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Introduction
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INTRODUCTION nHE REIGN OF the African Septimius Severus (193211 ) was not a time of peace for the Church in his native land where popular hatred intermittently led to sudden and violent outbursts against the Christians. The crises which persecution brought on for the Church called forth the remarkable pieces of apologetical literature which Tertullian, a recent convert to the faith, wrote in defense of his harassed brethren. From 197 he threw himself vigorously into the Christian cause, protesting against the lack of legal fairness in the treatment of Christians, who were simply condemned as such without previous examination of their morals and beliefs, and exhorting confessors in prison to face death courageously. To the year 197 belong his two books To the Heathen (Ad nationes) and his masterpiece , the Apology. A number of scholars are of the opinion that the short address To the Martyrs (Ad martyras) dates from the same year. They interpret Tertullian's phrase 'our present days' in the closing paragraph of the small work (Ch. 6.2) as the time of liquidation and purge following the slaughter of the army of Clodius Albinus, Serverus' last and most powerful rival to the throne, in the battle of Lyons on February 19, 197. Other scholars, finding the reference 13 14 TERTULLIAN too vague, prefer to assign the treatise to the year 202. They think that Tertullian's addressees are the group of catechumens whose martyrdom at Carthage in that year is so touchingly recounted in the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas. However this may be, the exhortation To the Martyrs, distinguished by simplicity of style and great warmth of feeling, belongs to Tertullian's earliest works. It is gentle in persuasion and quiet in tone. The unrestrained fire of the author's later writings seems under control. He is a man sympathetic with human frailty; he shows understanding of suffering; he exhibits no harshness. With the exception, perhaps, of his condemnation of the world (2.1-3), he holds no extreme view. He warmly approves of the solicitude of 'Lady Mother the Church' and individual brethren who provide for the bodily sustenance of the confessors who are kept in prison and will soon die for the faith (1.1; 2.7). He also seems to recommend the intercession of these confessors in behalf of penitent apostates (1.6). These views are quite different from those manifested in some of his Montanist writings in which he strongly condemns both practices (see Ch. 1 nn. 3,8). In the opening sentence of his address, Tertullian says that he hopes to speak words which will sustain the spirit of the confessors while they suffer imprisonment. Throughout , even to the conclusion, he seeks to strengthen and encourage them in the face of trials and hardships, which, if bravely borne, will remove fear of martyrdom and inspire courage for the great act to come. The first three chapters are enlivened by graphic pictures, some of them likening the present sufferings of the confessors to the privations endured by athletes during their rigid training preceding [3.239.214.173] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:21 GMT) TO THE MARTYRS 15 a contest and to the hardships soldiers have to undergo in the field. In the three remaining chapters Tertullian produces a long array of examples, showing that men and women did not shrink from the most painful sufferings and even sacrificed their lives for the sake of inordinate ambition and vanity, or died by accident and fate, while the confessors suffer in the cause of God. The text of the treatise was handed down in a group of rather late manuscripts, all belonging to the fifteenth century. The first printed edition by Beatus Rhenanus appeared at Basel in 1521. The present translation is based on the critical text of E. Dekkers in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 1 (Turnholti 1954) 1-8. 16 TERTULLIAN SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Texts: T. H. Bindley, Qui'nti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani De praescriptione haereticorum, Ad martyras, Ad Scapulam, edited with introduction and notes (Oxford 1893). E. Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 1 (Turnholti 1954) 1·8. Translations: S. Thelwall, in The Ante·Nicene Fathers (American reprint of the Edinburgh edition) 3: Latin Christianity. Its Founder, Tertullian (New York 1903) 693·696. K. A. H. Kellner, in Tertullians private und katechetische Schriften (Bibliothek der Kirchenvater. Tertullians ausgewahl te Schriften 1; Kempten and Munich 1912) 215·223. Secondary Sources: O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur 2 (2nd ed., Freiburg i. B...