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Apologeticus
Apologeticus (Latin: Apologeticum or Apologeticus) is a text attributed to Tertullian according to Christian tradition, consisting of apologetic and polemic. In this work Tertullian defends Christianity, demanding legal toleration and that Christians be treated like all other sects of the Roman Empire. It is in this treatise that one finds the sentence "Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum," which has been liberally and apocryphally translated as "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" (Apologeticus, L.13). Alexander Souter translated this phrase as "We spring up in greater numbers the more we are mown down by you: the blood of the Christians is the seed of a new life," but even this takes liberties with the original text. "We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed," is perhaps a more faithful, if less poetic, rendering. Tertullian says Christians, ends deliberately on the single open word semen — seed — and leaves the reader to complete the image themselves. The simplest and most faithful rendering remains: We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed.
There is a similarity of content, if not of purpose, between this work and Tertullian's Ad nationes—published earlier in the same year—and it has been claimed that the latter is a finished draft of Apologeticus. There arises also the question of similarity to Minucius Felix's dialogue Octavius. Some paragraphs are shared by both texts; it is not known which predated the other.
Tertullian's brief De testimonio animae ("Concerning the Evidences of the Soul") is an appendix to the Apologeticus, intended to illustrate the meaning of the phrase testimonium animae naturaliter christianae in chapter 17).
Not much is known about the life of Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullian. Some scholars believe him to have been a presbyter (priest) of the Christian Church, the son of a Roman centurion, and have him training to be a lawyer in Rome. Others, like David Wright, find that to be highly improbable. "No firm evidence places him in Rome at all, or for that matter anywhere outside of Carthage… It is in the well-educated circles in Carthage," Wright argues, "that Tertullian most securely belongs". Sometime after his conversion to the Christian faith, Tertullian left the mainstream Church in favour of the Montanist movement which he remained a part of for at least 10–15 years of his active life and whose influence can be seen in many of his later works.
Apologeticus, his most famous apologetic work, was written in Carthage in the summer or autumn of AD 197, during the reign of Septimius Severus. Using this date, most scholars agree that Tertullian's conversion to Christianity occurred sometime before 197, possibly around 195. It was written before the edict of Septimius Severus (AD 202), and consequently, the laws to which Tertullian took exception were those under which the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries had been convicted.
"The present treatise depends on three authorities, none of them comprising the entire work. The first printed edition, by Martin Mesnart at Paris in 1545, containing chapters 1-19, was made from a manuscript now lost, but which seems to have been a copy of the already mutilated original of the eleventh-century codex Agobardinus (now at Paris). This, our oldest extant authority, contains a number of Tertullian's works, and of the present treatise chapters 1-30; in the first sentence of chapter 21 the copyist, following his original, which had lost a number of pages, passed on (without apparently noticing any discrepancy) to the middle of a sentence near the beginning of a different work On The Dress of Women."
"The study of the manuscripts of Tert. has established that in the Middle Ages several collection of works of this author were in existence1:
This work is ostensibly addressed to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire, more specifically the magistrates of Carthage- "that the truth, being forbidden to defend itself publicly, may reach the ears of the rulers by the hidden path of letters"— and thus bears resemblance to the Greek apologues. It is structured as an appeal on behalf of the Christians and pleads "for toleration of Christianity, attacking pagan superstition, rebutting charges against Christian morality, and claiming that Christians are no danger to the State but useful citizens". Its readership is likely to have been composed of Christians, whose faith was reinforced through Tertullian's defense against rationalizations and rumours and who "would have been hugely enheartened by Tertullian’s matchless confidence in the superiority of the Christian religion".
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Apologeticus
Apologeticus (Latin: Apologeticum or Apologeticus) is a text attributed to Tertullian according to Christian tradition, consisting of apologetic and polemic. In this work Tertullian defends Christianity, demanding legal toleration and that Christians be treated like all other sects of the Roman Empire. It is in this treatise that one finds the sentence "Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum," which has been liberally and apocryphally translated as "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" (Apologeticus, L.13). Alexander Souter translated this phrase as "We spring up in greater numbers the more we are mown down by you: the blood of the Christians is the seed of a new life," but even this takes liberties with the original text. "We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed," is perhaps a more faithful, if less poetic, rendering. Tertullian says Christians, ends deliberately on the single open word semen — seed — and leaves the reader to complete the image themselves. The simplest and most faithful rendering remains: We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed.
There is a similarity of content, if not of purpose, between this work and Tertullian's Ad nationes—published earlier in the same year—and it has been claimed that the latter is a finished draft of Apologeticus. There arises also the question of similarity to Minucius Felix's dialogue Octavius. Some paragraphs are shared by both texts; it is not known which predated the other.
Tertullian's brief De testimonio animae ("Concerning the Evidences of the Soul") is an appendix to the Apologeticus, intended to illustrate the meaning of the phrase testimonium animae naturaliter christianae in chapter 17).
Not much is known about the life of Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullian. Some scholars believe him to have been a presbyter (priest) of the Christian Church, the son of a Roman centurion, and have him training to be a lawyer in Rome. Others, like David Wright, find that to be highly improbable. "No firm evidence places him in Rome at all, or for that matter anywhere outside of Carthage… It is in the well-educated circles in Carthage," Wright argues, "that Tertullian most securely belongs". Sometime after his conversion to the Christian faith, Tertullian left the mainstream Church in favour of the Montanist movement which he remained a part of for at least 10–15 years of his active life and whose influence can be seen in many of his later works.
Apologeticus, his most famous apologetic work, was written in Carthage in the summer or autumn of AD 197, during the reign of Septimius Severus. Using this date, most scholars agree that Tertullian's conversion to Christianity occurred sometime before 197, possibly around 195. It was written before the edict of Septimius Severus (AD 202), and consequently, the laws to which Tertullian took exception were those under which the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries had been convicted.
"The present treatise depends on three authorities, none of them comprising the entire work. The first printed edition, by Martin Mesnart at Paris in 1545, containing chapters 1-19, was made from a manuscript now lost, but which seems to have been a copy of the already mutilated original of the eleventh-century codex Agobardinus (now at Paris). This, our oldest extant authority, contains a number of Tertullian's works, and of the present treatise chapters 1-30; in the first sentence of chapter 21 the copyist, following his original, which had lost a number of pages, passed on (without apparently noticing any discrepancy) to the middle of a sentence near the beginning of a different work On The Dress of Women."
"The study of the manuscripts of Tert. has established that in the Middle Ages several collection of works of this author were in existence1:
This work is ostensibly addressed to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire, more specifically the magistrates of Carthage- "that the truth, being forbidden to defend itself publicly, may reach the ears of the rulers by the hidden path of letters"— and thus bears resemblance to the Greek apologues. It is structured as an appeal on behalf of the Christians and pleads "for toleration of Christianity, attacking pagan superstition, rebutting charges against Christian morality, and claiming that Christians are no danger to the State but useful citizens". Its readership is likely to have been composed of Christians, whose faith was reinforced through Tertullian's defense against rationalizations and rumours and who "would have been hugely enheartened by Tertullian’s matchless confidence in the superiority of the Christian religion".
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