Recherches de Science Religieuse 11 (1921), 98 (RP)

AN UNPUBLISHED TERTULLIAN?

In the admirable Miscellanea Geronimiana published by the Vatican Press on the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of St. Jerome, the Most Reverend Dom A. Amelli, abbot of Monte Cassino, published, from a florilegium of the ninth to the tenth century (Codex Casinensis, 384), a certain number of unidentified patristic texts, and called upon the goodwill of the workers in the field. Two of these texts are allotted to Tertullian and appeared to have some semblance of novelty (p. 178).

Filius Dei visus est Abrahe et ospitio receptus. Quod enim futurum erat meditabatur in sacramento. Hospes Habrahe futurus, cuius filiorum pedes ad approbationem quod ipse esset abluit, reddens in filiis eius hospitalitatis quod aliquando federaverat pater.

This text must be relabelled as Novatian, De Trinitate, 18; which will astonish no-one, since De Trinitate traversed the centuries under the name of Tertullian. - Of course, we would read faeneraverat, instead of federaverat.

Hi sunt qui venerunt ex magna tribulatione et laverunt stolas suas et candidas eas fecerunt in sanguine Agni (Ap., VII, 14). Vestitus animae, caro est, maculis quidem baptismate abluitur a sordibus, martyrio vero candidatur.

This text indeed really belongs to Tertullian; it is an extract from Scorpiace, 12. If Dom Amelli did not recognise it, it is mere chance, because he had opened Tertullian at the right page - Thus, all things considered, nothing new. But the interest of this beautiful work should not be measured with the insignificance of this contribution.

Adhémar d’ALES
Paris

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