of beliefs by expressing that only Christians, like himself, are able to enjoy the afterlife. St. Cyprian also saw society breaking down as a test to see who would make the morally correct decision especially when it’s the absolute least convenient time.

Alexander rarely made a mistake and had virtually no character flaws. Each excerpt used was very important because the account encapsulates how people of the day perceived these figures and gave us a glimpse into their lifestyle, character or thought process. For example, I learned how Mongols swept across Asia devastating their opponent with the bow and arrow. Before reading the passage I never knew the extent of Alexander’s leadership capabilities, constantly making the right decisions when it mattered the most. An aspect of life that I overlooked during a time of disaster was religion, unlike St. Cyprian who used Christianity to justify the plague spreading throughout his country. I was not aware that some people living in that time period viewed disasters as what was expected to happen in order to reach a