Marcus Minucius Felix

Marcus Minucius Felix was a lawyer practicing at Rome, almost certainly of North African origin, who had been a pagan and became a Christian. Jerome lists him among Christian authors and calls him a distinguished advocate. Beyond that the record of his life is empty. He left one book, and it is unlike anything else from the early church. It is called the Octavius, and it is not a treatise or a sermon. It is a conversation between friends on a holiday. The scene is Ostia, the port of Rome, on a day off from the courts. Three men walk down to the beach in the early morning. Minucius is one of them; the others are Octavius Januarius, a Christian and an old friend, and Caecilius Natalis, a pagan. As they pass a statue of Serapis, Caecilius lifts his hand to his lips and kisses it — and Octavius says something. They sit down on a breakwater, and Minucius is asked to judge between them. Caecilius speaks first, and he speaks well. Minucius gives the pagan case its full strength: nothing can be known for certain, so a wise man keeps the customs of his fathers; Rome's greatness is the proof of Rome's gods; the Christians are an illiterate rabble of the lowest classes who meet in the dark, worship the head of an ass, adore their crucified criminal, initiate their converts by making them stab an infant hidden in flour, and hold incestuous feasts. He asks why, if their God is so powerful, they are poor, hunted, and burned. Then Octavius answers, point by point, in the same civil tone. There is one God, whose existence the philosophers half-saw and the world's order declares. The crimes charged to Christians are the crimes pagans themselves commit — he names the exposure of infants and the abortions. Christian poverty is not a punishment but a training; suffering is where a man is proved, as the arena crowds themselves believe when they cheer a gladiator who will not yield. Caecilius concedes, and the three walk home glad, and that is the end. When it was written is genuinely disputed. Minucius and Tertullian share so much material that one plainly used the other, and scholars have argued both directions for two centuries; the date is placed anywhere from about 197 to the middle of the third century. What is not in dispute is that it is the most humane apology the ancient church produced — an argument conducted between friends who go on being friends. Sources: Minucius Felix, Octavius (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4); Jerome, On Illustrious Men 58; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.