Elvidius

ELVIDIUS. - Heretic of the 4th century. Nothing is known of his life, except that he was a mediocre and 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 made himself the promoter and spiritual father among the Roman matrons.

Against this ideal he wrote a pamphlet, in which he denied the supremacy of the virginal state over the married state, going so far as to affirm that virginity is against nature and that it had not been preserved even by the Most Holy Virgin; who, after Jesus, had other children. And he attempted to demonstrate this by relying on certain passages of the Gospels which he interpreted and explained according to his preconceived ideas, and on the authority of Tertullian and Victorinus of Pettau. E.'s pamphlet aroused apprehensions and scandal in the ascetic circles of Rome, and St. Jerome was asked to refute it. The latter then wrote, in 383, the opuscule De perpetua Mariae virginitate adversus Helvidium, in which he follows step by step the heretic's assertions, demonstrating that he had not understood the Holy Scriptures, and demolished his conclusions with a series of brilliant and solid demonstrations, which thereafter remained traditional in Marian theology. It is not certain that E. replied to St. Jerome's refutation; the place and time of his death are likewise unknown.

Agostino Amore