VALENTIN us
699
VALENTINUS
entimis's bones to be removed to Passaii. The diocese and Church of Passaii have since claimed the saint as their earliest incumbent and representative. The Acts oj" faints from which the BoUandists give a description of this saint are not older than the 11th century; while a leaden tablet said to have been found with his relics when they were exhumed can scarcely date further back than the r2th century. See Acta iSS. Bolland. ad d. 7 Jan. i, 368; Kaderi hdvnria Sancta,i,S2; Rett- berg, Kirchengesck, Deutschlaiuh, i, 220 sij. ; comp. ii, 133.
Other Valentines, of Rome, Interamna, Africa, and Belgium, are mentioned in the Acta SS. under Feb. 13. See also under March 1(5, April l-i and 29, June 2, July 16, Sept. 29, etc. — Herzog, Real- lincyklop. s. v. It is to one of these latter, doubtless, that the popular custom of St. Valentine's Day is to be assigned. See Valen- tin r:. St.
Valentinus, the Gnostic, and the ValentinianK. The birtli|)lace and descent of tliis most famous of Gnostics are not known. P]piphanius states tiiat he had learned that Valentinus was an Egyptian, and had received a Hellenic training at Alexandria {Hcei; xxxi, 2). The opinion that he was of Jewish extraction is a bare surmise. He came to Rome in the reign of Anto- ninus Pius, probably soon after A. I). 140, while Hyginus was bishop, and he remained until after Anicetus suc- ceeded to the bishopric (Irena?us, iii, 4, 3; comp. Euse- bius, //. £. iv, 10 sq.). Epiphanius sa\'S {Ilcer. xxxi, 7) that he went from Rome to Cyprus, and there first became an open enemy to the Church and the head of a heretical seer, with which statement should be com- pared that of Tertullian, in Pnescript. c. 30, that Valen- tinus and ]Marcion had in the beginning adhered to the orthodox belief. Tertullian retains them in fidl mem- bership with the Roman Church as late as the bishopric of Eleutheros (with which comp. Irena;ns, nt sup.). The further story {Adv. Valent. c. 4) that Valentinus, conscious of his intellectual strength and oratorical pow- er, had hoped to be made bishop of the Church, and had turned against the Church and the truth because a confessor was preferred to him, does not compel the as- sumption that disappointed ambition determined him to become a heretic.
The Valentinian system is very obscure with respect to many of its details, but its general structure and ma- terial contents are quite comprehensible. It constructs a Pleroma of ceons, and in the process sets forth an ideal- istic view of the entire course of the creation and re- demption of the world. The great first cause {^iv^oQ, TTpuiov, Tzpoapxhi T^poTvnTt]p) produced the Nous, or Monogenes, who became the principle of all subsequent emanations (ap\;/) tojv TravTMv), and who was equal and similar to the Father. Tlie Nous also manifests the Bythos, who is otherwise incomprehensible, and is in comparison with the latter the revealed God, through whom the generation and formation of the reons are mediated. With the Bythos was associated a feminine principle (<jv!^vyoQ) named Sige (silence), though some hold that the Bythos was both masculine and feminine in himself, or exalted above all syzygies; and with the Nous was associated- Truth (aX/yjaa). These formed a productive quaternity which became the origin of all things. Nous and Aletheia produced Logos and Zoe. and Logos became the father of tiie remainder of the Pleroma. He expressed what existed seminally in the consciousness of Nous, and it thereby received life, and obtained concrete form, in the syzygy Anthropos (pri- meval man) and Ecclesia. The quaternity thus be- came an octave (Ogdoas); and this Ogdoas, which con- stitutes the centre of;Bonic developments, was reinforced by a group of ten »ons emanated, according to Irenreus, from Logos and Zoe, and another of twelve from An- thropos and Ecclesia, or, according to Hippolytus, the ten from Nous and Aletheia and the twelve from Logos and Zoe. The derived a?ons were necessarily subject to limitations, as they could have no other recognition
of the Bythos than that mediated by the Nous, and as they were subject to the law of syzygies; and this ne- cessity caused them to experience a feeling of deticien- cy and want, which ultimately found expression in Sophia, the last of the female :eons. She vehemently desired to unite herself with the Bythos, but was pre- vented by lloros (the principle of limitation and differ- entiation in the Pleroma), and thereupon she laid aside the thought {t}'^l<pi]mr) previously entertained and the passion resulting from her attempt. This iv^v- p>]rns ai'v rtij tTnytt'Of^ui'qt Trd^fi became an abortion (tKrpwpa), or formless being (oimia a'jttop^oe), produced without the co-operation of the male syzygos. To guanl against a recurrence of the unnatural event, the Father caused a new pair of asons, Christ and the Holy (ihost, to be brought forth by the Nous, who restored harmony to the Pleroma — Christ by teaching the ajons that it must suthce them to know the nature of the syzygies and the idea of the unoriginated, and that the (ireat Father of all is intiniteand incomprehensible save as he is manifested by the Nous (they thus obtained a clear understanding of their relation to the Father, and learned that the immoderate desire to be united with the B}-thos was threatening to their own separate existence); the Holy Spirit by imparting to them rest and contentment, in giving them similarity of form and disposition, and making each of them to be, at the same time, what all the others were. This constitutes the completion of the Pleroma. The representation of Hip- polytus varies somewhat from that given above. The emanation of the abortion from the Sophia brought confusion, i. e. darkening of the intellect (ciyroia) and formlessness (n^wop^ia), into the Pleroma. 'I'o remove this, Christ and the Holy Ghost were produced, while Iloros, or Stanros, was brought forth to be the guard and protector of the Pleroma. To celebrate the restored harmony of the Pleroma, each of the asons contributes the most beautiful and precious it contains to ])rodnce the perfect beauty, Jesus the Soter. This forms the conclusion of the heavenly drama; but in the expelled abortion the condition for a real world-process has been given. Christ gives to this abortion the form of a lower or external Sojihia (popfioiric; Kar ovaiav as contrasted with the p6p(pto(Ti(; Kara yvMOiv), or Arha- motfi, a Sophia of nature, but not of knowledge. Con- tact with Christ has given her no permanent ability be- yond a confused desire for light; she becomes the prey of sorrow, fear, and despair, all of which are the result of dyvoia, a lack of clear, gnostical consciousness. In response to her prayers, the Soter .lesus is sent for her support (Paraclete), and by him she is delivered from her hurtful affections and endowed with gnostical qual- ities. She thereupon receives into herself the light of the angels who accompany the Soter, and brings forth pneuinatical fruit in their image. A second process of alienation and reconciliation is completed at this point, and, as in tlie former instance, in such a way that the affections eliminated from the seonic nature become the basis of a further development, while that ieonic nature itself becomes the guiding principle of the new development. These eliminated affections existed in the first instances as an incorporeal hyle (v\r]). but were soon incorporated in two substances, the hylic and the psychical. Fear became specifically psvchical, sorrow hylical, despair dasmoniacal; and the Achamoth thus be- comes the mother of all living things and the highest cosmical principle, and in her is reflected the Ogdoas of the aionic world, which is the protot\'pe of the cosmical. Achamoth makes use of the Demiurge, who is the father of the psychical, the former of the hylical, and the king of all, but whose merely psychical nature deprives him of the power to comprehend the thoroughly pneumati- cal purpose of the cosmical development. The De- miurge forms the entire visible world, and is called Hebdomas, from the seven heavens. He is the fiery (iod of Dent, iv, 24, because he, as the principle of cos- mical life, at the same time represents the might of