LA RISCOPERTA DEL DE IEIUNIO DI TERTULLIANO NEL CINQUECENTO: ASPETTI LETTERARI E DOTTRINALI

The knowledge of Tertullian’s works increased very much, in the sixteenth Century, thanks to Rhenanus’ three editions (1521, 1528 and 1539), in which the Scholar tried to explain Tertullian’s theological statements in the light of their historical context, antecedent to all the Church’s Councils. The growing confessional polemics impelled people to search, in Tertullian’s writings, arguments to be used in religious debates rather than literary qualities. The treatise De ieiunio, first printed in the Paris edition of 1545, was very soon employed to defend the catholic practice of fasting against protestant attacks. The spanish Theologian and Bishop M. Perez Ayala, in 1549, was the first to use Tertullian’s treatise for this aim, although he did not understand that it had been written “against the Church”, as Jerome testifies. Others Theologians and Scholars were attracted, however, by the graphic and satirical style which Tertullian displays with particular evidence in the prologue and in the epilogue of the treatise De ieiunio, from which they drew many passages that became common places against gluttony, loosing every reference to confessional controversies. A particular interest is found in Thomas Stapleton’s and Martin Fotherby’s writings, in which Tertullian’s treatise is quoted together with many other texts of classical Literature, showing some affinities between certain passages of the De ieiunio and latin Comedy