Sunday, 3 May 2015

Andrea Villani: Again on Tertullian’s concept of innocence: the non apologetic writings

At the Oxford Patristic Conference 2011 I tried to show the important role played by the concept of "innocence" in Tertullian's apologetic strategy: at the beginning of his Apologeticum, innocence is employed in its etymological meaning of in-nocentia, i.e. non guilty in front of the Roman Law, in order to defend the presence of the Christians within Roman Empire. At the end of the text, however, innocence turns into a Christian ethical virtue. This paper aims at extending the analysis of Tertullian's use of that concept to the non-apologetic corpus, focusing mainly on writings directed to a Christian audience. Which meaning does it assume there and why does Tertullian refers to if so often?

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