Concept
Lactantius
Overview
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae ("The Divine Institutes"), an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.
He is best known for his apologetic works, widely read during the Renaissance by humanists, who called Lactantius the "Christian Cicero". Also often attributed to Lactantius is the poem The Phoenix, which is based on the myth of the phoenix from Egypt and Arabia. Though the poem is not clearly Christian in its motifs, modern scholars have found some literary evidence in the text to suggest the author had a Christian interpretation of the eastern myth as a symbol of resurrection.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
His Latin contemporary Lactantius is worse, still; and so the darkling went on increasing until before the end of the century the great library of Alexandria was destroyed by Theophilus,[75] until Gregory the Great, two centuries later, burnt the great library of Rome, proclaiming that “Ignorance is the mother of devotion,” (which is true, just as oppression and injustice is the mother of spirituality), until a…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Lactantius is; names Lactantius.
This sacred science was brought formerly to the Romans by a little god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in Tuscany. These peoples worship one supreme God whom they always call the very great and very good God. Nevertheless, they have built a temple to a courtesan named Flora; and almost all the good women of Rome have in their homes little household gods four or five inches high. One of these little…
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
States what Lactantius is.
Post baptismum uero elegit duodecim discipulos, quorum unus traditor eius fuit. Et quia sanam doctrinam Iudaeorum populus non ferebat, eum inlata manu crucis supplicio peremerunt. Occiditur ergo Christus, iacet tribus diebus ac noctibus in sepulcro, resurgit a mortuis, sicut ante constitutionem mundi ipse cum patre decreuerat, ascendit in caelos ubi, in eo quod dei filius est, numquam defuisse cognoscitur, ut…
Boethius, The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
Close in meaning to Lactantius; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Lactantius
Related ideas
- Hellenistic philosophy
- Apuleius
- Sibyl
- Stoicism
- Heresy
- Nero
- Roman emperor
- Neoplatonism
- Apologetics
- Classical antiquity
- Roman Empire
- Renaissance
- Religious conversion
- Tunisia
- Theology
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Epicureanism
- Humanism
- Christianity
- Cicero
- Porphyry of Tyre
- Domitian
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.