|
“[To Tertullian], above all writers, we owe the very existence of ecclesiastical Latin, which was the chief medium for proclaiming the Gospel in the West for at least 1300 years” (Church Life and Thought in Northern Africa, Donaldson). |
|
|
TERTULLIAN.
Apologeticus Adversus Gentes Editio princeps and first edition of Tertullian’s masterpiece. $12,500. Venice: Bernardinus Benalius, [not after 1494]. Folio, early vellum. Light dampstaining to bottom corner of leaves (not affecting text); browning to a few leaves. Very rare. Goff T – 117. Tertullian, who is known as the “father of the Latin Church,” wrote the Apologeticum to shame the Roman authorities for the widespread persecution of Christians in Carthage. “[The Apologeticum’s] effect on Christians was deep and immediate. If Tertullian appeared to invoke Roman magistrates and to address the pagan world, most of his statements were also designed to encourage Christians. They felt confidence in a spokesman who could prove their respectability, both social and intellectual, by his very existence. He damned by ridicule the aspersions which daily assailed them, he filled them with a strong sense of moral superiority. If they heeded Tertullian, they need no longer believe themselves outcasts from normal society” (Tertullian, by T.D. Barnes). |
| The Apologeticum is
Tertullian’s greatest work and a key text in the history of early
Christian thought. The Apologeticum is the earliest Christian text to
advance the idea of ‘vera religio’ – i.e., the idea that Christianity is
the only true religion and that the pagans worship false gods. Second,
the Apologeticum is the first of Tertullian’s works to be written in the
elevated juristic style for which Tertullian is remembered and which was
to become the standard style of the Latin Church.– Indeed, Tertullian
has been called “the first theologian of the west”. “We can discover in
the writings of Tertullian a crucial development in the teaching of
Christianity, for he recognized that it must justify its claims at the
bar of reason as well as at the shrine of the heart (The Importance of
Tertullian in the Development of Christian Dogma, by James Morgan).
|
