Tertullian Story of his life
(QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIANUS).
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Ecclesiastical writer in the second and third centuries, b. probably
about 160 at Carthage, being the son of a centurion in the proconsular
service. He was evidently by profession
an advocate in the law-courts, and he shows a close acquaintance with the
procedure and terms of Roman law, though it is doubtful whether he is to be
identified with a jurist Tertullian who is cited in the Pandects. He knew Greek as well as Latin, and wrote
works in Greek which have not come down to us.
A pagan until middle life, he had shared the pagan prejudices against
Christianity, and had indulged like others in shameful pleasures. His conversion was not later than the year
197, and may have been earlier. He
embraced the Faith with all the ardour of his impetuous nature. He became a priest, no doubt of the Church of
Carthage. Monceaux, followed by d'Ales,
considers that his earlier writings were composed while he was yet a layman,
and if this be so, then his ordination was about 200. His extant writings range in date from the
apologetics of 197 to the attack on a bishop who is probably Pope Callistus
(after 218). It was after the year 206
that he joined the Montanist sect, and he seems to have definitively separated
from the Church about 211 (Harnack) or 213 (Monceaux). After writing more virulently against the
Church than even against heathen and persecutors, he separated from the
Montanists and founded a sect of his own.
The remnant of the Tertullianists was reconciled to the Church by St.
Augustine. A number of the works of
Tertullian are on special points of belief or discipline. According to St. Jerome he lived to extreme
old age.
The year 197 saw the publication of a short address by Tertullian,
"To the Martyrs", and of his great apologetic works, the "Ad
nationes" and the "Apologeticus". The former has been considered
a finished sketch for the latter; but it is more true to say that the second
work has a different purpose, though a great deal of the same matter occurs in
both, the same arguments being displayed in the same manner, with the same
examples and even the same phrases. The appeal to the nations suffers from its
transmission in a single codex, in which omissions of a word or several words
or whole lines are to be deplored. Tertullian's style is difficult enough
without such super added causes of obscurity. But the text of the "Ad
nationes" must have been always rougher than that of the "Apologeticus",
which is a more careful as well as a more perfect work, and contains more
matter because of its better arrangement; for it is just the same length as the
two books "Ad nationes".
The "Ad nationes" has for its entire object the refutation
of calumnies against Christians. In the first place they are proved to repose
on unreasoning hatred only; the procedure of trial is illogical; the offence is
nothing but the name of Christian, which ought rather to be a title of honour;
no proof is forthcoming of any crimes, only rumour; the first persecutor was
Nero, the worst of emperors. Secondly,
the individual charges are met; Tertullian challenges the reader to believe in
anything so contrary to nature as the accusations of infanticide and incest. Christians are not the causes of earthquakes
and floods and famine, for these happened long before Christianity. The pagans
despise their own gods, banish them, forbid their worship, mock them on the
stage; the poets tell horrid stories of them; they were in reality only men,
and bad men. You say we worship an ass's head, he goes on, but you worship all
kinds of animals; your gods are images made on a cross framework, so you
worship crosses. You say we worship the sun; so do you. A certain Jew hawked about a caricature of a
creature half ass, half goat, as our god; but you actually adore
half-animals. As for infanticide, you
expose your own children and kill the unborn.
Your promiscuous lust causes you to be in danger of the incest of which
you accuse us. We do not swear by the
genius of Caesar, but we are loyal, for we pray for him, whereas you
revolt. Caesar does not want to be a
god; he prefers to be alive. You say it is through obstinacy that we despise
death; but of old such contempt of death was esteemed heroic virtue. Many among you brave death for gain or
wagers; but we, because we believe in judgment.
Finally, do us justice; examine our case, and change your minds. The
second book consists entirely in an attack on the gods of the pagans; they are
marshaled in classes after Varro. It was
not, urges the apologist, owing to these multitudinous gods that the empire
grew.
Out of this fierce appeal and indictment was developed the grander
"Apologeticus", addressed to the rulers of the empire and the
administrators of justice. The former work attacked popular prejudices; the new
one is an imitation of the Greek Apologies, and was intended as an attempt to
secure amelioration in the treatment of Christians by alteration of the law or
its administration. Tertullian cannot restrain his invective; yet he wishes to
be conciliating, and it breaks out in spite of his argument, instead of being
its essence as before. He begins again by an appeal to reason. There
are no witnesses, he urges, to prove
our crimes; Trajan ordered Pliny not to seek us out, but yet to punish us if we
were known; — what a paralogism! The actual procedure is yet more strange. Instead of being tortured until we confess,
we are tortured until we deny...
To some extent, how great we cannot tell, he must have invented a
theological idiom and have coined new expressions. He is the first witness to
the existence of a Latin Bible, though he seems frequently to have translated
from the Greek Bible as he wrote. Zahn has denied that he possessed any Latin
translation, but this opinion is commonly rejected, and St. Perpetua certainly
had one at Carthage in 203…
Read more about this great saint… you will be amazed at the entire
story.
Excerpts
taken from Catholic Encyclopedia -- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14520c.htm
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