God as Male–Female: Priscillian, Prophecy, and the Witness of Irenaeus and Marius Victorinus

Abstract

This paper examines a comment by Priscillian (d. c. 385) in his Liber apologeticus that certain people erroneously applied to God the unusual Latin neologism, masculofemina. He contrasts their perspective with scriptural teaching about the Holy Spirit being poured out on both men and women. This raises two questions, namely, how Priscillian’s comment relates to accusations he faced of encouraging dangerous intimacy between men and women and the source of his information about their teaching. This paper argues that the central thrust of Priscillian’s teaching is around the notion that the spirit of prophecy was manifested in both sexes, but that he distinguished his teaching from that of Valentinian gnostics to defend his own orthodoxy. It argues that Priscillian acquired this teaching about God as masculofemina from the translation into Latin of the Aduersus haereses of Irenaeus of Lyons (d. c. 202). The term also occurs within the writing of Marius Victorinus (c. 359–61) in defense of Catholic Christianity. Priscillian drew on Irenaeus to defend the orthodoxy of his notion that the gift of prophecy was given to both men and women.

1. Introduction

The practice of imagining God in predominantly masculine terms has a long history in Christian orthodoxy. Yet, according to Priscillian, an educated layman who became bishop of Avila in c. 380 but was subsequently censured for sorcery and executed in c. 385 by order of the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus, certain people challenged this view. He says in the Liber apologeticus that they applied to God the unusual Latin neologism ‘male–female’ (masculofemina), without precedent in classical Latin: ‘It is said by unfortunate people that God is thought to be male-female: for us, however the spirit of God is in both men and women’ (sicut ab infelicibus dicitur, masculofemina putetur deus: nobis autem et in masculis et in feminis dei spiritus est) (Priscillian 2010, p. 60). Priscillian contrasts such teaching about God as beyond gender with his own prophetic understanding that God’s spirit is present in both men and women. He understands the logic behind this claim, namely, that if God made humankind in his image, both male and female (Gen. 1:27), then God could be called male–female. Does not St. Paul teach that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28)? Paradoxically, Priscillian is himself well-known for accusations that he was excessively close to female disciples (Burrus 1995, 2021). How can we reconcile his apparent criticism of those who call God male–female with his own understanding of divine inspiration?

Priscillian’s literary corpus belongs to a crucial period of Latin Christianity just before Jerome and Augustine were to rise in prominence. Conti’s important new edition and translation of his writings opens up opportunities for further research (Priscillian 2010, p. 13). Priscillian’s Liber apologeticus (Priscillian 2010, pp. 33–67) was the first of eleven treatises either by him or from his school, preserved in a single fifth- or sixth-century manuscript from Würzburg.1 His concern was to defend his own orthodoxy from criticism. This paper is concerned not so much with the debate about whether or not Priscillian can be described as a heretic, summarized by Conti (Priscillian 2010, pp. 5–12), as with a detail not mentioned in Conti’s commentary, namely, the source of Priscillian’s information about those who taught that God was masculofemina. How did this critical comment of Priscillian fit into his wider effort to defend his own orthodoxy? Before addressing the question of Priscillian’s source, we need to consider the centrality of prophecy to his understanding of the message of the Scriptures.

2. Priscillian and Prophecy

Priscillian addressed his Liber apologeticus to unnamed sacerdotes. They could be the dozen bishops who assembled either at Saragossa in 380 to condemn his movement (Burrus 1995, pp. 25–46), or perhaps after his visit to Rome in 382/3, at the Council of Bordeaux in 384, where he reports that specific charges of sorcery were made against him by Ithacius, bishop of Ossanoba (Priscillian 2010, pp. 16–17, 54). Sulpicius Severus, no supporter of Priscillian, described Ithacius in his Chronica 2.50.2 (Sulpicius Severus 2017, p. 106) as ‘bold, loquacious, impudent, extravagant and given to his gut and gullet’. In the face of factional politics, Priscillian needed to situate himself within Catholic orthodoxy. He claims at the outset of his Liber apologeticus that his disciples were committed to the creed (symbolum), namely, of Nicaea (Priscillian 2010, pp. 32, 54). It is evident not just from his treatises but also from his Canons on the Pauline epistles (which subsequently circulated as prefaces to the Vulgate translation in some twenty-two manuscripts), that Priscillian was a remarkably erudite scholar, familiar, in particular, with the prophets and St. Paul.2 Much of the first part of the Liber apologeticus involves a diatribe against those who hold what he considers to be heretical positions of Christian doctrine. He attacks the evil of the Patripassian heresy (Patripassianae heresis malum), which claimed that the Father suffered with the Son (Priscillian 2010, p. 36), as if he had himself been accused of emphasizing the identity of Father and Son. The one previous Latin author who had distanced himself at length from this heresy was Marius Victorinus (d. after 363), a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, and a philosopher who embraced Catholic Christianity late in life, writing his Contra Arium (Victorinus 1960a, p. 362) between 359 and 361. Victorinus offered the first philosophical discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, articulating a Homousian doctrine (Edwards 2009, p. 122). The fact that Priscillian conceptualizes the Patripassian heresy in similar terms suggests that even if not a philosopher by training, he was familiar with the theological arguments of Victorinus. Other heretical groups whom Priscillian pilloried were the Novatianists and Nicholaites (Priscillian 2010, pp. 36–38). They are identified in very general terms without any specific knowledge, as explained by Conti (Priscillian 2010, pp. 260–61). In one passage, he addresses an unfortunate schismatic (infelix scismatice), perhaps the Ithacius to whom he had referred earlier (Priscillian 2010, pp. 54, 60).

The passage in which Priscillian comments on those who describe God as masculofemina deserves to be quoted at some length. He is, here differentiating himself from heretics, whom he accuses of grossly misunderstanding the Scriptures, insisting that his own faith is in Jesus. Conti’s translation of this term (Priscillian 2010, p. 61) as ‘hermaphrodite’ implies someone with both male and female physical characteristics, a condition termed hermaphroditus (Augustine 1955, p. 509). It is more accurate to translate masculofemina as male–female.

And his name will be called Jesus, because he is the one who will save all people [Mt 1:21] and understand the parables and obscure expressions [Sir. 39:2] and the expressions of the wise and their obscurities, because he is powerful who said: When you have turned and mourned, then you will be saved [Is. 30:15], since he who is called Jesus revealed in his name, by coming in the flesh, what our God variously and in many ways [Heb. 1:1] had shown in his works, by saving from the beginning his people, thanks to our fathers. However, if someone thinks differently, he will take on the sentence, whoever he may be; indeed to them, God is considered to be male-female, as he is said to be by the wretched [heretics]; for us however, the spirit of God is in both male and female, as it is written: God made man in his image and likeness, male and female [Gen. 1:27]; he made them and blessed them [Gen. 1:28], just as the apostle says about him: Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God [1 Cor. 1:24], and since we are his men, he is our man and head [Cf. 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23]; [and] the apostle, after marrying us in faith, promised that he would have presented us to one husband as a chaste virgin [2 Cor. 11:2], because there is no male and female, but we are all one in Jesus Christ [Gal. 3:28].3

Priscillian’s description of these people as infelices (perhaps more accurately rendered as ‘the unfortunate’ than Conti’s ‘the wretched [heretics]’) suggests that he sees them not so much as heretics but as misguided because they misunderstood the statement in Genesis 1:27 about humanity created in God’s image as male and female. He understands their argument but insists that it is more accurate to that the Holy Spirit manifests itself in both men and women.

This observation allows Priscillian to introduce his key theme in the climax to the Liber apologeticus about the importance of prophecy. He quotes from the prophecy in Acts 2:17–21, in turn, citing Joel 2:28–32, that God will pour out his spirit on all flesh, and that ‘their sons and daughters will prophesy’ (Priscillian 2010, p. 64). Having declared his preference for explaining that the spirit of God rests on both men and women, he concludes with a tirade against false teachers, whom he contrasts with those inspired by the Holy Spirit to prophesy. He attributes to Tobias (mentioned in Tobit 4:1–23) a sentence, in fact, adapted from the sermon of Peter reported in Acts 3:25 (Priscillian 2010, p. 64):

Just as Tobias the prophet said to his son, ‘We are sons of the prophets. Noah was a prophet, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all our fathers who prophesied from the beginning of the world’.

This quotation is remarkable for its fusion of ideas, as Noah had never traditionally been identified as a prophet. In his sermon, Peter had argued (Acts 3:25): ‘You are the heirs of the prophets, the heirs of the covenant God made with our ancestors when he told Abraham: In your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed’. This is a verse largely ignored by the Church Fathers, with one exception, namely, Irenaeus of Lyons, who quotes it within Aduersus haereses 3.12.3 (Irenaeus 1974, p. 288) to explain that neither Valentinus nor Marcion have the authority of the prophets. While Irenaeus criticizes the teaching of many Christian intellectuals as gnostics, he never identifies Montanus or other self-proclaimed prophets for rebuke. Priscillian shared a similar preference for prophets over gnostics, keen to apply Platonic ideas to their understanding of Christian doctrine.

Jerome had frequently identified ‘sons of the prophets’ (referred to in 2 Kings 2:3–15) as monks and effectively the founders of their way of life in his Epist. 58.5 (Jerome 1910, p. 534), and Ep. 125.7 (Jerome 1918, p. 125). This was a perspective about which Augustine was cautious (Joyce 2015). Priscillian, by contrast, never refers to himself or his followers as monks or virgins. The only other patristic text known to repeat the phrase ‘we are sons of the prophets’ is a (fifth-century?) sermon, falsely attributed to Chrysostom (Pseudo-Chrysostom 1859, col. 806). Priscillian’s Liber apologeticus suggests that his movement was disturbed by increasing clericalization within the Church. They preferred to go back to the Acts of the Apostles and see themselves as sons of the prophets and as living out Joel’s vision of sons and daughters prophesying through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The twelve bishops present at the Council of Saragossa in 380 did not mention Priscillian by name, but condemned various practices, beginning with the following.

All faithful women of the Catholic Church are to be separated from the reading and meetings of strange men, or other women are to assemble with them [women] for the sake of teaching or learning, because the Apostle commands this. It was said by all the bishops: ‘Anathema on those who do not observe this judgement’.4

The canon implies that orthodoxy required that women had to meet separately from men to whom they were not related (virorum alienorum). Other canons condemn various departures from strict episcopal control: fasting beyond the normal Lenten season and hiding in remote places outside episcopal authority; keeping but not consuming the eucharist; remaining on estates (villas) and walking barefoot; pursuing a monastic way of life or becoming a dedicated virgin at less than forty years; and appropriating the name of teacher without permission. A canon that a bishop is not to accept someone excommunicated by other bishops implies fear of potential discord within the episcopate.5 The Spanish episcopate was becoming alarmed by a movement that seemed to threaten its authority. The fact that Priscillian never explicitly refers to his own disciples or monks or virgins suggests that he was not interested in these categories, but rather urged both laity and clerics to pursue a spiritual way of life. This is similar to the Asceticon or Rule of Basil (c. 330–79), translated into Latin by Rufinus (c. 345–410), which never speaks about monachi, but pursues the Pauline theme that each person should follow their calling (1 Cor. 7:20, 25) (Basil 1986, pp. 116, 130, 131, 207, Regula 82.5, 98.2, 101.1, 186.2).

Sulpicius Severus makes clear that Priscillian’s movement involved both lay people and bishops, none of whom attended the Council in 380 (Sulpicius Severus 2017, pp. 103–6; Burrus 1995, pp. 25–46). He reports that Priscillian was subsequently made bishop (sacerdos) after the Council in order to strengthen his authority when traveling through southern Gaul and into Rome, where he hoped to meet Pope Damasus (366–384) to refute accusations that they were closet Manicheans. While Priscillian accepted the principle of episcopal authority, he was concerned by its abuse. In one of his canons on St. Paul, he declares that the bishop and peace-loving clergy must be irreproachable in their behavior (Canon 45; Priscillian 2010, p. 186). Here, he assembles Pauline authority (1 Cor. 12:28–29 and Eph. 4:11) for there being three orders in the Church: apostles as the first rank, prophets as the second, and teachers (magistri) as the third (Canon 48; Priscillian 2010, p. 188). Elsewhere, he identifies Pauline passages testifying to the good life of certain laypeople (laicorum) who looked after the poor, suggesting he specifically sought to identify worthy laity in the Epistles, even if St. Paul never used the term (Canon 61; Priscillian 2010, p. 194). Sulpicius reported that Priscillian’s group included various women, both wives and others, like Euchrotia and her daughter Procula, whom he implies was made pregnant by Priscillian, although the child was then aborted (Sulpicius Severus 2017, p. 105, Cronica 2.48.3).6 The fact that Euchrotia was executed alongside Priscillian, Latronianus (a poet of whom Jerome speaks highly), and two other men, while others were sent into exile, implies that she was seen as part of the leadership of the movement (Sulpicius Severus 2017, p. 107, Cronica 2.51.3).7 Their execution, Sulpicius reports, only made the movement stronger. Their bodies were brought back to Galicia where they were revered as martyrs (Sulpicius Severus 2017, p. 108, Cronica 2.51.7). Sulpicius claimed that Priscillian had confessed at Trier to studying obscene doctrines, holding nocturnal gatherings of shameless women, and praying naked (Sulpicius Severus 2017, p. 107, Cronica 2.50.8).8 In Rome, Ambrosiaster lamented the eagerness of women to follow the foul and deceitful practices of the Manichaeans (Ambrosiaster 1969, p. 33). Augustine in his De natura boni 47 (written in the late 380s) had also heard rumors from a certain Catholic Christian in Rome about gross sexual deviations taking place among so-called Manichaeans in Gaul, who claimed that sexual union enabled them to share in divinity and that they justified their behavior by the authority of scripture (Augustine 1891, p. 887).9 Rumors of sexual malpractice were a standard feature of anti-heretical propaganda, which tended to cast any group that involved both women and men as undermining a patriarchal social order (Burrus 1995, pp. 33–35).

3. Masculofemina in Anti-Heretical Writing

In the Liber apologeticus Priscillian insisted that his followers were far removed from any form of gnostic heresy. In reporting that certain ‘unfortunate people’ called God masculofemina, Priscillian was invoking a neologism that had only very limited use. Of seven occurrences reported in the Library of Latin Texts (which unfortunately does not include the writings of Priscillian), four are from the account of the teaching of Valentinus, offered by Irenaeus of Lyons in the Latin translation of his Aduersus haereses 1.1.4, 1.2.4, 1.18.2, and 1.30.3 (Irenaeus 1979b, pp. 30, 42, 278, 366). Even though most of the Greek text of Irenaeus does not survive, one fragment suggests that masculofemina seems to be a translation of ἀρρενόθηλυς (Irenaeus 1979a, p. 178). While it is possible that Priscillian and his followers may have come across heterodox literature, such as the Gospel of Truth (Edwards 2016), it seems more likely that his reference to others referring to God as masculofemina derives from a Latin translation of the summary offered by Irenaeus. While Irenaeus is traditionally thought to have written the Aduersus haereses c. 180, it has been argued (Chiapparini 2014) that he may have done so in Rome c. 160–165, making his witness to the teaching of Valentinus all the more important. Priscillian uses the neologism masculofemina in exactly the same way as the translator of Irenaeus in the opening chapter about Valentinus, whom Tertullian reports once wanted to become bishop of Rome (Tertullian 1954, pp. 753–78). Irenaeus implies that Valentinus sought to interpret Christian thought within a Platonist philosophical framework in which all reality stemmed from a primal first being, called First-Father, that interacted with Thought, out of whose conjugal union emerged the principal Ogdoad known by four names: ‘Profundity, Mind, Word, and Man, because each of these is male and female: thus in the first case, First-Father was united in marriage to Thought whom they call Grace and Silence, then Only-begotten that is Mind to Truth; next Word to Life; finally man to Church’ (Irenaeus 1982, p. 30, Adu. haer. 1.1.1).10 In the next chapter, the translator of Irenaeus reports that the Father emitted Horon as masculofemina, emitting Silence as both male and female.11 In chapter 18, he declares that Valentinus taught that man was initially made masculofemina ‘after the image and likeness of God’ (Irenaeus 1982, p. 278, Adu. haer. 1.18.2).12 The last time it is used by the translator is when Irenaeus reports that they called an emanation from the divine both Wisdom and masculofemina (Irenaeus 1982, p. 366, Adu. haer. 1.30.3).13 There are other terms in Priscillian’s Liber apologeticus that could also derive from Irenaeus, such as his reference to Barbilo as the first Archon emanating from the divinity (Priscillian 2010, p. 62), discussed by Irenaeus in Adu. haer. 1.29.1 (Irenaeus 1979b, p. 358). His knowledge of Saturninus and Basilides may have a similar source (Priscillian 2010, p. 54), discussed by Irenaeus 1.24.1, 2.28.6, and 2.31.1 (Irenaeus 1979b, p. 320; Irenaeus 1982, pp. 324, 358). Priscillian’s use of the unusual term masculofemina gives a particularly clear clue that he is drawing on the Latin translation of Irenaeus, implying that it was already available to him before the Council of Saragossa or, more likely, the Council of Bordeaux. Possibly, he obtained his copy of the translation when visiting Rome in 382/3, and drew on it after confronting his accusers at Bordeaux in 384.

The term masculofemina is also used once by Marius Victorinus at the end of the first book of his Aduersus Arium 1.64 (Victorinus 1960b, p. 386). Here, he picks up a similar argument to Priscillian when explaining the teaching of an unidentified heretic:

But if however he says this: he made him [humanity] masculofemina and it is previously said: ‘He made man according to the image of God’, this is clear, since adjacent to both the body and the flesh, he is truly mystically ‘from the Word’, with male and female co-existing, since he was himself the Son in the first and second aspect, spiritually and carnally.14

This raises the possibility that Victorinus himself translated the Aduersus haereses of Irenaeus. Victorinus certainly read widely in heterodox and gnostic literature (Edwards 2009, p. 43). While he was publicly celebrated for being the rhetorician of Rome, he was also a philosopher, who translated the works of Plotinus and Porphyry. He went public in his conversion to Catholic Christianity ‘in advanced old age’ according to Jerome’s De uiris illustribus 101 (Jerome 1896, p. 48), sometime in the later 350s (Travis 1943). Augustine recalls how in his Confessions 8.2 (Augustine 1990, pp. 114–16), his friend Simplicianus reported that for a long time, Victorinus considered himself to be a Christian, without seeing the necessity of doing so publicly, asking ‘Do walls make a Christian?’ Only in advanced old age did he undergo baptism, after extensive study of Christian literature. Victorinus uses the term masculofemina not to mock heretics, but to explain the argument that it derives from the teaching of Genesis, that humanity, both male and female, was made in the image of God. In this sense, Victorinus was picking up an important insight of Valentinus while critiquing his thought as misguided in its understanding of orthodoxy. While it is possible that Priscillian picked up the term from the Contra Arium (which also reported what he knew about Patripassians), it seems more likely that he took it from the Aduersus haereses of Irenaeus.

There are two other usages recorded of masculofemina, both from the late fourth or early fifth centuries and, thus, unlikely to be a source for Priscillian. One is the Latin translation of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 3.9.6 made by Rufinus from a lost Greek original in around 406 (Pseudo-Clement 1965, p. 104).15 It is also used once by Filastrius of Brescia (d. 394) in Diversarum haereseon liber 61.1 (Filastrius of Brescia 1957, p. 243) in his entry on Mani. Both are likely to be influenced by the terminology of Irenaeus. While Priscillian distanced himself from those who described God as masculofemina, he nuanced their argument by arguing that the spirit of God would manifest itself in both men and women. Sulpicius Severus and Orosius, following Jerome and Augustine, might have caricatured Priscillian as a gnostic (Burrus 1995, pp. 126–59). In fact, Priscillian saw himself as being in conformity with the orthodoxy of Irenaeus of Lyons. Distancing himself from the elaborate metaphysical system of Valentinus, Priscillian promoted the idea that the spirit of prophecy had been given to both men and women.

4. Conclusions: The Lingering Influence of Priscillian

The execution of Priscillian, Euchrotia, and two other associates at Trier in c. 385 by order of Magnus Maximus, the Galician-born claimant to the Western Empire, did not put an end to Priscillian’s movement. Maximus was then seeking to assert his authority in the wake of the accession of his relative, Theodosius I, the Galician son of a Roman general. In 381, Theodosius sought to consolidate his power by calling a Council at Constantinople, which not only ratified the creed of the Council of Nicaea but also enforced acceptance of Catholic orthodoxy, outlawing any form of heresy. In 383, Maximus killed Gratian, to whom Theodosius had originally entrusted the Latin half of the Empire. He needed to demonstrate his authority to Theodosius by presenting himself as the protector of Catholic orthodoxy, and by allying himself with bishops who would support his ambitions. Not all churchmen supported Priscillian’s execution at Trier, the most important being Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–97). Priscillian and his admirers were concerned by the emergence of an established Christianity, in which bishops were becoming representatives of secular authority rather than genuine pastors of their community.

The claims by critics (by Jerome as much as by Augustine) that Priscillian was simply another gnostic heretic were uninformed (Ferreiro 1993). His critics singled out the involvement of women alongside men within his movement as a sign of moral corruption. In the Liber apologeticus, Priscillian sought to distinguish his movement from any gnostic group. Avoiding the categories of ‘monks’ and ‘virgins’, so important to the Catholic Christianity of Ambrose in Milan and Pope Damasus, Priscillian saw his disciples as seeking to return to the example of the early church and the prophecy of Joel 2:28, as reported in Acts 2:17, that the spirit of God would rest on both sons and daughters. Priscillian’s reference to those who called God masculofemina likely derives from the Latin translation of the teaching of Valentinus in the Aduersus haereses of Irenaeus of Lyons. The fact that this term is also used by Marius Victorinus in his Aduersus Arium raises the possibility that it was Victorinus who translated Irenaeus into Latin. He may have done so in the period when he was exploring Christian texts, even before he made a public statement of faith. Priscillian may not have been a philosopher like Victorinus, but he was indebted to his vision of orthodoxy, which drew on Irenaeus. Priscillian distanced himself from any gnostic philosophical versions of Christianity, which spoke in terms of primal entities as both male and female. His preference was for understanding scripture as about the coming of the Holy Spirit in both men and women.

In the early fifth century, Orosius (c. 375–420), also a native of Galicia and unusually familiar with the British Isles, wrote to Augustine about his alarm at the continuing influence of Priscillian’s movement, which he saw as extending the errors of the followers of Origen. He mentioned that two of his fellow citizens, both called Avitus, were responsible for bringing potentially dangerous new texts to Spain, a copy of Origen from Jerusalem and another of Victorinus (Orosius 1985, p. 160).16 While Orosius insisted that his friends both condemned Priscillian, his comment suggests how Priscillian’s teaching was sometimes seen as connected to potentially dangerous discussions of the Christian faith. His questions prompted Augustine to respond with a treatise about the errors of both Priscillianists and Origenists. More research is needed into how Priscillian’s writings might have survived, not least through a manuscript of the fifth or sixth century that ended up in Würzburg, where so many precious texts from Britain and Ireland are preserved.17 One of his disciples, Tiberianus, was banished to the Scilly Isles (see the comments of Conti in Priscillian 2010, p. 259). Similar themes would emerge in British and Irish texts from these early centuries (Joyce 2023). The negative image of Priscillian promoted by his critics, above all Orosius and Augustine, would mean that he would be remembered as a heretic. Nonetheless, Priscillian, Euchrotia, and others all wanted to escape the institutionalization of Catholic Christianity by returning to what they saw as its original inspiration. It is not impossible that the supposed recovery of the remains of James the Great at Compostella in the early ninth century was a restoration of the cult of Priscillian as an executed martyr (Chadwick 1976, p. 233). The authority of the prophetic voice would be picked up by others, even if Priscillian’s own writings remained little known.