Search -
De praescriptione haereticorum ad martyras
De praescriptione haereticorum ad martyras Author:Tertullian Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION Some fifteen years had passed since Tertullian had pleaded for Christianity in the ' Apology,' pouring scorn and contempt upon the persecutors fo... more »r their disregard of the simplest rules alike of justice and of common sense, in condemning the Christian religion unheard and unknown; and now he once more takes up his pen to recapitulate his arguments in a personal appeal to the proconsul of the African province. The edict of Severus, which forbade Jews and Christians to proselytize1, had been issued in the year 202 whilst he was in the East; and this prohibition was made the occasion of open attacks upon the Church in various parts of the Empire. The martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas with their companions at Karthage under Hilarian the procurator was, we may be sure, no isolated case, and throughout the next decade persecutions were frequent, their recurrence depending on the indifference, good nature, or hostility of the provincial executive 2. Severus died at York early in 211, and his sons, the two Augusti Caracalla and Geta, shared between them the sovereignty of the Eoman empire. But that fraternal 1 Spartian, Sever. 17 'In itinere Palestinis plurima iura fundavit. ludaeos fieri sub gravi poena vetuit. Idem de Christianis sanxit.' Two points in this edict deserve notice: (i) it refers only to new converts, and does not legislate with regard to persons already Christians ; (2) the Jews and Christians are now formally and explicitly distinguished in a legal enactment. Chap. 4. hatred which Tertullian had satirically denounced in the ' Apology'i as customary amongst the Romans received a signal exemplification in the case of these joint rulers; for little more than a year elapsed before Caracalla contrived his brother's assassination in his mother's arms,...« less