1. Since I have resolved with myself to set down in writing all the heresies flourishing or arisen in the age of Leo, now the very reason of my plan and of the time demands that, having brought to an end what had to be said concerning the heresy of the Manichaeans, I should now turn my mind and my very pen to reviewing the errors of Priscillian, which the same holy pontiff rejected, assailed, and proscribed. But as for what has to be said about the author of this new heresy, about his fatherland and character, about the synods gathered against him and his offspring, and finally about the various and manifold dogmas of this nefarious sect, no one hitherto has either accurately described it or at least brought it to light.
Therefore, when I had set my hand to composing these dissertations, and had understood that the matter was full of many dangers, I reckoned it necessary to run through the older and more recent writers on this subject; yet in such a way that, all prejudices being set aside, and led by no partisan zeal, I should present to my readers only those things which either lay open the truth, or at least seem to come nearer to the truth.
Therefore, since I had first prescribed for myself to treat of Priscillian's life and corrupt morals, I judged that no learned man would disapprove of this plan of mine, although in truth, in the very vestibule and course of the dissertation, I might seem to digress a little from the deeds of Leo, which it was my intention to relate and to vindicate. For, since in this part of ecclesiastical history we have met with some doubtful and obscure matters, others indeed spurious and false, and finally very many things wholly unknown, therefore that very zeal for truth which alone is seated in my mind compelled me to trace back and lay out the whole matter from its beginnings. Priscillian, then, born of noble stock, and abounding in the greatest riches, was a man keen in genius, restless,
eloquent, learned by much reading, most ready in discoursing and disputing. Fortunate indeed (says Severus Sulpicius) had he not corrupted his excellent genius by a depraved pursuit; you could plainly discern in him many goods of mind and body, but he was likewise most vain, and puffed up more than was just by knowledge of profane things. When therefore he had taken into fellowship with himself a certain Marcus the Egyptian, from him he drank in and imbibed into his mind all the crimes and monstrous doctrines proceeding from the sects of the Gnostics and Manichaeans.
Then, having added to the dogmas of both their own peculiar outrages, he introduced into the world a new sect, in which promiscuous lusts, defilements, adulteries, dissolutions of marriages, lies, perjuries, and other things of this kind were practised as though religious and lawful. And when I had pondered all these things with myself, I was easily brought to this conviction, that nothing more harmful and base to the honesty of nature, nothing more pernicious to human society, nothing finally more superstitious or more sacrilegious to the ruin of religion had ever been devised by any of the heretics.
For besides the shameful deeds committed against themselves and against their neighbours, and besides the injuries inflicted upon God, the study of astrology and the belief in fatal necessity so prevailed with Priscillian that he continually gave himself to magical arts. Nay, although he had been initiated by holy baptism and had given his allegiance to the divine power of the Christian faith, yet he lived so entangled in the errors of the heathen that he strove to worship the stars favourable to him, as he supposed, and to appease those opposed to him, employing for this cause profane and sacrilegious rites, which from Moses down to our own times the Church had ever guarded against and abhorred.
Meanwhile, however, lest he should seem to despise every consideration of piety and religion, by an excessive art of deceiving, in which he was thoroughly skilled, he made a show of humility in his dress, went about barefoot, preached that fasts were to be kept even on Sundays and on the Nativity of the Lord; and while he affected a feigned gravity of manners, he especially soothed the minds of women, whose company he always sought. For these were easily enticed by his excessive art of flattery, and flocking to him in droves, were caught without difficulty by desire for novelties and by licence for lusts. These things which we have thus far set forth concerning Priscillian's morals, institutions, and manner of acting have been called into doubt by no one;