other · 256 · Carthage
Africa and Asia held that baptism given outside the church was no baptism, and that converts from heresy had to be baptised properly on coming in. Stephen of Rome held that the rite was valid whoever administered it, provided the form was right, and that to repeat it was the error. He threatened to break communion with the African and Asian churches, and refused to receive Cyprian's envoys or even to let them lodge in the city. Cyprian had already written, at the council he convened on the question, that none of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or drives his colleagues to obedience by tyranny, since every bishop has his own free judgement and can no more be judged by another than he can judge another. The two died within about two years of each other, Stephen in 257 and Cyprian in 258, with nothing resolved. Rome's position eventually prevailed everywhere; Cyprian's sentence about bishops of bishops has had an even longer career.
To settle whether a convert baptised by heretics had been baptised at all.
No settlement, a threat of excommunication from Rome, and the sharpest statement anyone had yet made that a bishop of Rome is not a bishop over bishops.