The Tertullian Project
The ‘Tertullian.org’ website was created, in 1997, to provide “A collection of material ancient and modern about the ancient Christian Latin writer Tertullian and his writings.” As is indicated by the description found on the website itself, the main objective of this website is to serve as a database for everything related to the Latin writer Tertullian, who lived around the 2nd and 3rd century AD.
The creator of this website is Roger Pearse, a translator of ancient texts who published two books: ‘Eusebius of Caesarea. Gospel, Problems and Solutions’ in 2011, and ‘Origen of Alexandria. Exegetical works on Ezekiel’ in 2014. All his work is centred on the collection and translation of antique Christian literature.
The main website, titled ‘The Tertullian Project’ is very interesting for any historian doing research on this Latin author. The website provides a detailed biography, a list of the available texts with a summary for each, translations and Latin transcriptions, among other more or less useful information.
In order to provide the translations of Tertullian’s texts to a greater public, Roger Pearse transcribed the texts of translations made by other authors and put these on his website in the name of the ‘Tertullian Project’. Thus, the translations provided by Roger Pearse originate from published books, mostly from the mid-twentieth century.
All in all, this website constitutes an interesting stop for all historians starting doing research on Tertullian. The overview of Tertullian’s work and the translations provided by Roger Pearse can be helpful to potentially better define any further research on Tertullian.
Link: http://www.tertullian.org/
Early Church Fathers – Additional Texts
For the historians searching a bigger database of translated ancient Latin and Greek texts, the website gives a link titled ‘Additional Fathers’ to another website at the bottom of the page. The user is taken to the online collection of digitized translations of texts written by some of the most prominent authors of the ancient world.
All the translations on this website are in English. The majority of the translations are accompanied by an introduction written by the editor of the website, in order to help the reader to understand the contents of the text and its context. The texts used for this database come from books whose copyrights are expired and are free to be copied. Therefore, the translations provided on this website are almost all over a century old and not up to date with the latest translations.
The website has some big failings, for example there is no search function provided and the names of the authors are not ordered in an alphabetical order, which would make the search for a specific author easier. Another negative aspect of this website is that the original texts, either in Greek or Latin, from the ancient authors are missing, making this site a strict collection of dated translations.
Nevertheless, the website, with its easy access to translations, remains a good initial source for any historian doing research around ancient authors. Due to the fact that the translations are outdated, this website should only be used in order to gain an impression of the contents in a specific translation before moving on to a translation found in a more recent edition.
Link: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/
Written by
Patrick QUINTEIRA