What did it mean to be an ancient Latin Christian? The Christian and Roman identities within the apologetic works of Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Lactantius

Abstract

This thesis explores how Christian and Roman identities were categorized in the main apologetic works of Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Lactantius. How early Christian writers conceptualize and categorize what it means to be Christian, and how that understanding affects other aspects of their identity, has been a rich and contentious area of scholarship. However, this scholarship has yet to properly discuss this topic specifically in relation to Latin Christian writings before Constantine. This thesis aims to rectify this gap in scholarship and discuss how the circumstances of these pre-Constantinian Latin authors notably and substantially influence how they conceptualize and categorize their Christian identity. Earlier scholarship has primarily either discussed how ancient Greek Christian authors categorize their Christian identity in relationship to Jewish identity, or how post-Constantinian Latin authors categorize their Christian identity in relationship to Roman identity, under the rule of a supportive Roman Empire. In contrast, this thesis examines how these three authors categorize and conceptualize their Christian identity specifically in relationship to their Roman identity, under the rule of a hostile Roman Empire. It looks exclusively at these authors’ apologetic works, because within these works Christian identity is explained to and defended against a rhetorically non-Christian audience. Thus these works most clearly articulate and categorize the difference between Christian and non-Christian, and Christian and Roman. This thesis explores, among other things, how these authors both build upon and separate themselves from non-Christian Latin writings, specifically the works of Cicero; how these authors develop Latin Christian terminology to articulate their identity, specifically their use of the term religio; how these authors influence and actively build upon each other as Latin Christian writers with a common cause; and finally how these authors position their Christian identity in relation to the Roman government before Constantine’s support of Christianity. This thesis comes to the following conclusions. Firstly, due to how these works directly inspire each other, Tertullian’s Apology, Minucius Felix’s Octavius, and Lactantius’s Divine Institutes, can collectively be treated as a unified Latin apologetic tradition. Secondly, within these works these authors gradually redefine the Latin term religio and correspondingly work to redefine how the worship of a deity, and the identities based on said worship, are conceptualized in Latin. Finally, there emerges from the discourse of these authors a sphere of Christian identity centred around worship, which is significantly less based on civic authority than traditional Roman worship-based identity. To demonstrate these latter two points this thesis will begin with a discussion of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, which will look at how Cicero defines religio and conceptualizes identities based around worship, and how these subsequent Christian authors actively build on and alter these understandings. Subsequent chapters will analyse each author’s work in turn, and discuss how their works relate to each other, how they define or redefine religio, how they categorise Christian identity, and how they position this Christian identity in relation to the Roman government.