§ 169. EPIPHANIUS. 927
after St. Paul, of a learned Jewish convert and tlit only example among the ancient fathers ; for all the other fathers were either born of Christian parents, or converted from heathenism
He spent several years in severe ascetic exercises among the hermits of Egypt, and then became abbot of a convent near Eleutheropolis. In connection with his teacher and friend Hilarion he labored zealously for the spread of monasticism in Palestine.'
In tlie year 367 he was unanimously elected by the people and the monks bishop of Salamis (Constantia), tlie capital of the island of Cyprus. Here he wrote his works against the heretics, and took active part in the doctrinal controversies of his age. He made it his principal business to destroy the influence of the arch-heretic Origen,for whom he had contracted a thoi'ough hatred from the anchorites of Egypt. On this mission he travelled in his old age to Palestine and Constantinople, and died in the same year in which Chrysostom was deposed and banished, an innocent sacrifice on the opposite side in the violent Origenistic controversies."
Epiphanius was revered even by his cotemporaries as a saint and as a patriarch of orthodoxy. Once as he passed through the streets of Jerusalem in company with bishop John, mothers brought their children to him that he might bless them, and the people crowded around him to kiss his feet and to touch the hem of his garment. After his death his name was surrounded by a halo of miraculous legends. He was a man of earnest, monastic piety, and of sincere but illiberal zeal for orthodoxy. His good nature easily allowed him to be used as an instrument for the passions of others, and his zeal was not according to knowledge. He is the patriarch of heresy-hunters. He identified Christianity with monastic piety and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and considered it the great mission of his life to pursue the thousand-headed hydra of heresy into all its hiding places. Occasionally, however, his fiery zeal consumed what was subsefjuently conndered an
' He composed a eulogy on Hilarion, wliich, with some others of his works, if ost.
» Comp above, §§ 133 and 134.
928 THIRD PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590.
essential part of piety and orthodoxy. Sharing the primitive Christian abhorrence of images, he destroyed a picture of Christ or some saint in a vilhigc church in Palestine; and at times he violated ecclesiastical order.
The learning of Epiphanius was extensive, but ill digested lie understood five languages: Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and a little Latin. Jerome, who himself knew but three languages, though he knew these far better than Epiphanius, called him the Five-tongued,' and Rufinus reproachfully says of him that he considered it his sacred duty as a wandering preacher to slander the great Origen in all languages and nations." He was lacking in knowledge of the world and of men, in sound judgment, and in critical discernment. He was possessed of a boundless credulity, now almost proverbial, causing innumerable errors and contradictions in his writings. His style is entirely destitute of beauty or elegance.
Still his works are of considerable value as a storehouse of the history of ancient heresies and of patristic polemics. They are the following:
1. The Ancuok,' a defence of Christian doctrine, especially of the doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the resurrection ; in one hundred and twenty-one chaptei-s. He composed this treatise a. d. 373, at the entreaty of clergymen and monks, as a stay for those who are tossed about upon the sea by heretics and devils. In it he gives two creeds, a shorter and a longer, wliich show that the addition made by the sec-
' Tld/rdyXdHTTOs.
' Hieron. Apol. adv. Ruiinum, 1. iii. c. 6 (Opera, torn. ii. 537, ed. Vail.) and 1. iL 21 and 22 (torn. ii. 515). Jerome says that '' papa " Epiphanius had read thesis thousand [?] books of Origen, and in his apology against Rufinus and in his letters he speaks of him with great respect as a confederate in the war upon Origen. He acknowledges, however, that his statements need an accurate and careful verification. In his Liber de viris illustribus, cap. 114, he disposes of him very summarily with two scDtenccB: "Epiphanius, Cypri Salaminse episcopus, scripsit adversua omnes hasreses iibros, et multa alia, quje ab eruditis propter res, a simplicioribua propter verba Icctitantur. Superest usque hodie, et in extrema jam ecnectute varia cudit opera."
' 'AyKvpurds, Ancoralu.><, or Ancora fidei catholicic, in torn. ii. of Petavius; toia iii. 11-236 of Misne.