Priscillian - Writings and Rediscovery

Writings and Rediscovery

Some writings by Priscillian were accounted orthodox and were not burned. For instance he divided the Pauline epistles (including the Epistle to the Hebrews) into a series of texts on their theological points and wrote an introduction to each section. These canons survived in a form edited by Peregrinus. They contain a strong call to a life of personal piety and asceticism, including celibacy and abstinence from meat and wine. The charismatic gifts of all believers are equally affirmed. Study of scripture is urged. Priscillian placed considerable weight on apocryphal books, not as being inspired but as helpful in discerning truth and error. It was long thought that all the writings of the heretic himself had perished, but in 1885, Georg Schepss discovered at the University of Würzburg eleven genuine tracts, published in the Vienna Corpus 1886. Though they bear Priscillian's name, four describing Priscillian's trial appear to have been written by a close follower.

According to Raymond Brown's introduction of his edition Epistle of John, the source of the Comma Johanneum, a brief interpolation in the First Epistle of John, known since the fourth century, appears to be the Latin Liber Apologeticus by Priscillian.

The modern assessment of Priscillian is summed up in Cambridge professor Henry Chadwick's Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and the Charismatic in the Early Church, (Oxford University Press) 1975.

Fletcher, Richard A., "St. James' Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmirez", Chapter 1 and passim: Galicia, online at http://libro.uca.edu/sjc/sjc.htm which offers a historical and geographical background to the building of the cathedral in Compostela, and Burrus, Virginia, The Making of a Heretic, U. of California Press, 1995

McKenna, Stephen, "Priscillianism and Pagan Survivals in Spain" in Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain up to the Fall of the Visigothic Kingdom on-line The present account depends on this thoroughly cited chapter.

Saunders, Tracy, Pilgrimage to Heresy (iUniverse, 2007) - in Spanish: Peregrinos de la Herejía (Bóveda 2009) - offers a fictionalised version of the events in Priscillian's story and furthers the suggestion put forth by Prof. Henry Chadwick that Priscillian may be the occupant in the tomb in Santiago de Compostela