Priscillian

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Priscillian

(prĭsĭl`yən), d. 385?, Spanish churchman, bishop of Ávila. His appointment to the bishopric was protested by orthodox leaders, who had condemned his former activities as a lay preacher in S Spain, at the Synod of Zaragoza (380). Although Priscillian's ideas were repeatedly denounced, it is not clear that they were heretical. He was suspected of Manichaean and Gnostic leanings because he stressed puristic ideals, sought perfection in asceticism, and dabbled in astrology. The church had been attacking his views for some time when Roman Emperor Maximus ordered that Priscillian be put to death for practicing magic. His execution was strongly protested by his former opponents in the church, St. Ambrose, St. Martin, and the pope. After his death Priscillian was venerated as martyr and saint, and his followers grew. Not until after a council held at Braga (563?) finally condemned Priscillianism did it disappear from Spain.
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This subject can be approached from the point of view of "real women"--women who were tortured and executed--as well as from that of "women-as-code." Women accused of "heresy" in early and medieval Christianity include those labeled "Gnostics," Montanists, Priscillianists, Origenists,(90) Cathars,(91) and Beguines.(92) Studies of the witch craze now fill volumes, since Hugh Trevor-Roper's pioneering work of 1967 (in which, it must be noted, "women" are not the issue at [or on the] stake).(93)
Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History
This slim volume includes the entire extant corpus of Pacian, bishop of Barcelona in the mid to late fourth century (three letters to the Novatianist Sympronian, a treatise on penance, and a sermon on baptism), and completes the corpus in English translation of Orosius, priest of Braga in the early to mid fifth century (an apologia against Pelagians and a query to Augustine on the error of Priscillianists and Origenists; his Historia, translated by Roy Deferrari, is found in vol.
Iberian Fathers, vol. 3, Pacian of Barcelona, Orosius of Braga
One of the victims was Vincent, priest in an unnamed Baetican city, who remained in communication with the Luciferian bishop Gregory of Iliberris (Granada) and consequently suffered persecution at the hands of bishops Hyginus of Corduba (who had previously persecuted the Priscillianists) and Luciosus of an unnamed diocese (76).
El papel de los lideres civicos en Hispania durante la Antiguedad tardia
[...] Among the opponents of the Resurrection we naturally find first those who denied the immortality of the soul; secondly, all those who, like Plato, regarded the body as the prison of the soul and death as an escape from the bondage of matter; thirdly the sects of the Gnostics and Manichaeans who looked upon all matter as evil; fourthly, the followers of these latter sects the Priscillianists, the Cathari, and the Albigenses; fifthly, the Rationalists, Materialists, and Pantheists of later times.
Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their 1949 crisis
examines how a number of heretics and heresies mentioned by Jerome in his letter to Ctesiphon (including Simon Magus, though he is not the focus of this chapter) lived on in the Pelagians and the Priscillianists. Again, in chapter 7, he examines Vincent of Lerins's association of Simon with Priscillian, offering a descriptive account but little comparison of Vincent with Jerome (other than that the former was more forthcoming than the latter [127]), without addressing the obvious question of Vincent's degree of dependence on Jerome.
Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval, and Early Modern Traditions
A whole set of later groups were probably its offshoots: Quintillianists from a prophetess of the third century; Pepuzites, Priscillianists (of Priscilla, not Priscillian), apparent oddities like the Artotyrites and Tascodrougites, and the Tertullianists of Augustine's day, who were the true Montanists of North Africa.
Montanism, Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy
While in De viris illustribus 122-23 (composed in 393), Jerome does not outrightly pronounce a sentence of `heresy' on Priscillianists, by 415 (as evidenced in ep.
Hieronymus und sein kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen

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