PHOTINUS. - Heretic of the 4th century. A compatriot, disciple and deacon of Marcellus, of Ancyra (the Eastern councils insist greatly on this dependence), P., who possessed Latin as well as Greek, was elevated to the see of Sirmium (today Mitrovica) in Pannonia, probably at the end of 343. Together with Marcellus he was condemned a first time by the Synod of Antioch of 344 (in the formula of faith called the "macrostic ecthesis"; cf. Evagrius, Hist. eccl., II, 19: PG 67, 228 C). The condemnation was accepted by the Westerners at Milan (345), but remained ineffective because of the favor that P., a valiant preacher, enjoyed among his people. A similar fate befell other condemnations pronounced against him by a second Milanese synod and by the bishops assembled in 347 at Sirmium (the chronology of these events is not certain). At the Council convoked at Sirmium in 351 P., in public disputation with his adversaries, was convicted of heresy, deposed and exiled. Recalled by Julian the Apostate, in 364 he was again driven out by Valentinian. He died in his native Galatia in 376.
Since all the works of P. are lost (St. Jerome names the treatises Contra gentes and Ad Valentinianum), our knowledge of his doctrine depends on the conciliar decrees and on later summaries. Like Marcellus, P. denies the Word a personal subsistence; he calls God λογοπάτωρ, in order to exclude any (hypostatic) difference between the Father and the Word. While, however, the conception of Marcellus is rather Sabellian, P. approaches the dynamic monarchianism of Paul of Samosata: Christ, according to P., is nothing but a man wonderfully born, endowed by the energy (ἐνεργητική ἐνέργεια) of God, adopted as Son of God and cause of his miracles and virtues.
The adherents of P., called Photinians or also homunionitae, were never numerous. It is not clear to what extent they survived in the sect of the Bonosians in the Danubian provinces.
Bibliography2 works
Agostino Mayer