T
Tertullian
Tertullian
155 CE–220 CE · Carthage
Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 220 CE) was the most important Latin Christian writer of the Ante-Nicene period and is often called the father of Western theology. A native of Carthage in Roman North Africa, he wrote prolifically in Latin and forged much of the vocabulary the Western Church would use ever after — he gave currency to the word trinitas (Trinity) and to the formula of three Persons in one Substance. His works include the Apologeticum, a defense of Christians addressed to Rome's provincial governors; De Praescriptione Haereticorum, against the Gnostics; and Adversus Marcionem, his longest treatise, refuting Marcion. In his later years he was drawn to the rigorist Montanist movement, which set him at a distance from the mainstream church — yet his theological influence on the Latin West proved enormous and lasting.
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Stop 1 of 1155–220Born, Lived, And Wrote
CarthageAfrica Proconsularis
What they did here
Tertullian spent his life in Carthage, the great Latin-speaking city of Roman North Africa, where he produced almost his entire body of work.
Carthage in this era
Under Roman imperial rule, Carthage was the intellectual capital of Latin Christianity: Tertullian wrote the first major Latin theology here, Cyprian served as its bishop and was martyred in 258 CE, and a series of African councils shaped early church discipline.
About Carthage
Carthage, beside the Lake of Tunis near modern Tunis in Tunisia, was founded by Phoenician settlers (tradition names Queen Dido as founder). It grew into a Mediterranean power until Rome destroyed it in 146 BCE at the end of the Third Punic War, a sack the historian Polybius witnessed. Julius Caesar refounded it, and it became the centre of the Roman province of Africa, where Apuleius studied. Carthage was a major centre of Latin Christianity: Tertullian wrote there, Cyprian was its bishop until his martyrdom in 258, its councils such as that of 397 shaped the Western church, and the Donatist controversy divided it. Vandals, Byzantines and finally, in 698, Umayyad forces took the city.
In Carthage at the same time
Across the traditions, in Carthage at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Tertullian’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Tertullian’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.