PNEUMATOMACHI. – Trinitarian heretics who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit (c. 360–fifth century).
I. HISTORY. – In the Symbol of the Council of Nicaea, with regard to the Holy Spirit, it was said simply: “We believe... and in the Holy Spirit” (Denz-U, 54). But in 359–60 ff. Athanasius learned from his friend Serapion, bishop of Thmuis in Egypt, that some of the faithful, while rejecting Arianism, were in error concerning the Holy Spirit, whom they held to be: “not only a creature, but one of the spirits who serve (God), and differing from the angels only in degree” (Ad Serap., 1, 1: PG 26, 530 ff.). Athanasius called these heretics “Tropici,” because they interpreted as tropes (metaphors) the passages of Scripture contrary to their opinion. The Synod of Alexandria in 362 saw the first official reaction against this error (cf. Tamus ad Antiochenos, 3: PG 26, 800).
In Constantinople and Asia Minor, those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit were called p., and it seems that shortly after 366 a firm group of them was formed there among the Homoiousians, adherents of the deposed patriarch Macedonius (v.) and therefore called “Macedonians.” In 373 Sebaste (v.) appeared as “head of the heresy of the p.” (St. Basil, Ep. 263, 3: PG 32, 980). Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus were its representatives at the time of the Council of 381 (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 8). The historians who wrote on the subject after 380 also attributed particular importance to Marathonius of Nicomedia, because the “Macedonians” were also called “Marathonians.” But, as in the case of Macedonius himself, there is no evidence that Marathonius was properly a p. When the Macedonians, or Marathonians, subsequently accepted the Pneumatomachian doctrines on a broad scale, the group’s monastic asceticism helped to win many recruits to the new heresy (cf. Sozomen, Hist. eccl., IV, 27). The ecclesiastical reaction against the p. became intense from about 373 onward (the Illyrian Synod dates from 373 [Theodoret, Hist. eccl., IV, 8]; followed by St. Basil with the De Spiritu Sancto [375: PG 32, 67 ff.]; the synodal letter of Amphilochius of Iconium [ca. 375: PG 39, 96]; St. Epiphanius, Panarion [before 377; Haer. 74, against the p.: PG 42, 473 ff.]; Pope Damasus with the Anathematismi of 375–80 [PL 13, 358 ff.], and the Ep. Ea gratia [before 381, ibid. 351]). Around 380, the party of the p., already commonly called Macedonian, caused considerable confusion and uncertainty of ideas even among the orthodox themselves (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. theol., V, 5: PG 36, 137); consequently the Nazianzen rose up with his Orationes theologiae to defend the correct Trinitarian doctrine in Constantinople, also against them. The Council of Constantinople of 381 (v.), attended by thirty-six p. headed by Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus, did not overcome their opposition (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 8), and in its first canon the Council also anathematized the heresy “of the Semi-Arians, that is, the p.” (Denz-U, 85); efforts to lead them to orthodoxy in 383 were likewise unsuccessful (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 10). Theodosius struck at them, together with other heretics, in a series of civil laws in which they appear under the name of “Macedonians” (Cod. XVI, 5, 11 ff.).
In practice, however, even afterward they enjoyed a relative freedom of worship (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 20), and Didymus of Alexandria, in Book II of his De Trinitate (381–92: PG 39, 448 ff.), deemed it necessary to combat them anew. The two dialogues Adversus macedonianos (among the works of St. Athanasius: PG 28, 1291 ff.) and the dialogues De Sancta Trinitate (ibid., 1113 ff., especially the third, ibid., 1201 ff.) were also directed against them. Recently all these dialogues have been claimed for Didymus (cf. A. Günthör, Die 7 pseudonthanasischen Dialoge, Rome 1941). Toward the decline of the fourth century, the p. still displayed a certain activity, as attested by a controversy they held at Anazarbus in 392 with Theodore of Mopsuestia (cf. Baradbesabba, Storia: PG 9, 506 ff.; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Controversia con i macedoniani: ibid., 637 ff.). In the first decades of the fifth century they still had one church in Constantinople, one in Cyzicus, and several others in the Hellespont, where they were very numerous. Nestorius (v.) obtained repressive measures against them around 428, leading some of them back to orthodoxy (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., IV, 4: VII, 31). Subsequently the p. disappeared from history.
II. DOCTRINE. — Information about their doctrines is provided by the orthodox Fathers who opposed them, to whom must be added Cyril of Alexandria, especially in his De Sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate dialogi (PG 75, 657 ff.), written in 425, and also by several fragments of two properly Macedonian dialogues preserved by those same Fathers (cf. Fr. Loofs, Zesei..., cited in the bibliography). As regards the Word, not only the “Tropicists” of whom St. Athanasius speaks, but also several of the later p. accepted the homoousion in the orthodox sense (cf. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 31, 24: PG 36, 160: 41, 8: ibid., 440; Sermones arianorum, frag. 6: PL 13, 610 ff.; St. Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 74, 1: PG 42, 473. For the testimony of St. Cyril of Alexandria, cf. J. B. Wolf, op. cit. in the bibliography, pp. 44–49). There is insufficient evidence to maintain with Loofs that the p. were all homoiousians; nevertheless, the majority of the p. really were.
The specific point of the heresy was that, with regard to the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son, subordinationism (v.), according to which the Holy Spirit was believed to be inferior in nature to the Father and the Son: many, together with the Arians properly so called, regarded him as an actual creature, created out of nothing by the free divine will, although more mobile than the other creatures, because he was the first creature of the Son. Others, and not a few, followed Eustathius of Sebaste, more an ascetic than a theologian and a seeker of middle ways in dogmatics (cf. St. Basil, Dp., 128, 2: PG 32, 556), who asserted: “I neither dare call the Holy Spirit God, nor do I dare call him a creature” (Socrates, Hist. eccl., II, 45). Thus many took refuge in the concept of an intermediate being, neither God nor creature.