Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Secundus, a Gnostic

Secundus (1), Gnostic of 2nd cent., a disciple of Valentinus, and apparently one of the earliest of that teacher's successors, since he is the first of that school of whom Irenaeus gives an account (I. xi. 2). Irenaeus reports two things as peculiar in his teaching: (1) he divided the primary Ogdoad into two Tetrads, a right-hand and a left-hand one, the one being called light, the other darkness; (2) he did not allow the Sophia out of whose passions, according to the Valentinian theory, the material world took its origin to have been one

of the 30 primary Aeons. The short notice in Irenaeus seems the ultimate source of all authentic information about Secundus.

[G.S.]