The Pepuzians

OR

The Monatanists

Mistakenly Montanists have been seen as the early sober minded Charismatics who had been stifled by dead orthodoxy. While there are similarities they did show unhealthy tendencies that would distance them from Christians of any age.

They originated in the middle of the second century and continued into the early third century. The main relevance to the Ordination of Women debate is that it caused many respected leaders to give their opinion on public ministry of women in general and as prophetesses.

First as to the various names, Nathaniel Lardner says "They are called Montanists from Montanus; Phrygians and Cata-Phrygians from the country where they sprang up; Pepuzians from a village in Phrygia, which was respected by them as another Jerusalem."(1).

Montanus was "a native of Ardabau, a village in Phrygia, who in the latter half of the second century originated a widespread schism of which traces remained for centuries. ... He taught that God's supernatural revelations did not end with the apostles, but that even more wonderful manifestations of the divine energy might be expected under he dispensation of the Paraclete. ... We are told that Montanus claimed to be a prophet and spoke in a kind of possession or ecstacy."(2).

"His prophesyings were soon outdone by two female disciples, Prisca or Priscilla and Maximilla, who fell into strange ecstasies, delivering in them what Montanus and his followers regarded as divine prophecies. They had been married, left their husbands, were given by Montanus the rank of virgins in the church, and were widely reverenced as prophetesses."(3).

"But very different was the sober judgement formed of them by some of the neighbouring bishops. Phrygia was a country in which heathen devotions exhibited itself in the most fanatical form and it seemed to calm observers that the frenzied utterances of the Montanistic prophetesses were far less like any previous manifestations of the prophetic gift among Christians than they were to those heathen orgiasms which the church had been wont to ascribe to the operations of demons."(4).

"The church party party looked on the Montanists as wilfully despising our Lord's warning to beware of false prophets, and as being in consequence deluded by Satan, in whose power they had placed themselves by accepting as divine teachers women possessed by evil spirits. The Montanists looked on the church leaders as men who did despite to the Spirit of God by offering the indignity of exorcism to those whom He had chosen as His organs for communicating with the church."(5).

"Not withstanding the condemnation of Montanism and the excommunication of Montanists by neighbouring bishops, it continued to spread and make converts. Visitors came from far to witness the wonderful phenomena; ... Possibly A.D. 157 may be the date of the conversion of Montanus, A.D. 172 that of his formal condemnation by the Asiatic church authorities."(6).

"Themiso seems to have been, after Montanus, the head of the Montanists. He was at any rate their leading man at Pepuza; and this was the headquarters of the sect. There probably Montanus had taught; there the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla resided; there Priscilla had seen in a vision Christ come in the form of a woman in a bright garment, who inspired her with wisdom and informed her that Pepuza was the holy place and that there the New Jerusalem was to descend from heaven."(7).

"Thenceforth Pepuza and the neighbouring village Tymium became the Montanist holy place habitually spoken of as Jerusalem. ... Montanus himself did not live long to preside over his sect, and this is perhaps why it is seldom called by the name of its founder"(8).

"Whereas Maximilla had foretold wars and tumults, there had been more than thirteen years since her death with no general or partial war, and the Christians had enjoyed continual peace."(9).

"The Montanists did not reject the apostolic revelations ... The revelations of the new prophecy were to supplement, not to displace Scripture. ... Accordingly Tertullian [while still a Montanist] appeals to the new revelations on questions of discipline, e.g. second marriages, ... Thus Tertullian derives his doctrine as to the materiality and form of the soul from a revelation made to an ecstactica of his congregation."(10).

To those who believed in their divine inspiration, these would practically form additional Scriptures. Hippolytus tells that the Montanists 'have an infinity of books of these prophets whose words they neither examine by reason, nor give heed to those who can, but are carried away by their undiscriminating faith in them, thinking that they learn through their means something more than from the law, the prophets, and the gospels.'"(11)

"Didymus is shocked at a prophetical book emanating from a female, whom the apostle did not permit to teach. It would be a mistake to suppose that the Montanistic disputes led to the formation of the New Testament canon. On the contrary, it is plain that when these disputes arose Christians has so far closed their New Testament canon that they were shocked that any modern writing should be made equal to the inspired books of the apostolic age."(12)(12).

"Montanist Doctrines and Practices. ... What, then, was the nature of the additions actually made by the Montanists? New Fasts ... two weeks of what was called Xerophagy ... In these Montanists abstained, not only from flesh and wine, and the use of the bath, but from all succulent food, e.g. juicy fruit, except on Saturday and Sunday. ...The weekly ... half fasts which in the church ended at three p.m. were by Montanists usually continued till evening. The church party resisted the claim that these two new weeks of abstinence were divinely obligatory. The real question was, Had the prophetess God's command for instituting them?"(13).

"They ... had many rules about fasting and abstinence. ... The catholics said that such things ought not to be imposed on men. If any thought fit to mortify themselves they were at liberty so to do."(14).

"Second Marriages. On this subject again the difference between the Montanists and the church really reduces itself to the question as whether the Paraclete [Holy Spirit] spoke by Monatanus. Second marriages had before Montanus been regarded with disfavour in the church. ... But however unfavourably such marriages were regarded, their validity and lawfulness were not denied."(15).

This meant to Montanists "Whoever married a second time, though his first wife was dead, was excommunicated by them."(16).

"They did not allow the church the power to forgive great sins after baptism; or that they who so fell should ever after be admitted again to full communion, though they repented. Nay, Tertullian seems to say there is no salvation or forgiveness for such persons; and that Christ does not intercede for them."(17).

"They were also against flight in persercution, and against giving money to redeem themselves from ill usage of persecutors, or to procure any mitigation of affliction from them. They moreover met together openly, and in great numbers, in a way that was reckoned indiscreet by many other Christians. They were Millenaries, as appears from Tertullian."(18).

"Theodoret's account is, that Montanus made no innovation in the doctrine of the Trinity, or the creation of the world: but afterwards some of his followers denied the hypostases, and agreed with Sabellius and Noetus. The author of the Additions to Tertullian's book of Prescriptions says there were two parties among them, who had different sentiments about the Trinity. It must be reckoned probable that some of them were in the Sabellian or Unitarian scheme. For it is affirmed by many writers of antiquity; by Jerome and Isidore of Pelusium, as well as the others just mentioned."(19).

I have omitted the less credible tales regarding the Montanists such as using human blood in their feasts, and those which may have been peculiar to one person such as Tertullian.

Even though the church of their day would have been a mixed body, it spoke with one voice rejecting their pretensions on the ministry of women and many other associated matters. That those within the movement were equally the Church or spoke for the Church can hardly be sustained in view of their practices and beliefs referred to above.

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Notes.

[Back](1) Works of Nathaniel Lardner, Vol 4, p.669, London 1815.
[Back](2) A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature, Ed. H. Wace, and W. C. Piercy, one volume edition, p.738 col. 1, London 1911.
[Back](3) ibid. p738 col. 1.
[Back](4) ibid. p738 col. 2.
[Back](5) ibid. p738 col. 2.
[Back](6) ibid. p738 col. 2 - 739 col. 1.
[Back](7) ibid. 739 col. 2.
[Back](8) ibid. 739 col. 2.
[Back](9) ibid. 740 col. 1.
[Back](10)ibid. 741 col. 1.
[Back](11) ibid. 741 col. 1.
[Back](12) ibid. 741 col. 1.
[Back](13) ibid. 741 col. 2.
[Back](14) Lardner Vol. 4, p.673.
[Back](15) ibid. 741 col. 2.
[Back](16) Lardner Vol. 4, p.673.
[Back](17) Lardner Vol. 4, p.673,674.
[Back](18) Lardner Vol. 4, p.674.
[Back](19) Lardner Vol. 4, p.672.

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