Nicolaites

NICOLAITES. - A libertine-Gnostic sect, mentioned in Rev. 2:6 and 16 ("false apostles": v. 2), which infested the Asian communities of Ephesus (where it was praiseworthily combated) and of Pergamum. They must, it seems, be identified with the "supporters of the doctrine of Balaam" (ibid. 2:14) at Pergamum, and with those "seduced by Jezebel the prophetess" (ibid. 2:20) at Thyatira who practiced fornication and the use of idol-offerings. Perhaps they claimed to be endowed with prophetic charism, which would explain the allusion to Balaam. To them seems due, in part, the moral laxity also of the communities of Sardis and Laodicea (ibid. 3:1-6, 14-22).

St. Irenaeus calls them disciples of Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch, one of the first seven deacons (Acts 6:5), and considers them a branch (ἀπόσπασμα) of false gnosis (C. haer., I, 26, 3; III, 11, 1: PG 7, 687 and 880); so too St. Hippolytus (Philosophoumena, VII, 36). The opinion that links the Nicolaitans to the deacon Nicolaus (one of the 70 disciples, later bishop of Samaria; in 12th place in Pseudo-Hippolytus: PG 10, 956, in last or 70th place in the Chronicon Paschale: PG 92, 545) became common. But it is possible that the Nicolaus who founded the Nicolaitans was different from the deacon: some made him a disciple of Simon Magus. J. Coccejus put forward the hypothesis, later maintained by L. Vitringa (1705: ba'al-'am) and C. A. Heumann (1712), then by J. Janus (1723), J. D. Michaelis, J. G. Eichhorn, H. Ewald, E. W. Hengstenberg, R. E. Stier, and today by R. H. Charles, that Nicolaus was a symbolic name, the Greek adaptation of "Balaamites," maintaining the equivalence Νικόλαος = Bile'am; but νικάν ("to conquer") has a different sense from bila' ("to devastate"). Tertullian, St. Epiphanius, St. Philastrius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Cassian, trace the sect ("assertores libidinis atque luxuriae": Tertullian: PL 2, 306) back to the deacon Nicolaus, whom they compare to the traitor Judas. But it is more probable that his name was abused: Clement of Alexandria (Strom., II, 20; III, 4: PG 8, 1061, 1129-32), followed by Eusebius (Hist. eccl., III, 29: PG 20, 275-78) and by Theodoret (Haer. fabulae, III, 1: PG 83, 401), explains that immoral men distorted the saying of the pious deacon Nicolaus παρχιρῶθαι τῇ αἰχρίᾳ δῆ ("one must neglect the flesh") and authorized every vice by availing themselves of his authority; to this there seems to be an allusion (3rd cent.) in Constit. apost., VI, 8, 2 (after enumerating the Gnostic sects and using the words of Clement of Alexandria): οἱ νῦν ψευδόνυμοι Νικολαῖται "those who today are wrongly called disciples of Nicolaus" (ed. F. X. Funk, I, p. 119). "The Nicolaitans were connected to the deacon Nicolaus just as the Marcionites were to the apostle Paul" (Harnack [v. bibl.], p. 422). By the end of the 2nd century the Nicolaitans must already have been merged with other Gnostic sects (Eusebius, ibid.: "the heresy of the Nicolaitans remained for a very brief time"). In the Middle Ages the opponents of ecclesiastical celibacy were called Nicolaitans.

Antonino Romeo