Latin Literature in Early Christianity

The Latin language was not at first the literary and official 
organ of the Christian Church in the West. The Gospel was 
announced by preachers whose language was Greek, and these 
continued to use Greek, if not in their discourses, at least in 
their most important acts. Irenaeus, at Lyons, preached in Latin, 
or perhaps in the Celtic vernacular, but he refuted heresies in 
Greek. The Letter of the Church of Lyons concerning its martyrs is 
written in Greek; so at Rome, a century earlier, is that of 
Clement to the Corinthians. In both cases the language of those to 
whom the letters were addressed may have been designedly chosen; 
nevertheless, a document that may be called a domestic product of 
the Roman Church, the "Shepherd" of Hermas, was written in Greek. 
At Rome in the middle of the second century, Justin, a Palestinian 
philosopher, opened his school, and suffered martyrdom; Tatian 
wrote his "Apologia" in Greek at Rome in the third century; 
Hippolytus compiled his numerous works in Greek. And Greek is not 
only the language of books, but also of the Roman Christian 
inscriptions, the greater number of which, down to the third 
century were written in Greek. The most ancient Latin document 
emanating from the Roman Church is the correspondence of its 
clergy with Carthage during the vacancy of the Apostolic See 
following on the death of Pope Fabian (20 January, 250). One of 
the letters is the work of Novatian, the first Christian writer to 
use the Latin language at Rome. But even at this epoch, Greek is 
still the official language: the original epitaphs of the popes 
are still composed in Greek. We have those of Anterus, of Fabian, 
of Lucius, of Gaius, and the series brings us down to 296. That of 
Cornelius, which is in Latin, seems to be later than the third 
century. In Africa Latin was always the literary language of 
Christianity, although Punic was still used for preaching in the 
time of St. Augustine, and some even preached in the Berber 
language. These latter, however, had no literature; cultivated 
persons, as well as the cosmopolitan population of the seaports 
used Greek. The oldest Christian document of Africa, the Acts of 
the Scillitan Martyrs, was translated into Greek, as were some of 
the works of Tertullian, perhaps by the author himself, and 
certainly with the object of securing for them a wider diffusion. 
The Acts of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas, originally written in 
Latin, were translated into Greek. In Spain all the known 
documents are written in Latin, but they appear very late. The 
Acts of St. Fructuosus, a martyr under Valerian, are attributed by 
some critics to the third century. The first Latin Christian 
document to which a quite certain date can be assigned is a 
collection of the canons of the Council of Elvira, about 300. 

Side by side with literary works, the Church produced writings 
necessary to her life. In this category must be placed the most 
ancient Christian documents written in Latin, the translations of 
the Bible made either in Africa or in Italy. Beginning with the 
second century, Latin translations of technical works written in 
Greek became numerous treatises on medicine, botany, mathematics, 
etc. These translations served a practical purpose, and were made 
by professionals; consequently they had no literary merit and 
aimed at an almost servile exactitude resulting in the retention 
of many peculiarities of the original. Hellenisms, a very 
questionable feature in the literary works of preceding centuries, 
were frequent in these translations. The early Latin versions of 
the Bible had the characteristics common to all texts of this 
group; Hellenisms abounded in them and even Semitisms filtered in 
through the Greek. In the fourth century, when St. Jerome made his 
new Latin version of the Scriptures, the partisans of the older 
versions to justify their opposition praised loudly the harsh 
fidelity of these inelegant translations (Augustine, "De doct. 
christ.", II, xv, in P. L., XXXIV 46). These versions no doubt 
exercised great influence upon the imagination and the style of 
Christian writers, but it was an influence rather of invention and 
inspiration than of expression. The incorrectness and barbarism of 
the Fathers have been much exaggerated: profounder knowledge of 
the Latin language and its history has shown that they used the 
language of their time, and that in this respect there is no 
difference worth mentioning between them and their pagan 
contemporaries. No doubt some of them were men of defective 
education, writers of incorrect prose and popular verse, but there 
have been such in every age; the author of the "Bellum Hispaniae", 
the historian Justinus, Vitruvius, are profane authors who cared 
little for purity or elegance of style. Tertullian, the Christian 
author most frequently accused of barbarism, for his time, is by 
no means incorrect. He possesses strong creative power, and his 
freedom is mostly in the matter of vocabulary; he either invents 
new words or uses old ones in very novel ways. His style is bold; 
his imagination and his passion light it up with figures at times 
incoherent and in bad taste; but his syntax contains, it may be 
said almost no innovations. He multiplies constructions as yet 
rare and adds new constructions, but he always respects the genius 
of the language. His work contains no Semitisms, and the 
Hellenisms which his critics have pointed out in it are neither 
frequent nor without warrant in the usage of his day. This, of 
course, does not apply to his express or implicit citations from 
the Bible. At the other extreme, chronologically, of Latin 
Christian literary development, a pope like Gelasius gives 
evidence of considerable classical culture; his language is novel 
chiefly in its choice of words, but many of these neoterisms were 
in his time no longer new and had their origin in the technical 
usage of the Church and the Roman law. 

In the historical development of Christian Latin literature three 
periods may be distinguished: