Stephen I
d.257. Pope from 254. A native Roman, he had a brief pontificate which saw several confrontations with Cyprian of Carthage* who held that “no one of us sets up to be bishop of bishops.” Stephen restored two Spanish bishops, Basilides and Martialis, who had been deposed and replaced; refused to depose the bishop of Arles for Novatianism; and did not insist on rebaptism where the rite had been performed by heretics, so long as it had been done in the name of the Trinity. On the latter point Cyprian and eighty-seven of his colleagues differed, denying the validity of heretical baptism, at the Council of Carthage (256).