United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Born at Tarragona and educated in Spain, he crossed over to Africa about the year 414, and received instruction from St. Augustine upon knotty questions of the origin of the soul and other matters. In Augustine's works are contained the "Consultation of Orosius with Augustine on the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists," and a letter from Augustine to Orosius against them.

The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked the enemy in their own monasteries; he marched to Mount Nitria at the head of a strong body of soldiers, and, enrolling under his banners the anthropomorphite monks, attacked Dioscorus and the Origenists, set fire to their monasteries, and laid waste the place.

Deputies from Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, and the orthodox monks journeyed with Pelagius to Constantinople, to present to the emperor an accusation against the Origenists. Pelagius had much influence with Justinian, and he and Mennas procured for the petitioners access to the emperor. They asked him to issue a solemn condemnation of Origen's errors.

He branded with the name of Origenists those who argued that God was without form, and who quoted the writings of Origen in support of their opinion.

Sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring, have revived the opinion of Origen, who maintains that good will predominate in due time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational creatures, even the bad angels, will become at last holy and blessed. M. le Clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the cause of the Origenists, but without declaring himself for them.

Allied to the Manichæan heresy were the Priscillians, the Saccophori, the Solitaries, and many others; and, in addition, the Messalians or Euchites, the Luciferians, the Origenists, the Antidicomarianites, and the Collyridians. A quarrel about the consecration of a bishop gave rise to fierce struggles not connected with the doctrine, so much as with the discipline of the Church.

The eighth article of the Confession, concerning wicked ministers of the Church and hypocrites viz. that their wickedness does not injure the sacraments and the Word is accepted with the Holy Roman Church, and the princes commend it, condemning on this topic the Donatists and the ancient Origenists, who maintained that it was unlawful to use the ministry of the wicked in the Church a heresy which the Waldenses and Poor of Lyons revived.

The quarrel between the Origenists and the anthropomorphites did not end in words. A proposition in theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was no better cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis or the crocodile; but a change of religion had not changed the national character.