and the condemned prophets hoped to reverse the first unfavourable verdict by the sentence of a larger tribunal. But all the leading bishops of Asia Minor declared against it. At length an attempt was made to influence or overrule the judgment of Asiatic Christians by the opinion of their brethren beyond the sea. We cannot be sure how long Montanus had been teaching, or how long the excesses of his prophetesses had continued; but in 177 Western attention was first called to these disputes, the interference being solicited of the martyrs of Lyons, then suffering imprisonment and expecting death for the testimony of Christ. They were informed of the disputes by their brethren in Asia Minor, the native country no doubt of many of the Gallic Christians. Eusebius in his Chronicle assigns 172 for the beginning of the prophesying of Montanus. A few years more seems necessary for the growth of the new sect in Asia before it forced itself on the attention of foreign Christians, and the Epiphanian date 157 appears more probable, and agrees the vague date of Didymus, "more than 100 years after the Ascension." Possibly 157 may be the date of the conversion of Montanus, 172 that of his formal condemnation by the Asiatic church authorities.
Were the Gallic churches consulted by the orthodox, by the Montanists, or by both? and what answer did the Gallic Christians give? Eusebius only tells us that their judgment was pious and most orthodox, and that they subjoined letters which those who afterwards suffered martyrdom wrote while yet in prison to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia and also to Eleutherus, bp. of Rome, pleading (or negotiating, πρεσβεύοντες) for the peace of the churches. If, as has been suggested, the last expression meant entreating the removal of the excommunication from the Montanists, Eusebius, who begins his account of Montanism by describing it as a device of Satan, would not have praised such advice as pious and orthodox.
We think that the Montanists had appealed to Rome; that the church party solicited the good offices of their countrymen settled in Gaul, who wrote to Eleutherus representing the disturbance to the peace of the churches (a phrase probably preserved by Eusebius from the letter itself) which would ensue if the Roman church approved what the church on the spot condemned. We have no reason to think of Rome as then enjoying such supremacy that its reversal of an Asiatic excommunication would be quietly acquiesced in. Yet the Asiatic bishops might well be anxious how their decision would commend itself to the judgment of a stranger at a distance. To such a one there would be nothing incredible in special manifestations of God's Spirit displaying themselves in Phrygia, while the suggestion that the new prophesying was inspired by Satan might be repelled by its admitted orthodoxy, since all it professed to reveal tended to the glory of Christ and to the increase of Christian devotion. To avert, then, the possible calamity of a breach between the Eastern and Western churches, the Gallic churches, it would appear, not only wrote, but sent Irenaeus to Rome at the end of 177 or the beginning of 178. This hypothesis relieves us from the necessity of supposing this πρεσβεία to have been unsuccessful, while it fully accounts for the necessity of sending it.
The Asiatic churches laid before the Christian world justification for their course. Their case was stated by one of their most eminent bishops, Claudius Apolinarius of Hierapolis. Apolinarius gives the signatures of different bishops who had investigated and condemned the Montanist prophesyings. One of these, Sotas of Anchialus, on the western shore of. the Black Sea, was dead when Apolinarius wrote; but Aelius Publius Julius, bp. of the neighbouring colony of Debeltus, gives his sworn testimony that Sotas had tried to cast the demon out of Priscilla but had been hindered by the hypocrites. We learn from a later writer that Zoticus of Comana and Julianus of Apamea similarly attempted to exorcise Maximilla, and were not permitted to do so. Another of Apolinarius's authorities adds weight to his signature by appending the title martyr, then commonly given to those who braved imprisonment or tortures for Christ. The result was that the Roman church approved the sentence of the Asiatic bishops, as we know independently from Tertullian.
II. Montanism in the East, second stage.—For the history of Montanism in the East after its definite separation from the church, our chief authorities are fragments preserved by Eusebius of two writers, the anonymous writer already mentioned and Apollonius of Ephesus. The date of both these writings is considerably later than the rise of Montanism. Apollonius places himself 40 years after its first beginning. In the time of the Anonymous the first leaders of the schism had vanished from the scene. Montanus was dead, as was Theodotus, an early leader in the movement, who had probably managed its finances, for he is said to have been towards it a kind of ἐπίτροπος. The Anonymous states that at the time he wrote 13 full years had elapsed and a 14th had begun since the death of Maximilla. Priscilla must have died previously, for Maximilla believed herself to be the last prophetess in the church and that after her the end would come.
Themiso seems to have been, after Montanus, the head of the Montanists. He was at any rate their leading man at Pepuza; and this was the headquarters of the sect. There probably Montanus had taught; there the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla resided; there Priscilla had seen in a vision Christ come in the form of a woman in a bright garment, who inspired her with wisdom and informed her that Pepuza was the holy place and that there the New Jerusalem was to descend from heaven. Thenceforth Pepuza and the neighbouring village Tymium became the Montanist holy place, habitually spoken of as Jerusalem. There Zoticus and Julianus visited Maximilla, and Themiso was then at the head of those who prevented the intended exorcism.
Montanus himself probably did not live long to preside over his sect, and this is perhaps why it is seldom called by the name of its founder. The sectaries called themselves πνευματικοί, spiritual, and the adherents of the church ψυχικοί, carnal, thus following the usage of some Gnostic sects. In Phrygia
