Cyprian Before His Conversion
The sources describe Cyprian as a native of Antioch raised in paganism, who pursued an extensive education centered on astrology and magical arts. By one account he studied from the age of seven to thirty at major centers of pagan learning, including Mount Olympus, Argos, Tauropolis, Memphis, and Babylon, and became a prominent pagan priest noted for his ability to cast spells. He is said to have traveled through Greece, Egypt, and India before settling in Antioch to practice sorcery.
He is distinguished in tradition as Cyprian 'the Magician' to differentiate him from the better-known Cyprian of Carthage.
Justina and the Failure of the Magic
Justina was also of Antioch. By one account she converted her parents from paganism to Christianity and committed herself to virginity through fasting and prayer. A young man — named Aglaidas in the OCA account — sought to marry her, and when she refused, he hired Cyprian to manipulate her through sorcery.
Cyprian is said to have dispatched demons, and even 'the chief of the demons,' to corrupt Justina, along with spirits and plagues, but her commitment to prayer rendered these efforts ineffective. The tradition relates that she repelled the attacks through the Sign of the Cross. This supernatural resistance convinced Cyprian of the power of faith in Christ.
Conversion and Ministry
Devastated by the failure of his magic, Cyprian himself made the Sign of the Cross and sought liberation from the influence of Satan. He publicly burned his books of sorcery before a bishop, was baptized, and entered the service of the Church.
He rose rapidly through ecclesiastical office. By one account he became a priest within a year of baptism and soon afterward a bishop; the Wikipedia account names him deacon, priest, and then bishop, succeeding Anthimus as bishop of Antioch. The sources relate that he converted so many pagans that none were left to sacrifice to idols in his diocese. Justina, for her part, became the superior of a community of women.
Martyrdom
During the persecution of Diocletian, given as the year 304, both Cyprian and Justina were arrested. By the Wikipedia account they were tortured in Damascus and brought before the emperor at Nicomedia, then beheaded on the bank of the Gallus River; the OCA account likewise places their torture and beheading at Nicomedia in 304.
A witness to their suffering — named Theoctistus, described as a soldier in the OCA account — was himself moved to convert and was executed alongside them. By the Wikipedia tradition, Christian sailors carried the unburied bodies to Rome after six days, where they were entombed in a basilica of Constantine on an estate belonging to a noblewoman named Rufina.
Relics & Shrines
The OCA account reports that relics of the saints are dispersed widely, with fragments at Mount Athos, Cyprus, Greece, and Romania. By the Roman tradition, the bodies were entombed in a basilica of Constantine in Rome on the estate of the noblewoman Rufina.
Legacy and Reception
The feast of Cyprian and Justina appeared in Roman Catholic calendars from the thirteenth century until 1969, when it was removed for what was described as a lack of historical evidence of their existence.
Their story has had a notable afterlife in literature and folklore. The scholar Gilles Quispel proposed that the narrative of Cyprian served as a prototype influencing the Faust legend. The Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca dramatized their story in El mágico prodigioso, and grimoires circulating across Scandinavia bear the name Cyprianus.
