Rudolf Helm's edition of Jerome's translation of Eusebius's chronological tables for the years 2187 and 2188 (171 and 172 CE) contains, back to back, two entries which at first glance may not seem to have too much to do with one another: The first, the last entry for 171, refers to the ‘pseudoprophecy which is called “according to the Phrygians” (kata Phrygas)’. This began with Montanus as its creator (auctore) and with Priscilla and Maximilla its insane prophets (insanis uatibus)’. The second, the first entry for 172, reads: ‘Tatian has been recognized [i.e. been identified] as a heretic. From him the Encratites take their beginning (Tatianus haereticus agnoscitur, a quo Encratitae)’.Footnote ¹

Thus the ‘outbreak’, if that is the right word, of what modern scholarship knows as ‘Montanism’ (an expression that has been used only since the fourth century;Footnote ² the more authentic designation is ‘The New Prophecy’Footnote ³) is noted here in Eusebius's Chronicle as the last event for the year 171. The same author's Church History 5.16.7, excerpting an earlier source, the so-called ‘anti-Montanist Anonymous’, adds that the events occurred under the proconsulate in Asia of a certain Gratus, which could be dated to 169/70 or 171/2.Footnote ⁴ The Chronicle entry refers to the ‘movement’ as a ‘pseudo-prophecy’, on grounds, or so it seems, of its ecstatic nature, and to the prophets involved as ‘insane’. Jerome uses for ‘prophet’ an expression usually reserved for pagan seers, uates. The expression insanis uatibus can be understood as applying to the three persons who are named, Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla, although from the way the sentence is structured the phrase seems to refer primarily to the two women. The understanding is, or so it seems, that they uttered ‘dark’ oracles in a manner similar to that of seers at pagan shrines. The expression ‘oracle’ for Montanist prophecies is also still sometimes used in modern literature, especially when possible ties between Montanism and traditional, pre-Christian, Phrygian religion are explored,Footnote ⁵ an aspect of the topic that will not be considered here.

The alleged oracle-like darkness of the prophecies was later used by heresiologists as evidence against their authoritative nature, although the extant logia do not strike one as overly dark. Alternatively, and somewhat in contradiction to the first charge, there was the suggestion that the prophecies came ultimately from ‘evil spirits’ or ‘the adversary’ (i.e. the devil). This charge, too, was inconsistent, for not only were the sayings by and large comprehensible, at the time they were not perceived as overly problematic doctrinally. Only from the fourth century was Montanism linked to heretical views, such as Sabellianism.Footnote ⁶ What did cause trouble, however, was the way in which they were delivered (involving ecstatic prophecy as a source of doctrine that could potentially undermine tradition) and who delivered them, namely women, who as pneumatically gifted prophets assumed the status and functions of ordained leaders, bishops, a role that was about to be defined in ways that definitely excluded women.

The entry in Eusebius's Chronicle alludes to these implications. Montanus, a man, is mentioned as ‘originator’ (auctor) of the movement. Yet according to other sources he too was an ecstatic prophet,Footnote ⁷ and the expression insanis uatibus can be understood as referring to him as well. But the real issue, as this article will argue, is the fact that women publicly acted as prophets and thereby assumed leadership roles and threatened structures that were developing in a different kind of theological and ecclesial discourse.Footnote ⁸

Tatian, who is also known as author of the Diatessaron, was a pupil of Justin Martyr and author of an apology entitled Oration to the Greeks,Footnote ⁹ which he probably completed not long after 172.Footnote ¹⁰ The first known witness to accuse him of heresy and of being a leading theologian (if not the founder) of the Encratites is Irenaeus,Footnote ¹¹ a contemporary. A few decades later Clement of Alexandria corroborated Irenaeus's charge, with additional evidence.Footnote ¹² Both Irenaeus and Clement cite from works of Tatian which are no longer extant. The only extant work, the Oration to the Greeks, does not contain any material that would suggest that Tatian promoted Encratism.Footnote ¹³ Be that as it may, the comments of Irenaeus and Clement make it quite clear that the issue was about the interpretation of certain Pauline passages (1 Corinthians 7: 5–6, 39; 15: 22). According to Irenaeus and Clement, Tatian held that according to these passages Adam was not saved (15: 22) and that only those could possibly be saved who abstained radically and permanently from sexual activity, even in marriage, as well as from luxury food and drink.Footnote ¹⁴

Views of this kind were also attributed to adherents of the ‘New Prophecy’. Origen, invoking Psalm 5: 10 and Romans 3: 13, cites them as saying: ‘Do not come near me for I am clean. I have taken no wife … Like a Nazirite of God I am drinking no wine’.Footnote ¹⁵ Jerome attributed the same attitudes to the Encratites.Footnote ¹⁶ He, too, invokes the Nazirite oath from Numbers 6: 1–21, originally a temporary vow; but Amos 2: 12 was understood in Antiquity to have interpreted it as permanent and thus to have radicalized it. This is why Jerome can say that Tatian derived his heresy from this verse. Both Origen and Jerome are alluding to a second-century Pauline controversy. Getting married and drinking wine (1 Timothy 5: 23) were prominent themes in the Pastoral Epistles aimed specifically at refuting Encratite tendencies, perhaps during the time of Marcion,Footnote ¹⁷ perhaps earlier. Contemporaries therefore appear not to have seen a great difference between the ascetic practices of Encratites and those of Montanists. Tertullian, in later life an adherent of the ‘New Prophecy’, tried hard to highlight that difference,Footnote ¹⁸ but he appears to have been splitting hairs.Footnote ¹⁹

This combination of entries, the beginning of the Montanist, ‘Kataphrygian’, ‘false prophecy’ (note that Eusebius does not call it a heresyFootnote ²⁰) and Tatian's identification as a heretic and his role as founder of the Encratites, suggests the theme of the present article. However, they do so less in view of common ascetic practices and more in view of the interconnections between pneumatic prophecy and ascetic intellectualism, between Pneuma and Paideia, Spirit and Education, as possible driving forces in second-century Christianity towards stronger, tighter, more militant but also more sophisticated, institutional, ecclesiastical forms. During the ensuing decades these forms made Christianity more comprehensible, permeable and transparent to its cultural, social and political environment, forces to be reckoned with, but also persuasive forces. The phenomenon of ecstatic prophecy, the practical workings (so to speak) of the Holy Spirit in everyday decision-making, which suspended common sense and rationality and by its nature resisted institutional control and intellectual categorization, met with increasingly sophisticated efforts at achieving, paradoxically, precisely that, namely theological conceptualization and institutional (i.e. hierarchical) integration. As Hans von Campenhausen outlined some time ago in his monumental Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (1953),Footnote ²¹ the path from New Testament concepts of apostolic and Spirit-led authority (e. g. in the Praxapostolos and in the Pauline corpus) to second- and third-century concepts of tradition, apostolic succession and pneumatic leadership (as in the office of the bishop) led around the middle of the second century via a thorny, conflict-ridden but also in many ways fertile route of competition and engagement between prophets and teachers, those who represented or worked through ‘the Spirit’ (Pneuma) and those who worked through theological ‘education’ (Paideia), and put forward (among others) theologies of ‘the Spirit’, theologies which (so to speak) ‘rationalized the irrational’. More often than not, such representatives of Paideia, that is teachers or educators, more intellectuals than spiritually inclined men (and the majority were men), were accused of heresy, sometimes after they had died, because they were invoked as authorities by later heretical teachers. Leaders of prophetic movements, including women, were also condemned, not as heretics (initially at least) but as social rebels. Later, in the fourth century, they were anachronistically found to have held heretical views.Footnote ²²

A neuralgic point of contact between these movements may be detected around the time of the formation of Montanism and the teaching activity of Tatian in the late 160s and early to mid-170s; it may not be entirely accidental that Eusebius linked these two items in his Chronicle by listing them next to one another. Exploring this link, we shall first revisit the early history of Montanism before turning to Tatian and his promotion of a distinct Christian concept of paideia labelled ‘barbarian paideia’ as opposed to (classical) Greek paideia, his association with the heresy of Encratism and his possible links to Montanism. We shall conclude with some tentative remarks concerning the possible wider significance of the apparent tensions between paideia and Pneuma in second-century Christianity.

We begin with the early history of Montanism: Eusebius's date of 171/2 is only one of several that were suggested in Antiquity.Footnote ²³ Epiphanius of Salamis dates the beginnings of the movement to 156/7, referring to the ‘nineteenth year of the emperor Antoninus Pius’,Footnote ²⁴ while the Paschal Chronicle dates it somewhat later, to 182.Footnote ²⁵ This latter date is implausible, for reasons to be seen shortly; the earlier is worth examining. Of course, none of them are certain. That given by Epiphanius in particular is notoriously unreliable in several respects. To begin with, and interestingly, Epiphanius draws a causal link between the emergence of Encratites and Montanists where Eusebius's juxtaposition cautiously suggested mere coincidence. Epiphanius then refers to the Phrygians as the successors of the Encratites (διαδεχομένη) and dates the origin of the latter in the reign of the emperor Hadrian, which is well before the 140s (ὁ Μαρκίων δὲ καὶ οἱ περὶ Τατιανοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ διαδεξάμενοι Ἐγκρατῖται ἐν χρόνοις Ἀδριανοῦ). Everything Epiphanius says here is dubious. In reality Marcion only became active in Rome in the 140s. Tatian did not become active before the 160s, or even the 170s, when he was declared a heretic, left Rome and probably returned to Syria. If he really was the founder of the Encratites, as Eusebius and others seem to claim, he and his ‘movement’ cannot have predated the Montanists, for whom recently discovered archaeological and epigraphic finds suggest dates as early as the 140s,Footnote ²⁶ although this evidence has also to be treated with caution. Since ecstatic prophecy was known and tolerated in early Christianity from the very beginning, the so-called ‘outbreak’ of Montanism only marks the point when it began to be attacked as schismatic, and even then only in some cases and in specific areas.

Thus a looser chronology, similar to the one suggested (for example) by the entry in Eusebius's Chronicle, is more probable. First Montanism emerged (150s), then Tatian appeared on the scene (160s). He was then accused of being the founder (or at least the leading theoretician) of Encratism, although more probably he provided material in his work (the Oration to the Greeks) which could later be invoked as authoritative by those promoting Encratism, or cited as damning evidence by those who rejected it and who looked for early authoritative writers on whom to pin the charge of Encratism.

We offer one more word regarding the possibility of reconstructing such sequences of events as are listed in sources such as Eusebius's Chronicle relatively precisely, (say) year by year. Markus Vinzent has recently drawn attention to what Rudolf Helm, editor of one of the authoritative editions of the Chronicle, says about this. Helm writes that not one of the chronological references in the chronicle is reliable; every single entry poses a problem in itself, for which the possibility of authorial error, authorial views regarding the reliability of the available sources, errors in the transmission of the sources and many further aspects need to be taken into account. From a purely historical-chronological standpoint, the project of forcing a world history of such a scope into a year-by-year framework such as this must be deemed unfortunate.Footnote ²⁷ Helm adds, however (and this is significant here), that Eusebius himself was not overly rigid in attributing individual events to precise years. Rather, he grouped events, which he had already preliminarily judged to be somehow connected, relatively loosely within spans of years marked, in the case of the second century, by the reign of particular emperors or dynasties. For example, he dated the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch to the reign of Trajan (98–117)Footnote ²⁸ and the flourishing of the two apologists Quadratus and Aristides to the first decade of the reign of Hadrian (117–38), that is, around the mid-120s.Footnote ²⁹ Interestingly, Eusebius says of the apologist Quadratus that according to tradition he shared with the daughters of Philip (Acts 21: 8–9) the gift of prophecy and that he belonged, besides them and many others, to the first rank of the apostolic succession.Footnote ³⁰ Thus in the 120s prophecy seems not to have been an issue, whether the prophets were men or women. This makes any early dating of the beginnings of ‘Montanism’ (i.e. before Montanus) problematic, since before Montanus prophecy seems not to have been deemed controversial. Judging by Eusebius's remark, it may even have counted as a possible criterion of apostolicity.

For the outbreak of Montanism and the flourishing of Tatian, Eusebius reserved the last decade of the Antonine dynasty, or more precisely, the last decade of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80), that is the 170s. To look at this from a historical perspective, this was long after the apparently positive and constructive 120s and after a first wave of heresies such as Marcionism (early 140s) and Valentinianism (150s), and also just after the death of Justin Martyr (c.165). Tatian, as we have heard, was a pupil of Justin Martyr and was accused of heresy shortly after his death. This period preceded the monumental works of Irenaeus (180s) and Tertullian (190s–210s), when a (lenient and even positive) stance towards Montanism and critical-polemical, although not completely convincing, voices against Tatian were first articulated.

For a better understanding, therefore, of the coming to a head of the impact of early Montanism alongside an intellectual teaching such as that of Tatian, a focus on the early to mid-170s may be more appropriate. The end-point of this phase would be c.180, the terminus ad quem of Tatian's Oration to the Greeks and the date given for the death of Maximilla.Footnote ³¹ This decade is often seen conventionally as a first period of ‘catholic rejection of the Prophecy’. Christine Trevett, for example, refers to it in this manner.Footnote ³² However, it could also be perceived as a time of heightened dialectical tension, between a desire on the part of church leaders to achieve more theological and ecclesial integration and a readiness to put this integration at risk by suppressing movements that were perceived as obstacles to this process.

Earlier we mentioned Eusebius's distinction between Montanus as ‘originator’ (auctor) of the movement and Priscilla and Maximilla as ‘mad prophets’ (insanae uates).Footnote ³³ A few decades after Eusebius, Didymus referred to Montanus as ‘exarch’.Footnote ³⁴ As Trevett has pointed out, Eusebius may be by and large reliable here and Anne Jensen's assertion that Montanus was introduced to reduce the role of the women agents in the drama may be unnecessarily revisionist.Footnote ³⁵ The movement started with him but it was dominated by Priscilla and Maximilla. On the other hand, Didymus's use of the term ‘exarch’ may indicate that there was a tendency to ascribe to him a stronger role than he actually had. The notion that there simply had to be a man's guiding mind behind a movement of crazy women prophets or that such a movement could only be judged properly against the evidence of at least one male representative has even affected modern scholarship. Thus, in George Salmon's entry on Montanus in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, Trevett found this sentence: ‘If Montanus had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed not under the superintendence of the Christian teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but of wild and excitable women’.Footnote ³⁶

As a matter of fact, however, the early heresiological sources treat Montanus no better than any of the women: ‘Bent on being leader he allowed the adversary to possess him and … fell into … convulsions. He became ecstatic, … spoke strangely and prophesied in a way that clearly contradicted the tradition … of the church.’Footnote ³⁷ Similarly, of Priscilla and Maximilla the sources say that they spoke ‘crazily, indecently and strangely, just like the aforementioned Montanus’.Footnote ³⁸ The word ‘indecently’ suggests that the source assumes that there is one specific aspect of the women's prophetic activity that differs from that of Montanus, but apart from this additional characteristic, Montanus and the two women are treated with equal disdain. There is nothing to suggest that the women behaved more irrationally than the man, or that their prophecies were ‘less rational’ than the man's. Even Salmon's account contains evidence that suggests the opposite.

Salmon's statement stands in a particular context: Tertullian's admission in On the Soul 9 that he derived certain aspects of his doctrine of the soul directly from the revelation proclaimed by a prophetic woman in his congregation. This makes Salmon's statement all the more poignant. What did he really think would have been the source of the Christian teaching derived from the wisdom of those male Christian teachers whom he invokes against those ‘wild, excitable’ women? Was it a kind of formal education, a form of Greek paideia, as opposed to the ‘barbaric’ lack of education of those women, who were prone to uncontrolled emotions and easily fell into ecstasy? Even Eusebius did not gender ecstasy like that. Moreover, for early Christians, how wisdom could emerge from folly presented a conundrum: how the supra-rational could enter into this world and transform it. They would have been careful not to dismiss reports of ecstatic prophecy as ‘tittle-tattle’, as von Campenhausen does,Footnote ³⁹ nor would they have been tempted to reduce it to an ultimately rationalist technique of discursive communication, like Karl Froehlich.Footnote ⁴⁰

To be sure, however, ultimately the prophecies did have to be communicated through discursive techniques. They presented what we might call a media challenge.Footnote ⁴¹ They required literary and rhetorical skills, and civility: in short, paideia. Crucially, as the sources suggest, women such as Priscilla, Maximilla and Quintilla possessed those skills. They did not require, in Salmon's words, a Montanus to ‘triumph’. We shall cite some examples.

In his Church History (5.18.13), Eusebius reports that a certain Zoticus of Cumane set out publicly to refute the spirit that worked in Maximilla. However, he was prevented from doing so by those agreeing with her.Footnote ⁴² One could interpret this passage in two ways: either Maximilla behaved like a possessed spirit medium and Zoticus tried to perform a kind of exorcism on her but was prevented by her supporters, or Zoticus tried to challenge Maximilla as she communicated her prophetic message in plain discursive language. The verb ‘to refute’ (διελέγξαι) used in the source to denote Zoticus's activity suggests at least some degree of rhetorical-dialectical exchange, not a purely ritual intervention. This view is further supported by the observation that all extant Montanist logia – though admittedly there are no more than fourteen of these – are discursive theological statements, not dark, obscure oracles or magical-ritual incantations.Footnote ⁴³

In another source, the Dialexis, depicting essentially a disputation between a Montanist and an orthodox Christian, the orthodox interlocutor accuses the Montanist women prophets of ‘speaking publicly in the churches’, ‘assuming authority over men’, ‘writing books in their own name’, ‘praying and prophesying without covering up’, and generally not subjecting themselves to their ‘head’, ‘that is their husband’.Footnote ⁴⁴ These latter phrases in particular, but in a certain sense the entire passage, allude to 1 Timothy 2: 12. We have already noted the significance of this in the light of the controversies about Pauline teachings since the 140s. The present passage, which may be as late as the fourth century, refutes, and by doing so attests, the fact that Montanist women prophets had assumed clerical status, as Trevett puts it.Footnote ⁴⁵ If the Dialexis reflects a real (or at least realistic) scenario, they fulfilled the roles of bishops.

Such a level of leadership involving authoritative public speaking and especially the writing of books presupposes that such women had acquired a high degree of paideia. Paideia, we should also remember, had a practical purpose in Antiquity. It qualified citizens to speak in public, in councils and assemblies, and to be elected (or selected) to civic leadership roles and positions of power in the polis or the imperial administration. Another aspect of paideia in this more practical sense (of projecting an air of superiority and self-confidence) may lie behind the remark that the women prophets were not ‘covering up’ (‘wearing a veil’) when praying and prophesying. This could also refer more generally to the way the women dressed.

Eusebius's Church History (5.18.4, 6, 11) adds some further colour to this. It reports that Priscilla and Maximilla were from a well-to-do background. They had been married but had left their husbands. Nevertheless, as already noted, Priscilla was now accorded the title of virgin, to reflect her ecclesiastical status. Both presumably lived an ascetic life. Yet they continued to dress according to their social status, put on make-up, wore jewellery and hosted banquets. They maintained this lifestyle with proceeds from their work, gifts that they received from their followers.Footnote ⁴⁶ Jerome refers to them in a very Roman turn of phrase as nobiles et opulentes feminas (noble and wealthy women).Footnote ⁴⁷

Yet again, the fact that Priscilla and Maximilla met the media challenge posed by their mission as they showed themselves to possess paideia in every sense of the word, in communicating their prophecies and assuming leadership roles as they did so, does not mean that their prophesying was ‘only pretended’, as some sources would like to suggest,Footnote ⁴⁸ a charge that is not consistent with the simultaneous accusation that it was caused by evil spirits or the devil. Nor does it do justice to the sources if we depict the women's actions as motivated primarily by rational considerations such as a quest for power and influence. The extant logia set out quite credibly what is meant by ecstatic prophecy in the case of Priscilla and Maximilla, and also, of course, of Montanus. The charge that it involves a state ‘out of one's mind’, strange language (either foreign or completely incomprehensible) and convulsions, was mentioned earlier.Footnote ⁴⁹ In what follows attention will be drawn to another aspect, the theological content of the prophecies.

Montanus is reported to have said that prophesying is like being played ‘like a lyre’ by the Lord, who removes the old heart and puts in a new one.Footnote ⁵⁰ Maximilla described herself as one who ‘is compelled, willinging or unwillingly, to know the knowledge of God (γνωθεῖν γνῶσιν θεοῦ)’.Footnote ⁵¹ Thus what Montanus and Maximilla are reported to have experienced are theological truths, of such a kind as can also be found in works of Philo of Alexandria, who refers to the human soul as ‘God's tool’,Footnote ⁵² or in apologists such as Clement of Alexandria, who also uses the image of the lyre.Footnote ⁵³ In Tatian, too, we find a philosophically grounded theology of the Logos and the Pneuma as a single power of God salvifically active in those few human beings who are connected with that power and proclaim that which is hidden.Footnote ⁵⁴ Ecstatic prophets were live models of this reality. They experienced it and they communicated this experience. Any power they were to exert in the church emerged from an authority grounded in the authenticity of their experience.

This raises once more the question of gender. Theoretically, at a purely abstract philosophical level, it could perhaps be said that an ecstatic God-experience as the one described by MaximillaFootnote ⁵⁵ is gender-neutral. This would be confirmed by an apologist such as Tatian, who understood himself as a philosophical teacher and whose authority was derived from that role. In consequence, the God-experience had hardly any effect on social relations. In other words, what gender-neutrality really meant in this case was gender-bias (against women). We can see this in Tatian, who proudly announces to his putative pagan audience the existence of Christian women philosophersFootnote ⁵⁶ but then refers to these as ‘modest … virgins speaking with each other about utterances concerning God while spinning yarn from a distaff’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Elsewhere he speaks of older women among his hearers, who probably belonged to the group of poorer people to whom he lectured for free.Footnote ⁵⁸ He reports that he is ridiculed by his opponents for speaking nonsense to women in general and to young and old women in particular. But here ‘speaking nonsense’ does not mean the same as ‘speaking strangely’ in the case of Priscilla and Maximilla. Tatian was not an ecstatic prophet. His pagan critics merely took aim at what they saw as the deficient quality of his philosophy. By insisting that what he taught was a ‘barbarian philosophy’ that (because of its prophetic power) was ultimately superior to Greek paideia, he (in a certain sense) aligned himself with the tradition to which Montanism also belonged, but unlike Tertullian two decades later he seems not to have drawn the conclusion that prophetic women should be accepted as prophets or teachers, despite his apparent sympathy for women, tainted as this also was by cultural prejudice.

Judging by Tatian's remarks, the situation of the Montanist women prophets was very different from Tatian's ‘women philosophers’. The latter are presented as continuing to obey traditional role models. Socially, very little changes for them. Their working day is lightened up by some religious conversation. The former, in contrast, were breaking the mould, and with some success, as we have seen. I have explored elsewhere what Tatian might have thought about women prophets such as Priscilla and Maximilla, who were, after all, contemporaries of his: there could be traces of possible allusions in the Oration. At one point he takes a swipe against Cynic philosophers who engage in ‘manic speech’.Footnote ⁵⁹ This could have been aimed at a specific woman Cynic, Hipparchia of Maroneia, the wife of Crates, whom Tatian mentions, who lived in fourth to third-century BCE Athens. Her ‘manic’ and ‘erotic’ (meaning ‘eros-driven’) approach to philosophy (and to life) has been compared by modern scholars to that of the Montanist women prophets,Footnote ⁶⁰ as it also broke the mould and made a considerable impact on society, and made her into a leading, albeit controversial, figure. Tatian, as can be gathered, took a dim view of this type of womanhood, not only within Christianity but generally. His ‘barbarian’ kerygma did not go so far as to redefine the traditional pre-Christian status of women and to admit that women gifted with pneumatic prophecy could on that basis assume ecclesiastical leadership positions.

Let us return to the topic of gender: The decisive characteristic of Hipparchia's philosophy (as of Montanist women prophecy) was that it was not derived from abstract principles but emerged from lived experience; and it is this characteristic that renders it irrefutably gendered. The ecstasy, the ‘strange’ (‘manic’) speech, the convulsions of the body, these were physical manifestations, no matter how abstract and lofty the spiritual content that was communicated, and the persons on whom they manifested themselves and who had to proclaim these messages and to stand up for them were women. There was on the one hand the intellectual content of the prophecy, gnosis and God, but there was on the other hand emotion, too, ecstasy, mania, physicality, suffering and pleasure, experiences of an erotic nature. The Neo-Platonist Iamblichus once defined prophecy as something divine and intellectual, yet not expressed in a state of reason but of mania.Footnote ⁶¹

In Epiphanius's Panarion, Quintilla or Priscilla (the narrator is not certain which) is reported to have received her prophecy in her sleep. According to her own witness she was visited in her sleep by Christ, who lay beside her and (in a literal translation) ‘slept with her’. In her own words the prophetess then continues: ‘Christ came to me in the form (ἰδέα) of a woman, dressed in a shining robe, and imbued me with wisdom.’Footnote ⁶² One gets the impression that modern translators tend to defuse this passage and make it sound more anodyne (for example, saying that Christ chastely came to sleep beside the prophet, imbuing spiritual wisdom, in the [presumably inauthentic] disguise of a woman).Footnote ⁶³ But it must be kept in mind that the text is about an ecstatic experience. The use of the Greek expressions ‘to sleep (together) with’ (συνυπνόω) and ‘to imbue with’ (ἐμβάλλω), perhaps even better, ‘to inseminate with’, clearly suggests sexual imagery. The phrase of Christ coming in the form (ἰδέα) of a woman suggests that this was meant in the sense that Christ revealed herself as a woman (in the sense of an identity of Logos and Pneuma which could already be seen expressed in Tatian's Oration) and as such infused the prophetess with wisdom (σοφία), the spiritual fertility of the act not relying on Christ's masculinity. The fourth-century heresiologist dismisses this as absurd, but in its original second-century context this revelation could (and apparently did) make sense; for this written testimony is extant, which suggests that the tradition went some way, not only with female but also with male followers, as the example of Tertullian's On the Soul 9 cited earlier suggests. What is extant here may be a trace of a gendered (one might even say feminist) take on early Christian doctrine, which emerges from an ecstatic experience and is being communicated as a prophecy or revelation, thus contributing to Christian tradition, albeit in a context that was geographically and ecclesiastically contained, while after the second century the movement tended to be disowned in its entirety, although it later experienced repeated resurgence in various forms.Footnote ⁶⁴

What can be clearly observed, however, is how the heresiological strategy applied by Epiphanius is in this case different from that employed for Gnostic teachings (for example). The attitude of Tertullian also indicates that (and was subsequently perhaps a reason why) Montanist women prophet-teachers, despite the hostility directed against them, were later treated by heresiologists (to say the least) ‘with caution’; for it was clear that they were no heretics.

Moreover, the idea expressed by the likes of Salmon that Montanist women prophets were a bunch of wild and excitable and (by implication) uneducated womenFootnote ⁶⁵ and that there was therefore a hermeneutical gap opening up between ecstatic prophecy and an emerging ecclesiastical theology that relied on ever increasing levels of ‘higher education’ is not supported by the evidence either; nor are the findings of ‘enlightened’ church historians who interpret ecstatic prophecy merely as a communicative strategy.Footnote ⁶⁶ There is a difference between the ecstatic experience and its communication, between Pneuma and paideia. However, the reason why this difference led to tensions in the course of the Montanist crisis lay not in the women prophets’ level of education, which could be considerable, as is poignantly illustrated by the example of Zoticus of Cumane's abortive attempt to put down Maximilla,Footnote ⁶⁷ or on the quality of the theological content of the prophecies (which is beyond doubt), but somewhere else: even though the emerging teaching on the Holy Spirit, as in the theology of the apologists, did allow for ecstatic prophecy, and an early apologist such as Quadratus in the early 120s was even credited with the gift of prophecy, conventional thinking among the mostly male theologians did not allow for women assuming public ecclesial roles such as the office of bishop on the basis of that gift. This kind of thinking can already be detected in Tatian, who, as has been shown, was in certain respects sympathetic and respectful towards, and supportive of, women,Footnote ⁶⁸ but did not see them as teachers and leaders. The probably fourth-century Dialexis provides an even clearer picture, as it concedes on the basis of Acts 21: 8–9 that women can be prophets but insists that they cannot proclaim their prophecies in public in the church, let alone write them up and publicize them, and thereby assume the authority reserved for bishops.Footnote ⁶⁹

The real issue, therefore, was not a clash between paideia and Pneuma, two dimensions of early Christian life which in principle perfectly complemented one another, but the persistence of prejudice, of a pre-Christian social-cultural mouldFootnote ⁷⁰ that time and again resisted the pressures that were applied to it by the forces of pneumatic prophecy. It was this that caused the relationship between paideia and Pneuma in the mid- to late second-century church to be not only fruitful but at times also acrimonious and tense.

This article set out from the observation that for the years 171 and 172 Jerome's translation of Eusebius's chronicle lists two events in close proximity to one another, the ‘outbreak’ of Montanism and Tatian's identification as a heretic by the Roman church and his departure from Rome. It then discusses these dates and the question of whether there might be other aspects than this proximity of dates that link Tatian to Montanism. While the date regarding Tatian is not usually called into doubt, that regarding Montanism is. Alternative dates, mostly earlier, have recently been suggested. Arguing mainly on the basis of new archaeological and epigraphic evidence, the article critiques this recent trend to date the onset of Montanism earlier, even as early as the 140s. Of course, prophecy did exist as early as that, and even earlier, but it was then a mainstream feature and even considered indicative of apostolicity, as in the case of Quadratus. It may not have been prophecy that underwent a change in the decades running up to 170 but attitudes to prophecy, especially among a new type of church leaders, who increasingly saw the Spirit at work in the liturgical and doctrinal structures of the church, which they controlled, rather than in the activities of inspired prophets. Similarly, it seems that Tatian was able to remain in Rome and be active there as a theological teacher and leader of a school for several years after his teacher Justin's death around 165, but that in the early 170s a point was reached when he was eventually condemned and expelled. Sources potentially referring to this event suggest that schools and teaching in schools became suspect in the new climate in the same way as prophecy did.Footnote ⁷¹

Cautiously, we therefore suggest that links might be drawn between Tatian's thought (as expressed in the Oration) and that of the ‘New Prophecy’: There is, for example, a common affinity to, or association with, Encratism. Such an affinity or association was perceived by critics of both Tatian and the Montanists, as the texts cited demonstrate. But ascetic rigour as a source of spiritual and intellectual authority and as a reflection of a fundamental theological perspective (for example, that humanity's fallen state requires sustained remedial ascetic action) may also be two things Tatian and the New Prophecy had to some degree in common anyway.

In Oration 5.1 and 7.1 and elsewhere, Tatian identifies Logos with Pneuma. Although he does not use this as a starting point for reflecting on the possibility of ‘experiencing’ or visualizing a mystical dream-encounter with a female Spirit-Christ imbuing Wisdom of the kind Priscilla is reported to have had in Epiphanius's Panarion 49.1.2, his Logos-Pneuma concept could have provided the theological framework for interpreting such an encounter precisely.

Tatian could also have considered the possibility of theological learning inspired by the divine Pneuma, when in connection with his conversion he refers to himself as one taught directly by God (θεοδίδακτος, Oration 29.3).Footnote ⁷² At the same time Tatian endorsed the philosophical activity of women in his community and defended it against mockery by pagan outsiders.Footnote ⁷³ Also, what Tatian meant by ‘philosophy’ was serious ‘God talk’.Footnote ⁷⁴ His defence of women theologizing might equally have been directed against Christian polemics against such practices.

The references in Tatian's Oration remain fairly vague, however. By comparison, extant biographical data of women leaders of the New Prophecy suggest that at least some of them were formally educated and able to perform rhetorically in public, that their social status permitted them to do this, and that in doing so they exerted authority and commanded sizeable followings. The fact that they faced opposition and were later suppressed is secondary from the point of view of the present article. Here it is important to note that women such as Priscilla and Maximilla had both the pneumatic inspiration to envision, and the philosophical and rhetorical education to construct, alternative theologies: theologies, for example, that closely identified Logos and Pneuma, or conceived within such a framework of a female incarnation.Footnote ⁷⁵ There is too little evidence from the second century to reconstruct any such theology in detail, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the struggle was not between paideia and Pneuma, at least not on the part of those who were (unjustifiably) accused of a lack of the former, for example Montanist women prophets. Rather, it was between cultures of theological discourse: an older culture of prophets and teachers, men and women, who produced a variety of original teachings, be it from prophecy, philosophical reflection or a combination of both, and a new culture emerging from around the middle of the second century, in which prophecy, in particular of women, was suppressed, or at least tightly controlled, and in which individual teachers and their schools were rejected for the apparent idiosyncrasy of their teaching.Footnote ⁷⁶ We might almost get the impression that there was a tendency in the church not so much to choose paideia over Pneuma but to reject both in a move to assert authority, power and control.