Apology
Tertullian, Apology (Apologeticum)
Tertullian of Carthage
A defense lawyer’s brief, addressed to the men who could have him killed. He spends half of it explaining what Christians actually do, and the other half asking who the real cannibals are.
- Catch rate
- 95 / 255
- Base research
- 110
- Stat total
- 262
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
The Apology is complete, substantial, and has never dropped out of use in eighteen hundred years. A deep pool of argument to draw on.
This is the great Latin defense of the faith — addressed to the governors of the empire by a trained rhetorician who does not dither. It argues with real force.
The Apology survives in more manuscripts than anything else Tertullian wrote — thirty-nine copies of its standard text alone — and the ancient world thought so well of it that somebody translated it into GREEK, which almost no Latin book got. A text that well secured defends like a wall.
Most people who have never read a word of Tertullian can still quote him about the blood of the Christians. Quick to the debate floor.
Cited for this book
“The object of our worship is the one God, who, out of nothing, simply for the glory of his majesty, fashioned this enormous universe.” — Apology 17.1, in Arbesmann, Daly & Quain (Fathers of the Church, 1950), 52. Written c. A.D. 197 to the governors of the empire. Thirty-nine codices carry its standard text, far more than any other work of Tertullian’s; a Greek translation once existed and only fragments survive — Eusebius quoted from it.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turn the Charge | Ethics | Argument | 60 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 6 | We Sojourn With You | Ethics | Argument | 52 | 100% | 20 |
| 8 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 11 | Heard Before Condemned | Rationality | Argument | 60 | 100% | 15 |
| 13 | The Blood Is Seed | Ethics | Argument | 65 | 100% | 10 |
| 15 | Fashioned Out of Nothing | Theology Proper | Argument | 64 | 100% | 15 |
| 16 | We Pray for Caesar | Rationality | Argument | 55 | 100% | 20 |
| 19 | Sarcasm | Rationality | Argument | 60 | 95% | 15 |
Read it: Your Deities Are Headless
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“What is there more unfair than to hate a thing of which you know nothing, even though it deserve to be hated?”
Tertullian, Apology 1 (trans. Thelwall, ANF 3, public domain).
“You put Christians on crosses and stakes: what image is not formed from the clay in the first instance, set on cross and stake?… We lay our heads upon the block; before the lead, and the glue, and the nails are put in requisition, your deities are headless.”
Tertullian, Apology 12 (trans. Thelwall, ANF 3, public domain). One continuous passage; the ellipsis is a clause on consecrating the god on the gibbet.
“So we sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce. We sail with you, and fight with you, and till the ground with you.”
Tertullian, Apology 42 (trans. Thelwall, ANF 3, public domain).
“Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest.”
Tertullian, Apology 30 (trans. Thelwall, ANF 3, public domain).
Carthage, around 197, addressed to the governors of the provinces — a legal brief in the shape of a speech, and Tertullian had the training to write one.
Chapter 1 is the whole strategy in a sentence. He is not asking to be liked. He is asking to be heard first and hated afterwards, if it comes to that.
Chapter 12 is the sarcasm, and look at how it is built: the same cross, the same nails, the same axe — used on Christians, and used on the statues you call gods. He does not add a word of comment. He just lays the two side by side.
Then chapters 30 and 42, which are the answer to the real charge. Christians were not accused of bad theology; they were accused of being useless to the empire. So: we pray for the emperor, and we are in your markets and your armies already.