ENCRATITES (Ἐγκρατῆς, Ἐγκρατῆται, Ἐγκρατῆται). - The E. are the "continent" ones par excellence, heretics who represent an excessive tendency toward asceticism, forbidding the use of meat, wine and marriage, and who therefore profess continence in its most rigorous form. To defend their doctrine they made use of passages of the New Testament in which continence is recommended, isolating them from their context, interpreting them captiously and even altering them.
In reality it is perfectly clear how this position derives from the Neoplatonic and Gnostic concept of matter as evil, as the wicked work of the demiurge, in which one must not participate. This tendency manifests itself as early as apostolic times (1 Tim. 4:1-5) and gradually develops during the 2nd century; the apocryphal Acts of Paul, of Peter, of John favor it. Toward the end of the 2nd century the E. are, according to St. Epiphanius, greatly widespread, and their ideas take hold even on Christians of good faith (e.g. Alcibiades, one of the martyrs of Lyons; cf. the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 30: PG 20, 437). It also seems that they had an ecclesiastical organization of their own.
It is evident that the E. represented a grave danger for the Church and for society, especially with regard to the prohibition of marriage. They were considered heretics by St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 28: PG 7, 690-91), by pseudo-Tertullian (De praescr., 52: PL 2, 72) and by Hippolytus (Philosophumena, VIII, 16-20: ed. P. M. Cruice, Paris 1860). Cf. also St. Epiphanius, Haer., XLVI, XLVII: PG 41, 839-53.
The discussion on the validity of the Baptism conferred by them gave rise to the well-known controversy between Pope Stephen and St. Cyprian.
Theodosius, together with the Manichaeans, expressly condemned the E. and also the apostatics, the hydroparastatae and the sacrophori, all sects these inspired by the principles of encratism (second constitution against the Manichaeans, Codex Theodosianum, XVI, tit. V, I, 7 and II).
Among the principal exponents of encratism are remembered Julius Cassian, a docetist, who composed a book Περὶ εὐνοχίας, and Tatian, the author of the Diatessaron, called by St. Jerome princeps encraticorum (Epist., XLVIII, 2: PL 22, 494), from whom a sect of E. took its name.
Bibliography3 works
Saverio Pericoli Ridolfini