MONTANUS and MONTANISM. – Montanus is the founder of Montanism, an enthusiastic and rigorist sect that began in Phrygia ca. 172 and was therefore called the “heresy of the Phrygians”; by its own adherents, however, it was termed the “new prophecy,” on account of the alleged revelations of the Paraclete.
The followers of Montanism were also called “Catagri” (from the Greek οἱ χατὰ Φύγας) or Pepuzians (from the holy city of the movement); according to the leaders of the various groups, they were distinguished as Proclians, Eschiniti, Tertullianists, Priscillianists, Quintillianists (the last two named after the prophetesses Priscilla and Quintilla). With the exception of the writings of Tertullian, the other, not abundant Montanist literature has been lost; only the collection of prophetic sayings of Montanus and his two first female disciples are preserved, consisting of 14 oracles (6 attributed to Montanus, 3 to Priscilla, 5 to Maximilla). To these are to be added 4 others transmitted by Tertullian as effata of the Paraclete. Our knowledge of Montanism is therefore based on anti-Montanist and heresiological sources.
I. THE ORIGINS OF MONTANISM
Little is known about the person of M. Before his conversion to the Christian faith, he may have been a priest of the fanatical cult of Cybele. Nor is it certain when the movement began; according to Epiphanius (Haeres., 4: 8; PG 41, 856) it would have originated ca. 156–57; according to Eusebius, however (Chron., II; PG 19, 563), in the years 172–73. This second date is more probable (the intervention of the martyrs of Lyons, the oldest event that can be independently assured from the two disputed dates, falls only in the year 177, and the first pope consulted on the question of Montanism was Eleutherius [v.], 174–89). According to the earliest sources, M. proclaimed himself the organ of the Paraclete, who, announced in the Fourth Gospel, had not yet descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, but was to manifest Himself thereafter through him, so as to restore the Church to full truth. Two women, Priscilla (or Prisca) and Maximilla, were the first to be won over to the new doctrine; having also become partakers of the prophetic gift, they were soon venerated alongside Montanus himself.The prophecy was announced as new, especially in its ecstatic form (contrary to the Catholic concept of prophecy as set forth by St. Paul; 1 Cor. 14). The prophets of Montanism fell into violent ecstasies, and in a state of rapture and abstraction from the senses, they uttered the “effata” of the Paraclete. In this characteristic violent ecstasy, one is wont to recognize the particular contribution of the Phrygian region, home to intense religious emotions, such as the orgiastic cult of Cybele. Regarding its content, the prophecy announced the imminent parousia of Christ and the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem into the Phrygian plain, between the towns of Pepuza and Tymion, where M. wished to gather all Christendom. Against the backdrop of such ardent expectation of the imminent parousia, the moral demands of primitive Montanism must be understood. The faithful were to prepare for a radical detachment far greater than had hitherto been practiced in Christian communities. An intense asceticism was cultivated, concretized in the total renunciation of marriage (the prohibition of second marriages, with the implicit allowance of the first, must be considered a later mitigation of the original demand), in the prescription of more prolonged and austere fasts. Later, periodic fasts were established in the sect; M. himself probably required that the entire life of the faithful, until the Lord’s return, be a continuous fast. A third original demand required absolute readiness for martyrdom (cf. the two effata of the Paraclete cited by Tertullian, De fuga, 9; PL 2, 133). Particularly harsh was the Montanist stance on the penitential question, characterized by the following effatum of the Paraclete: “Potest Ecclesia donare delicta, sed non faciam, ne et alii delinquant” (Tertullian, De pudicitia, 21; PL 2, 1078). The obscure saying, in its strong antithesis, evidently a response to M.’s opponents, foretells, even in the remission of post-baptismal sins, a new rigorism entirely in keeping with the other demands of the movement. Finally, to the original patrimony belong the promises of special rewards for faithful followers and the Quartodeciman practice in the celebration of Easter. In opposition to Gnosticism (v.), the other great danger of the Church in the 2nd century, Montanism revealed itself as of purely intractable origin. The doctrine of the faith and Scripture were not touched. But with his appeal to the Paraclete, who through him was to complete the work of Christ, M. in fact radically altered the Catholic concept of the Church. Not the bishops, but the new prophets, the true “spiritual men,” represented the authority of the Church; this conclusion was later deduced with perfect clarity by Tertullian: “Et ideo Ecclesia quidem delicta donabit; sed Ecclesia spiritus per spiritalem hominem, non ecclesia numerus episcoporum” (De pudicitia, 21; PL 2, 1080). M. himself, a spirit not speculative but a fervent enthusiast, does not seem to have been equally aware of the revolutionary character of his own work, which from the outset appeared rather as a movement of spiritual renewal within the bosom of the Church itself, a fact that must have strongly favored its propagation.
II. THE EXPANSION OF MONTANISM
The religious enthusiasm, the esteem for charismatic gifts, the ardent eschatological expectation, and the orthodoxy of doctrine must have given Montanism a particular power of attraction within the Church of the 2nd century. The founders died early: Maximilla ca. 179, M. and Priscilla even earlier, but the new prophecy had already crossed the borders of the region where it had arisen (Ardabau, Pepuza, Tymion); from Phrygia it had spread like wildfire throughout Asia Minor (thus the Church of Thyatira in Lydia had passed entirely over to M.’s following) and from there radiated into Syria and Thrace. The West was soon involved as well. The letters that the adherents of Montanism sent to the centers of Western Christendom to win them over to their cause have not been preserved. But from Eusebius (Hist. eccl., V, 3; PG 20, 437) we know that the famous letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul to the brethren of Asia and Phrygia, written in the year 177, contained also a judgment on the prophetic activity of M. and his companions, an opinion that Eusebius judged “pious and orthodox.” Moreover, from Lyons letters were also sent, written by the martyrs before their death, to the brethren of Asia and to Pope Eleutherius “pro pace Ecclesiarum” (ibid.). It seems, therefore, that the attitude in the principal Gallic Church was one of prudent reserve: while Montanism was in its infancy, advice was given in favor of peace, without thereby favoring the new prophecy. At Rome, Pope Eleutherius, to whom St. Irenaeus brought the letter of the martyrs of Lyons, had certainly already been informed of Montanism by other means. The scarcity of sources does not allow us to ascertain with certainty the attitude assumed by the Pope. It is probable that he did not formally condemn the Phrygian movement but issued a declaration unfavorable to it: this is deduced from a notice by Tertullian (Adv. Praxem, 1; PL 2, 178 sqq.); Prasca, a leader of the Patripassians, having come from Asia to Rome, would have induced the Pope (supposed to be Victor I, 189–98, or, according to De Labriolle and Ehrhard, more probably Zephyrinus: 198–217) to withdraw the letters of communion already issued in favor of the Montanists, appealing to the official declarations of his predecessors (“praecessorum auctoritates”). These declarations of the predecessors of Zephyrinus (Eleutherius and Victor I), without constituting a true condemnation (which would be difficult to explain otherwise given the initial sympathy of ZephyrinusFor the Montanists), they must also have been unfavorable to the new prophecy. The popes, therefore, not yet having clearly grasped the true nature of the movement—which in the West also presented itself with greater sobriety—remained reserved, partly due to the high esteem then accorded to charismatic gifts, as well as to the fact that the Montanists ostentatiously professed orthodoxy in doctrine. It seems that the sect had already, in this period of initial expansion, fallen from its original high level. Anti-Montanist literature arose against the avarice of the prophets, against the crimes of a certain Alexander who claimed to be a martyr; the primitive postulates regarding marriage and fasting were abandoned, and prophets and martyrs were granted a certain power to remit sins (cf. the excerpts from the anti-Montanist Apollonius in Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, V, 18). The enthusiasm for martyrdom, however, remained steadfast, and the Montanists could appeal to the great number of their martyrs. Doctrine was also compromised. In Rome, a portion of the Montanist community, led by Eschine, aligned itself with the modalist Monarchianism (v.) of Noetus (cf. Hippolytus, *Refutatio omnium haeres.*, VIII, 19; ed. P. Wendland in *CB*, 26, p. 238), while another faction under Proclus maintained the Church’s Trinitarian faith.
Scant information survives regarding the constitutional aspect of Montanism during this period. It appears that the Montanist communities in Asia had a charismatic organization, whose members were prophets, martyrs, and prophetesses; among these, after Priscilla and Maximilla, Quintilla stood out, and her followers were called Quintillians (cf. St. Epiphanius, *Haeres.*, 49; *PG* 41, 880).
**III. MONTANISM OF TERTULLIAN.** — In Africa, the new prophecy found in Tertullian (v.) its most prominent and active adherent. Of his thirty-one surviving works, eleven belong to the Montanist period (204–206; 222–223). A man of strong individualistic tendencies, Tertullian was drawn to Montanism because it distinguished itself from every heresy—particularly Gnosticism—in matters of orthodoxy; and also because it marvelously accommodated his own Christian ideal, steeped in the most radical ethical rigorism, which allowed him to override the opposition of the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the superior authority of the Paraclete. When his hope of persuading the Church at Carthage to accept the new prophecy proved vain (cf. his first two Montanist works: *De virginibus velandis* and *De exhortatione castitatis*, from 205–206), Tertullian openly broke with the Church (by 207 at the latest), turning against it with increasing harshness (characteristic is his designation of the Church as the “Church of the psychics,” the lower class of men in Gnostic systems).
Yet Tertullian was too strong a personality not to imprint his own mark upon Montanism; he gave the new prophecy a personal and local coloring (thus he entirely omits mention of Pepuza, speaks little of the founders of the sect, appealing most often directly to the Paraclete); in return, he provided Montanism with a clear soteriological foundation when he proclaimed the activity of the Paraclete as the fourth and final phase of the economy of salvation (after the initial state of “nature fearing God,” the childhood guarded “by the Law and the Prophets,” and the youth nourished “by the Gospel,” now justice “is perfected through the Paraclete into maturity”; *De virg. velandis*, 1; *PL* 2, 938). While he accepted—contrary to his temperament—the ecstatic form of the new prophecy (he defends it in *De exstasi*, a seven-book treatise, unfortunately lost), he departed from primitive Montanism in his judgment on the position of women in the community; he energetically excluded them from any right to teach, to offer sacrifice, and above all from any priestly function (*De virg. velandis*, 9; *PL* 2, 950). In his struggle against the Church, Tertullian addressed all the principal themes of Montanist rigorism: he condemned avoidance of persecution as a denial of God’s will (*De fuga*, ca. 211–212), including a violent diatribe against second marriages (*De monogamia*, ca. 217) and against the Church’s indulgent practice regarding fasting (*De ieiunio adversus psychicos*), reaching the peak of his polemic in the controversy over ecclesiastical “peace,” which he now, contrary to his earlier view, restricted to “lesser sins” (“peccata in hominem”), while for grave sins he applied the principle: “For who forgives sins, if not God alone?” (*De pudicitia*, 21; *PL* 2, 1077).
One cannot deny, as Faggiotto (*La diaspora cat.: frigia*, cited in bibliography, p. 129) has sought to do, that Tertullian truly converted to Montanism; yet it is equally true that he did not so much serve the new prophecy as place it at his own service. In the end, he even separated from Montanism and, followed by a small group of adherents, founded the party of the Tertullianists, whose last remnants returned to the Church sometime before 428 (cf. St. Augustine, *De haeres.*, 86; *PL* 42, 46).
**IV. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MONTANISM.** — As against Gnosticism, the Church waged a twofold struggle against Montanism, theological and ecclesiastical. The theological polemic (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, V, 16–18, has preserved excerpts from the so-called “Anonymous Anti-Montanist,” a three-book treatise written by a Phrygian bishop or priest ca. 192, and from the work that a certain Apollonius directed, twenty years later, against the prophecy and life of the Montanists) sought especially to prove that the new prophecy was not the work of the Spirit of God and to reject its rigorist postulates. Among the opponents of Montanism, some extremists went further. Already St. Irenaeus (*Adv. Haeres.*, III, 11, 9; *PG* 7, 890ff.) censured those who, in opposition to the false prophets, rejected the Gospel of St. John because the Lord there promises the Paraclete. From Eusebius (*Hist. eccl.*, VI, 20) we learn that at the time of Pope Zephyrinus the Roman presbyter Gaius (v.) rejected, in a polemical treatise in the form of a dialogue with the Montanist leader Proclus, the Apocalypse as a source of the sect’s chiliasm.
The ecclesiastical struggle against Montanism manifested itself properly first in Asia, where at a certain moment the danger must have been grave. Some bishops attempted to convert the new prophets. Zoticus of Comana and Julian of Apamea went to Pepuza to cast out the demon of Maximilla, but were turned away by the prophetess’s followers (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 16; PG 20, 472). The danger prompted the neighboring bishops to hold assemblies in which Montanism was condemned. These meetings may be seen as the first provincial synods. Also directed against Montanism is the oldest known synodal letter, a writing of Bishop Serapion of Antioch, signed by several other bishops and accompanied by the refutation of Montanism written by Bishop Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 19; ibid., 431). The outcome of this twofold struggle was the expulsion of the new prophecy from Catholic communion and the organization of its followers into separate communities. In these, by the fourth century, the patriarchs of Pepuza held first place, then the κοινωνοί (associates), and finally the bishops (cf. St. Jerome, Ep. 4; PL 2, 476). In these communities Montanism survived for a long time. Yet the very grave danger that the sect had posed at its rise was already overcome by the middle of the third century. In the year 263–64 the Montanist community of Thyatira, which had existed for more than ninety years, returned to the Church; this was certainly not the only such case. Nevertheless, at the end of the fourth century Montanism was still strong in Phrygia, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia, as well as in Constantinople. Despite repressive measures by Christian emperors, the sect persisted in the East until the eighth century. There seem to have been cases in which Montanists burned themselves alive in their own churches rather than surrender them to Catholics.
The importance of the victory over Montanism is to be sought in the renunciation of the eschatological enthusiasm proper to the early days of the Church, in the ever more decisive affirmation of hierarchical organization founded upon the apostolic succession of bishops, in the safeguarding of the Church’s universality—destined to win for Christ not merely a small group of exalted spiritualists but the whole world—against the subjectivism and religious individualism of Phrygian prophetism.