4. Prosper in his Chronicle is the authority that the Priscillianist plague, a most grievous one, began to spread abroad in the year of Christ 379, chiefly in Spain, in the consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius, writing thus: Gratian, after the death of his uncle, took Theodosius the son of Theodosius into partnership, and handed over to him the empire of the East. At that time Priscillian, a bishop from the Gauls, out of the dogma of the Manichaeans and Gnostics founded a heresy of his own name. Now that the consulship of Ausonius, Hermogenes, and Olybrius must be assigned to the aforesaid year 379, the tables of the Roman consuls plainly show.
I know, however, that men most skilled in the art of criticism have rather judged that this heresy was propagated through Spain later. This opinion William Cave, Severinus Binius, and others have followed, contending that this heresy arose two years afterwards, and that Priscillian drew his origin from Spain. They assert that both these points were affirmed by Severus Sulpicius. But from his writings neither of them is in fact ascertained. For the aforesaid Severus, having undertaken to describe the evils of his own age, by which the Churches were polluted in no ordinary manner and all things thrown into confusion, denounces their chief authors, yet neither closely defines the time, nor asserts that Priscillian arose in the Spains.
Nay, if we carefully attend to the force of Sulpicius' words, it must be believed that this sect long lay hidden before Priscillian joined it, namely when Marcus the Egyptian, born at Memphis, with the support of a certain noble and very wealthy woman called Agape, and of Elpidius the rhetorician, first introduced the sect of the Gnostics into the Spains, to which afterward Priscillian himself joined, from whom that heresy took its name. Then first (he says) that infamous heresy of the Gnostics, a ruinous superstition hidden in secret mysteries, was detected within the Spains. The origin of this evil, arising from the East, from the Egyptians, but by what beginnings it there gathered strength, is not easy to relate. Marcus first brought it within the Spains, having set out from Egypt, born at Memphis.
His hearers were a certain Agape, a woman of no ignoble rank, and the rhetorician Elpidius. By these Priscillian was instructed, of noble family, exceedingly rich in resources, etc. There, then, Severus Sulpicius distinguishes the times: one, namely, in which the sect of the Gnostics was spreading; the other, in which Priscillian, joining the Gnostics, and having surpassed and outdone their impiety, turned the errors of Marcus, Agape, and Elpidius into the monstrous portent of a new and most nefarious sect, with wickedness, audacity, and raging lust. That this happened in the consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius, and could not have occurred later, can be determined from other matters also and from the Council of Caesaraugusta itself.
For when, on the authority of Sulpicius, the same Priscillian perceived that the number of his sectaries was daily increasing, he began to call them all together into one place; and being accustomed to lead them away into the hiding-places and byways of the mountains, he there held nefarious assemblies, which, in order to withdraw them from the eyes and knowledge of others, he permitted his sectaries to feign as communion with the Catholic Church, having received the sacred elements in hand and carried them away with themselves. When therefore the bishops of the Spains came to know that religion, justice, and honesty were going to ruin, and that no measure was set to their luxury, sacrileges, or magical incantations, they carefully framed those laws and canons which they thought most necessary for curbing these most grievous evils.
It is therefore not probable, as Cave and the rest have asserted, that this heresy came to light in the year of the Lord 381. For how could this have happened, when in that year, already propagated far and wide through those provinces, it had fixed deep roots in the minds of the wicked; when a very great multitude of men and women, on certain days of the year, both in the mountains and in the villages, the Priscillianists held their assemblies; when finally all the obscene and profane things that were practised in their hiding-places had become known to the pastors of the Catholic Church? That all these things had become known, the eight canons of that Council of Caesaraugusta declare, of which we shall speak a little later.
Nor indeed let us suppose that, as soon as this heresy became known, the holy prelates of the Church came together into a council. For when the virulent corruption of Priscillian was first discovered by Hyginus, bishop of Corduba, successor of the great Osius—a corruption which had also depraved and corrupted certain bishops, among whom were Instantius and Salvianus—he wished the matter to be referred to Idacius, priest of the city of Emerita. But he, namely Hyginus, blazing out against the sectaries without measure (says Severus Sulpicius) and beyond what was fitting, by harassing Instantius and his associates, put a kind of torch to the nascent fire, so that he exasperated the wicked rather than restrained them.
The matter therefore having been referred to Idacius, and Instantius and his associates having been more grievously stirred up, they did not yet immediately come to a council. But after many contests entered into between the two parties, when the hope of the Catholics, by which they persuaded themselves that the heretics could be brought to repentance, was utterly frustrated, at length twelve Catholic bishops assembled at Caesaraugusta. Now, having noted this former slip of Cave, Severinus Binius, and others, it would be fitting to guard against and eliminate the last one, namely that concerning the fatherland and origin of Priscillian. But lest I should seem to wish to bring the nation of this or that people into odium, I shall scarcely touch upon that question.
I shall only add that this assertion is quite wrongly ascribed to Severus Sulpicius—namely that Priscillian arose in Spain; for whoever shall have run through the whole and entire second book of the same Severus's History will meet with nothing of the sort. Nay, if we are willing to survey the testimonies of other ancients, we shall still be able to define this matter with difficulty. For even Jerome himself, who was wont to relate the origins of others, not once and again, but many times, in recounting the morals, deeds, and death of Priscillian, everywhere preserved deep silence about his fatherland and origin.
He confesses, however, that Priscillian scattered his errors through all the assemblies of men and women in Spain, and teaches that he took Galla, a woman not by nation but by name, as his associate in his depraved crimes; but from what people or place he himself drew his origin, he wholly kept silent or dissembled. But that not one out of so many ancient Fathers who wrote about this heresy supports the opinion of Cave and other more recent writers is most thoroughly established. Augustine indeed in various and several places describes the errors of the Priscillianists, which, he says, Priscillian established in Spain. Orosius, almost contemporary with Priscillian, in his Commonitorium, or Consultation, addressed to Augustine, complained only that this heresy was diffused through Spain.
Idacius in his Chronicle makes mention both of Priscillian and of the Priscillianists; but nowhere did he indicate that this man arose in Spain. Epiphanius likewise, in heresy 49, treating of Priscillian, in few words delineates his outrages and crimes, but asserted nothing about his birth and fatherland. The author, finally, of the book On Heresies, which is inscribed to Rufinus the Palestinian in volume XXVII of the Library of the Fathers, has only this: The seventieth heresy, that of the Priscillians among the Spaniards, Priscillian is read to have begun.
When I pondered all these things with myself, it was not that I might defend the rights of the Spanish nation, or that I might clear them of this mark, but rather that I might insist upon the truth, and take care to guard against that suspicion by which some might judge that Priscillian arose in the Gauls. Now the most grave and most solid foundations of this suspicion were augmented not only from the aforesaid Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, but from many other conjectures. For both that Chronicle which bears only the name of Prosper of Aquitaine, and that which is enlarged with the name of Tiro and was brought to light by Canisius, expressly have: Priscillian, a bishop from Galatia; Priscillian, a bishop from the Gauls.
But besides, they expressly indicate that the province of Aquitaine was corrupted by this heresy; that among the other women Priscillian had as an associate in his crimes and death Euchrotia, the wife of Delphidius, or Helpidius, the rhetorician. But this Delphidius, or Helpidius, was a man of Gaul, and teaching rhetoric in that same province of Aquitaine, as has been made clear from the most ancient monuments of Christian Gaul, whose collectors indeed, when treating of the archbishopric of Bordeaux, wrote thus concerning Saint Delphinus, at the year of Christ 380: Saint
Delphinus, a singular ornament of the Gallican Church...., at the council held at Caesaraugusta in Tarraconensian Spain, in the year 380 or the following year, took part along with other prelates of Aquitaine, where Priscillian and Delphidius, an Aquitanian rhetorician, and other followers of nefarious dogmas were condemned. Moreover, finally, how can it happen that we should reject the testimony of Prosper, so open and so piously clear? That testimony indeed neither Tillemont nor Dionysius Petavius rejected or marked as an error; who, although they dissemble treating of the fatherland and origin of Priscillian, nevertheless with us traced the beginning of that heresy back to the year of Christ 379, led by the sole testimony of Prosper.
Prosper himself therefore would not, lest it turn to the disgrace and reproach of himself and of the whole Aquitanian nation, have called Priscillian a Gaul, if this had not been sufficiently and more than sufficiently clear both to himself and to the rest. If indeed we should reason thus, against the most widespread tradition and the conviction of all, we should seem to seek a knot in a bulrush. For that Priscillian drew his origin there, where his errors were first propagated, is to be affirmed without any hesitation of mind whatsoever.
But if thereafter the words of the founded Chronicle should seem to be repugnant, which exhibit the word Galatia, yet one ought not thence to judge that Priscillian was a Gaul, since the learned have very often judged that that Chronicle especially teems with many errors, and since besides that word was sometimes used by the ancients to designate the peoples of Galatia settled within the confines of the Spains, as we could demonstrate by six hundred examples. This we shall especially furnish in adorning the letter of Saint Leo the Great to Turribius of Astorga, concerning which we reserve to treat more brilliantly in its proper place in the narration of this history.