Abstract

In Novatian’s De Trinitate there is a passage which, while it makes a reference to an “invidia mortalitatis”, has been to some extent the torment of editors and of translators. On the one hand, the genitive tends mostly to be read as objective, on the other, the text is manipulated at times (even in recent editions) on the basis of a lectio facilior derived from conjecture. The article summarizes the history of criticism relative to the above-mentioned passage, highlighting some of its limits. From there it searches for historical-philological bases of a reading of the passage in which the genitive is understood as subjective. The evidence gathered seems to point to an Origenist source, and that would lean us toward welcoming the invitation, already formulated by Manlio Simonetti, to new research inNovatian and his sources.