CEOLFRID, chol'frid, SAINT: Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow; b. of noble parents in Northumbria c. 642; d. at Langres, France, while on his way to Rome, Sept. 24, 716. He became a monk at the age of eighteen, and was made prior by Benedict Biscop of his new abbey of St. Peter at Wearmouth, which was begun in 674; accompanied Biscop to Rome in 678; became abbot of his second monastery founded at Jarrow in 681 or 682 (where he had Bede among his pupils), and in 688, abbot of both Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was a good manager and increased and enriched his monasteries, at the same time making them centers of learning and industry. He took special pains to learn the Roman methods of reading and singing the services and influenced the Irish in Scotland to adopt the Roman date for Easter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bede, Historia abbatum; also Hist. eccl., iv. 18, v. 21 (where Ceolfrid's letter to Naiton [Nechtan], king of the Picts, on the Easter question, is given), v. 24; also the anonymous Historia abbatum, by a monk of Wearmouth, contemporary with Ceolfrid, in Plummer's Bede, i. 388-404; W. Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 308-309, Oxford, 1897.

CERDO (CERDON): A Syrian Gnostic, who, according to Irenæus (I. xxvii. 1, III. iv. 3) and Eusebius (Chron., ed. Schoene, i. 168), lived in Rome in the time of the bishop Hyginus (c. 136-140). Epiphanius (xli. 1) connects him with Saturninus. He is of importance chiefly as having been the teacher of Marcion.

G. KRÜGER.

CERINTHUS: Gnostic teacher of Asia Minor, about 100 A.D. According to Irenæus (I. xxvi. 1), he taught that the world was not created by the first God, but by a subordinate power. Jesus was

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a son of Joseph and Mary, but was wiser and more righteous than other men. After his baptism the spirit of the all-sublime power of God descended upon him in the form of a dove. From now on he preached the unknown Father and performed miracles. Finally the "Christ" forsook him, but "Jesus" suffered and rose again, whereas the spiritual Christ did not suffer. John directed his Gospel especially against Cerinthus (III. xi. 1), and in proof of the aversion which the apostle felt toward this heretic Irenæus (III. iii. 4) tells a story from Polycarp that the two met once in the baths at Ephesus, whereupon the apostle fled, "lest even the bath-house fall down because Cerinthus is inside." In the main the story is credible, but the later story (cf. Epiphanius, Hœr., xxviii. and others) of the Judaism of Cerinthus is an invention. The assertion of the Roman Caius that Cerinthus is the author of the Apocalypse is certainly erroneous.

G. KRÜGER.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. A. Lipsius, Zur QuelIenkritik des Epiphanius, pp. 115-122, Vienna, 1865; A. Hilgenfeld. Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums, pp. 411-421, Leipsic, 1884; A. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. 234-235, Freiburg, 1894, Eng. transl., iii. 14-19, Boston, 1897; T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, 2 vols., Erlangen, 1888-92; Krüger, History, p. 68 and literature given there.