I imagine Cyprian being pretty upset with the Pope when he wrote this. the Pope would not budge on this and it was not until the next Pope that things in Africa were cleared up.
But we cannot be sure of Cyprian's thinking here. Again, we should not to do necromancy.
But why do I say this when Cyprian so clearly states that no one is a bishop of bishops?
Well, assuming he means a Pope by "bishop of bishops" or that he is denouncing the Pope then I would submit his earlier writings:
"The Lord says to Peter: I say to you, he says, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. ... [Matt. 16:18]. On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. . . . If someone [today] does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?" (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4; first edition [A.D. 251]).
Cyprian seems pretty strong in his belief about the Chair of Peter in his letter about four years earlier.
Or how about his letter from 253 which was about two years earlier:
"Cornelius was made bishop by the decision of God and of his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the applause of the people then present, by the college of venerable priests and good men, at a time when no one had been made [bishop] before himwhen the place of [Pope] Fabian, which is the place of Peter, the dignity of the sacerdotal chair, was vacant. Since it has been occupied both at the will of God and with the ratified consent of all of us, whoever now wishes to become bishop must do so outside. For he cannot have ecclesiastical rank who does not hold to the unity of the
Church" (Letters 55:[52]):8 [A.D. 253]).
Yet again Cyprian is rather strongly wording that the Bishop in the Chair of Peter has a special authority that the church needs to be unified.
Racer, what do you think happened and why do you think Cyprian wrote that there is no bishop of bishops in 255?