ARTOTIRITI

ARTOTYRITES. – An ancient Eastern sect so called because its adherents used bread (ἀρτοχί) and cheese (τυρόχί) in the celebration of their mysteries. The scant information we possess about them comes from ecclesiastical writers of the 4th and 5th centuries: St Epiphanius is the first to mention them in his Panarion, 2, 49 (PG 41, 880), followed by Filastrius of Brescia (Liber de haeresibus, § 74: PL 12, 1186), St Augustine (De haeresibus, liber, § 28: PL 42, 30) and St Jerome (In epist. ad Galatas, 2, 2: PL 26, 382), who commonly link it with Manichaeism and locate its presence in Galatia and the surrounding regions. Modern rationalist criticism has mistakenly sought to identify an artotyrite group in St Perpetua (cf. P. de Labriolle, s.V. in DHG, IV, cols. 825-27).