the inclination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements on this point. Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 1757–1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire. In Grimm’s absence from France (1775–1776), Madame d’Épinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men of letters. She died on the 17th of April 1783. Her Conversations d’Émilie (1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, Émilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. The Mémoires et Correspondance de Mme d’Épinay, renfermant un grand nombre de lettres inédites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J.-J. Rousseau, ainsi que des détails, &c, was published at Paris (1818) from a MS. which she had bequeathed to Grimm. The Mémoires are written by herself in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance. Madame d’Épinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and René is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Garnier as Diderot. All the letters and documents published along with the Mémoires are genuine. Many of Madame d’Épinay’s letters are contained in the Correspondance de l’abbé Galiani (1818). Two anonymous works, Lettres à mon fils (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d’Épinay.
See Rousseau’s Confessions; Lucien Perey [Mlle Herpin] and Gaston Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme d’Épinay, les dernières années de Mme d’Épinay (1882–1883); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.; Edmond Scherer, Études sur la littérature contemporaine, vols. iii. and vii. There are editions of the Mémoires by L. Énault (1855) and by P. Boiteau (1865); and an English translation, with introduction and notes (1897), by J. H. Freese.
EPIPHANIUS, SAINT (c. 315–402), a celebrated Church Father,
born in the beginning of the 4th century at Bezanduca, a village
of Palestine, near Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of
Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egypt, where he
began an ascetic course of life, and, freeing himself from Gnostic
influences, invoked episcopal assistance against heretical thinkers,
eighty of whom were driven from the cities. On his return to
Palestine he was ordained presbyter by the bishop of Eleutheropolis,
and became the president of a monastery which he founded
near his native place. The account of his intimacy with the
patriarch Hilarion is not trustworthy. In 367 he was nominated
bishop of Constantia, previously known as Salamis, the metropolis
of Cyprus—an office which he held till his death in 402. Zealous
for the truth, but passionate and bigoted, he devoted himself
to two great labours, namely, the spread of the recently established
monasticism, and the confutation of heresy, of which he
regarded Origen and his followers as the chief representatives.
The first of the Origenists that he attacked was John, bishop of
Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit at Jerusalem
(394) in terms so violent that the bishop sent his archdeacon to
request him to desist; and afterwards, instigated by Theophilus,
bishop of Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council
of Cyprian bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. In his
closing years he came into conflict with Chrysostom, the patriarch
of Constantinople, who had given temporary shelter to four Nitrian
monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism.
The monks gained the support of the empress Eudoxia, and when
she summoned Theophilus to Constantinople that prelate forced
the aged Epiphanius to go with him. He had some controversy
with Chrysostom but did not stay to see the result of Theophilus’s
machinations, and died on his way home. The principal work
of Epiphanius is the Panarion, or treatise on heresies, of which
he also wrote an abridgment. It is a “medicine chest” of
remedies for all kinds of heretical belief, of which he names
eighty varieties. His accounts of the earlier errors (where he
has preserved for us large excerpts from the original Greek of
Irenaeus) are more reliable than those of contemporary heresies.
In his desire to see the Church safely moored he also wrote the
Ancoratus, or discourse on the true faith. His encyclopaedic
learning shows itself in a treatise on Jewish weights and measures,
and another (incomplete) on ancient gems. These, with two
epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome, are his only genuine
remains. He wrote a large number of works which are lost. In
allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek and
Latin, Jerome styles Epiphanius Πεντάγλωσσος (Five-tongued);
but if his knowledge of languages was really so extensive, it is
certain that he was utterly destitute of critical and logical power.
His early asceticism seems to have imbued him with a love
of the marvellous; and his religious zeal served only to increase
his credulity. His erudition is outweighed by his prejudice, and
his inability to recognize the responsibilities of authorship makes
it necessary to assign most value to those portions of his works
which he simply cites from earlier writers.
The primary sources for the life are the church histories of Socrates and Sozomen, Palladius’s De vita Chrysostomi and Jerome’s De vir. illust. 114. Petau (Petavius) published an edition of the works in 2 vols. fol. at Paris in 1622; cf. Migne, Patr. Graec. 41-43. The Panarion and other works were edited by F. Oehler (Berlin, 1859–1861). For more recent work especially on the fragments see K. Bonwetsch’s art. in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyk. v. 417.
Other theologians of the same name were: (1) Epiphanius Scholasticus, friend and helper of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum (Pavia), c. 438–496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger), c. A.D. 680, to whom some critics have ascribed certain of the works supposed to have been written by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution has been made.
EPIPHANY, FEAST OF. The word epiphany, in Greek,
signifies an apparition of a divine being. It was used as a
singular or a plural, both in its Greek and Latin forms, according
as one epiphany was contemplated or several united in a single
commemoration. For in the East from an early time were
associated with the feast of the Baptism of Christ commemorations
of the physical birth, of the Star of the Magi, of the
miracles of Cana, and of the feeding of the five thousand. The
commemoration of the Baptism was also called by the Greek
fathers of the 4th century the Theophany or Theophanies, and
the Day of Lights, i.e. of the Illumination of Jesus or of the Light
which shone in the Jordan. In the Teutonic west it has become
the Festival of the three kings (i.e. the Magi), or simply Twelfth
day. Leo the Great called it the Feast of the Declaration; Fulgentius,
of the Manifestation; others, of the Apparition of Christ.
In the following article it is attempted to ascertain the date of institution of the Epiphany feast, its origin, and its significance and development.
Clement of Alexandria first mentions it. Writing c. 194 he states that the Basilidians feasted the day of the Baptism, devoting the whole night which preceded it to lections of the scriptures. They fixed it in the 15th year of Tiberius, on the 15th or 11th of the month Tobi, dates of the Egyptian fixed calendar equivalent to January 10th and 6th. When Clement wrote the great church had not adopted the feast, but toward A.D. 300 it was widely in vogue. Thus the Acts of Philip the Martyr, bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, A.D. 304, mention the “holy day of the Epiphany.” Note the singular. Origen seems not to have heard of it as a feast of the Catholic church, but Hippolytus (died c. 235) recognized it in a homily which may be genuine.
In the age of the Nicene Council, A.D. 325, the primate of Alexandria was charged at every Epiphany Feast to announce to the churches in a “Festal Letter” the date of the forthcoming Easter. Several such letters written by Athanasius and others remain. In the churches so addressed the feast of Jan. 6 must have been already current.
In Jerusalem, according to the Epistle of Macarius[1] to the Armenians, c. 330, the feast was kept with zeal and splendour, and was with Easter and Pentecost a favourite season for Baptism.
We have evidence of the 4th century from Spain that a long fast marked the season of Advent, and prepared for the feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January. The council of
- ↑ For its text see The Key of Truth, translated by F. C. Conybeare, Oxford, and the article Armenian Church.
