Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/756

 many editions of his works [] are full of information on the Monophysite controversy. In later times Monophysitism does not seem to have attracted the attention of writers to the same extent as Nestorianism has done. There is no work on the former corresponding to those of Assemani and Badger on the latter. Neander, Dorner, Canon Bright, and, more recently, Mr. Bethune Baker are as useful here as on Nestorianism. Canon Bright has also translated and edited Leo's Sermons on the Incarnation. Gieseler is strangely brief on the controversy in the 5th cent., but has more information on its later developments. Mr. Wigram's ''Intro. to the Hist. of the Assyrian Church'' (S.P.C.K. 1910) has some chapters on the later developments of Monophysitism in the East.

[J.J.L.]

Monothelitism. [.]

Montanus (1), a native of Ardabau, a village in Phrygia, who, in the latter half of the 2nd cent., originated a widespread schism, of which traces remained for centuries.

I. Rise of Montanism.—The name Montanus was not uncommon in the district. It is found in a Phrygian inscription (Le Bas, 755) and in three others from neighbouring provinces (Boeckh—3662 Cyzicus, 4071 Ancyra, 4187 Amasia). Montanus had been originally a heathen, and according to Didymus (de Trin. iii. 41) an idol priest. The epithets "abscissus" and "semivir" applied to him by Jerome (Ep. ad Marcellam, vol. i. 186) suggest that Jerome may have thought him a priest of Cybele. That after his conversion he became a priest or bishop there is no evidence. He taught that God's supernatural revelations did not end with the apostles, but that even more wonderful manifestations of the divine energy might be expected under the dispensation of the Paraclete. It is asserted that Montanus claimed himself to be the Paraclete; but we believe this to have merely arisen out of the fact that he claimed to be an inspired organ by whom the Paraclete spoke, and that consequently words of his were uttered and accepted as those of that Divine Being. We are told that Montanus claimed to be a prophet and spoke in a kind of possession or ecstasy. He held that the relation between a prophet and the Divine Being Who inspired him was the same as between a musical instrument and he who played upon it; consequently the inspired words of a prophet were not to be regarded as those of the human speaker. In a fragment of his prophecy preserved by Epiphanius he says, "I have come, not an angel or ambassador, but God the Father." See also Didymus (u.s.). It is clear that Montanus here did not speak in his own name, but uttered words which he supposed God to have put into his mouth; and if he spoke similarly in the name of the Paraclete it does not follow that he claimed to be the Paraclete.

His prophesyings were soon outdone by two female disciples, Prisca or Priscilla and Maximilla, who fell into strange ecstasies, delivering in them what Montanus and his followers regarded as divine prophecies. They had been married, left their husbands, were given by Montanus the rank of virgins in the church, and were widely reverenced as prophetesses. But very different was the sober judgment formed of them by some of the neighbouring bishops. Phrygia was a country in which heathen devotion exhibited itself in the most fanatical form, and it seemed to calm observers that the frenzied utterances of the Montanistic prophetesses were far less like any previous manifestation of the prophetic gift among Christians than they were to those heathen orgiasms which the church had been wont to ascribe to the operation of demons. The church party looked on the Montanists as wilfully despising our Lord's warning to beware of false prophets, and as being in consequence deluded by Satan, in whose power they placed themselves by accepting as divine teachers women possessed by evil spirits. The Montanists looked on the church leaders as men who did despite to the Spirit of God by offering the indignity of exorcism to those whom He had chosen as His organs for communicating with the church. It does not appear that any offence was taken at the substance of the Montanistic prophesyings. On the contrary, it was owned that they had a certain plausibility; when with their congratulations and promises to those who accepted them they mixed a due proportion of rebukes and warnings, this was ascribed to the deeper art of Satan. What condemned the prophesyings in the minds of the church authorities was the frenzied ecstasy in which they were delivered.

The question as to the different characteristics of real and pretended prophecy was the main subject of discussion in the first stage of the Montanist controversy. It may have been treated of by Melito in his work on prophecy; it was certainly the subject of that of Miltiades περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν προφήτηϖ ἐν ἐκστάσει λαλεῖν; it was touched on in an early anonymous writing against Montanism [], of which large fragments are preserved by Eusebius (v. 16, 17). Some more of this polemic is almost certainly preserved by Epiphanius, who often incorporates the labours of previous writers and whose section on Montanism contains a discussion which is clearly not Epiphanius's own, but a survival from the first stage of the controversy. We learn that the Montanists brought as Scripture examples of ecstasy the text "the Lord sent a deep sleep (ἔκστασιν) upon Adam," that David said in his haste (ἐν ἐκστάσει) "all men are liars," and that the same word is used of the vision which warned Peter to accept the invitation of Cornelius. The orthodox opponent points out that Peter's "not so" shews that in his ecstasy he did not lose his individual judgment and will. Other similar instances are quoted from O.T.

The same argument was probably pursued by Clement of Alexandria, who promised to write on prophecy against the Montanists (Strom. iv. 13, p. 605). He notes it as a characteristic of false prophets ἐν ἐκστάσει προεφήτευον ὡς ἂν Ἀποστάτου διάκονοι (i. 17, p. 369). Tertullian no doubt defended the Montanist position in his lost work in six books on ecstasy.

Notwithstanding the condemnation of Montanism and the excommunication of Montanists by neighbouring bishops, it continued to spread and make converts. Visitors came from far to witness the wonderful phenomena;