The precise date and exact provenance of the emergence of Latin Christian literature are obscure. It seems to have appeared first in North Africa. Roman Christian literature is in Greek up to the time of Hippolytus in the mid-third century. Tertullian dominates the discussion because of the number of his extant treatises. He did not, however, like Athene, spring forth fully grown from the head of Zeus, armed and shouting his battle cry. There was a Latin Christian literature before him. Unfortunately, we cannot say how extensive this literature was, because its remains are so meagre.

The first Latin Christian literature appears to have been translations of portions of the Bible. These translations have not been preserved, but are posited from traces left in the biblical citations of Tertullian and Cyprian in North Africa, and Novatian in Rome. A distinction is made between ‘North African’ and ‘European’ translations on the basis of differences which appear in the authors from the respective locales. The earliest reference to such translations is in the Latin Acts of the martyrs of Scilli in North Africa (AD 180) where it is stated that the martyrs had copies of ‘books, and letters of Paul’. The former were probably copies of the Gospels. It is assumed that these books and letters would have been in Latin.