13 - Tertullian, Apology 21

Summary

Little is known with certainty about the life of Tertullian, who authored some of the very earliest Christian literature written in Latin. He was from the city of Carthage in Roman North Africa, and his literary career in this city spanned from roughly 196 to 212; he was perhaps born around 170. From the few scattered comments he made about his own life, we learn that he was raised as a pagan, and became a Christian under unknown circumstances. Most scholars now doubt other details about Tertullian’s life which come from later sources, such as Jerome’s belief that his father was a Roman centurion, and Eusebius’s suggestion that he was a lawyer in his pre-Christian career. One further point from Jerome about Tertullian’s life likewise requires cautious treatment. This is the claim that Tertullian in middle age “lapsed” away from the catholic church into Montanism, a revivalist movement of Christianity established in the second century and eventually branded as heretical.¹ Though Tertullian’s later works do show increasing signs of Montanism, it is impossible to divide up his career neatly into catholic and Montanist phases, as previous generations of scholars tended to do.