Epiphanius of Salamis

Epiphanius was born about 315 near Eleutheropolis in Palestine, in a region where Jews, Samaritans, Christians and half a dozen sects lived on top of one another. He went to Egypt as a young man, saw the monks — and, he says, narrowly escaped a gnostic group that tried to recruit him, whose books he later reported to the bishop. He came home and founded a monastery near his birthplace, and ran it for about thirty years. In 367 he was made bishop of Salamis, the chief city of Cyprus, and he held the see until his death thirty-six years later. He knew Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Coptic and some Latin; Jerome called him the five-tongued man. His great work is the Panarion, which means "medicine chest." Written between 374 and 377, it describes eighty heresies in order, from before Christ to his own day, and prescribes an antidote for each. His stated purpose was practical: an ordinary believer should be able to recognize a false teaching when it walks in the door. As history it is uneven — he repeats gossip, he is credulous, and his summaries are sometimes unfair. As a source it is irreplaceable. For a number of early sects, the Panarion preserves the only surviving quotations of their actual writings; Epiphanius copied out documents in full because he wanted his readers to see the thing itself. Scholars who have no use for his judgments still cannot work without his evidence. He also wrote the Ancoratus, a book on the faith to steady believers being tossed about; On Weights and Measures, which is a key witness to the Greek versions of the Old Testament; and a treatise on the twelve stones of the high priest's breastplate. His last years were spent hunting Origenism. He pressed John of Jerusalem to condemn Origen, ordained Jerome's brother inside John's diocese without permission, and helped set off a feud that consumed Jerome and Rufinus for years. In 402 Theophilus of Alexandria drew him to Constantinople to help bring down John Chrysostom. He arrived, refused Chrysostom's hospitality, held services outside the rules — and then evidently realized what he had been used for. He sailed for home and died at sea in 403, aged about eighty-eight. Sources: Epiphanius of Salamis, The Panarion, translated by Frank Williams; Jerome, Letters and On Illustrious Men; Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, VI; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "St. Epiphanius".