On the Apparel of Women

Tertullian’s earliest work concerning women (composed in 196 or 197) was the second book De Cultu Feminarum. Some years later, but before he avowedly espoused the New Prophecy, he reworked the same material: it stands in modern editions as De Cultu Feminarum I, but may originally have been entitled De habitu muliebri. The change in tone cannot be mistaken: instead of ‘handmaids of the living God, my fellow servants and sisters’, the later tract addresses womankind as the daughters of Eve, the entrance-door of the Devil, the forfeiter of paradise, the deserter of the divine law who deceived Adam, the image of God.

Timothy David Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971; reissued with corrections and a postscript, 1985), 137.