Chapter 24: Priscillian of Avila

Among the letters falsely attributed to Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (executed in 258), there is one — emanating from Novatian’s partisans, that is to say, from the Christians loyal to the New Prophecy and hostile to the lapsi — that attests to the presence in Spain of Christian communities of the Montanist tendency, the ardor of which Novatian had revived in the fire of imperial persecution.

In 254, an African council convened under the egis of Cyprian provided his support to the Novatians who, in Lerida, Leon and Astorga, rejected the ministers suspected of abjuration during Dece’s repressions.

Thus, with the Constantinian turn, the Catholic ecclesiatical faction that acceded to power recognized everywhere the authority of the perjured priests and collaborators. (See the example of Bishop Cecilian, enemy of Donat in Carthage.) A Century later, Bishop Pacianus of Barcelona denounced penitential discipline and the rigor of the priest or bishop named Sympronianus.[305]

Priscillian’s intervention inscribed itself in the persistance of a Christian tradition with which Catholicism confirmed its break by reason of its political aims. His execution drew a bloody stroke across archaic Christianity sacrificed to national security [la raison d’Etat].

Through the argument without reply of the sword, Catholicism cut itself off from a Christianity that would not cease to haunt it during the long funeral procession of the Vaudois, apostolics, Flagellants, [and] Spiritual Franciscans, right up to the emergence of a Reformation in which the spirit of Montan and Tertullian would be reincarnated in the founding fathers of modern capitalism.

Born around 340 to a well-to-do and probably senatorial Roman family, Priscillian was in his thirties when he adhered to the Christian current that was traditionally ascetic, millenarianist and on the look-out for the second coming of the Christ.

Priscillian soon clashed with the representatives of Rome and the new tendency. Among the clerical functionaries of the emperor, two dignitaries — Ithacius, Bishop of Ossonuba (Faro) and his Metropolite, Hydatius of Emerita Augusta (Merida) — accused Priscillian of imposing on his faithful an oath of loyalty to him. He inflamed the Council of Saragossa, which in 380 convened twenty-six bishops from Spain and Portugal, and two from South Gaul. What was the exact accusation? That Priscillian, well versed in biblical exgeses, referred to texts other than the canonical ones, which had only been recently imposed. But the progress of Manicheanism, the great competiting religion, offered the “Romans” the occasion to appeal to the amalgam, which was the ordinary ingredient of such polemics. Priscillian, a perfect ascetic, declared himself favorable to celibacy for priests. It was no longer necessary to assimilate him with the disciples of Mani, against whom the neo-Novatians had, all things considered, never ceased to struggle.

That same year, Priscillian was elected Bishop of Avila. This angered Hydatius, who obtained, one after the other, the support of Ambroise, Bishop of Milan and a future saint, and an imperial rescrit that ordered the deposition of Priscillian and the banishment of the “pseudo-Bishops and Manicheans.”

Soon afterwards, Priscillian, two bishop friends and three women from his congregation went to Rome via the [province of] Aquitaine, so as to plead their case and prove their religious orthodoxy. They expressed the wish to be judged, not by a civil tribunal, but an ecclesiastical proceeding. In Milan, Ambroise refused to give them an audience. Addressing themselves to Macedonius, Ambroise’s adversary, they managed — through an intermediary — to join with Emperor Gratian, who was originally from Spain and who was convinced by their arguments, and so restored their See to Priscillian and his friend, Bishop Instantius.

Ithacius reacted by winning over Treves, where he reported the affair to Gratian. But, in August 380, Gratian was assassinated by a rival, another Spaniard, Magnus Maximus, who was acclaimed “Augustus,” although legitimate recognition of him was refused, which abandoned him to the uncertainties of usurpation.

Pressed by the desire to reconcile the sympathies of a unitary and Roman Church, Magnus Maximus took hold of the trial like it was a political tool and convened a synod in Bordeaux so as to settle the question by a veritable pontifical sovereignty. His hatred of Gratian enjoined him to demonstrate that, contrary to his predecessor, he would tolerate neither polytheism nor heresy. Priscillian, summoned to Treves with his friends, confronted the bishops of Spain and Gaul, who had been informed of the decisions of Maxime [Maximus?] beforehand.

With the exception (one says) of Martin of Tours, all condemned the Bishop of Avila, who — in his combat against the Manicheans — had reproached them for their recourse to magic and was now [in his turn] accused of Manicheanism and sorcery. Tortured, he confessed his magical powers, his role in demonaic meetings, and his custom of praying while nude. The repressive tradition of the Church would attempt to identify in the popular imagination Manicheanism and, much later, Valdeism, with rites of sorcery that easily ignited the pyres of fear and hatred.

The iniquity of the trial of Priscillian aroused the reprobation of Martin of Tours and perhaps that of Sirice, whose timid power aspired to the recognition of a pontifical title. A second chance given to Priscillian was abruptly ended by the decapitation of six people charged with “magic and immorality” in Treves between 385 and 387. Received with indignation by the Christian communities, the news suggested to Ambroise of Milan a few late regrets. The remains of Priscillian, repatriated to Gaul around 396, were the object of the veneration reserved for martyrs of the faith.

As the death of their leader did not weaken the Priscillians, Emperor Honorius would issue the rescrit of 408 against them. In 561 or 563, the Council of Braga would judge it useful to anathematize seventeen “errors” imputed to Priscillian.

It is difficult to disentangle the Priscillian doctrine from the calumnies that the Church has mixed into it over the centuries. Its basis derived from a Christianity that was dominant from the second half of the Second Century to the end of the Fourth Century, and that the Church later condemned under the names Montanism, Encratism, Novatianism and Origenism. Thus Priscillianism was unacquainted with the compiled gospels, which had been canonically enriched by arguments hostile to Arius and ascetic rigor. Priscillianism regrouped clerics and lay people in assemblies in which asceticism (and thus the cult of virginity) were exalted. If one can judge from the similar state of the Pietist congregations of the Seventeenth Century, it is probable that ecstasies, illuminations, prophetism and other forms of religious hysteria common to Puritanism were manifested in Priscillianism.

The trinitary conception of Nicaea had not reached Spain, nor the popular strata of Christianity. “Long after Nicaea, a very archaic view and an experience similar to the Trinity continued to be dominant.”[306]

According to Priscillian, Christian asceticism participated in the presence of the God-Christ. As in the prescription of Tertullian, one dreamed of exhausting the body so as to make the Spirit grow within it. As with Justin arguing against Tryphon, the Christ was nothing other than the divine Logos. The presence of God resulted more from a personal experience than rational reflection. Revelation in itself of the God-Christ permitted mankind to attain the state of perfection through the exercise of rigor. And Priscillian spoke of a nova nativitas, a new birth. Was it not his heritage that would welcome Spanish Catholicism, which — from Dominique to Queipo of Llano, passing through Ignacius and Loyola, and [possibly due to] genius loci [spirit of place], Theresa of Avila — furbished the weapons against life known as Viva la muerte[307] and Perinde ac cadaver?[308]

Is it necessary to exclude the recourse to astrology, if not magic, from a teaching that was founded on the imitation of the Christ and that conferred “quies, libertas, unitas”?[309] “The Priscillianist heretics,” Pope Gregoire affirmed, “think that all men are born under a conjunction of stars. And, to help their error, they appeal to the fact that a new star appeared when Our Lord showed himself in the flesh.”[310] Perhaps the notion of a new birth gave way to the astrological speculations that were similar to those made by Bardesanes of Edessa. As for magic, its practice was fairly widespread in the Christian milieux, as is attested by the abraxas or talismans on which the Christ replaced Seth, Ophis, Mithra, Serapis and Abrasax. The cult of the saints itself was helped by the invocations in which the sign of the cross was substituted for the song of the [seven] vowels and for gestures that translated diverse expressions.

To recognize in Priscillian the first victim of [Catholic] orthodoxy and the [universal] jurisdiction adopted in matters of heresy (and this is the way that the historians have seen him) would be to forget the massacre of the Arians and the Donatists. The novelty of Priscillian resided rather in the iniquity of the trial and in the arguments made against the accused. At Treves, the curtain was de facto raised on a long series of stagings in which the accused, condemned in advance by the judgment of the Church, entered (under the parodic sign of justice) into the circle of fire of expiatory sacrifice, by which the clergy imposed the dogma of its purity and its divine power upon the sinners.