The problem of determining the
authorship of the edict which occasioned the composition of the De pudicitia has been studied frequently
and needs no more than a brief synopsis here. Three principal views have been
proposed. Older editors and commentators attributed the decree to Zephyrinus,
bishop of Rome from 198 to 217. With the discovery of the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus in 1850, scholars all but unanimously
accepted Callistus (bishop of Rome 217–222) as the author, since they
considered that the charge of laxity in forgiving sins of impurity which
Hippolytus makes against Callistus (Philosoph.
9.12) must be understood as referring to his issuance of the edict of
toleration which Tertullian condemns in De
pud. 1.6. Other passages in the De
pudicitia which are thought to prove the Roman provenance of the edict will
be found in cc. 13.7 and 21.5, 9. In recent years, however, scholars have been
abandoning the idea that the decree was issued by a bishop of Rome. K. Adam, P.
Galtier, B. Poschmann and other authorities on the history of penance argue
quite convincingly that it was promulgated by an African bishop, probably
Agrippinus of Carthage. This view has, at present, a certain ascendancy,
although it is not universally received and the decree continues to be referred
to in the literature as the ‘Edict of Callistus.’ (William P. Le
Saint, Tertullian: Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and On Purity [Ancient
Christian Writers 28; New York: Newman Press, 1959], 47-48)
