Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.
PAUL OF SAMOSATA, St. — St. P. visited by St. Anthony. Detail of the fresco of the Anchorites in the Thebaid (14th cent.) — Pisa, Camposanto.
while the Word and the Holy Spirit are not true eternal hypostases like that of the Father. At most he granted the Word a transitory and ill-defined subsistence. “Regarding the Incarnation he said that Christ was a mere man” (anon., De sectis, 3, 3: PG 86, 1213-16). He insisted on the superiority of Christ over Moses and the prophets; divine wisdom dwelt in him as in an exceptional temple, but he is not God.
To enter into the details of the system one must resort to conjecture, since reliable sources are lacking. P. wrote nothing; his theology is known only through fragments, which come from stenographic reports of the discussion between him and the priest Malchion and from the synodal letter of 268. There is moreover, 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 Artemone and above all Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius.
BIBL.: G. Bardy, Paul de Samosate. Étude historique, 2nd ed., Louvain 1929: fundamental work summarized in DThC, XII, cols. 46-51. Also noteworthy is the erudite but tendentious monograph by F. Loofs, Paulus von Samosata (Texte und Untersuchungen, 46, fasc. V), Leipzig 1924: the author attempts to prove that the doctrine of P. represents primitive Christianity; Fliche-Martin-Frutaz, II, pp. 337-42.
Martino Jugie
Cite this article
“PAOLO DI TEBE.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX (1952), p. 470. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/paolo-di-tebe.
