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Of the history of the Church in Spain in the first three centuries
after Christ we know almost nothing. St. Paul was, in all likelihood,
one of its first evangelists. It gave martyrs to the Church in the
persecution of Decius. Fifty years later than Decius, on the eve of the
greater persecution of Diocletian, its bishops, to judge from what we
know of the Council of Elvira (c. 300-305), were preoccupied with the
problems of a Catholicism so extensive and so universally popular that
in many respects it had become gravely relaxed. There were Catholics
who, even in time of peace, continued to make their offerings to the
pagan gods. Marriages between Christians and the heathen priests were
not unknown. The clergy showed too keen an inclination to engage in
commerce -- bishops no less than priests and deacons. Others practised
as moneylenders. The habit or example of idolatry was still strong and,
lest they should be worshipped, all pictures were now ordered to be
removed from the churches Clerics who are married are to live with
their wives as with their sisters, under pain of deposition. Rules are
laid down for the cases of conversion from such special classes as the
charioteers of the circus, and the comedians from the theatre who, once
converted, are strictly forbidden to return to their unhallowed
profession. With this council, held in the first ten years of the
fourth century, the veil falls once more on our knowledge of the early
Spanish Church. When it lifts, some seventy years later, it is to
disclose a Church torn by internal controversy, and to reveal one of
the most curious figures of all Church history. This was Priscillian.
He was a man of great distinction, well-born, cultivated, wealthy,
gifted with eloquent speech, with a genius for propaganda, and he was
wholly devoted to the cult of the ascetic life.
The different churches in Spain already by this time had each of them
its circle of ascetics -- men and women who had specially dedicated
themselves by a vow of continency in a spiritual union with Our Lord.
They would continue to live in their own homes, but all follow a more
or less universal rule, which prescribed special daily prayers, daily
reunions in the church, additional fasts, and abstinences, and a sober
manner of dress -- the women for example were veiled, wore no
jewellery, used no cosmetics. They would be, in Spain as elsewhere, the
local church's agents in the organised charities that played so great a
part in the primitive Christian life, care of the sick, of widows and
orphans, relief of the indigent poor. Priscillian was not in any sense
a pioneer in this ascetic movement, but his powerful personality gave
it a new impetus and speedily began to transform it.
Gradually, the multitudes whom he influenced -- and his disciples grew
in number very speedily indeed -- looked to Priscillian for direction
and not to the head of the local church, to Priscillian and his private
inspirations. And Priscillian was not limited by the traditional
sources of Christian Asceticism. The myths of the Gnostically-inspired,
apocryphal gospels served him with ideas no less than the genuine
Scriptures. The basis of his ascetic practices again was not Christian,
but the old oriental theories of the radical badness of matter, and of
the inevitable fundamental opposition between matter and spirit. This
showed itself in the exaggerated abstinences to which he was given and
which he recommended, condemnation of marriage, of the use of wine, and
the use of flesh meats as things bad and to be shunned. Little by
little his followers began to have the appearance of a sect apart, to
whom other members of the Church were as an inferior race. The
Priscillianists -- to anticipate a later name for them-habitually went
barefooted. Periodically, at fixed times, they withdrew themselves from
the world to give themselves to their own peculiar religious observance
in a kind of "retreat." They had their own use of the Holy Eucharist.
Women, especially, had an important place in the movement.
It was not long before the genius of Priscillian had completely
disturbed the Spanish Church, especially in the west and northwest, in
Portugal and Galicia. His ascetic reputation and what was known of the
severity of his life, were, for many people, decisive. Thousands joined
him and among them even some of the bishops. Other bishops began to
question the tendencies of the movement, to suspect the principles that
inspired it and then to organise against it. In 379 they sent to
consult the pope, Damasus I, and the following year, in a great council
at Saragossa, a number of the practices to which the followers of
Priscillian were said to be given, were forbidden under the strictest
penalties.
How strong, by this time, the movement had grown may be judged from the
next event in the story -- the election of Priscillian himself as
Bishop of Avila on the very morrow of the Council of 380. Immediately
he assumed the offensive, and made a great effort to oust his superior,
the Metropolitan of Lusitania. But that bishop, Idace, was not to be
easily overthrown. He had an influential friend at the imperial court
-- no other indeed than St. Ambrose -- and the only result of
Priscillian's manoeuvre was an edict from the emperor, Gratian, in
general terms, against "false bishops and Manichees." Already there
was, in this, menace of what the future might hold for Priscillian, for
the Manichee-to whose anti-social morality his own alleged customs bore
so striking a resemblance -- had been under the ban of the empire since
long before the conversion of Constantine. Priscillian, with some
friends, then set out for Italy, for Rome and Milan to assure himself
of the support of both pope and emperor. The pope would not receive
them; but from Milan they obtained, in the end, a decree which in
effect annulled that from whose execution they had fled.
Once more Priscillian was free to take the offensive, this time with
the civil authority behind him. The leaders opposed to him, menaced now
by the State as disturbers of the peace, took themselves to Treves, the
seat of the pretorian prefecture of the Gauls in which Spain lay. There
they found support in the bishops and the high officials, but
Priscillian's influence in Milan was still too great to be overthrown.
Suddenly the whole situation changed when, in 383, Maximus, the
imperial commander in Britain, declared himself emperor. He landed in
Gaul with an army and Gratian, marching north to meet him, was
assassinated at Lyons. Maximus was master of Britain, of Gaul and of
Spain. Of this empire Treves became the capital, and still at Treves
was the bishop who was Priscillian's chief enemy -- Ithacus, a man of
loose life, worldly, ambitious and, as the enemy of the bishop who had
found protectors at the court of Milan, likely to find a favourable
hearing with the victorious Maximus.
Maximus was sufficiently won round by Ithacus' charges to order that
Priscillian and a like-minded colleague, Instantius, should be arrested
and tried at Bordeaux by a council of bishops. Instantius was deposed,
but Priscillian, refusing a trial, appealed from the bishops to the
emperor. The scene changed to Treves and this time it was to the
criminal courts, on criminal charges, that Ithacus denounced his rival.
Priscillian was tried on an indictment accusing him of sorcery, of
diffusing obscene doctrines, of presiding at midnight reunions of
women, and of stripping himself naked to pray. With six associates he
was condemned; and, since sorcery was a capital offence, executed.
The sentences and their execution caused a sensation. St. Martin,
Bishop of Tours, had protested in advance against any sentence of
death. Ithacus, in his plea against Priscillian, had made the most of
his congenial opportunity to demonstrate publicly against all
asceticism and all ascetics, even to the extent of denouncing St.
Martin himself as a Manichee. The saint, undismayed, had continued to
urge his plea that in an affair which concerned questions of Catholic
doctrine, the lay court had no jurisdiction. The emperor had promised
that there should be no question of a death sentence and the bishop
returned home. Then, influenced by the anti-Priscillianist bishops,
Maximus had ordered an enquiry and, on the prefect's report that
Priscillian was guilty of sorcery, had ordered the trial that resulted
in the conviction and the executions. Nor was this the end.
Commissioners were sent to Spain to deal similarly with Priscillian's
adherents.
St. Martin returned to Treves and broke off all relations with the
Bishop of Treves and those who had shared in the enquiries and the
trial. Nor did he cease to protest against the iniquity of the death
sentences, until the emperor promised, as the gauge of his communion,
to halt the persecution then beginning in Spain. The pope, too
(Siricius, 384-396), asked for an explanation of the proceedings and,
fully informed by the emperor, excommunicated Ithacus and his
associates. Nor would St. Ambrose when, in the course of the year, a
political embassy brought him to Treves, give any recognition to the
bishop, "not wishing to have anything to do with bishops who had sent
heretics to their death."
For three years, however, despite St. Martin, the repression continued
until in 388 Maximus was slain and the West was once more ruled from
Milan. With this restoration of Valentinian II, Priscillian came,
posthumously, into something like his own. With the other supporters of
the late usurper the persecutors of Priscillian paid the inevitable
penalty. Ithacus and the others were deposed and exiled. The remains of
Priscillian were brought back from Germany with all manner of ceremony
to become the centre of a popular cultus, and soon Spain was once more
given over to the bitter fights of religious factions, Galicia and the
West ever more strongly Priscillianist, Betica and Carthaginia just as
strongly orthodox. For years the episcopate was divided. A council at
Saragossa (395) excommunicated the Priscillianist bishops and these,
reverting to the manoeuvre of their master, fled to Milan to enlist the
support of the court. St. Ambrose showed himself sympathetic, but
insisted on an abjuration of Priscillian's distinctive doctrines and on
the renunciation of the cult of his memory and his remains. The exiles
consented, and thereby gained the support not only of St. Ambrose but
also of the pope. They returned to Spain only to break their promises,
and at a new council (Toledo, 400) they were yet again condemned. This
time the condemnation broke the unity of the party, for while some of
the bishops submitted, others remained obstinate. Curiously enough the
submission was the cause of yet another division. Rome, consulted as to
the procedure to be adopted towards the repentant bishops, gave its
traditional advice that they should be shown every consideration.
Whereupon, as always, a faction ""more Catholic than the pope" showed
itself, declining to re-admit the repentant Priscillianists to
communion and breaking off all relations with those who did so. There
were now three kinds of Christians in Spain, the Priscillianists, the
moderate Catholics with whom, thanks to Rome, the repentant
Priscillianists were now united, and the fanatical Catholic opponents
of the reunion -- a lamentable state of affairs after thirty years of
controversy. Before any real improvement could take place there came,
in 406, the flood of the great barbarian invasion to submerge for a
time, with much else, these evidences of religious weakness and
dissension.
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