Lactantius (bornad 240, North Africa—diedc. 320,Augusta Treverorum, Belgica [now Trier, Ger.]) was a Christian apologist and one of the most reprinted of the Latin Church Fathers, whoseDivinae institutiones (“Divine Precepts”), a classically styled philosophical refutation of early-4th-century anti-Christian tracts, was the first systematic Latin account of the Christian attitude toward life. Lactantius was referred to as the “Christian Cicero” byRenaissance humanists.

Lactantius was appointed a teacher ofrhetoric at Nicomedia (later İzmit, Tur.) by the Roman emperorDiocletian. When the emperor began persecuting Christians, however, Lactantius resigned his post about 305 and returned to the West. Later, in about 317, he came out of retirement to tutor the emperor Constantine’s sonCrispus, at Trier.

Only Lactantius’ writings dealing withChristianity have survived. His principal work, theDivinae institutiones, depended more on the testimony of classical authors than on that of sacred Scripture. Itrepudiated what he termed the deluding superstitions of pagan cults, proposing in their place the Christianreligion as a theism, or rationalized belief in a single Supreme Being who is the source creating all else. In a companion work, “On the Death of Persecutors,” Lactantius held that the Christian God—in contradistinction to the remote, unconcerned God ofStoic deism—could intervene to right human injustice. Moreover, he maintained that Romanjustice could be better perfected by rooting it in the Christian doctrine of divine fatherhood uniting thehuman race in universal fraternity through the mediation of Christ than by basing it on the Latin concept ofaequitas (“equity”).

Limited by an unprofound view of religion as popularmorality, Lactantius was more adept in showing the incongruity of heathen polytheism than in establishing Christian teaching.