락탄티우스

루키우스 카이킬리우스 (또는 카일리우스) 피르미아누스 락탄티우스(Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, 240년? ~ 320년?)는 초기 기독교의 신학자이자 저술가였으며 콘스탄티누스 1세(Constantine I)의 초대 자문자였다. 락탄티우스는 북아프리카 베르베르 출신으로주로 로마제국 동방의 여러도시를 다니면서 수사학을 가르쳤다. 그는 주로 그리스 이교 철학자들의 논리에 대항하여 교육받은 이교도들을 대상으로 기독교의 교리를 묵시론적으로 설명하는 글을 주로 저술했다. 그의 저술 《신의 교훈 Divinae Institutiones》은 초기 기독교 사상의 체계화된 저작의 대표적인 사례로 꼽힌다. 그의 사후에 이단성이 있는 것으로 분류되었는데, 르네상스 인문주의자들에 의해 재발견되어 그의 신학보다는 현학적인 스타일의 수사학적인 라틴문학으로 더 각광을 받았다. 이 책 4.28에서 종교(religion)에 대하여 어원적으로 re+lig('묶다')로 이해하여 종교를 '다시 묶다', '하나님과 다시 결합하다'로 정의하였다. 어거스틴은 이 견해를 따랐다. 그래서 종교를 하나님에 대한 경외(reverence for God)로 정의하게 되었다. 로마 황제 디오클레티아누스가 니코메데이아(지금의 터키 이즈미트)의 수사학 교사로 임명했지만, 황제가 기독교인들을 박해하기 시작하자 305년경 교사직을 사임하고 서방으로 돌아갔다. 그 뒤 317년 은둔생활을 끝내고 트리어에서 콘스탄티누스 1세의 아들 크리스푸스를 가르쳤다. 그리스도의 재림과 관련하여 종말론의 견해는 전천년주의를 주장했다.

작품

• De Opificio Dei ("The Works of God"), an apologetic work, written in 303 or 304 during Diocletian's persecution and dedicated to a former pupil, a rich Christian named Demetrianius. The apologetic principles underlying all the works of Lactantius are well set forth in this treatise.
• Institutiones Divinae ("The Divine Institutes"), written between 303 and 311. This is the most important of the writings of Lactantius. It was "one of the first books printed in Italy and the first dated Italian imprint." As an apologetic treatise, it was intended to point out the futility of pagan beliefs and to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity as a response to pagan critics. It was also the first attempt at a systematic exposition of Christian theology in Latin and was planned on a scale sufficiently broad to silence all opponents. Patrick Healy notes, "The strengths and the weakness of Lactantius are nowhere better shown than in his work. The beauty of the style, the choice and aptness of the terminology, cannot hide the author's lack of grasp on Christian principles and his almost utter ignorance of Scripture." Included in this treatise is a quote from the nineteenth of the Odes of Solomon, one of only two known texts of the Odes until the early twentieth century. However, his mockery of the idea of a round earth was criticised by Copernicus as "childish".

Page from the Opera, a manuscript from 1465, featuring various colours of pen-work

• An Epitome of the Divine institutes is a summary treatment of the subject.
• De Ira Dei ("On the Wrath of God" or "On the Anger of God"), directed against the Stoics and Epicureans.
• De Mortibus Persecutorum ("On the Deaths of the Persecutors") has an apologetic character but has been treated as a work of history by Christian writers. The point of the work is to describe the deaths of the persecutors of Christians before Lactanius (Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian) and the contemporaries of Lactantius himself: Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, Maximinus. This work is taken as a chronicle of the last and greatest of the persecutions in spite of the moral point that each anecdote has been arranged to tell. Here, Lactantius preserves the story of Constantine's vision of the Chi Rho before his conversion to Christianity. The full text is found in only one manuscript, which bears the title Lucii Caecilii liber ad Donatum Confessorem de Mortibus Persecutorum.
• Widely attributed to Lactantius although it shows only cryptic signs of Christianity, the poem The Phoenix (de Ave Phoenice) tells the story of the death and rebirth of that mythical bird. That poem in turn appears to have been the principal source for the famous Anglo-Saxon poem to which the modern title The Phoenix is given.
• Opera ("Works") A second edition printed in the monastery at Subiaco, Lazio, is still extant. It remained in Italy until the late eighteenth century, when it was known to be in the library of Prince Vincenzo Maria Carafa in Messina. The Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, acquired this volume in 1817.