should be indefinitely postponed. The bishops and their flocks gave offence to the spiritualists on so many points that at last it could be endured no longer. The latter wished for more fasting, the prohibition of second marriages, a frank, courageous profession of Christianity in daily life, and entire separation from the world; the bishops, on the other hand, sought to make it as easy as possible to be a Christian, lest they should lose the greater part of their congregations. And lastly, the bishops were compelled more and more to take the control of discipline into their own hands, while the spiritualists insisted that God Himself was the sole judge in the congregation. On this point especially a conflict was inevitable. It is true that there was no rivalry between the new organization and the old, as in Asia and Phrygia, for the Western Montanists recognized in its main features the Catholic organization as it had been developed in the contest with Gnosticism; but the demand that the “organs of the Spirit” should direct the whole discipline of the congregation contained implicitly a protest against the actual constitution of the Church. Even before this latent antagonism was made plain there were many minor matters which were sufficient to precipitate a rupture in particular congregations. In Carthage, for example, it would appear that the breach between the Catholic Church and the Montanistic conventicle was caused by a disagreement on the question whether or not virgins ought to be veiled. For nearly five years (202–207) the Carthaginian Montanists strove to remain within the Church, which was as dear to them as it was to their opponents. But at length they quitted it, and formed a congregation of their own.
It was at this juncture that Tertullian, the most famous theologian of the West, left the Church whose cause he had so manfully upheld against pagans and heretics. He too had come to the conviction that the Church had forsaken the old paths and entered on a way that must lead to destruction. The writings of Tertullian afford the clearest demonstration that what is called Montanism was, at any rate in Africa, a reaction against secularism in the Church. There are other indications that Montanism in Carthage was a very different thing from the Montanism of Montanus. Western Montanism, at the beginning of the 3rd century, admitted the legitimacy of almost every point of the Catholic system. It allowed that the bishops were the successors of the apostles, that the Catholic rule of faith was a complete and authoritative exposition of Christianity, and that the New Testament was the supreme rule of the Christian life. Montanus himself and his first disciples had been in quite a different position. In his time there was no fixed, divinely instituted congregational organization, no canon of New Testament Scriptures, no anti-Gnostic theology, and no Catholic Church. There were simply certain communities of believers bound together by a common hope, and by a free organization, which might be modified to any required extent. When Montanus proposed to summon all true Christians to Pepuza, in order to live a holy life and prepare for the day of the Lord, there was nothing whatever to prevent the execution of his plan except the inertia and lukewarmness of Christendom. But this was not the case in the West at the beginning of the 3rd century. At Rome and Carthage, and in all other places where sincere Montanists were found, they were confronted by the imposing edifice of the Catholic Church, and they had neither the courage nor the inclination to undermine her sacred foundations. This explains how the later Montanism never attained a position of influence. In accepting, with slight reservations, the results of the development which the Church had undergone during the fifty years from 160 to 210 it reduced itself to the level of a sect. Tertullian exhausted the resources of dialectic in the endeavour to define and vindicate the relation of the spiritualists to the “psychic” Christians; but no one will say he has succeeded in clearing the Montanistic position of its fundamental inconsistency.
Of the later history of Montanism very little is known. But it is at least a significant fact that prophecy could not be resuscitated. Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla were always recognized as the inspired authorities. At rare intervals a vision might perhaps be vouchsafed to some Montanistic old woman, or a brother might now and then have a dream that seemed to be of supernatural origin; but the overmastering power of religious enthusiasm was a thing of which the Montanists knew as little as the Catholics. Their discipline was attended with equally disappointing results. In place of an intense moral earnestness, we find in Tertullian a legal casuistry, a finical morality, from which no good could ever come. It was only in the land of its nativity that Montanism held its ground till the 4th century. It maintained itself there in a number of close communities, probably in places where no Catholic congregation had been formed; and to these the Novatians at a later period attached themselves. In Carthage there existed down to the year 400 a sect called Tertullianists; and in their survival we have a striking testimony to the influence of the great Carthaginian teacher. On doctrinal questions there was no real difference between the Catholics and the Montanists. The early Montanists (the prophets themselves) used expressions which seem to indicate a Monarchian conception of the person of Christ. After the close of the 2nd century we find two sections amongst the Western Montanists, just as amongst the Western Catholics—there were some who adopted the Logos-Christology, and others who remained Monarchians.[1]
Sources.—The materials for the history of Montanism, although plentiful, are fragmentary, and require a good deal of critical sifting. They may be divided into four groups: (1) The utterances of Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla[2] are our most important sources, but unfortunately they consist of only twenty-one short sayings. (2) The works written by Tertullian after he became a Montanist furnish the most copious information—not, however, about the first stages of the movement, but only about its later phase, after the Catholic Church was established. (3) The oldest polemical works of the 2nd century, extracts from which have been preserved, especially by Eusebius (Hist. Eccles. bk. v.), form the next group. These must be used with the utmost caution, because even the earliest orthodox writers give currency to many misconceptions and calumnies. (4) The later lists of heretics, and the casual notices of Church fathers from the 3rd to the 5th century, though not containing much that is of value, yet contain a little.[3]
- ↑ It is evident that Montanism was by no means homogeneous. Too often the primitive “heresy of the Phrygians” has been studied in the light of the matured system of Tertullian. One great divergence is manifest: Tertullian never himself deviated from orthodox and vehemently asserts the orthodoxy of all Montanists, but both Montanus (“I am the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”) and Maximilla (“I am Word and Spirit and Power”) used language which has a distinctly “monarchian” flavour. There were really divided views on the question of the Divine Monarchy among the Montanists as among the Catholics. The orthodox party were known as the Cataproclans, the heterodox as Cataeschinites, and both appealed to the oracles of their prophets. Other influences tending to diversity were the rise of later prophets and visionaries, the personality of prominent members of the sect (like Tertullian himself, who gave to Montanism much more than he received from it), and the power of local environment. An examination of Phrygian as distinct from African Montanism leads to the following conclusions: (1) The Phrygians claimed to have received the prophetic gift by way of succession just as the bishops traced their office back to the apostles; Tertullian seems to ignore the intermediate steps between the apostles and Montanus; (2) the “ecstasy” of the African section was much more restrained than the ravings of the Phrygians; (3) the original Montanists followed the example of the Phrygian native cults in assigning a prominent place to women, Tertullian on the other hand (De virg. vel. 9) says, “It is not permitted to a woman to speak in church, nor yet to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to assume any office which belongs to a man, least of all the priesthood;” (4) while both sections gave to prophets the power of absolution, the Phrygians extended it to martyrs also—at Carthage the Catholics did this contrary to the views of Tertullian. There is also good reason to doubt whether the Phrygian Montanists were anything like so ascetic and desirous of martyrdom as has been generally considered. Apollonius (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 16) accuses them of covetousness and tells us that Themiso purchased his freedom from imprisonment by a considerable payment. Sir William Ramsay has also shown that martyrdom’s in Phrygia were rare during the end of the 2nd and the whole of the 3rd century, a spirit of religious compromise prevailing between the Christian and pagan populations (see a paper by H. J. Lawlor in the Journal of Theological Studies for July, 1908, vol. ix. 481).
- ↑ Collected by Munter and by Bonwetsch, Geschichte des Montanismus, p. 197.
- ↑ On the sources see Bonwetsch, pp. 16–55.
