Title: Q. Septimii Florentis Tertulliani Apologeticus adversus gentes
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Folio. ff. [20] (first and last blank). Signatures: a-b⁶ c⁸. Modern half vellum, sprinkled boards. Stamps: "Bibliotheca Sanctam Crucem" on blank recto of a1. Blank spaces and initial guides left for illumination. Last blank: manuscript notes, some crossed. Caption title (p. [3]). 45 lines. Type: 110 R. Capital spaces with guide letters.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">"Type 110 R. was apparently not used in this state after 1494, hence the position of this book" (British Museum, Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum. London, 1924, V, p. 376). While this editio princeps is often dated [1494], it must precede the first dated (and only other incunabular) edition, that of Milan, Ulrich Scinzenzeller, 4 December 1493, which is based upon it: see the online bibliography of the <a href="https://www.tertullian.org/" rel="nofollow">Tertullian Project</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Also includes Sermo pulcherrimus de vita eterna. Caput XLVII and Sermo de vita eterna. Caput XLVII.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">First edition of this masterpiece by Tertullian, who had composed the Apologeticus at Carthage in the summer or autumn of AD 197 to shame the Roman authorities for the widespread persecution of Christians in Carthage and to embolden his coreligionists. It is the earliest Christian text to advance the idea of ‘vera religio,’ the idea that Christianity is the only true religion and that the pagans worship false gods. At the same time, given that Christianity was still in its vulnerable infancy, it was a painstaking defense of the new sect against state persecution, as well as a plea for religious tolerance and against ‘unvoluntary worship.’ It is also 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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The Apologeticus provides us with the earliest notice of the notorious fictive letter about Jesus from Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius. Tertullian twice refers to this letter, reporting the prosecution and death of Jesus, in 5.2 and 21.24, as B. D. Ehrman explains (Forgery and Counterforgery. The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. New York, 2013, p. 351): on the receipt of ‘tidings from Syria’, we are told, Tiberius proposed to the Roman Senate that Christ be considered ‘one of the gods’ (5.2), and allegedly maintained this position personally, after the Senate rejected the notion. That these ‘tidings’ came in a letter or letters from Pontius Pilate is confirmed at 21.24, with ‘All these things with reference to Christ, Pilate, who also within his conscience was now a Christian, reported to the then emperor Tiberius’. While the correspondence that Tertullian apparently saw or was told about, and that Eusebius mentions more than a century later, echoing Tertullian in Eccl. Chron. I.2.2, may have been ‘a second century Christian forgery’ (as A. Whealey, Josephus on Jesus. New York, 2013, p. 94, considers it), Liber de adventu Messiae praeterito by Samuel Marochitanus from the late middle ages and Renaissance (Bib# 4102698/Fr# 174 in this collection) could be a much later version of that, and the various 19th-century inventions, culminating in Mahan’s (Bib#s 4103466-69/Fr#s 809-12), must be yet another, going back in spirit to the ‘evidence’ of Tertullian, but unconstrained by documentary tradition. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">See F. R. Goff, Incunabula in American Libraries: A Third Census. Millwood (N.Y.), 1973, T-117; Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (online), it00117000; BNF Catalogue des incunables T-90; L. A. Sheppard, Catalogue of XVth century books in the Bodleian Library, T-90; D. Reichling, Appendices ad Hainii-Copingeri Repertorium bibliographicum: additiones et emendationes. Munich, 1905-1914, 15443; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Inkunabelkatalog. Wiesbaden, 1988-2009, T-120; J. C. T. Oates, A catalogue of the fifteenth-century printed books in the University Library, Cambridge. Cambridge, 1954, 1925; K. Ohly &amp; V. Sack, Inkunabelkatalog der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt am Main, 1967, 2644.</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_5547591" rel="nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>