Butler certainly paints a wretched picture of how very evil Cyprian was, pre-conversion to Christianity. And it began with Cyprian’s ungodly parents:

The detestable superstition of his idolatrous parents put them upon devoting him from his infancy to the devil, and he was brought up in all the impious mysteries of idolatry, judicial astrology, and the black art.

From this auspicious start to his life, Cyprian then traveled about the Mediterranean world and then crossed the Middle East into India in search of all the schools of sorcery and magic he could find. Butler continues detailing his infamy:

When Cyprian had filled his head with all the extravagances of these schools of error and delusion, he stuck at no crimes (i.e., would not hesitate to commit any crime whatsoever), blasphemed Christ, and committed secret murders, to offer the blood and inspect the bowels of children, as decisive of future events.

A necromancer, Cyprian used children’s innards (we are told) to foretell the future.

Not for nothing was he known as “Cyprian the Magician”! But he came up against a spiritually powerful woman he could not master with his arts–a virgin named Justina, who was reportedly as lovely as she was chaste. The way that Cyprian became involved is that a wealthy young (and pagan, Butler points out) nobleman fell in love with Justina, and when she did not return his interest, the nobleman sought out The Magician to help bend Justina’s will. Lo and behold, Cyprian himself fell for Justina! Yet try as he might, employing every trick in his repertoire, Cyprian found that his magic was powerless against Justina: “She defeated and put to flight the devils by the sign of the holy cross.”

Rather sensibly, “Cyprian finding himself worsted by a superior power, began to consider the weakness of the infernal spirits, and resolved to quit their service.”

Thus, Cyprian basically traded up to a stronger magic! As it happened, this didn’t mean that Justina fell in love with him, and, in fact, Cyprian’s embrace of Christianity led him toward the life of a catechumen, then a priest, then a bishop, and then one of those rounded up and killed in an Imperial persecution of Christians in the year 304 (leading to Cyprian’s sainthood as a martyr for the faith).

Cyprian has been lifted up by the Church for over 1700 years as a prime example of a man who went from ultra-evil to ultra-good because of the power of Christianity. Me? I think it’s amazing what the non-love of a good woman can do for a man!