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Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius; 100 – 160 AD) was the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen.〔''Adversus Valentinianos'' 4.〕 Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those embedded in refuted quotations in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.〔Cross, F. L., ed. ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church''. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005, article ''Valentinus''〕 His doctrine is known to us only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples.〔 He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature (his own followers) received the ''gnosis'' (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser form of salvation, and that those of a material nature (pagans and Jews) were doomed to perish.〔〔Irenaeus, ''Adversus Haeresies'' i. 6〕 Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians.〔 It later divided into an Eastern and a Western or Italian branch.〔 The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.〔 ==Biography== Valentinus was born in Phrebonis in the Nile delta and educated in Alexandria, an important and metropolitan early Christian centre. There he may have heard the Christian philosopher Basilides and certainly became conversant with Hellenistic Middle Platonic philosophy and the culture of Hellenized Jews like the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo. Clement of Alexandria records that his followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas and that Theudas in turn was a follower of St. Paul the Apostle.〔Clement of Alexandria, (Stromateis, book 7, chapter 17 ). "Likewise they allege that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas. And he was the pupil of Paul."〕 Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle, which Paul publicly referred to in connection with his visionary encounter with the risen Christ (; ; ; ), when he received the secret teaching from him. Such esoteric teachings were downplayed in Rome after the mid-2nd century.〔The article esoteric Christianity focuses on Early Modern and modern esoteric Christian revivals.〕 Valentinus taught first in Alexandria and went to Rome about 136 AD, during the pontificate of Pope Hyginus, and remained until the pontificate of Pope Anicetus. In (''Adversus Valentinianos'' ), iv, Tertullian says: :Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence. Being indignant, however, that another obtained the dignity by reason of a claim which confessorship had given him, he broke with the church of the true faith. Just like those (restless) spirits which, when roused by ambition, are usually inflamed with the desire of revenge, he applied himself with all his might to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent. Commonly unaccepted, we cannot know the accuracy of this statement, since it is delivered by his orthodox adversary Tertullian, but according to a tradition reported in the late fourth century by Epiphanius, he withdrew to Cyprus, where he continued to teach and draw adherents. He died probably about 160 or 161 AD. While Valentinus was alive he made many disciples, and his system was the most widely diffused of all the forms of Gnosticism, although, as Tertullian remarked, it developed into several different versions, not all of which acknowledged their dependence on him ("they affect to disavow their name"). Among the more prominent disciples of Valentinus were Bardaisan, invariably linked to Valentinus in later references, as well as Heracleon, Ptolemy and Marcus. Many of the writings of these Gnostics, and a large number of excerpts from the writings of Valentinus, existed only in quotes displayed by their orthodox detractors, until 1945, when the cache of writings at Nag Hammadi revealed a Coptic version of the ''Gospel of Truth,'' which is the title of a text that, according to Irenaeus, was the same as the ''Gospel of Valentinus'' mentioned by Tertullian in his ''Against All Heresies''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】Tertullian">title=Against All Heresies: Valentinus, Ptolemy and Secundus, Heracleon (Book I, Chapter 4) )〕 The Christian heresiologists also wrote details about the life of Valentinus, often scurrilous. As mentioned above, Tertullian claimed that Valentinus was a candidate for bishop, after which he turned to heresy in a fit of pique. Epiphanius wrote that Valentinus gave up the true faith after he had suffered a shipwreck in Cyprus and became insane. These descriptions can be reconciled, and are not impossible; but few scholars cite these accounts as other than rhetorical insults. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Valentinus (Gnostic)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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