Chapter 21: The Spirituals, Also Called Messalians or Euchites

Unlike Arianism, Donatism and Monophysism — which, born from rivalries of nations and churches, might better be characterized as schisms rather than heresies — the movement of the “Spirituals,” who were called Messalians or Euchites by their adversaries, was only Christian in appearance, under which was expressed the ordinary taste for life, so easily diverted [tourne] by dereliction, leveling and destructive asceticism, or religious or political fanaticism.

By combating the rigor of the New Prophecy, as it was perpetuated by Novatian, Donat and the Circoncellions, the Church of Rome used a political wisdom of which many popes later showed themselves to be worthy inheritors. Though it was protected by its status as a unique religion, Catholicism did not win the game. Other than a minority, the Greco-Roman aristocracy was reluctant to banish from its everyday life the pleasures of the bed, the table, nay, the bloody games of the circus. Unlike the “Virgin Church” dear to Tertullian and Donat, the Catholic, apostolic and Roman Church required a strict obedience to its authority and representatives by those who accorded the sacraments and the remission of sin. In all the acommodations thus rendered possible — and the specifications of Augustine of Hippone would soon come to clarify things — nothing prevented a Roman citizen inclined towards hedonism from embracing Catholicism. Priests, bishops and popes, moreover, would only put the brakes on their ordinary debaucheries after the Sixteenth Century, that is, after the cold shower of the Reformation, which washed the Catholic stains from its primitive Christianity, the true Western Christianity, anti-Semitic and puritan: the New Prophecy.

But the anti-Montanism of the Church also expressed the voice of wisdom. The trinity, by which the Church — as much as the Spirit — mediated between God and the Son who was incarnated in the weakness and corruption of human and terrestrial nature, also filled a primordial function: it avoided the confrontation of dualism; it set right the balance between good and evil, oppression and revolt, repression [refoulement] and relief [defoulement]. The reverse of Puritanism, it was unbridled license. In this sense, the “Messalian” movement constituted the antithetical continuation of Montanism.

In his Hymns about the Heresies, which were composed between 363 and 373 in Edessa, Ephrem speaks of people who gave themselves up to a free morality under the cover of devotion. They called themselves pneumatikoi, “Spirituals.” Their adversaries called them the Messalians (from the Syrian word m’salleyane, “those who pray”) or Euchites (from the Greek euchitai).

Epiphanius of Salamis mentioned their presence in Antioch around 376 or 377. He described them as vagabonds who, refusing to possess any goods, slept in the streets of the town, men and women mixed together, rejecting all forms of work and contenting themselves with begging and praying.

Their initiator was Adelphius, but other names were linked to a current that was scattered everywhere, continued to perpetuate itself, and of which it is permitted to conjecture that it rallied together a great number of people who were drawn more by ephemeral ecstasy than by the prize of a hypothetical beyond — indeed, this current hasn’t ceased to trace its furrows underneath the prudent appearances of religious obligation. Dadoes, Sabas, Hermas, Symeon and Eustathe of Edessa have been mentioned by Photius, Michael the Syrian, Bar-Hebraeus and Philoxene of Mabbourg.

In the 380s, Flavian, patriarch of Atioch, persecuted the Spirituals and chased them into the provinces of Lycaonia and Pamphylia, where they were condemned by the bishops around 388. In 390, Flavian of Antioch went further by anathematizing all of the Messalians, despite Adephius’ attempts to defend their cause.

The persecution of the Spirituals was extended into Armenia. Letoios, bishop of Melitene, ordered the burning of monastaries into which the Messalian doctrine had penetrated. (The recidivists were condemned to having their shins sliced open.[295])

Around 405, Atticus, patriarch of Byzantium, insisted on the necessity of expelling the Messalians. Much later, Nestorius would associate himself with the struggle. In 428, the imperial police were tasked with intervening against the Spirituals and making them outlaws. In 431, the Council of Ephesus would ratify the measures previously taken, without great success, it would seem.

In the second half of the Fifth Century, the Spirituals united around Lampetius, a priest ordained around 460 by Alypius, the Bishop of Cesarea of Cappadoce. According to Theodore Barkonai, Lampetius founded in the mountanous region between Sicily and Isauria monasteries of men and women in which a joyous life was lived. (*) There were other places in Egypt where Lampetius enjoyed the protection of Alpheius, bishop of Rhinocoloura (El’Arich, near the Palestinian border). And how could they not revive the memory of Carpocratus in Alexandria? But the patriach of the city [El’Arich], either through nonchalance or sympathy, was content to demand an oral repudiation of error from the “uncultivated” people.

(*) In the Third and Fourth Centuries, the various ascetic Christianities condemned the women who lived with bishops, priests or deacons, and [worse] exercised sacramental functions, under the name “Agapete” (agapetai, “the beloved”). Relatively favorable to women, the Celtic tradition introduced the Agapetes into the new Christian cults of Ireland and Britain, in which, during the Sixth Century, there still existed monasteries composed of female hosts (cohospitae), who conferred the sacraments without, for all that, renouncing their [feminine] charms. The Arthurian legends would frequently evoke them. Around 150, The Pastor of Hermas gave an allegorical meaning to their double nature as libertines and holy “virgins.”

The actions taken at the beginning of the Sixth Century by the pariarch of Antioch, and his refutation of a work by Lampetius entitled Testament, show the persistance of the movement, which was also being fought by the Monophysite Churches of Syria.

One would find Spirituals in Constantinople towards the end of the Sixth century, grouped around a convert named Marcian, from whom came the name Marcianites, according to Maxime the Confessor.[296] Photious, author of a Fourth Century study of the Messalians, speaks of contemporary heretics with whom he was involved.