ELCESAITES. - A sect with an eclectic doctrine of Jewish background, showing affinities with the Essenes and Ebionites and with some Gnostic element, influenced by astrology, magic and esotericism. The sources are offered to us by the Philosophumena, IX (ed. P. M. Cruce, Paris 1860) and St. Epiphanius, Haer., XIX, XXX, LIII: PG 41, 259-69; 405-73; 959-62.
The E. used only certain books of the Old Testament, rejecting whatever concerned sacrifices. They rejected all of St. Paul (v. EBIONITES), and of the New Testament they probably never made a true use of their own, since their doctrine has nothing Christian about it. They did, however, have their own book, brought from the region of the Parthians by a sage, the orthography of whose name varies: 'Ḥḫẓāṣī (Philosophumena), 'Elżāṭī, 'Ḥḫẓāṭī (St. Epiphanius, Haer., XIX, 2), 'Elżāṭāṭī (Theodoret, Haer. Fab., II, 7: PG 83, 393), and whose real existence is moreover debatable.
The E. believed in a creator God, in a Son of God, not equal to him but his creature, though the most perfect; the Holy Spirit was then a being similar to the Son but of the female sex (cf. the offshoots of Gnostic theories). For salvation, blind and absolute faith in the doctrine contained in their sacred book was sufficient, and to obtain the remission of sins a baptism was conferred in the name of God and of his Son the great king, after the penitent had confessed his own sins and invoked "heaven, water, the holy spirits, the angels of prayer, the oil, the salt, the earth." Such baptism could be repeated and also had great healing powers: moreover, water was held among them in great veneration. The E. maintained almost all Jewish customs and practices, and in particular circumcision; they believed in astral influences, especially on the days of the week, on account of which precisely the third day and the Sabbath were unlucky. St. Epiphanius (Haer., XIX, 4: PG 41, 268) transcribed their esoteric formula, which G. Bareille (Eleksaïtes, in DThC, IV, col. 2239) interprets as a blasphemous formula against the worshipers of Christ, admitting the occultist character of the sect of the E.
In the moral field they were rather laxist, they condemned virginity and continence and made marriage obligatory (St. Epiphanius, Haer., XIX, 1: PG 41, 261). Although in their book the Revelation is said to have occurred in the third year of Trajan, in reality they appear at the beginning of the 3rd century, to spread soon afterwards also outside the Jewish-Christian milieu of the East, with the coming to Rome of one of their number, Alcibiades of Apamea, who, however, met with little success there. From the middle of the 3rd century until about the middle of the 4th they do not appear; but toward the end of the 4th St. Epiphanius notes them still alive in the East, in the Essene and Ebionite milieus.
Noteworthy are the relations between the doctrine of the E. and the Clementine apocrypha (cf. the comparisons made by Bareille, loc. cit., col. 2233 and the bibliography of F. Nau, Clémentins (Apocryphes). I. Homélies, Recognition et leurs abrégés, in DThC, III, col. 216).
Bibliography
Saverio Peticoli Ridofini