Apologeticus


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". 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.
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.

Authorship

Not much is known about the life of Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullian. Some scholars believe him to have been a presbyter 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.

Ascribed date

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, and consequently, the laws to which Tertullian took exception were those under which the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries had been convicted.

Oldest extant manuscripts

"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. 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 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:
  1. The collection of the Codex Agobardinus, the oldest extant manuscript of Tert.2.
  2. The collection of the manuscript of Troyes 523 of the twelfth century3.
  3. A collection represented by a number of manuscripts, which derive from a lost Codex Cluniacensis and a likewise lost manuscript from Hirsau, the Hirsaugiensis4.

    Addressees and audience

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".

Genre

Apologeticus has the typical concerns of other apologetic works of his time, though it is presented in a much more complex manner. According to Wright, the text is constantly shifting "from the philosophical mode to the rhetorical and even juridical". Drawing from his training in literature and law, Tertullian demonstrates his talents as a Latinist and a rhetorician in an attempt to defend his newfound Christian faith. Tertullian's modern editor :Otto Bardenhewer further contends that Apologeticus is calm in tone, "a model of judicial discussion". Unlike previous apologists of Christianity, whose appeals for tolerance were made in the name of reason and humanity, Tertullian, influenced by his legal training, spoke as a jurist convinced of the injustice of the laws under which the Christians were persecuted.

Summary of ''Apologeticus''

The following outline and summary is based on Robert D. Sider's translation of Apologeticus.

Introduction and addressing of unjust treatment of the Christians (Chapters 1–6)

The first section of Apology is concerned with the unjust treatment of the Christians, which Tertullian believes stems from the ignorance of the pagan populace. Simply put, he argues that people praise what they know and hate what they do not. To Tertullian this becomes evident in the cases of people who once hated because they were ignorant towards that they hated, and once their ignorance was gone, so was their hate. Their hatred prevents them from investigating more closely and acknowledging the goodness that is inherent in Christianity, and so they remain ignorant. And there is good in Christianity, Tertullian claims, despite the fact that people remain ignorant to it. Even when brought forth and accused, true Christians do not tremble with fear or deny their faith. It is the authorities that display bad behavior when they deny proper criminal treatment to the Christians. He argues that if Christians are to be treated as criminals, they should not be treated differently from ordinary criminals, who are free to answer to charges, to cross-question and defend themselves. In reality, the Christians are not free to say anything that will clear their name or ensure that the judge conducts a fair trial. If an individual says he is not a Christian, he is tortured until he says he is; if he admits to being a Christian, the authorities want to hear that he is not and torture him until he denies it. They resort to any means necessary to force them to either deny or confess, anything to acquit him. If all this done to someone simply for admitting to be a Christian, then they are surely making a mockery of Roman laws by basing all the charges on the name "Christian". Before hating the name, one must look at and study the founder and the school.
In addressing the charges, Tertullian plans to show the hypocrisy that surrounds these charges, demonstrating that those crimes exist among the pagan prosecutors as well. Then he analyzes the laws, claiming it suspicious that a law should refuse to be examined for error and worthless if it demands obedience without examination. If a law is found having an error and being unjust, should it not be reformed or even condemned? Faulty laws have no place in a just judicial system and should thus not be applied and observed. Here Tertullian mentions :Nero, and to a certain extent :Domitian, as examples of emperors who raged against the Christians through the use of unjust laws, simply for condemning "some magnificent good". He then brings up the good laws, and asks what has become of them; those that "restrained extravagance and bribery", "protected their modesty and sobriety", of the "conjugal happiness so fostered by high moral living that for nearly six hundred years after Rome was founded no sued for divorce". These traditions and laws are being ignored, neglected and destroyed and yet Rome chooses to concern itself with the "crimes" committed by the Christians.

Charges based on rumor answered (Chapters 7–9)

Tertullian begins by addressing the charges based on rumors, charges that vary from murdering and eating babies to committing incestuous and adulterous acts. Ultimately, he argues, they are simply rumors, for no evidence has ever been brought forth. No one has ever seen believers gather and supposedly commit impure acts or heard the cry of a crying baby because meetings and rituals are rarely performed in front of non-believers. It's all just lies and rumors meant to slander the Christian faith. Tertullian then makes the claim that Romans themselves are guilty of the very crimes it claims the Christians do. People from every age are sacrificed to Saturn and Jupiter all throughout the empire. The arenas are filled with the blood of those that fight, and the Romans even consume the animals that eat the bloodied bodies of the dead. For the Christians, murder is strictly forbidden; there is to be no killing or spilling of human blood, and that includes the killing the baby in the womb, for it would be destroying its soul. Neither are Christians allowed to eat meat that still has blood.
Of the charges of incest and adultery, Tertullian says that Christians are not guilty of them, for they refrain from adultery and from all sexual activity outside marriage, thus ensuring that they are safe from incest. Such behavior is different from that of the Romans, who through their immoral acts commit incest. This comes about simply through the case of mistaken identity: men go off and commit adultery, begetting children all throughout the empire who later unknowingly have intercourse with their own kin by mistake. In his attempt to make the Romans acknowledge their engagement in these acts, Tertullian hopes to demonstrate that Christians behave much differently from what they are accused of and that the charges should not hold.