SUMMARY: The present study attempts to follow the development of one of the most primitive features of Christian anthropology, revealing its presence in the Latin West even after the second century. Such feature is of some importance in the correlation « soma-eikon-prosopon » (corpus-imago persona), to express the divine mystery of creation and re-creation (genesis-anagenesis) in the human body through the « imago Dei corporaliter effigiata », which makes man become « glo­ria Dei corporata » and, contemplating the corporal dimension as an existential condition, com­pletes the whole of creation. Hence the denomination of « somatic anthropology ». The research follows its developments in its most ancient Christian texts, from the Latin translations of Dida-che, Clemens Romanus, Ignatius of Antiochia, to the exponents of the Syrio-Asiatic theology, systematised by Irenaeus of Lyons, to discover its presence (in conflict with the so-called « anthro­pology of the soul » or Alexandrine) in the North-African, Italian and the primitive Spanish au­thors up to the fifth century.