Primary source · Latin
The Divine Institutes
Lactantius · c. AD 303–311
What this text is
Seven books written while the Great Persecution burned — classical Latin's first full system of Christian thought, containing the era's great sentence on religious liberty.
Interlinear passages
Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.
Book V.19 — religion cannot be compelled
religioreligioncogito be compellednonnotpotestis able
Public-domain translations
William Fletcher (ANF, 1886)
There is no occasion for violence and injury, for religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected… Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion.
Manuscript witnesses
Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 701
5th c.A late-antique copy of the Divine Institutes, remarkably close to the author.
Subiaco editio princeps
1465The first dated book printed in Italy was this very work.
Provenance
Nicomedia and Trier, c. AD 304–313 — the 'Christian Cicero' for Constantine's age
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Lactantius: Divine Institutes (TTH 40)Anthony Bowen & Peter Garnsey, 2003The standard annotated translation.
- L. Caeli Firmiani Lactanti opera (CSEL 19, 27)S. Brandt & G. Laubmann, 1890–1897The critical edition.