Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Serapion, solitary of Scete

Serapion (14), a solitary, of Scete, and leader of the Anthropomorphites against the festal epistle of Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria. The monks of Scete, with the one exception of Paphnutius, an abbat, rejected the orthodox view as to God's nature. Serapion, however, was converted by the efforts of Photinus, an Oriental deacon. Cassian tells us that an abbat Isaac explained to him in connexion with Serapion's conversion that the Anthropomorphite heresy was simply a relic of paganism. Pious men like Serapion had been so long accustomed to an image that without a material notion of God their prayers seemed objectless. Cassian, Collat. x. 16; Ceill, viii. 176.

[G.T.S.]