This was an ascetic Christian movement in Roman Iberia (modern Spain) that drifted into heresy soon after it was established. It was the brainchild of a man named Priscillian, a wealthy and educated Christian layman originally from the province of Gallaecia (northwestern Span, approximately modern Galicia).
Priscillian was born around 340 CE. In addition to being wealthy and educated, he appears to have been a skilled orator and had a good deal of local influence. By the mid-360s he’d adopted an ascetic lifestyle and had begun promoting it as a virtuous Christian practice. Through the next several years he’d collected a following.
Sometime prior to, or around, 370 Priscillian apparently came under the sway of the followers of a Gnostic sage from Egypt named Marcus. His nascent movement adopted some Gnostic ideas, such as dualism. He also outlined a kind of hierarchy of believers, the apex of which were “doctors” (which in the Latin of the time meant “teacher,” in a sense somewhat akin to modern English “professor”). Of course, he counted himself as one of those “doctors.”
Like most Gnostic sects, Priscillianism held that humanity was by nature divine, but imprisoned in the physical realm. Unlike them, however, it didn’t utterly reject all of the Judaic scripture. Instead, Priscillianism taught that scripture had to be rigorously interpreted in uncommon ways (and quite possibly in “layered” fashion). It further held, as did Manichaeism, that human beings and even the world itself were a mixture of the divine and the diabolical, good and evil.
The movement also was, as Priscillian had originally established from the beginning, starkly ascetic in nature. Alcohol and meat were forbidden, and so was sex. Members could not marry, and while married couples that converted could remain together, they had to abstain from sex. These also were hallmarks of Manichaeism (as well as some of the Gnostic sects). Partly because of this, the movement’s opponents sometimes accused its followers of being Manichaean.
One of the more notable concepts taught by Priscillianism is that it was permissible to lie in order to promote the movement — and by extension, the salvation of others. This notion followed from their belief that scripture could be read and interpreted in multiple ways, and that very few (i.e. only members of the movement) understood them correctly. Outsiders and followers of lesser degree were ignorant, and could be treated as such.
Fairly early on during the development of this movement, two bishops, Instantius and Salvianus, had joined it, and were friends and advisors of Priscillian. This granted his movement at least a veneer of official Church approval.
But that only went just so far. Other bishops grew alarmed, the most important of those being Hyginus of Cordoba and Ithacius of Ossonoba. It took some effort, but around 380 they managed to gather a synod of bishops from around Iberia and southern Gaul, which condemned Priscillianism and its leaders.
Despite this, however — or perhaps because of it, due to Priscillian’s popularity and agitation over what this synod had done — Priscillian was ordained and also named Bishop of Avila in central Iberia. Ithacius had to turn to Roman Emperor Gratian, who issued a decree removing Priscillian and the bishops in his movement from their sees and exiled them.
As with the synod that had condemned them, this order wasn’t enforced. Priscillian and the rest of his cadre traveled to Rome to appeal to Pope Damasus I. They didn’t get to see him, but they were able to get the Emperor’s order lifted.
Emperor Gratian was soon succeeded by Emperor Magnus Maximus, who heard the case of Priscillian and his movement, and ordered another synod be convened to deal with the matter. That council, in 384, ordered Instantius deposed (likely because he’d ordained Priscillian). Even then, as before, that didn’t prove conclusive, and the matter ended up being heard by the Imperial court directly. The case was handed off, to be decided by the regional prefect.
At that point, things became serious. A prefectural trial, of sorts, was held in 385. Priscillian and the other leaders of his movement were found to have practiced magic. Based on this judgment, the Emperor condemned Priscillian and the rest of the movement’s leadership to death. Efforts to head off this sentence were undertaken by influential Christian leaders such as Martin of Tours and Ambrose of Milan. To be clear, none of them were supporters of Priscillian or his movement; but they objected to the state interfering in what they considered a purely ecclesiastical affair.
But nothing they did was enough to save Priscillian or his cadre. Roman officials executed them as ordered. This was the first time a Christian had killed any other Christian due to heresy. Of course, in strict legal terms, that is not why Priscillian had been put to death. As noted, it was due to his presumed practice of magic. Still, there’d never have been any trial at all, if not for outrage about Priscillian’s “heresy.” So there can be no question about why he was killed.
The execution of Priscillian and the other leaders of his movement rippled through western Christendom. The Pope censured the Emperor, the prefect, and Ithacius as well. Denunciations of Maximus and his regime, over the Priscillian affair, were pronounced throughout Iberia and Gaul. Ithacius and other hierarchs who’d engineered Priscillian’s demise were effectively persona non grata. Maximus’s successor Valentinian II almost immediately after his ascension in 388 ordered them deposed and exiled, and formally ended any prosecution of surviving Priscillianists.
Still, none of these punishments were enough to alter the fundamental fact that a precedent had been set: That Christians could punish, and kill, heretics simply because they were heretics. This was a lesson that would be carried forward, through the Middle Ages and even into the early modern era, to terrible effect.
Partly as a reaction to the execution of Priscillian and his movement’s leadership, it gained popularity for a time. And in many places, again throughout Iberia and southern Gaul, Priscillian was hailed as a martyr.
This is not the result that Priscillian’s enemies had wanted. In any event, after Valentinian’s edicts were enforced, they were on the outside of the Church looking in. So the Priscillian affair clearly had not worked out for them. At all.
The proceedings of later synods, over the next few centuries, suggest that Priscillianism still had a significant following, well into the 6th century. It’s quite possible it still had a presence in its native Iberia by the time that region was conquered by Muslims in the early 8th century, and only died out because of that conquest.
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