SIMON MAGUS. - A Samaritan, contemporary of the Apostles (Acts 8:9-24). St. Justin (Apol., I: PG 6, 3-68) says he was a native of Gitton (Πττων); the deacon Philip, while evangelizing Samaria, found there S., who had acquired extraordinary fame for his magics (μαγεών), so that the crowds of Samaria cried out to him: "This man is the Power of God, which is called Great" (Acts 8:9-10).
The Acts of the Apostles narrate his baptism, his encounter with Peter (v.) and his shameful offer to the same (ibid. 8:9 ff.). Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Eusebius, the pseudo-Clementines and the apocryphal Acts of Peter (v.) also speak of him.
Justin relates (Apol., I, 26; Dial. cum Tryph., 120) that S. in his travels was accompanied by a certain Helena, formerly a prostitute, who would be "the primordial idea" (έννυα) proceeding from him "great power of God" (notions of plainly gnostic flavor); furthermore that S. came to Rome under the emperor Claudius and there continued his magical arts and received divine honors with a statue on the Tiber Island bearing the inscription "Simoni Deo Santo" (the inscription, on the base of the statue found there in 1574, read: "Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio", and referred to the Sabine deity Semo Sancus).
St. Jerome attributes these words to S.: "ego sum Sermo Dei, ego sum Speciosus, ego Paraclitus, ego Omnipotens, ego Omnia Dei" (In Matth., XXIV, 5: PL 26, 183), which seems an amplification of Acts 8:9-10. Irenaeus presents S. as the source of all heresies (Adv. haer., I, 23, 2; 27, 4), that is, of the gnostic heresies which he chiefly has in view. In the brief notices of Justin, which are the most reliable, one discerns the doctrinal germs that are at the basis of gnosis. Moreover it is difficult, given the scarcity of sure and precise data, to reconstruct Simonian gnosis. According to Hippolytus (Philosoph., VI, 7, 20) S. would have written a work entitled Ἀπόρσος μετφίλ, "Great Declaration". But it is probable that this writing comes from the followers of S., called Simonians, a gnostic sect that still persisted in the 4th century, as one learns from Eusebius (Hist. eccl., II, 13). Legendary are the accounts of the apocryphal Acts of Peter and of the pseudo-Clementines (Homil., 2, 22 ff.; 4, 4 ff.; Recognit., 1, 72; 2, 7 ff.; 3, 12 ff.) about the supposed encounters with the apostle Peter (v.) at Rome or in Syria, and about the challenge to fly, falling afterward at the prayers of the same Apostle. The opinion of Ch. Baur, who on the flimsy foundation of the ps.-Clementine homilies saw in S. the Magician the exponent of the struggle of Paulinism against Petrinism, is entirely outdated.
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Gaetano Stano