CERDONE. — The oldest information about C. is found in St Irenaeus. C., who came 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 would be knowable, the latter 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 scarcely plausible that Marcion was merely a plagiarist. Perhaps Irenaeus’s source created a false synchronism between the list of the bishops of Rome and the appearance of the individual heretics, as, for example, in the Chronicon of Michael the Syrian (ed. I. B. Chabot, I, Paris 1900; p. 178 ff.); following a confusion on the part of the chronographer, the doctrines of the Gnostic Mark (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 11, 5) are attributed to C. In Irenaeus (op. cit., III, 4, 3) we read that C. secretly disseminated his ideas in Rome and, after confessing, was convinced once more and excluded from the Christian community. Epiphanius (Pamar., 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 the pseudo-Tertullian (Adv. omnes haeres., 6) even attributes to him Marcion’s New Testament canon. Inte-
(phot. Fiorestini)
CERAMICS – Peasant boy with hen and dog. White porcelain (mid-eighteenth century) – Venice.
CERAMICA - The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Earthly Paradise. Floor of majolica tiles in the church of S. Michele at Anacapri. By Leonardo Chiaiese (1761), after a design by Solimena - Capri.
Interesting is the statement of Agapio (Mahbug) in the Universal History (PO 7, 511): C. said that several divinities gathered together and created the world, and denied the resurrection. This information attributes to C. the cosmological and anthropological ideas that in the tradition (v. Eznik) are presented as Marcion’s; an assertion perhaps not mistaken, because the speculative ideas concerning the role of Hyde in creation seem to point to a mentality different from his other ideas.