Apologeticus

Apologeticus (Latin: Apologeticum or Apologeticus) is Tertullian's most famous work, consisting of apologetic and polemic. In this work Tertullian defends Christianity, demanding legal toleration and that Christians be treated as all other sects of the Roman Empire. It is in this treatise that one finds the phrase: "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" (Apologeticus, Chapter 50).

There is a similarity of content, if not of purpose, between this work and Tertullian's Ad nationes—published earlier in the same year—and it has been claimed that the latter is a finished draft of Apologeticus. There arises also the question of similarity to Minucius Felix's dialogue Octavius. Some paragraphs are shared by both texts: it is not known which predated the other.

Tertullian's brief De testimonio animae ("Concerning the Evidences of the Soul") is an appendix to the Apologeticus, intended to illustrate the meaning of the phrase testimonium animae naturaliter christianae in chapter 17).

Not much is known about the life of Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullian. Some scholars believe him to have been a presbyter (priest) of the Catholic Church, the son of a Roman centurion, and have him training to be a lawyer in Rome. Others, like David Wright, find that to be highly improbable. "No firm evidence places him in Rome at all, or for that matter anywhere outside of Carthage… It is in the well-educated circles in Carthage," Wright argues, "that Tertullian most securely belongs". Sometime after his conversion to the Christian faith, Tertullian left the Catholic Church in favor of the Montanist movement, which he remained a part of for at least 10–15 years of his active life and whose influence can be seen in many of his later works.

Apologeticus, his most famous apologetic work, was written in Carthage in the summer or autumn of 197 AD, during the reign of Septimius Severus. Using this date, most scholars agree that Tertullian's conversion to Christianity occurred sometime before 197, possibly around 195. It was written before the edict of Septimius Severus (202 AD), and consequently, the laws to which Tertullian took exception were those under which the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries had been convicted.

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