ELVIDIUS. - Emergence in the 4th century. No information is known about his life, except that he was a physician and an ignorant man, and a disciple of the Arian bishop of Milan, AUXENTIUS. While in Rome, he joined the group of those who opposed the monastic movement, of which St. Jerome had become the spiritual father among the Roman matrons.
Against this ideal he wrote a pamphlet in which he denied the superiority of the virginal state over the marital state, going so far as to assert that virginity is contrary to nature and that it had not even been maintained by the Blessed Virgin Mary; for, after Jesus, she had other children. He attempted to prove this by citing certain passages from the Gospels, which he interpreted and explained according to his preconceived ideas, and by appealing to the authority of Tertullian and Victorinus of Pettau. Elvidius's pamphlet caused alarm and scandal in the ascetic circles of Rome, and St. Jerome was asked to refute II. In 383, Jerome wrote the treatise *De perpetua Mariae virginitate adversus Helvidium*, in which he followed Elvidius's assertions step by step, demonstrating that he had misunderstood Holy Scripture and dismantling his conclusions with a series of brilliant and convincing arguments that later became traditional in Mariological theology. It matters little that Elvidius replied to Jerome's refutation; likewise, the place and time of his death are unknown.