Lactantius - Works

Works

• 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.
• The Divine Institutes (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), written between 303 and 311. This is the most important of the writings of Lactantius. 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, planned on a scale sufficiently broad to silence all opponents. The Catholic Encyclopedia said, "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".
• An Epitome of the "Divine institutes" is a summary treatment of the subject.
• De Ira Dei ("On the Wrath of God"), directed against the Stoics and Epicureans, dealing with anthropomorphic deities.
• De Mortibus Persecutorum 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: Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, and the contemporaries of Lactantius himself, Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Maximinus. This work is taken as a chronicle of the last and greatest of the persecutions, in spite of the moral point 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 Persecutorium.
• Widely attributed to Lactantius although it shows no overt sign 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.