ASCHITES. - Heretics who trace back to Montanism (v.). Information about them, not always consistent, comes from the ancient writers on heresies, such as Philastrius (Liber de haeresibus, 65: PL 12, 1187), St. Augustine (De haeresibus, 62: PL 42, 42), St. Epiphanius (Contra haereses, 48: PG 41, 856), Theodoret (Haereticarum fabularum compendium, I, 1, 10: PG 83, 360).
There is disagreement about their name, since, while Philastrius calls them acodrocites, and St. Augustine simply aschites (from the Greek ἀσκός "wineskin", because they seem to have kept in their churches a swollen wineskin which they carried dancing around the altar to symbolize that they were filled with the new wine of the Spirit, alluding to the text of St. Matthew 9:17), St. Epiphanius calls them tascodrugites (τασκοβρυγίται, a barbarous word, translated into Greek as πασαλορυγίται, that is, those who in praying put their fingers in their nose as a sign of humility) and links them to the Cataphrygians or Quintilians; and Theodoret calls them ἀσκοβρύται or ἀσκοβρυπῖται, ascodrites or ascodrupites, and makes of them a Gnostic sect, according to which salvation is wrought by the knowledge of the truth. In fact, they attribute to the Sacraments of the Church only a purely symbolic value and abolish Baptism. It should be noted that Philastrius distinguishes the ascodrugites from the passalorincites. Some moderns see in the name of the a. or askites an allusion to the wineskin of Marsyas, of which the Greek classics speak to us, and therefore think of a remnant of a pagan practice preserved in Phrygia and Galatia.
Bibliography
Martino Jugie