Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/165

Rh Sophia, Pistis, Elpis, Agape, are said to have been a mother and daughters who suffered in September, and whose relics were transferred to the church of St. Silvester. On the other hand, Sapienta, Spes, Fides, Caritas, are said by Ado to have suffered Aug. 1, and were buried on the Appian Way, in the crypt of St. Caecilia. In that crypt has been found the inscription, In the same place, if we rightly understand de Rossi, was found —Agape, who lived twenty-six years in peace. There is no statement of relationship in the notices of the tombs on the Appian Way. It appears probable that Ado has confounded the widely celebrated martyrs who are said to have suffered in September under Adrian, with the occupants of some Christian tombs in a crypt where there were many celebrations early in August. The Menology gives the ages of Faith, Hope, and Love as 12, 10, and 9. (De Rossi, Rom. Sott. i. 180‒183, ii. 171 ff., pl. lv. 10; Bede, Mart. July 1, Bede, Mart. Auct. June 23; Usuard, Aug. 1; Menol. Basil. Sept. 16.) [E.B.B.]  Carpocrates (Καρποκράτης, Irenaeus; Καρποκρᾱς, Epiphanius and Philaster, both probably deriving this form from the shorter treatise against heresies by Hippolytus), a Platonic philosopher who taught at Alexandria early in the 2nd cent., and who, incorporating Christian elements into his system, became the founder of a heretical sect mentioned in one of our earliest catalogues of heresies, the list of Hegesippus, preserved by Eusebius (H. E. iv. 22). These heretics are the first of whom Irenaeus expressly mentions that they called themselves Gnostics; Hippolytus first speaks of the name as assumed by the Naassenes or Ophites (Ref. v. 1). Of all the systems called Gnostic, that of Carpocrates is the one in which the Hellenic element is the most strongly marked, and which contains the least of what is necessarily Jewish or Oriental. He is described as teaching with prominence the doctrine of a single first principle: the name μοναδικὴ γνῶσις, given by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. 2) to the doctrine of the school which he founded, is made by Neander to furnish the key to the whole Carpocratian system; but possibly is only intended to contrast with the doctrine of the Valentinian teachers, who thought it necessary to provide the first Being with a consort, in order that emanations from Him might be conceivable. Carpocrates taught that from the one unknown unspeakable God different angels and powers had emanated, and that of these the lowest in the series, far below the unbegotten Father, had been the makers of the world. The privilege of the higher souls was to escape the rule of those who had made the world; even by magical arts to exercise dominion over them, and ultimately, on leaving the world, to pass completely free from them to God Who is above them. Jesus he held to be a mere man naturally born of human parents, having no prerogatives beyond the reach of others to attain. His superiority to ordinary men consisted in this, that His soul, being steadfast and pure, remembered those things which it had seen in the revolution (τῇ περιφορᾷ) in which it had been carried round with the unbegotten God, and therefore power [or a "power"] had been sent from God enabling Him to escape the makers of the world. Though brought up in Jewish customs, He had despised them, and therefore had received powers enabling Him to destroy the passions which are given to men as a punishment. But in this there was nothing special: others might be the equals or the superiors not only of Peter or Paul, but of our Lord Himself. Their souls, too, might remember the truths they had witnessed; if they despised the rulers of the world as much as Jesus did, they would be given the same privileges as He, and higher if they despised them more. Thus the Carpocratians gave honour, but not an exclusive honour, to Christ. They had pictures of Him, derived, it was said, from a likeness taken by Pilate's order; and images, which they crowned and treated with other marks of respect; but this they did also in the cases of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers.

In the opening statement concerning the making of the world, the doctrine ascribed to Carpocrates is almost identical with that ascribed to Saturninus; but in the next paragraph the language is distinctly taken from the myth in Plato's Phaedrus, in which human knowledge is made to be but a recollection of what the soul had seen when carried round with the gods in their revolution, and permitted to see the eternal forms of things.

The doctrine of the duty of despising the rulers of the world received among the Carpocratians an interpretation which enabled them to practise immorality without scruple. Things in themselves were indifferent; nothing was in its own nature good or evil, and was only made so by human opinion. The true Gnostic might practise everything—nay, it was his duty to have experience of all. A doctrine concerning the transmigration of souls which was taught by other Gnostic sects, and which harmonized well with Platonic teaching, was adopted by the Carpocratians in the form that a soul which had had its complete experience passed at once out of the dominion of the rulers of the world, and was received up to society with the God above them: those which had not were sent back to finish in other bodies that which was lacking to them; but all ultimately would be saved. But as was also taught by the Basilidians of Irenaeus and by the Ophites, salvation belonged to the soul alone; there would be no resurrection of the body. In conformity with this theory was interpreted the text from the Sermon on the Mount, "Agree with thine adversary quickly." The "adversary" (whom, Epiphanius tells us, they named Abolus, a corruption, doubtless, from the Diabolus of Irenaeus) was one of the world-making angels, whose office it was to conduct the soul to the principal of these angels, "the judge." If he found that there were acts left undone, he delivered it to another angel, "the officer," to shut it up "in prison"—i.e. in a body—until it had paid the last farthing. The doctrine that we ought to imitate the freedom with which our Lord despised the rulers of the world raises the question, Did Carpocrates intend to impute immorality to Him? On this point 