CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GNOSTICS AND THE MONTANISTS AT LYONS.

For nearly twenty years the Asiatic colony of Lyons and Vienne, notwithstanding more than one internal trial, prospered in all the works of Christ. Thanks to her, the evangelical preaching already lit up the valley of the Saône. The Church of Autun especially was, in many points of view, a daughter of the Graeco-Asiatic Church of Lyons. Greek had been for a long time the language of mysteries, and held there during some centuries a certain liturgical importance. Then there appeared, in a sort of matinal and uncertain penumbra, Tourners, Chalon, Dijon, Langres, whose apostles and martyrs were connected with the Greek colony of Lyons, and not with the great Latin evangelisation of Gaul in the third and fourth centuries.

Thus, from Smyrna even to the inaccessible parts of Gaul, there stretched a ridge of strong Christian activity. The Lugduno-Viennese community was connected by an active correspondence with the mother churches of Asia and Phrygia. The facilities offered by the navigation of the Rhone served 167for the speedy importation of all novelties; such a Gospel of recent manufacture, such a system newly drawn by Alexandrinian subtlety, such a charisma set in fashion by the sectaries of Asia Minor were known at Lyons or at Vienne nearly the next day after their appearance. The lively imagination of the inhabitants was a more powerful vehicle still. An exalted mysticism, a delicacy of nerves approaching hysteria, a warmth of heart capable of making all sacrifices, but susceptible also of being led in all directions, were the character of this Gallo-Grecian Christianity. The venerable Pothin, more than ninety years of age, had the most difficult task of governing these souls, more ardent than submissive, and who sought in their submission even something else than the austere charm of accomplished duty.

Irenæus had become the right hand of Pothin, his coadjutor, if one might express it so, his designated successor. An abundant writer and a finished controversialist, he began, on his arrival at Lyons, to write in Greek against all the different Christian tendencies, in particular against Blastus, who wished to return to Judaism, and against Florin, who admitted with the Gnostics a god of good and a god of evil. The teachings of Valentinus, by their breadth and philosophical appearance, gained many adherents among the Lyonese population. Irenæus made himself a kind of speciality in combating them. No orthodox polemic, before him, had at this point comprehended the depth of the Gnosis and its anti-Christian character.

Valentine was a fine kind of spirit, who certainly never would have succeeded either in replacing the Catholic Church nor seizing the direction of it. Gnosticism reached the Rhone in the person of a doctor much more dangerous. I mean Markus, who seduced women by the strange manner in 168which he celebrated the Eucharist, and by the audacity with which he made them believe that they had the gift of prophecy. His style of administering the sacraments brought with it the most dangerous familiarities. Feigning to be the dispenser of the grace, he persuaded women that he was in the secret of their guardian angels, that they were destined to an eminent rank in his church, and ordered them to prepare a mystical union with him. “From me and through me,’ he said to them, “thou wilt receive the grace. Place thyself as a betrothed receives her fiancé, that thou mayest be what I am and I what you are. Prepare thy bed to receive the seed of light. Behold the grace is descending on thee. Open thy mouth and prophesy.” “But I have never prophesied, and I don’t know how to prophesy.” He redoubled his invocation, terrifying and stupefying his victim. “Open thy mouth, I tell thee, and speak: everything thou utterest will be prophecy.” The heart of the initiated beat hard; the waiting, the embarrassment, the idea that perhaps she was about to prophesy made her lose her head; she raved at hazard. It was represented to her afterwards that she had spoken full and sublime sense. The unfortunate one, from that moment, was lost. She thanked Markos for the gift he had communicated, asked what she could do in return, and, recognising that the giving up of all her goods in his favour was a small matter, she offered herself to him if he would condescend to accept her. Often the best and most distinguished were thus surprised; for on all sides already there was a talk of penitents vowed to mourning for the rest of their life, who, after having received from the seducer the prophetic communion and initiation, recoiled in horror, and came to the orthodox asking pardon and forgetfulness.

Such a man was particularly dangerous at Lyons. 169The mystic and impassioned character of the Lyonese, their somewhat material piety, their taste for the bizarre and for sensible emotions, exposed them to all sorts of falls. What goes on to-day in the feminine public in the towns in the South of France on the arrival of a fashionable preacher took place then. The new fashion in preaching was much liked. The richest ladies, those who were distinguished by a beautiful border of purple on their robes, were the most curious and the most imprudent. The Christians thus seduced were not slow to be disabused. Their conscience burned them: their life henceforth was blasted. Some confessed their sin in public and re-entered the Church; others, out of shame, did not dare to do this, and remained in the most false position, neither in nor out. Others, falling into despair, went far away from the Church, and concealed themselves “with the fruit they had drawn from their connection with the sons of Gnosis,” adds Irenæus maliciously.

The ravages which this gloomy seducer made in souls was terrible. People spoke of philtres, of poisons. The penitents confessed that he had completely exhausted them, that they had loved him with a love superhuman and fatal, which imposed itself on them. They told above all of the abominable conduct of Markos towards a deacon of Asia, who received him into his house with a thorough Christian affection. The deacon had a wife of rare beauty. She allowed herself to be won over by this dangerous guest, and lost the purity of the faith at the same time as the honour of her body. From that time Markos took her everywhere about with him, to the great scandal of the churches. The good brothers had pity on her, and spoke to her with sadness to lead her back: they succeeded not without difficulty. She was converted, confessed her faults and misfortunes, and passed the rest of her 170life in a perpetual confession and penitence, telling in humility everything she had suffered by the magician.

What was worse than this was that Markos made some pupils, like him, great corrupters of women, giving themselves the title of “perfect,” claiming transcendent knowledge, pretending that “they alone had drunk the fulness of the Gnosis of the ineffable Virtue,” and that this knowledge raised them high above all power, so that they could do freely what they wished. It was claimed that the mode of their initiation was most abominable. They dressed up a cabinet like a nuptial couch; then, with a solemnity of doubtful mysticism and some cabalistic words, they feigned to proceed to their spiritual nuptials, copied from those of the superior syziges. Thanks to their rites and the use of certain invocations to Sophia, the Markosians believed they could obtain a sort of invisibility which made them escape, in their nuptial chapels, the eyes of the Sovereign Judge. Like all the Gnostics, they abused the anointings with oil and balm; they made up all sorts of sacraments, apolytroses or redemptions, replacing even baptism. Their extreme unction over the dying had something touching in it, and has alone remained in use.

Pothin and Irenæus energetically resisted these perverse guides. Irenæus threw into the struggle the idea of his great work, Against Heresies, a vast arsenal of arguments against all the varieties of Gnosticism. His correct and moderate judgment, the philosophical basis which he gave to Christianity, his clear and purely deistic ideas on the relations between God and man, his intellectual mediocrity itself, preserved him from the aberrations of an intemperate speculation. The fall of his friends Blastus and Florinus was an example 171to him. He saw salvation only in the middle path represented by the universal Church. The authority and catholicity of that Church appeared to him the unique criterion of truth.

Gnosticism in fact disappeared from Gaul, both by the violent antipathy which it inspired among the orthodox, and by a gentle transformation which allowed nothing of its theories to remain but an inoffensive mysticism. A marble of the third century found at Autun preserves to us a little poem presenting, like the eighth book of the Sibylline oracles, the acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ. The pious Valentinians and the orthodox could both equally enjoy the singular style of this strange piece.

“O divine race of the heavenly ΙΧΘΥΣ, receive with a heart full of respect immortal life among mortals; rejuvenate thy soul among the divine waters, by the eternal waves of the Sophia which gives its treasures. Receive sweet nourishment like the honey of the Saviour of the holy; eat in thy hunger and drink in thy thirst; thou holdest ΙΧΘΥΣ in the palms of thy hands.”

Montanism, like Gnosticism, visited the Rhone Valley and obtained great successes. Even during the life of Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla the Lyonese heard with admiration of their prophesies and supernatural gifts. Coming forth from a world closely bordering on Montanism, the Church of Lyons could not remain indifferent to a movement which carried away Phrygia and troubled all Asia Minor. The terrible oracles of the new prophets, the pious practices of the saints at Pepuza, their brilliant charismas, this return of the supernatural phenomena of the apostolic age—such were the tidings which came one by one after each other from Asia, and which struck with stupor the whole Christian world, and they could not but move them peculiarly. It was almost themselves they 172beheld in these ascetics. Their Vettius Epagathuses, were they not called so because of their austerities, the most famous nazirs? The majority found it easy to believe that the fountain of God’s gifts had not been dried up. Many distinguished members of the Lyonese Church, and a certain Alexander, a physician by profession, who had lived in Gaul for many years, came from that country. This Alexander, who astonished everybody by his love of God and his boldness and preaching, appeared favoured with all the apostolic graces.

The Lyonese, at a distance, give us therefore the impression of belonging with many relationships to the pietistic circle of Asia Minor. They sought for martyrdom, they had visions, practised charismas, enjoyed communications with the Holy Spirit or Paraclete, looking on the Church as a virgin. An ardent millenarianism, a constant expectation of anti-Christ and the end of the world were in some sort the common ground from which these great enthusiasts drew their vigour. But a touching docility, joined to rare practical good sense, made the majority of the faithful suspicious of the evil spirit who was hidden frequently under these proud peculiarities.

Sometimes, indeed, certain bizarre results came from Phrygia, evidencing a Christian effervescence which no reason could guide. A certain Alcibiades, who came from this country to settle in Lyons, astonished the Church by his exaggerated macerations. He practised all the austerities of the saints of Pepuza, absolute poverty, excessive abstinences. Nearly the whole creation he repelled as impure, and people asked how he could live while refusing the most evident necessaries of life. The pious Lyonese saw in this at first nothing save what was praiseworthy; but the arbitrary manner in which 173the Phrygian understood things disquieted them. Alcibiades had sometimes the appearance of a madman. He seemed, like Tatian and many others, to condemn in principle an entire class of God’s creatures, and he offended many brethren by the manner in which he guided his kind of life in the outset. It was still worse when, arrested with the others, he determined to continue his abstinences. A heavenly revelation was required to restore him to reason, as we shall soon see.

Irenæus, so firm on the question of Marcionism and Gnosticism, was, in regard to Montanism, much more undecided. The holiness of the Phrygian ascetics could not but affect him; but he saw too plainly into Christian theology not to perceive the danger of the new doctrines as to prophecy and the Paraclete. He does not mention the Montanists among the heretics with whom he fights. He energetically blames certain subversive pretensions, without once naming their authors, and the precautions which he took show that he did not wish to put the Phrygian pietists in the same rank as the schismatic sects. A man of order and hierarchy beyond everything, he ended, it would seem, by seeing in them false prophets; but he hesitated for a long time before arriving at this severe opinion. All the Lyonese were in the same perplexity as he. In their embarrassment they thought of consulting Eleutherus, who a short time back had succeeded Soter in the Roman see. Already the Bishop of Rome was the authority from whom the solution of difficult cases was demanded, who counselled the various churches, and was the centre of concord and unity.