CERDO. - The oldest information about C. is found in St. Irenaeus. C., having come to Rome under Hyginus, is said to have taught that the God preached by the Law and the prophets was not the Father of Jesus; the former was knowable, the latter was not, the first just, the second good (Adv. haer., I, 27, 1).
This text is suspect because it attributes to C. precisely the principal doctrines of Marcion, and it is hardly plausible that Marcion was a mere plagiarist. Perhaps Irenaeus's source made a false synchronism between the list of the bishops of Rome and the appearance of individual heretics, as, for example, in the Chronicon of Michael the Syrian (ed. I. B. Chabot, I, Paris 1900; p. 178 ff.), where, following a confusion on the part of the chronographer, the doctrines of the Gnostic Marcus (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 11, 5) are attributed to C. In Irenaeus (op. cit., III, 4, 3) we read that C. spread his ideas clandestinely in Rome and that after having confessed he was once again convinced and excluded from the Christian community. Epiphanius (Panar., 41, 1; ed. K. Holl, 190, 11) and Philastrius (Haer., 44) know that C. had come from Syria to Rome (source: Hippolytus?). Epiphanius attributes docetic doctrines to C., and pseudo-Tertullian (Adv. omnes haeres., 6) even Marcion's New Testament canon. Inte-
(phot. Fiorentini)
CERAMICS - Young peasant with hen and dog. White porcelain (mid-18th century) - Venice.
Interesting is the statement of Agapius (Mahbub) in the Universal History (PO 7, 511): C. said that several divinities gathered together and created the world, and he denied the resurrection. This notice attributes to C. the cosmological and anthropological ideas that in tradition (see especially Eznik) are given as those of Marcion; an assertion perhaps not mistaken, because the speculative ideas on the role of Hyde in creation seem to point to a mentality different from his other ideas.
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Erik Peterson