Heresiography is a modern category that can include a wide range of texts, e.g. the Muslim aš-Šahrastānī's 12th-century Book of Sects and Creeds, Confucian complaints about "demon-worshipping vegetarians", or Anglican screeds against the range of Dissenters. But what I will call "early heresiography" here is the prototype on which later European heresiography was modelled, and from which the generalized category was derived. The texts in question are a closely related set of works from the 2nd to the early 5th century of the Christian era, mostly in Greek and Latin. For the moment I will leave aside the Armenian Eznik of Kolb and the varied production of anti-heretical writing in Syriac - solely due to a lack of knowledge on my part, since it would really make more sense to include them in the same discussion than to treat them separately. In a future post, I will also discuss Byzantine and medieval heresiography, which is largely derivative of the earlier works treated here.
The Early Heresiographies
As most ancient Christian genres, heresiography begins in Greek, the first known author of a Refutation of All Heresies being the 2nd-century church father Justin (called Justin Martyr). He also wrote a separate refutation of one specific "heresy", the treatise Against Marcion. Both of these works are now lost, but they are early representatives of two important genres, the catalogue of heresies or heresiography/heresiology, and the anti-heretical monograph. In this case, we are concerned only with the former, which had a model in Greek doxography (another modern term). Doxographies also listed haireseis, but in the earlier sense of philosophical schools. In Christianity, the word quickly acquired the sense of 'deviant Christian group', or in some cases, 'group that deviates from Christianity'. Apart from the difference in content, the central formal difference was that philosophical doxographies sought to describe a multiplicity of opinions, whereas Christian heresiographies catalogued a multiplicity of errors.
The Greek-language heresiographies after Justin are, with (very) rough dates of publication:
180 CE : On the Detection and Overthrow of Knowedge (gnôsis) Falsely So Called by Irenaeus of Lyon
200 CE : The lost Syntagma Against Thirty-Two Heresies by bishop (and at one point antipope) Hippolytus of Rome
200 CE : The Philosophumena or Refutation of All Heresies, still extant, also attributed to Hippolytus of Rome
375 CE : The Panarion ('Medicine-Chest') by Epiphanius of Salamis, Cyprus
As I understand, it is generally thought that Justine is the basis of all these works, with Epiphanius apparently indirectly depending on it through Hippolytus' Syntagma.
The early Latin-language heresiographies are:
3rd cent. CE : Against All Heresies by Pseudo-Tertullian (Victorinus of Pessau?), attached to Tertullian's De praescriptione haereticorum, which is a general treatment of heresies, not a catalogue
384 CE : Filaster/Philastrius' Book of the Various Heresies
428 CE : Augustine's On Heresies
Of these, Ps.-Tertullian gives hardly more than a list, and Augustine only provides fuller accounts for certain groups, like the Manichaeans. Both Ps.-Tertullian and Filaster seem to have used the lost Syntagma by Hippolytus, and Augustine quotes Filaster and Epiphanius by name.
An Overview of the Basic Set of Heresies
Because of the close genetic connections between the different heresiographies, it is possible to speak of a shared heresiographical schema, with some variations and additions. I will start with the 32 sects listed by Pseudo-Tertullian, which seems to be a summary of Hippolytus' lost Syntagma.
Sects 1-4 are Samaritan and Jewish groups: the Dositheans (Samaritan), the Sadducees, Pharisees and Herodians (Jewish; the last seem to be a Christian invention?)
Sects 5-9 connect all Christian heresy to the Jewish figures through the mysterious figure of Simon Magus. This character - who first briefly figures in the Acts of the Apostles - is said to be the teacher of Menander. Saturninus, Basilides and Nicolaus are related to this "lineage" as well, but in rather vague terms. All of these are said to have had their communities of followers, i.e. Simonians, Menandrians, etc.
Sects 10-12 are perhaps the most contrarian of them all, the Ophites, Cainites and (somewhat less so) the Sethites.
Sects 13 is that of Carpocrates - somewhat disconnected from the rest, while sects 14-15, the followers of Cerinthus and Ebion respectively, had some kind of shared history.
Sects 16-19 are all fundamentally dependent on Valentinus; communities of different degrees of independence looked to Ptolemy (17a), Secundus (17b), Heracleon, Marcus (19a) and Colarbasus (19b) as authorities.
Sects 20-23 are those of the shadowy Cerdo, the highly influential Marcion, and of Marcion's erstwhile followers, Lucian and Apelles.
Sects 24-26 are far closer to to the dogmatic positions of the catholic heresiographers. They are the followers of Tatian, the Cataphrygians (with subdivisions including the Cataeschinetans and Cataproclans), the Quartodecimans (followers of Blastus)
Sects 27-29 differ from the catholics mainly by holding very different beliefs about the nature of Christ, but are not so different as sects 1-23: they are two separate Theodoti (one them called Theodotus the Byzantine), and Noetus. The last is replaced by Praxeas in Ps.-Tertullian.
The exact connections and chronological sequence of these various groups is often left unclear, but heresiographers always imagine the origin of heresy to lie in the founder's prideful corruption of Christianity and/or influence from previous heretics (or other sources), rather than seeking to accounting for any diversity within Christianity. Of course, there really were rivalling communities. But it is notoriously difficult to line up ideas, texts, nominal communal identities and social networks in a satisfactory way. In many cases, supposed extra-Christian "influences" might be better conceptualized as tools used to work out problematic aspects of Christianity. This means that such intellectual tools may be available in a community before they are put to prominent use, which would allow us to concentrate on the concrete uses of ideas in known contexts rather than speculating about a singular moment of origin.
Brief Discussion of Some of the Basic Heresies
5-6. Simon Magus, Menander: Justin claims that in his time there were still followers of Menander - who was a Samaritan and, as I understand it, did not claim to be Christian. Whether the evidence about Simon Magus allows us to confidently connect him to Menander or to posit a real Simonian community seems doubtful to me - but this is a problem to return to in the future.
7-8. Saturninus, Basilides: These certainly were Christians; Clement of Alexandria cites Basilides with some regularity. Although some of his teachings seem in retrospect to place him far outside "normal" Christianity, seeing him as exclusively an enemy of catholic theology neglects the formative influence he must have had as one of the first Christian intellectuals.
9. Nicolaus: The Nicolaites are first mentioned in the Book of Revelation, but it seems that all later claims made about them are based on this passage alone.
16. Valentinus: The Valentinians were clearly very important, and they may have been responsible in some part for the adoption of Platonic terminology in Christianity. Nevertheless, their cosmology was so elaborate that the larger part of it remained limited to people who were conscious of a Valentinian group membership. In many cases - especially in the case of non-catholic groups - it is impossible to say what is due to Valentinian influence and what is owed to common sources.
21. Marcion: Unlike Basilides and Valentinus, who were monists, Marcion taught that there were two independently existing gods: a good one, and a merely just one. This just god, the demiurge or creator, is identified with the God of the Hebrew Bible. (The same is true of the demiurge in Valentinianism, but there he is not an independent being.) In the Islamicate world, Marcionite Christians existed until the tenth century.
24. Tatian: he was orthodox enough that his apologetic Oration to the Greeks survived, but dubious enough that his Diatesseron, a synthesis of the four gospels, was eventually dropped by all surviving churches.
25. Cataphrygians: also known as the Montanists, they were quite influential for some time, and the Latin church father Tertullian at some point became a Montanist.
26. Quartodecimans: their deviation was to have the "wrong" date for Easter - I am uncertain how much of a distinct identity they ever developed in other respects.Part #2 will discuss the variations and additions to this basic schema in the other heresiographers.
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