Montanism
A burst of new prophecy and rigorous discipline that drew even Tertullian's loyalty
Montanism was a second-century movement, named for Montanus and known as the New Prophecy, that claimed fresh prophetic revelation and demanded rigorist discipline. It attracted the noted writer Tertullian. The mainstream Church rejected it, wary of its claims to ongoing revelation and its severe standards. The precise date of its origin is uncertain, generally placed in the mid- to later second century.
How it traveled
- The Church History of EusebiusCaesarea · 339explains
- Jerome and Gennadius. Lives of Illustrious MenBethlehem · 420applies
- The Letters of St. JeromeBethlehem · 420challenges
Key passages(20)
A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles · John Chrysostom
τί ἐστιν ἔκστασις. Because the word also, and more commonly, means the being beside one’s self, amazed, or stupefied by excess of grief, Chrys. explains that it denotes the being rapt out of the bodil
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Apollonius. [a.d. 211.] He was a most eloquent man, according to St. Jerome; and his writings against Montanism were so forcible as to call forth Tertullian himself, to confute him, if possible. He f
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Jerome and Gennadius. Lives of Illustrious Men · Jerome
Chapter LIII. Tertullian the presbyter, now regarded as chief of the Latin writers after Victor and Apollonius, was from the city of Carthage in the province of Africa, and was the son of a proconsul
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The Canons of the Councils of Ancyra, Gangra, Neocæsarea, Antioch and Laodicea, which Canons were Accepted and Received by the Ecumenical Synods · The Ecumenical Councils
This synod here declares the baptism of the Montanists invalid, while in the preceding canon it recognised as valid the baptism of the Novatians and Quartodecimans. From this, it would appear that the
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
This was the first work, so far as we know, to denounce the practice of prophesying in ecstasy. The practice, which had doubtless fallen almost wholly into disuse, was brought into decided disrepute o
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
Chapter XIX.—Serapion on the Heresy of the Phrygians. 1. Serapion, Both versions of the Chron. agree in putting the accession of Serapion into the eleventh year of Commodus (190 a.d.), and that of h
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
But although it failed and passed away, Montanism had a marked influence on the development of the Church. In the first place, it aroused a general distrust of prophecy, and the result was that the Ch
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
The exact date of the rise of Montanism cannot be determined. The reports which we have of the movement vary greatly in their chronology. We have no means of fixing the date of the proconsulship of th
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
Maximilla and Priscilla, or Prisca (mentioned in chap. 14). They were married women, who left their husbands to become disciples of Montanus, were given the rank of virgins in his church, and with him
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
The reference here seems to be to a death like that recorded by a common tradition of Simon Magus, who by the help of demons undertook to fly up to heaven, but when in mid air fell and was killed. Whe
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
21. For some of the heresies have a great many martyrs; but surely we shall not on that account agree with them or confess that they hold the truth. And first, indeed, those called Marcionites, from t
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
Chapter XVIII.—The Manner in which Apollonius refuted the Phrygians, and the Personswhom he Mentions. Or events (τίνων). 1. As the so-called Phrygian heresy On the name, see chap. 16, note 2. Of t
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
This appointment of economic officers and the formation of a compact organization were a part of the one general plan, referred to in the previous note, and must have marked the earliest years of the
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The Commonitory of Vincent of Lérins, For the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies · Vincent of Lérins
Tertullian a great Trial to the Church. [46.] The case is the same with Tertullian. Hardly anything is known of Tertullian, besides what may be gathered from his works, in addition to the following
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The Letters of St. Jerome · Jerome
Letter XLI. To Marcella. An effort having been made to convert Marcella to Montanism,a.d. Montanus lived at Ardaban, in Phrygia, in the second half of the second century, and founded a sect of proph
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The Second Ecumenical Council: The First Council of Constantinople · The Ecumenical Councils
Canon VII. Those who from heresy turn to orthodoxy, and to the portion of those who are being saved, we receive according to the following method and custom: Arians, and Macedonians, and Sabbatians,
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Jerome and Gennadius. Lives of Illustrious Men · Jerome
Chapter XXXIX. Miltiades of whom Rhodo gives an account in the work which he wrote against Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla, wrote a considerable volume against these same persons, and other books Agai
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
The first extant notice of Apolinarius is that of Serapion, bishop of Antioch from about 192 to 209 (see Harnack, Zeit des Ignatius, p. 46), in the epistle quoted by Eusebius in V. 19. We learn from t
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
On the approximate date of this Apology, see the previous note. No fragments of the work are now extant, unless the account of the thundering legion mentioned by Eusebius in Bk. V. chap. 5 belong to i
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The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
εἰς τὴν τῶν κατὰ Μιλτι€δην λεγομένων αἵρεσιν. The occurrence of the name Miltiades, in this connection, is very puzzling, for we nowhere else hear of a Montanist Miltiades, while the man referred to h
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