Apologeticus
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,"[3] but even this takes liberties with the original text.
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.
"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".
[4] Sometime after his conversion to the Christian faith, Tertullian left the Orthodox Church in favor of the Montanist movement, which he remained a part of for at least 10–15 years of his active life[5] 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,[6] during the reign of Septimius Severus.
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.
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.
[12] 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".
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.
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".
[14] He then brings up the good laws, and asks what has become of them; those that "restrained extravagance and bribery", "protected their [women's] 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".
[15] These traditions and laws are being ignored, neglected and destroyed and yet Rome chooses to concern itself with the "crimes" committed by the Christians.
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.
Furthermore, the character and nature of the gods themselves leave much to be desired; they are filled with rage, incestuous thoughts, envy, and jealousy.
He makes an even greater argument in referring to the pagan gods as demons, whose sole purpose is the subversion and destruction of mankind.
They corrupt the souls of men by passions and lusts and rather successfully procuring "for themselves a proper diet of fumes and blood offered to their statues' images.
The people all worship different gods and often treat their images with less respect than they deserve, using any opportunity to pawn their statues off and use them as sources of income.
Christianity in general presents no threat to public order and thus its members should be allowed to meet and live in peace.
[22] He makes the case that if Christianity is just another kind of philosophy, it should be treated the same way, granted with the freedom to teach and spread their beliefs and practice, customs and rituals.
The Christians take no pleasure in being persecuted and enduring trials, but as soldiers of Christ they too must fight for the truth, all, of course, for the glory of God.
