Epiphanius of Salamis

“ He had some controversy with Chrysostom but did not stay to see the result of Theophilus’s machinations, and died on his way home. The principal work of Epiphanius is the Panarion, or treatise on heresies, of which he also wrote an abridgment. It is a “medicine chest” of remedies for all kinds of heretical belief, of which he names eighty varieties. His accounts of the earlier errors (where he has preserved for us large excerpts from the original Greek of Irenaeus) are more reliable than those of contemporary heresies. ”

“ Epiphanius said furiously, “Malefactor and cannibal, speakest thou thus, treating us and our city and our emperor as heretics? We are more Christian and orthodox than thou art. We confess that our Lord and God has both a divine will and a human will, and an intellectual soul, and that every intellectual nature has by nature, Will, and Operation, since motion belongs to life, and will to mind: and we know Him to have the capacity of Will not only in the Godhead, but also in the Manhood. Nor do we deny His Two Wills and Two Operations.” ”

“ But Themistocles pressed close against his side. “Ask for no wings,”—in the admiral’s voice was a tremor not there when he sped confidence through the crew,—“if it be destined we save Hellas, it is destined; if we are to die, we die. ‘No man of woman born, coward or brave, can shun the fate assigned.’ Hector said that to Andromache, and the Trojan was right. But we shall save Hellas. Zeus and Athena are great gods. They did not give us glory at Salamis to make that glory tenfold vain. We shall save Hellas. ”

“ ST. EPIPHANIUS, BISHOP OF PAVIA, FROM 467 TO 497. THE reputation of Epiphanius for sanctity and miracles, gave him the highest credit with all the last weak Roman emperors, and with the kings Odoacer and Theodoric, though all of opposite interests. By his admirable eloquence and charity he often disarmed the most savage barbarians, obtained the lives and liberty of whole armies of captives, the abolition of several oppressive laws, and the mitigation of heavy public imposts and taxes. ”

“ Hippolytus makes Epinoia come to earth to establish, instead of taking away, the rule of the angels, who were by his account her own progeny; and if the angels were, as Epiphanius says, inflamed with love for her, the last thing they would be likely to do would be to transform her out of her first and heavenly shape, and finally place her in a brothel—as they are said to have done with Helena, Simon’s mistress. ”

“ The loose manner in which the Fathers repeat each other, even in serious matters, is too well known to every one acquainted with their writings to require any remark. Their inaccuracy keeps pace with their want of critical judgment We have seen one of the mistakes of Epiphanius, admitted by Tischendorf to be only too common with him, which illustrates how little such data are to be relied on. We may point out another of the same kind committed by him in common with Hippolytus, pseudo-Tertullian and Philastrius. ”

“ Having been instructed from his youth by the most celebrated ascetics, and having on this account passed the most of his time in Egypt, Epiphanius became most celebrated in Egypt and Palestine by his attainments in monastic philosophy, and was chosen by the inhabitants of Cyprus to act as bishop of the metropolis of their island. Hence he is, I think, the most revered man under the whole heaven, so to speak ”

“ Wait not for horse and foot; tarry not the march of the mighty army; retreat even though they close upon you. O divine Salamis! thou shalt lose the sons of women, whether Demeter scatter or hoard her harvest!” Themistocles, who had, perhaps, dictated the response, now furnished an apt solution. The “walls of wood,” he said, meant the fleet, in which the citizens and their children should take refuge. The last sentence threatened woe not to the Athenians, but to their foes, else why was Salamis called “divine”? ”

“ And Saint Epiphanius sent a reply to his letter, saying, “I have written nothing concerning thee, and I am not in agreement with the empress against thee, and as for thyself thou shalt [not] return from exile.” After this Saint Epiphanius wanted to return to the throne of his diocese, and he went forth from the city of Constantinople to depart to the city of Cyprus, and God willed to make him to die on the ship before he reached the throne of his diocese, even as God had revealed to John, the Mouth of Gold ”

“ For Theophilus accused Epiphanius of entertaining low thoughts of God, by supposing him to have a human form. [2]
Now although Theophilus was really unchanged in sentiment, and had denounced those who thought that the divinity was human in form, yet on account of his hatred of others, he openly denied his own convictions; and he now professed to be friendly with Epiphanius, as if he had altered his mind and agreed with him in his views of God. He then managed it so that Epiphanius by letter should convene a Synod of the bishops in Cyprus, in order to condemn the writings of Origen. ”

“ The author of this tells us in Book I that he has “aforetime” [35] expounded the tenets of the heretics “within measure,” and without revealing all their mysteries, and it might, therefore, be from some such earlier work that both Epiphanius and Theodoret have borrowed. Some writers, including Salmon, [36] have thought that this earlier work of our author is to be found in the anonymous tractate Adversus Omnes Hæreses usually appended to Tertullian’s [12] works. ”

“ Nothing further is, however, known about Saturnilus or Saturninus or his heresy, which Epiphanius makes the third after Christ, nor is there any mention in any of the heresiologies of any writings by him. His story of a First or Pattern Man made in the image of the Supreme Being is common, as has been said, to many of the early heresies, and reappears in Manichæism. It is probably to be referred to some tradition current in Western Asia. See Bousset’s Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, cap. “Der Urmensch.”
[105] τῆς αὐθεντίας, “one who holds absolute rule.” ”

“ So the ordinary educational plan was to group events together in some scheme that might not be quite exact but was calculated to have some symbolic interest and to stay in the memory. For instance, the three great tragedians were grouped together round the Battle of Salamis, the great triumph of the Persian Wars in 480 b.c. Aeschylus fought among the heavy-armed infantry, Sophocles danced in a choir of boys to celebrate the victory, and Euripides was born in Salamis on the day of the battle. We do not know the origin of this pleasant fable ”

“ For I do not “cast a snare upon any one,” [11] as is done by the less thoughtful among the mass of men. Think of what I say, most honourable son.
Footnotes ↑ This letter, along with the reply of Marcellus, is given by Epiphanius in his Heresies, n. 6, from which the Greek text is taken.↑ φειδόμενος. The Latin gives subveniens, relieving.↑ The Greek text of Epiphanius gave πρὸς τὸ ἀδιάκριτον. ”

“ He also swayed the popular mind by the oracle, in which he argued that by "wooden walls" ships were alluded to; and that Apollo spoke of Salamis as "divine," not terrible or sad, because Salamis would be the cause of great good fortune to the Greeks. Having thus gained his point, he proposed a decree, that the city be left to the care of the tutelary goddess of the Athenians, that all able-bodied men should embark in the ships of war, and that each man should take the best measures in his power to save the women and children and slaves. ”

“ They became Christians and fellow-workers with Paul, to whom they seem to have shown their devotion in some special way (Rom. xvi. 3, 4) . (2) A native of Pontus, celebrated for a very literal and accurate translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Epiphanius (De Pond. et Mens. c. 15) preserves a tradition that he was a kinsman of the emperor Hadrian, who employed him in rebuilding Jerusalem (Aelia Capitolina, q.v.) ”

“ The Athenians had passed over to Salamis as follows:—So long as they were looking that an army should come from the Peloponnese to help them, they remained in Attica; but as those in Peloponnesus acted very slowly and with much delay, while the invader was said to be already in Boeotia, they accordingly removed everything out of danger, and themselves passed over to Salamis ”

“ Hippolytus, Philosophumena, Bk IX. c. 27, pp. 465, 466, of Cruice. Later, he attributes the same doctrine to the Pharisees. His desire to show that in both cases it was derived by the Jews from the Pythagoreans or the Stoics is manifest.
478. Epiphanius, Panar. Bk I. t. I. Haer. X. c. 1 (pp. 75, 76 of Oehler, vol. II. pt 1) . Epiphanius makes them a Samaritan sect.
479. Porphyrius, de Abstinentia, Bk IV.
480. ”

“ Salamis was fought and won just as he had left childhood behind. His adolescence and maturity coincided with the rise and establishment of the Athenian Empire; he listened to Pericles, saw the Parthenon and Propylæa rise upon the Acropolis, associated with Æschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Thucydides, watched the work of Phidias and Polygnotus grow to life under their fingers. Though he carried into the years of Nestor the genius of Shakespeare, he was yet so blessed that he died before the fall of Athens. ”

“ Epiphanius relates of himself, that in his youth he accidentally fell into company with some women of this sect, who revealed to him the most horrible secrets of the Carpocratians. They were armed with beauty sufficient to make an impression on a person of his age; but, by the grace of God, he says, he escaped the snare which the devil had laid for him. (See Gnostics.) ”

“ But the reference here is perhaps rather to the Thebais or Epigonoi than the Iliad. Again, it is said that when Athens and Megara were disputing about the possession of Salamis, both parties appealed to the authority of Homer in support of their contentions. If this story may be trusted it is of importance as showing that the poems were generally venerated at such an early date. And though all the evidence is late [292] , the form in which the passage in question (Il. II 557 f.) has survived does clearly suggest Athenian influence. ”

“ Perhaps he was descended from a freedman of the consul; his wide and varied learning indicates that he had received a liberal education, and so far suggests that his parents occupied a good social position. The place of his birth is not certainly known. Epiphanius, the earliest authority on the question, observes that two opinions were held in his time, "some saying that he was an Alexandrian, others that he was an Athenian" (ὅν φασί τινες Ἀλεξανδρέα ἕτεροι δὲ Ἀθηναῖον, Haer. xxxii. 6) . Alexandria was the principal scene of his labours ”

“ Nothing more is known of his life. According to Epiphanius (62 b, 68 d, 69 a) , he had been a fellow-disciple of Menander with Saturnilus at Antioch in Syria; but this is evidently an arbitrary extension of Irenaeus's remarks on the order of doctrines to personal relations. If the view of the doctrines of Basilides taken in this article is correct, they afford no good grounds for supposing him to have had a Syrian education. Gnostic ideas derived originally from Syria were sufficiently current at Alexandria, and the foundation of what is distinctive in his thoughts is Greek. ”

“ Hæret Fab., c. iii., and Damascenus, sec. lvii. (who is accustomed to follow Epiphanius) ; and yet in Epiphanius, Hæres., 57, we read that Noetus was an Asian of the city of Ephesus ( ̓Ασιανον τῆς ̓Εφέσου πόλεως) . (Fabricius.) ↑ Epiphanius says that Noetus made his heresy public about 130 years before his time (οὐ πρὸ ἐτῶν πλειόνων ἀλλ ̓ ὡς πρὸ χρόνου τῶν τουτων ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα, πλείω ἢ ἐλάσσω) ; and as Epiphanius wrote in the year 375, that would make the date of Noetus about 245. He says also that Noetus died soon after (ἔναγχος) , along with his brother. ”

“ What Epiphanius says is that the Dositheans agree with the rest of the Samaritans in the observance of circumcision and the Sabbath, and in avoiding contact with any one because they feel that all men (that is, all gentiles) are unclean. He had already described the customs of all the Samaritans: They wash themselves and their clothes in water when they come in contact with a foreigner ”

“ Most of the Athenians had taken refuge in the adjoining island of Salamis (the ancient home of Ajax) , partly owing to an allusion to it in the second Delphian oracle. “Divine Salamis,” it was said, “would destroy many sons of women”; and this, Themistocles held, could only refer to a slaughter of the enemy. Although almost all the powers in southern Greece were acting in concert with Athens in resisting Xerxes, the Peloponnesians were disposed to fall back on their line of defence at the isthmus of Corinth ”

“ In his Gnosticism, resting according to Hippolytus on a basis of Alexandrian-Greek culture, we have the transition from the Jewish-Christian to a more Gentile than Jewish-Christian Gnostic standpoint. The continued hold of the former is seen according to Epiphanius in the maintaining of the necessity of circumcision and of the observances by Christians of the law given by disposition of angels, as also, according to Caius of Rome, who regards him as the author of the New Testament Apocalypse, in chiliastic expectations. ”

“ Epiphanius indeed, quoting Irenæus705, makes him say that this heretic and his disciples ascribed two wives to Bythus, Thought and Will, from whom he made the rest of the Æons to proceed. But it is evident from the version of the Ancient Interpreter that the actual words of Irenæus were Οἱ περὶ Πτολεμαῦον, which may mean either Ptolemy or his followers, and as Tertullian ascribes this tenet to his disciples, desirous of improving upon their master, we may safely conclude that Epiphanius does not intend to attribute it distinctly to Ptolemy, but either to him or to his followers. ”