PRISCILLIAN and PRISCILLIANISM. —
A heresiarch and intrusive bishop of Ávila (c. 345–85), whose tragic fate is being progressively clarified by scholarship. The accusations of heresy against him stem more from the accusations of his contemporaries and the certain heterodoxy of his disciples than from the content of his writings known to date.
A Spanish nobleman of wide culture and practiced in magical arts, P. while still a layman, around 370, mainly in the regions of Mérida and Córdoba, propagated an esoteric doctrine of Gnostic-Manichaean origin, promising in secret gatherings, through certain ascetical practices, a gradual perfection to initiates. With his persuasive eloquence, he seduced many nobles and commoners, as well as some bishops such as Instantius and Salvianus. These men conferred first the presbyterate and then episcopal consecration upon the leader for the see of Ávila, thereby increasing the prestige of the sect. It soon spread through Lusitania, Baetica, Galicia, and southern Gaul.
A fanatical reaction led by the bishops Hydatius of Mérida and Itacius of Ossanova soon arose to oppose II. The controversy engaged the attention of ecclesiastical and civil authorities, Spanish councils such as those of Zaragoza in 380 and Toledo in 400, St. Damasus and St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Martin of Tours, and the Emperor Maximus.
As for the heresiarch, his fate occupied 15 years of varying fortunes, until he was convicted of sorcery and immorality before the imperial tribunal and condemned according to the law; he was executed at Trier in 385 (Sulpicius Severus, *Chron.*, 2, 50, 8). The condemnation, to which St. Martin of Tours vainly opposed himself and which was disapproved by Pope Siricius and St. Ambrose, crowned the heretic among his followers with the halo of martyrdom; and the sect, especially in Spain, gained a splendor that lasted until the anathemas of the Council of Braga in 563 dealt it a fatal blow, though not entirely extinguishing II.
Until the end of the last century, nothing was known of P.’s personal writings except for an epistolary fragment preserved by Orosius and the *Canones in Epistolas s. Pauli*, a brief Pauline theology in 90 sentences compiled by the Spanish bishop, a certain Peregrinus, until in 1889 the treatises of P. discovered at Würzburg were published. Great was the surprise to find in them neither the intellectual gifts that Sulpicius acknowledged in P. nor the bizarre accumulation of errors imputed to him by tradition. Some denied these treatises to the heretic, attributing them to Instantius, one of his disciples (so Don G. Morin, *Pro Instancio contre l'attribution à Priscillien des opuscules du manuscrit de Wurzbourg*, in *Rev. bén.*, 30 [1913], pp. 153–173; opposed by J. Martin, *Priscillian oder Instanius*, in *Hist. Jahrb.*, 47 [1927], pp. 237–51). Others, such as G. Scheps, F. Paret, and E.-Ch. Babut, sought to rehabilitate P.’s person, whose condemnation they deemed unjust and unfounded. Today, criticism agrees with tradition, basing itself on the testimonies of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Philastrius, Sulpicius Severus, Itacius, Innocent I, St. Isidore, and the Councils of Zaragoza, Toledo, and Braga, and on the guilt of Priscillianist heresy, which filled Spanish history for more than a century. Nor have decisive reasons been found to deny the authenticity of treatises that, though not devoid of Priscillianist traces, are apologetic in tendency.
Reduced to outline, the principal tenets of the heresy are as follows: a modalist theory that denies the Trinity; Christ, the angels, and the human soul would be Gnostic emanations; the devil, as the principle of evil, would be the cause of the body as well as of storms and droughts; marriage is condemned, while extramarital union is permitted, and the resurrection of the flesh is denied, etc. Priscillianism in Spain provoked an entire cycle of refutations. The most significant are the following. After Tiberianus of Baetica and his friends, authors of a profession of faith to which P. alludes (*Liber apologeticus*, 3), and Latronianus—“a poet comparable to the ancients,” according to St. Jerome (*De vir. inl.*, chap. 122)—whose works have perished, the most important figure is Dictinius, bishop of Astorga, who abjured his errors at the First Council of Toledo. The heretical treatises were, however, read with veneration even in the time of St. Leo the Great, which is why the Council of Braga in 563 condemned them anew. One of them, entitled *Libra*, denounced from the Balearic Islands to St. Augustine around 420 by Consentius (*St. Augustine, Epist.* 119), justified lying, a typical Priscillianist recourse: *“iura, perciura, secretum prodere noli”*, and provoked St. Augustine’s refutation: *Contra mendacium*. Nothing remains of the biting accusations of Hydatius and Itacius.
The Symbol of the Faith and the anathemas of the First Council of Toledo were refuted by the Galician bishop Pastor: *Libellus in modum symboli* (cf. J. A. de Aldama, *El Simbolo Toledano*, I, Rome 1934); Syagrius, bishop of the same region, distinguished himself in the controversy with certain *Regulae definitionum contra haereticos* (cf. G. Morin, *Pastor et Syagrius, deux écrivains perdus du Ve siècle*, in *Rev. bén.*, 10 [1893], pp. 385–94). Of the lively controversy stirred by Toribius of Astorga (c. 440), two letters remain, while a *Commonitorium* and a *Libellus* by the same, now lost, are reflected in the reply of Pope Leo I in 447. With his *Commonitorium de errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum*, Orosius drew St. Augustine into the dispute, who responded with his work *Contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas*. Finally, much of the abundant symbolical production in Spain until the end of the Visigothic era exhibits this anti-Priscillianist tendency, not without anti-Arian concerns.