to Christianity occurred sometime before 197, possibly around 195. It was written before the edict of Septimius Severus (AD 202), and consequently, the laws to which Tertullian took exception were those under which the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries had been convicted. Oldest extant manuscripts "The present treatise depends on three authorities, none of them comprising the entire work. The first printed edition, by Martin Mesnart at Paris in 1545, containing chapters 1-19, was made from a manuscript now lost, but which seems to have been a copy of the already mutilated original of the eleventh-century codex Agobardinus (now at Paris). This, our oldest extant authority, contains a number of Tertullian's works, and of the present treatise chapters 1-30; in the first sentence of chapter 21 the copyist, following his original, which had lost a number of pages, passed on (without apparently noticing any discrepancy) to the middle of a sentence near the beginning of a different work On The Dress of Women." "The study of the manuscripts of Tert. has established that in the Middle Ages several collection of works of this author were in existence1: The collection of the Codex Agobardinus, the oldest extant manuscript of Tert.2. The collection of the manuscript of Troyes 523 (Codex Trecensis) of the twelfth century3. A collection represented by a number of manuscripts, which derive from a lost Codex Cluniacensis and a likewise lost manuscript from Hirsau (Württemberg), the Hirsaugiensis4. Addressees and audience This work is ostensibly addressed to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire, more specifically the magistrates of Carthage- "that the truth, being forbidden to defend itself publicly, may reach the ears of the rulers by the hidden path of letters"— and thus bears resemblance to the Greek apologues. It is structured as an appeal on behalf of the Christians and pleads "for toleration of Christianity, attacking pagan superstition, rebutting charges against Christian morality, and claiming that Christians are no danger to the State but useful citizens". Its readership is likely to have been composed of Christians, whose faith was reinforced through Tertullian's defense against rationalizations and rumours and who "would have been hugely enheartened by Tertullian’s matchless confidence in the superiority of the Christian religion". Genre Apologeticus has the typical concerns of other apologetic works of his time, though it is presented in a much more complex manner. According to Wright, the text is constantly shifting