CHAPTER VII.

DECADENCE OF GNOSTICISM.

Christianity, at the point we have arrived at, had, if we may thus express it, reached the complete bloom of its youth. Life with it abounded, overflowed; no contradiction arrested it; it had representatives for all tendencies, advocates for all causes. The nucleus of the Catholic Church and orthodoxy was already so strong that all sorts of fancies could be found beside her without injuring her. Apparently, the sects denounced the Church of Jesus; but these sects remained isolated without consistency, and disappeared, for the most part, after having satisfied for a moment the needs of the little group which had created them. It is not that their action was barren; the almost individual secret instructions were at the moment of their highest popularity. Heresies almost always triumphed by their very condemnation. Gnosticism especially was chased out of the church and it was everywhere; the Orthodox Church, by striking at it with its anathema, impregnated itself with it. Among the Judeo-Christians, Ebionites and Essenes, it flowed along over the banks.

When a religion begins to count a large number of partisans, it loses for a time certain of the advantages which have contributed to found it; for man is better pleased and finds more comfort in the little gathering than in the numerous church, where he is not known. As the public power did not direct its energy in the service of the Orthodox Church, the religious situation was that which England and America present at this day. The chapels, if one may say so, were multiplied in all 65directions. The chiefs of the sects struggled to obtain influence over the faithful, as in our times this is done by the Methodist preachers, the innumerable Dissenters of free countries. The faithful were a sort of curacy driven off by greedy sectaries, more like hungry dogs than pastors. The women especially were the coveted prey; when they were widows and in possession of property, they never were but surrounded by young and clever directors, who strove by mildness and complaisance to monopolise the cure of souls, at once fruitful and sweet.

The Gnostic doctors had, in this hunt for souls, great advantages. Affecting a higher intellectual culture and less rigid manners, they found a sure clientèle among the richer classes, who desired to be distinguished and to escape the common discipline prescribed for the poor. Contact with the Pagans, and the perpetual contraventions of police rules which a member of the church was led to commit, contraventions which exposed him constantly to martyrdom, became tremendous difficulties for a Christian occupying a certain social position. Far from pressing towards martyrdom, the Gnostics furnished means to escape it. Basilides and Heracleon protested against the immoderate honours rendered to the martyrs; the Valentinians went further: in the time of hot persecution they advised that the faith should be denied, alleging that God did not demand from His adorers the sacrifice of life, and that it was better to confess Him less before men than before the Æons.

They did not exercise less seduction among rich women, in whom their independence inspired the desire for a personal position. The Orthodox Church followed the severe rule laid down by St. Paul, which forbade all participation by the woman 66in the exercises of the church. In these little sects, on the contrary, women baptized, officiated, presided at the liturgy, and prophesied. As opposed as possibly could be in manners and mind, the Gnostics and the Montanists had this in common, that, by the side of their doctors, a female prophetess was found; Helen beside Simon, Philumena beside Apelles, Priscilla and Maximilla beside Montanus, and quite a galaxy of women around Markos and Marcion. Fable and calumny took possession of a circumstance which lent itself to misapprehension. Many of these dependents could only have been allegories without reality, or inventions of the orthodox. But certainly the modest position which the Catholic Church always imposed on women, and which became the cause of their ennoblement, was not quite observed in these petty sects, subjected to a less rigorous rule, and little accustomed, in spite of their apparent holiness, to practise true piety, which is self-denial.

The three great systems of Christian philosophy which had appeared under Hadrian, that of Valentinus, that of Basilides, that of Saturninus, were developed without being much improved. The chiefs of these systems still lived or had successors. Valentinus, although thrice driven from the church, was much sought after. He left Rome to return to the East; but his sect continued to flourish in the capital. He died about the year 160 in the island of Cyprus. His disciples were all over the world. There was a difference between the doctrine of the East and that of Italy. The chiefs of the former were Ptolemy and Heracleon; Secundus and Theodotus at first, then Axiomicus and Bardesanus, directed the Oriental branch. The Valentinian school was much the most serious and Christian of all those which bore the general name of Gnostics. Heracleon and Ptolemy were learned exegetes in the 67Epistles of Paul, and the Gospel called that of John. Heracleon, in particular, was a real Christian doctor, by whom Clement of Alexandria and Origen profited a great deal. Clement has preserved to us from him one beautiful and elevated page on martyrdom. The writings of Theodotus were also habitually in Clement’s hand, and some extracts appear to us to have come from them into the great mass of notes’ made by the laborious Stromatist.

In many points of view, the Valentinians might pass for enlightened and moderate Christians, but there was at the bottom of their moderation a principle of pride. The Church was not, in their eyes, a depository of anything but a minimum of truth, barely sufficient for ordinary men. The basis of things was known to them alone. Under the pretext that they made part of the psychical world and could not fail to be saved, they gave themselves unheard-of liberties, ate of everything without distinction, went to Pagan festivals, and even to the cruellest spectacles, fled from persecution, and even spoke against martyrdom. They were people of the world, free in manners and conversation, treating as prudery and bigotry the extreme reserve of the Catholics, who feared a light word, even an imprudent thought. The direction of women, in such circumstances, presented many dangers. Some of these Valentinian pastors were plainly seducers; others affected modesty; “but soon,” says Irenæus, “the sister became enceinte by the brother.” They arrogated superior intelligence to themselves, and left to the simple faithful the faith, “which is very different.” Their exegesis was learned but barely safe. When they were pressed with texts of Scripture, they said the Scripture had been corrupted. When apostolic tradition was contrary to them, they no longer 68hesitated to reject it. They had, it appeared, a gospel which they called “The Gospel of the Truth.” They really ignored the Gospel of Christ. They substituted for salvation by faith or by works a salvation by gnosis, that is to say, by the knowledge of a pretended truth. If such a tendency had prevailed, Christianity would have ceased to be a moral fact, to become a cosmogony and a metaphysic without influence on the general progress of humanity.

It was not, moreover, with impunity that they flashed abstruse formulas in the people’s eyes, keeping back to themselves the meaning. One single Valentinian book remains to us, “The Believer’s Wisdom”; and it shows us to what a height of extravagance certain speculations had arrived—beautiful enough in the mind of their authors when they fell upon puerile minds. Jesus, after his resurrection, was reported to have passed eleven years on the earth to teach his disciples the highest truths. He told them the history of Piste Sophia; how she, enticed by her imprudent desire to seize the light she had seen at a distance, fell into the material chaos; how she was for a long time persecuted by the other Æons, who refused her rank to her; how at length she accomplished a series of proofs of repentance, until at last one sent from heaven, Jesus, descended for her from the luminous region. Sophia is saved by having believed in this Saviour before she had seen him. All this is expressed in a prolix style, with the wearisome process of amplification and hyperbole of the apocryphal gospels. Mary, Peter, Magdalene, Martha, John Parthenos, and the different Gospel personages play an almost ludicrous part. But the people, who found dryness in the restrained enough circle of the Jewish and Judeo-Christian Scriptures, took pleasure in these dreams, and 69many owed to such readings the opportunity of knowing Christ. The mysterious forms of the sect rested before everything on oral instruction, and its successive degrees of imitation fascinated the imagination and made them hold firmly to the revelations which they had obtained in consequence of so many trials. After Marcion, Valentinus was the heretic whose colleges were most frequented. Bardesanus, at Edessa, succeeded, by inspiring himself with it, in creating a large school of Christian instruction, such as had never been seen. We shall speak later on of this singular phenomenon.

Saturninus always had numerous disciples. Basilides had his successor, his son Isidore. There wrought, besides, in this world of sects, certain fusions and separations, which were often the outcome of the vanity of the leaders. Far from lending themselves to the exigencies of practical life, the Gnostic system became every day more crude, complicated, and chimerical. Every one wished to be the founder of a school, to have a church, with its profits; in this some one, clouded with doctors, the least Christian of men, sought to surpass the others, and added some oddity to the oddities of their predecessors.

The school of Carpocrates presented an incredible mixture of aberrations and of fine criticism. They spoke, as of a miracle of learning and eloquence, of the son of Carpocrates, named Epiphanes, a sort of infant prodigy, who died at sixteen years of age, after having astonished those who knew him by his knowledge of Greek literature, and especially by the knowledge he had of Plato’s philosophy. It appears that they had raised to him a temple and altars at Samos, in the island of Cephalonia; an academy was erected in his name; they celebrated his birthday like the 70apotheosis of a god by sacrifices, feasts, and hymns. His book “On Justice” was much boasted of; what has been preserved to us is a sophistical and rugged discussion which recalls Prudhon and the socialists of our days. God, said Epiphanes, is just and good, for nature is equality. The light is alike for all, the sky the same to all; the sun makes no distinction between poor and rich, nor male nor female, nor bond nor free. No one can take from another his share of the sun to double his own; it is the sun which nourishes all. Nature, in other words, presents to everyone an equal happiness. It is human laws which, by violating the divine, have introduced evil; the distinction between “mine” and “thine,” inequality, antagonism. Applying these principles to marriage, Epiphanes denied its justice or necessity. The desires which we all hold from nature are our rights, and no institution should put any limits to it.

Epiphanes, to tell the truth, is less a Christian than a Utopian. The idea of absolute justice bewitches him. As opposed to the lower world, he dreams of a perfect, true world of God, a world founded on the doctrine of the sages, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, where equality, and consequently community of goods, should reign. His mistake was to believe that such a world could have a place in reality. Led away by the Republic of Plato, which he took quite seriously, he indulged in the saddest sophisms, and although he doubtless failed to rebut the gross calumnies which they related concerning those festivals where, the lights being extinguished, the guests delivered themselves up to a hateful promiscuousness, it is difficult not to admit that he produced strange follies in that direction. A certain Marcellinus, who came to Rome under Anicet, adored the portraits of Jesus Christ, 71Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, offering them worship. Prodicus and his disciples, named also Adamites, pretended to renew the joys of the earthly Paradise by some practices far removed from the primitive innocence. Their church called itself Paradise; they heated it, and attended it naked. Notwithstanding this they called themselves continent, and made the pretension of living in a perfect virginity. In name of a sort of divine and natural law all these sects, Prodicians, Eutychites, and Adamites, denied the force of the established laws, which they qualified by arbitrary rules and pretended laws.

The numerous conversions of Pagans which had taken place created these kinds of scandals. They entered the church, drawn by a certain odour of moral purity; but they did not become saints for all that. A painter of some talent, named Hermogenes, thus became a Christian, but without renouncing the freedom of his pencil or his taste for women, or his recollections of Greek philosophy, which became amalgamated, good and evil alike, with Christian dogma. He admitted a primary matter, serving as a substratum to all God’s works, and the cause of the defects inherent in creation. They imputed several oddities, and Tertullian, with like rigorists, treated him with an extreme brutality.

The heresies of which we are speaking were all Hellenic. It was the Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato, which was the origin of it. Markos, whose disciples were called Markosians, left, on the other hand, the school of Basilides; the formulas upon the tetrade which he pretended were revealed to him by a heavenly woman, who was none other than Sige herself, would have been inoffensive had they not been joined to magic, thaumaturgical prestiges, philtres and arts capable of seducing women. He 72invented special sacraments, rites, anointings, and specially a sort of mass for his own use, which might have been imposing enough, had he not mixed with them sleight of hand passes analogous to the miracles of St. Januarius. He pretended by virtue of a certain formula to really change the water into blood in the chalice. By means of a powder, he gave the water a reddish colour. He caused the consecration to be made by a woman over a little chalice; then he turned the water of the smaller chalice into a large one which he held, pronouncing over it these words: “May the infinite and ineffable grace which is above all things fill thy internal being, and increase in thee its knowledge; shedding the grain of mustard seed upon good soil.” The liquid was then increased, no doubt the result of some chemical reaction, and overflowed in a great stream. The poor woman was stupefied, and everyone was struck with wonder.

The church of Markos was not only a nest of impostors; it passed also for a school of debauched and secret infamies. Perhaps this character was exaggerated, because in the Markosian cult the women acted as priests, and offered the Eucharist. Many Christian ladies they said allowed themselves to be bewitched; they put themselves under the direction of the sophist, and only came out bathed in tears. Markos flattered their vanity, holding towards them a language of equivocal mysticism, trampling over their timidity, teaching them to prophesy, and imposing on them. Then, when they were fatigued and ruined, they returned to the church, confessed their faults, and vowed themselves to penitence; weeping and groaning over the misfortune which had happened to them. The epidemic of Markos desolated principally the churches of Asia. The kind of connection which existed between Asia and Lyons brought this dangerous 73man to the banks of the Rhone. We shall see him make many dupes there; some frightful scandals celebrate his arrival in that church of saints.

Colarbasus, according to certain accounts, came very near Markos, but we do not know if we have here the name of a real person. It is explained by Col arba Qol arba, a Semitic expression for the Markosian tetrade. The secret of those bizarre enigmas will probably always escape us.