In the 2nd and 3rd Centuries a practice developed in the churches of Asia Minor whereby the forgiveness of sins, or ecclesiastical peace, was granted by martyrs. The practice had its origin in the persecutions of Christians. As martyrs participated in the Passion of Christ, and were thus united to Him in a unique way, they were able to uphold those who renounced their faith in the midst of persecutions, welcoming them back to the Church. The peace granted by martyrs was approved by bishops. The practice was also familiar to Tertullian, who, being a Montanist, pointed out that it was generally the „people of the Spirit” who had the power to forgive sins, which included prophets as well as martyrs. Tertullian claimed that the power to forgive sins was not related to the Apostolic succession. The above-described practice was opposed by St. Cyprian of Carthage who, in 250 A.D., following the persecutions under Decius, put penitential practice in order, subordinating it to the power of the bishop.
The original Latin catalogue of heresies, produced by Saint Philastrius of Brescia in the second half of IVth century, encompasses several observations regarding the source of early Christian heterodox movements. These views are dispersed and interwoven into the analysis of particular heresies, and as such do not constitute an integral and standalone teaching on the nature of unorthodoxy and its genesis. The present work attempts at enucleating this standpoint and summarising it in a comprehensive and complementary manner. Regarding the issue of the foundation of heresy, Philastrius proposed his own point of view based on the following threefold argumentation: the theological (Satan is the father of all the world’s heterodoxy – comprehended as a lapse form God’s truth), the moral (heresies rise due to one’s pride), and historical and cultural (errors in early Christian doctrine derive from the Judaic sects or else from the counterfactual views of the ancient Greek philosophers). Philastrius’ perspective refers back to an extensive and modestly younger work Panarion by Epiphanius of Salamis, in which the topic of Jewish-deriving deviations from the doctrine was treated even more at length. The Bishop of Brescia’s index has been the inspiration for the later catalogues of unorthodoxy by St. Augustine (narrow in the topic of Judaic origins of heretical movements and rather focused on influences from the ancient philosophical schools) and Isidore of Seville (intermingling both sources of early heretical movements – i.e. Judaic and Greek – withholding the determination which of them has in fact more influenced the uprising of heterodoxy and the doctrine itself).
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