{{Short description|African-American Catholic monk, priest, and historian}} {{Infobox academic | honorific_prefix = The Reverend Doctor | name = Cyprian Davis | honorific_suffix = O.S.B. | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = Clarence John Davis | birth_date = {{birth date|1930|09|09}} | birth_place = Washington, D.C. | death_date = {{death date and age|2015|05|18|1930|09|09}} | death_place = Jasper, IN | region = | alma_mater = Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium | occupation = Church historian | period = | notable_works = | spouse = | children = | era = | language = | tradition_movement = | school_tradition = Catholic Church history | workplaces = St. Meinrad Archabbey | main_interests = | notable_ideas = | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = }} '''Cyprian Davis''', OSB (born '''Clarence John Davis'''; September 9, 1930 – May 18, 2015) was an African-American Benedictine monk, priest, and historian at Saint Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. He is known for his work on the history of Black Catholicism.
== Biography == Davis was born in Washington, D.C., on September 9, 1930. He converted to Catholicism in his teenage years and became interested in joining the priesthood as well as becoming a monk. Though many monastic communities (and most Catholic religious institutes) did not accept African Americans at the time, after high school Davis joined the seminary of St. Meinrad Archabbey (1949–1956). He became a novice on July 31, 1950, took the monastic name Cyprian on August 1, 1951, and was ordained a priest on May 3, 1956. He was the first African American to join that monastic community.<ref name="alumni">{{cite web |last1=Ginther |first1=Richard M. |title=Father Cyprian Davis, OSB |url=https://alumni.saintmeinrad.edu/page/Davis |publisher=Saint Meinrad Alumni |access-date=January 6, 2019 |date=August 10, 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190331042653/https://alumni.saintmeinrad.edu/page/Davis |archive-date=March 31, 2019 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Davis received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Catholic University of America (1957), before going to the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium to study Church history, obtaining his ''Doctoral en Sciences Historiques'' (D.Hist.Sci.) from Louvain, in 1963. While there, Davis focused his work on the Church during the Middle Ages to avoid American Church history and concerns of race and slavery. Upon his first return from Belgium in 1963, he taught church history at Saint Meinrad Seminary, and eventually became the school's first professor emeritus in 2012.<ref name="ncr">{{cite web|date=May 20, 2015|title=Benedictine Fr. Cyprian Davis, top chronicler of black Catholic history, dies|url=https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/benedictine-fr-cyprian-davis-top-chronicler-black-catholic-history-dies|access-date=January 6, 2019|website=National Catholic Reporter|language=en}}</ref>
Having returned to the US in the midst of the civil rights movement, Davis attended the August 1963 March on Washington and heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech.<ref name="alumni"/> He would later march with Mary Antona Ebo and others in the Selma to Montgomery marches.
As a black Catholic professor, he began to be invited to speak in black parishes and was constantly asked about the place of African Americans in the Catholic church.<ref name="ncr" /> He was involved in writing two pastoral letters on race, "Brothers and Sisters to Us" (1979) and "What We Have Seen and Heard" (1984), and later received a grant from the Lilly Endowment to the study the black Catholic church, resulting in the publication of his award-winning ''The History of Black Catholics in the United States'' (1990)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |title=The history of Black Catholics in the United States |date=1990 |publisher=Crossroad |isbn=9780824510107 |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofblackca00cypr |url-access=registration |language=en}}</ref>
Davis died on May 18, 2015, in Memorial Hospital in Jasper, Indiana, at age 84.
== Works == * {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |title=Christ's image in Black: the Black Catholic community before the Civil War |date=1989 |publisher=University of Notre Dame |oclc=22714523 |language=English}} * {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |title=The history of Black Catholics in the United States |date=1990 |publisher=Crossroad |isbn=9780824510107 |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofblackca00cypr |url-access=registration |language=en}} * {{cite book |last1=Hayes |first1=Diana L. |author1-link=Diana L. Hayes |last2=Davis |first2=Cyprian |title=Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States |date=1998 |publisher=Orbis Books |isbn=9781570751745 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XCzZAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} * {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |last2=Phelps |first2=Jamie T. |author-link2=Jamie T. Phelps|title=Stamped with the image of God: African Americans as God's image in Black |date=2003 |publisher=Orbis Books |isbn=9781570755224 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ryzZAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} * {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |title=Henriette Delille: Servant of Slaves, Witness to the Poor |date=2004 |publisher=Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HQTwNwAACAAJ |language=en}} * {{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Cyprian |title=To Prefer Nothing to Christ: Saint Meinrad Archabbey, 1854-2004 |date=2004 |publisher=Saint Meinrad Archabbey/Abbey Press |isbn=9780870293832 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qs2JAAAAMAAJ |language=en}}
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Cyprian}} Category:1930 births Category:2015 deaths Category:20th-century African-American writers Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American Roman Catholic theologians Category:21st-century African-American writers Category:21st-century American historians Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:21st-century American Roman Catholic theologians Category:African-American members of Catholic religious communities Category:African-American historians Category:African-American male writers Category:African-American non-fiction writers Category:African-American Roman Catholic priests Category:American Benedictines Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American Roman Catholic writers Category:Catholics from Washington, D.C. Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Religious studies scholars Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Université catholique de Louvain alumni