ON THE IMAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER
EXCERPTS FROM TERTULLIAN
EXCERPTS FROM EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
Tertullian on practical issues
35. Concerning
caution against idolatry.
36. Concerning participation in public shows.
37. On the image of the Christian preacher.
38. Concerning patience.
39. On the proper behaviour of Christian women.
40. Concerning modesty.
37. ON THE IMAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER
The garment of the mantle extrinsically-itself too quadrangular-thrown back on either shoulder, and meeting closely round the neck in the gripe of the buckle, used to repose on the shoulders ... Henceforth, finding your tunic too long, you suspend it on a dividing cincture; and the redundancy of your now smooth toga you support by gathering it together fold upon fold; and, with whatever other garment social condition or dignity or season clothes you, the mantle, at any rate, which used to be worn by all ranks and conditions among you, you not only are unmindful of, but even deride (De pallio, 1).
To the Mantle appertains this whole Asiatic practice! What hast thou, Libya, and thou, Europe, to do with athletic refinements, which thou knowest not how to dress? For, in sooth, what kind of thing is it to practise Greekish depilation more than Greekish attire? ... For, now that the contracted brow of censorial vigilance is long since smoothed down, so far as reprehension is concerned, promiscuous usage offers to our gaze freedmen in equestrian garb, branded slaves in that of gentlemen, the notoriously infamous in that of the freeborn, clowns in that of city-folk, buffoons in that of lawyers, rustics in regimentals; the corpse-bearer, the pimp, the gladiator trainer, clothe themselves as you do (De pallio, 4).
When this Mantle itself, arranged with more rigorous care, and sandals after the Greek model, serve to flatter Aesculapius, how much more should you then accuse and assail it with your eyes, as being guilty of superstition-albeit superstition simple and unaffected? Certainly, when first it clothes this wisdom which renounces superstitions with all their vanities, then most assuredly is the Mantle, above all the garments in which you array your gods and goddesses, an august robe (De pallio, 4).
Of shoes we say nothing-implements as they are of torture proper to the gown, most uncleanly protection to the feet, yes, and false too. For who would not find it expedient, in cold and heat, to stiffen with feet bare rather than in a shoe with feet bound? A mighty munition for the tread have the Venetian shoe-factories provided in the shape of effeminate boots! ... if anything in the way of shoeing is worn, it is a most cleanly work; or else the feet are rather bare,-more manly, at all events, (if bare,) than in shoes (De pallio, 5).
But, albeit utterance be mute -impeded by infancy or else checked by bashfulness, for life is content with an even tongueless philosophy- my very cut is eloquent. A philosopher, in fact, is heard so long as he is seen. My very sight puts vices to the blush ... Let philosophy now see to the question of her own profitableness; for she is not the only associate whom I boast. Other scientific arts of public utility I boast. From my store are clothed the first teacher of the forms of letters, the first explainer of their sounds, the first trainer in the rudiments of arithmetic, the grammarian, the rhetorician, the sophist, the medical man, the poet, the musical timebeater, the astrologer, and the birdgazer. All that is liberal in studies is covered by my four angles (De pallio, 6).
What is good, moreover, provided it be true and full, loves not darkness: it joys in being seen, and exults over the very pointings which are made at it. To Christian modesty it is not enough to be so, but to seem so too. For so great ought its plenitude to be, that it may flow out from the mind to the garb, and burst out from the conscience to the outward appearance; so that even from the outside it may gaze, as it were, upon its own furniture, -(a furniture) such as to be suited to retain faith as its inmate perpetually (De cultu feminarum II, 13).
Tertullian is traditionally regarded as a fiery apologist of unknown biography who burst into Latin Christianity, in the reign of Septimius Severus, with a number of remarkable treatises that he composed over a relatively short period of time, after which he fizzled out for the rest of his long-lasting life. Surprisingly, he focused his attacks on a Greek painter, and also fought some other unfamiliar character that could not share his admiration for a strange group of visionaries who lived in Phrygia long time since. Some less demanding section of the clergy unleashed his fury no less than an otherwise unrecorded persecution of Christians. Not only himself but also his epoch is elusive. Ruthless opponents of the bishop Cyprian, who fled Carthage when Decius launched his anti-Christian campaign, followed his guidelines in a religious confrontation closely mirroring the subsequent Donatist controversy that flared up in Africa after Diocletian’s resignation. Following his unrelenting defence of the orthodox stance and his proscription of all heretics, at some point in time he supposedly forsook the Church Catholic to follow the ridiculous directions and put up with the frivolities of a gang of false prophets. Such two hardly compatible stages in his career were not successive but widely overlapping.
A quite different approach is presented in Did Tertullian really exist? Did Cyprian? Did Hippolytus? according to which the efforts of early 4th-century African and Roman rigorists, forcefully denouncing an entrenched ecclesiastical body intent on preserving its former privileged position in the Church in spite of the disappointing behaviour of many of its members in times of harassment, along with the reaction of the hierarchical organization under attack, gave rise to the purported works of their respective literary champions, which conveniently came down from the preceding century to the assistance of Donatists and Caecilianists.