ENCRATITES (Ἐγκρατεῖς, ἐγκρατεῖς, ἐγκρατεῖται). — The Encratites are the "continent" par excellence, critics who represent an excessive tendency toward asceticism, forbidding the use of meat, wine, and marriage and thus professing continence in its most rigorous form. To defend their doctrine, they made use of passages from the New Testament in which continence is recommended, isolating them from their context, interpreting them sophistically, and even altering them.
In reality, it is quite clear how this position derives from the Neoplatonic and Gnostic concept of matter as evil, as the wicked work of the demiurge, from which one must abstain. This tendency manifests itself from apostolic times (1 Tim. 4:1-5) and gradually develops during the 2nd century; the apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, and John favor II. Toward the end of the 4th century, the Encratites, according to St. Epiphanius, were widely diffused, and their ideas took hold even among well-meaning Christians (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 their own ecclesiastical organization.
It is evident that the Encratites represented a grave danger to the Church and to society, especially regarding the prohibition of marriage. They were considered heretics by St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 28; PG 7, 690-91), Theophilus of Antioch (Ad Autolycum, 52; PL 2, 72), and Hippolytus (Philosophorumena, VIII, 16-20; ed. P. M. Cruice, Paris 1860). Cf. also St. Epiphanius, Panarion, XLVII, XLVII; PG 41, 839-53.
The debate over the validity of the baptism they administered gave rise to the notable controversy between Pope Stephen and St. Cyprian.
Theodosius, together with the Manicheans, expressly condemned the Encratites and also the Apostolics, the Hieropracts, and the Sacrophagi—all of whom, it was said, were inspired by the principles of Encratism (second constitution against the Manicheans, Codex Theodosianus, XVI, tit. V, I, 7; I, 11).
Among the principal exponents of Encratism are Julius Cassianus, a Docetist, who composed a book; Hippolytus Vouytz; and Tatian, the author of the Diatessaron, whom St. Jerome calls princeps encratitarium (Epist., XLVIII, 2; PL 22, 494), and from whom a sect of Encratites took its name.