Priscillian and the Gnostics in Spain

There follow the times of our own day, difficult and dangerous. In these the churches have been defiled with no ordinary evil, and everything has been thrown into confusion. For it was then that the infamous heresy of the Gnostics was first discovered in Spain: a deadly superstition that hid itself under secret rites. The birthplace of that mischief was the East, and particularly Egypt; but from what beginnings it sprang up and grew there is not easy to explain. Marcus was the first to bring it into Spain. He had set out from Egypt, and his birthplace was Memphis. His pupils were a certain Agape, a woman of good family, and a teacher of rhetoric named Helpidius. [a]

By these in turn Priscillian was taught. He was a man of noble birth and great wealth, bold, restless, eloquent, learned through wide reading, very quick in debate and discussion; altogether a happy man, if he had not ruined an excellent mind with wicked studies. No doubt there were many admirable qualities to be seen in him, of both mind and body. He could go long without sleep, and endure both hunger and thirst. He had little desire to pile up wealth, and was very sparing in the use of it. But at the same time he was a very vain man, and far more puffed up than he should have been with his knowledge of merely worldly things. Moreover, it was believed that he had practiced magic from his boyhood. Having taken up the ruinous system we have described, he drew many people of noble rank and crowds of common people into accepting it, by the arts of persuasion and flattery he possessed. Besides this, women who loved novelties, whose faith was unsteady, and who had an itching curiosity about everything, flocked to him in crowds. This was encouraged by the kind of humility he showed in his face and manner, which stirred in everyone a greater honor and respect for him.

And now, little by little, the wasting disease of that heresy had spread through most of Spain, and even some of the bishops came under its corrupting influence. Among these, Instantius and Salvianus had taken up Priscillian’s cause, not only by declaring that they agreed with his views, but even by binding themselves to him with a kind of oath. This went on until Hyginus, bishop of Cordoba, who lived nearby, found out how matters stood and reported the whole thing to Hydatius, priest of Mérida. But Hydatius harassed Instantius and his allies without limit, and beyond what the occasion called for; and so he put a torch, as it were, to the growing blaze, and rather provoked these evil men than suppressed them.