Messalians

(Praying folk; participle Pa'el of the Aramaic word meaning "to
pray").

An heretical sect which originated in Mesopotamia about 360 and
survived in the East until the ninth century. They are also called
Euchites from the Greek translation of their Oriental name
(euchetai from euchomai, to pray); Adelphians from their first
leader; Lampetians from Lampetius, their first priest (ordained
about 458); Enthusiasts from their peculiar tenet of the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost by Whom they thought themselves
inspired or possessed (enthous). The non-Christian sect of the
Euphemites were also called Messalians, and Epiphanius (Haer.,
lxxx), our sole informant about these, considers them the
forerunners of the Christian Messalians. The non-Christian
Messalians are said to have admitted a plurality of gods, but to
have worshipped only one, the Almighty (Pantokrator). They were
forcibly suppressed by Christian magistrates and many of them put
to death. Hence they became self-styled Martyriani. The Christian
Messalians were a kind of Eastern Circumcellions or vagrant
Quietists. Sacraments they held to be useless, though harmless,
the only spiritual power being prayer, by which one drove out the
evil spirit which baptism had not expelled, received the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and arrived at union with God,
becoming so perfect that the passions ceased to trouble. They
disregarded discipline in the matter of fasting, wandered from
place to place, and in summer were accustomed to sleep in the
streets. To avoid persecution they would conform to
ecclesias6tical usages, profess orthodoxy, and deny any heretical
doctrines ascribed to them. They engaged in no occupations, were
solely occupied in prayer, as they said, or rather in sleep, as
Theodoret sarcastically remarks. The intensity of their prayer
brought them into immediate communication with the Godhead. When
they had reached the passionless state (apatheia, "apathy"), they
saw the Trinity, the three Divine Persons becoming one and
dwelling within them. They likewise saw the evil spirits that go
through the world for the ruin of souls, and trod them under foot.
In fact every man had within him a demon, who could only be
replaced by the Holy Ghost. Even Christ's body was full of demons
once.

Flavian, the Bishop of Antioch, tried to suppress them in his city
about 376. By feigning sympathy he made Adelphius disclose his
real doctrines; and then he banished him and his followers. They
then wandered to the south-east of Asia Minor. Amphilochius of
Iconium caused them to be again condemned at the Synod of Side
(388 or 390). Letoius, Bishop of Melitene, finding some
monasteries tainted with this Quietism, burnt them and drove the
wolves from the sheepfold, as Theodoret narrates. The "Asceticus",
"that filthy book of this heresy", as it is called in the public
acts of the Third General Council (431), was condemned at Ephesus,
after it had already been condemned by a Council of Constantinople
in 426 and by the local council at which Amphilochius of Side
presided. Yet the sect continued to exist. At first it included
only laymen. Lampetius, one of the leaders after the middle of the
fifth century was a priest, having been ordained by Alypius of
Cfsarea. He was degraded from his priesthood on account of
unpriestly conduct. He wrote a book called "The Testament". Salmon
refers to a fragment of an answer by Severus of Antioch to this
work of Lampetius (Wolf, "Anecdota Grfca", III, 182). In Armenia
in the middle of the fifth century strict decrees were issued
against them, and they were especially accused of immorality; so
that their very name in Armenian became the equivalent for
"filthy". The Nestorians in Syria did their best to stamp out the
evil by legislation; the Messalians ceased to exist under that
name, but revived under that of the Bogomili. In the West they
seem hardly to have been known; when the Marcianists, who held
somewhat the same tenets as the Messalians, were mentioned to
Gregory the Great, he professed never to have heard of the Marcian
heresy.

NOTES

EPIPHANICUS, Haer., lxxx; THEODORET, Hist. Ec., IV, x; IDEM, Haer.
fab., IV, xi; CYRIL OF ALEX., De Adorat. in Spir. et Verit., III
in P.G., LXVIII, 282; TIMOTHEUS in Eccles. Grfc. mon., III, 400
sqq.; TER-MKRTTSCHIAN, Die Paulikianer im byz. Kaiserreich
(Leipzig, 1893); PHOTIUS in P.G., CIII, 187 sqq.

J.P. ARENDZEN
Transcribed by Paul T. Crowley

Dedicated to the Sacred Heart

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

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