PAUL OF SAMOSATA. - Heretic of the 3rd century, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268.
I. LIFE
P. appears in history only from his assumption to the see of Antioch, in 260. Born at Samosata of a poor family, he acquired a considerable fortune, later increased as receiver of the finances (ducenarius) of the king of Palmyra, Odenathus II, who became lord of Antioch after the defeat of Valerian by the Persians (260), and was succeeded at his death, in 267, by his widow Zenobia. The new prelate immediately adopted the behavior of a great lord. The letter of the Council of Antioch of 268, which condemned him, attributes to him the manners of a trafficker, accuses him of pride and arrogance, reproaches him for worldly pomp, for seeking applause in church, in particular for the suppression of the hymns in honor of Jesus Christ.
The last point especially was serious. The noise of this heretical preaching soon spread among the Christians of the provinces near Antioch. As early as 264, some bishops of these regions, among them Helenus of Tarsus and Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, gathered at Antioch to make an inquiry into the conduct and doctrine of P. Dionysius of Alexandria, who had been invited, excused himself, pleading his poor health and his old age, but wrote to the Church of Antioch on the question. What happened in this assembly is little known; it is known only that P., who appeared there as the accused, worked in such a way as to avoid any condemnation. A subtle spirit and a skillful dialectician, he managed to dissemble his error and promised to amend himself in his manner of speaking as in his conduct, but in reality he continued to act and to teach as before. Therefore six of the bishops who had taken part in the Council drew up a formula of faith (whose authenticity is sufficiently established) and ordered P. to subscribe to it (cf. the formula, which is of the highest dogmatic interest, in G. Bardy [v. bibl.], pp. 13-19). The bishop of Antioch was deaf to this admonition and continued to scandalize the faithful as much by his teaching as by his conduct. A new council was needed, which met at Antioch in 268. The bishops, 70 or 80 in number, carefully examined the appeals against the Samosatene. It was above all a matter of clarifying his doctrine and of convicting him of error; they succeeded, thanks to the distinguished learning of the priest Malchion. A long theological discussion ensued between the two, which was taken down in shorthand. Its text was preserved for a long time. The fragments that remain have been collected by Bardy (op. cit., pp. 34-79). P., condemned and deposed, was replaced by Domnus, son of the previous bishop, Demetrianus. The Council made its decision known by means of an encyclical letter addressed to Dionysius of Rome, to Maximus of Alexandria and to all the bishops and the clergy of Christendom.
P., strong in the protection of Zenobia, refused to leave the episcopal residence and could still play the part of bishop for those, fairly numerous, whom he had won over to his cause. Only in 272, at the time of the passage of the emperor Aurelian through Antioch, were the orthodox able to re-enter into possession of the "house of the Church," following an appeal to the Emperor. The latter "ordered that the house be assigned to those to whom the bishops of Italy and of the city of Rome would have adjudged it." And so P. was ignominiously driven from the church by the secular arm (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 30, 19). After this expulsion, P. survived for some time, defended by disciples faithful to his theology who organized themselves at Antioch into a separate community. In its 19th canon the Council of Nicaea confirmed the practice of rebaptizing them when they returned to the Catholic Church. They were called Paulianists or Paulianizing; toward the end of the 4th century, the sect disappeared.
II. DOCTRINE
If one sticks to the broad outlines, it is easy to give a clear idea of P.'s heretical doctrine. He was at once a monarchian and an adoptionist; he denied the dogma of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation; for him there exists only one God, the Father, while the Word and the Holy Spirit are not true eternal hypostases as that of the Father is. At most he granted the Word a transitory and ill-defined subsistence. "Regarding the Incarnation he said that Christ was an ordinary man" (anon., De sectis, 3, 3: PG 86, 1213-16). He insisted on the superiority of Christ over Moses and the prophets; the divine wisdom dwelt in him as in a temple in an exceptional degree, but he is not God.
If one wishes to enter into the particulars of the system, one must resort to conjectures, since sure sources are lacking. P. wrote nothing; his theology is known only through fragments, which come from the stenographic accounts of the discussion between him and the priest Malchion and from the synodal letter of 268. There is also, as direct testimony, the letter of the six bishops, written after the Council of 264. Indirect testimonies abound from the 4th century onward, but they provide few precise indications and almost always dwell on the comparison between the doctrine of P. and that of other heretics, such as Artemon and above all Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius.