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Tertullian1He was a North African adherent, of what was a minority religion, in the territories in which he lived and traveled. He had seen his faith mocked publicly, with opponents parading cartoonish images in the streets to inflame the animus and contempt already directed against his beliefs. They declared his religion the threat to social order and cherished values; they blamed its inexplicable increase in followers for the calamities befalling civil society. Many of his fellow believers had already been imprisoned, even tortured. He blamed “ignorance as the chief root of [the] unjustifiable bitterness” towards his faith.

This pious man predicted that a cataclysmic judgment was coming, which would dismantle the very civilization that was threatening him—only his creed could save it preventing a chaos and lawlessness heretofore unknown.

He decided the time had come to enter the lists and fight the good fight.

His name was Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. He was a Christian. And his weapon was…satire.

Tertullian (ca. AD 165–225) was born in Carthage, modern-day Algeria. He was a convert to the Christian faith and his contributions to early Christian literature were prolific and profound. He lived during a time of intense persecution of North African Christians, and his apologetical works not only attempted to set straight what it was that Christians actually believed, but also emboldened future Christian writers while preserving much earlier Christian social history. Moreover, these works are thought to have influenced the excellent satirical work of Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, in their frank acknowledgment of the grotesque treatment at the hands of an enemy.

Swift, an established Anglo-Irish (Protestant) priest in the Church of Ireland, wrote that the “solution” to the seventeenth-century “Irish problem” was to employ the best social-engineering practices of the day and use Irish children as a source of nutrition:





But Tertullian beat Swift to the parodic punch by almost a millennium and a half. While Christians in pre-Constantinian days were accused of the most vile practices by their pagan neighbors and were subjected to court trials, which sought anything but justice, ordinary criminals were tortured in an effort to encourage the confession of their crimes, and so admit actual guilt:


Tertullian acknowledged how


Given how Christian trials were typically prosecuted, rather than entreat the authorities to reform themselves, Tertullian insisted that the pagan authorities take their perverse judicial practices to their logical conclusion. In which case,


In due course, Tertullian’s zeal for the Spirit and pursuit of pure living would cause him to condemn the Church as the coming seat of Anti-Christ. Breaking with the majority of his coreligionists, whom he believed insufficiently rigorous, he became an adherent of what many deemed a fanatical sect. A “premillennialist,” he joined the Montanists, a sect of early “enthusiasts,” and even formed a breakaway group of “Tertullianists.” Nevertheless, his theological and apologetic contributions to early Latin Christianity remain invaluable. And his witty, literate, and sophisticated reproach to the Faith’s early tormenters remain a badge of honor for Christians today and a model for satirists of whatever religious and political denomination.


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3 replies to this post
  1. Thank you for a good history lesson. I enjoyed reading about the person whose name I have come across many times but I never looked him up. By the way Carthage is in Tunisia across the bay from Tunis. I spent an afternoon with some scholars from a Rockefeller grant there digging in 1968.

  2. Satire presupposes an energetic understanding of what is right, and is therefore a powerful weapon for conservatives. Both Tertullian and Swift were in full possession of a moral sense strong enough to be wielded successfully in battle.

  3. My favorite Tertullian quote: “If the Tiber rises too high for the walls, or the Nile too low for the fields, if the heavens do not open, or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl is, “The Christians to the lion!” What, all of them, to a single lion?” (Apologeticus, chapter 40).

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