[...]

 

6. As it so happened, at that time a certain presbyter, Novatus, having defrauded the widows of the Church of Carthage, robbed orphans, embezzled the money of the Church, cast his father out of his house and allowed him to die of hunger and without burial, and having kicked the womb of his pregnant wife and caused her to abort her child, came from Africa to Rome. And at Carthage, when the brethern in the Church pressed hard upon him in pursuit and the day of the investigation of his activities was imminent, he went into hiding. Not long after, when this Novatian was disturbed about the episcopate of Cornelius - for he had hoped to have it for himself - Novatus together with some partisans of his side, as is usual in such cases, urged him on when he was wavering, encouraged him when he was uncertain, and exhorted him to hope for something great. He came across some people, out of the number of those who had escaped the storm of that persecution, among whom he aroused against Cornelius this very hatred on the subject of receiving the lapsed. He gave to Novatian their letters. And Novatian, by the authority of these letters, although there was already a bishop sitting at Rome, assumed for himself the title of the "other" bishop in opposition to the proper tradition decreeing a singularity of the priesthood; he accused Cornelius of having been in communion with the lapsed; and he asserted his own blamelessness.

[...]

19. Do we have the dealings with adulterers or thieves? Or is it those who have preffered Novatus to their own life and head, after he has embezzled the money of orphans and widows; those who have preffered the murderer of his own wretched parent and of his wife's offspring; those who have preffered a man who was not only unrepentant [of his crimes], but even glorifying in them?

 

(transl. Hanson 1999: 45-46)