The acts of the synod of Elvira have a very great importance, because they allow us to clarify the characteristics of Spanish Christianity before the edict of Milan, characteristics on which the sad episode of Basilides of León and Martial of Mérida had already given a very good clue. significant. Alongside a part of the church perfectly aware of the duties incumbent on the Christian (the same severity of the sanctions provided for by the canons shows), the great mass of Spanish Christians, lay and ecclesiastical, does not seem to make a clear distinction between paganism and Christianity: the council reveals the existence of Christians exercising the flaminate, directly or through alternates; of catechumens who, in order to have greater freedom of action, postponed Christian initiation until their deathbed; of Christians who exercised the judiciary; of Christian aristocrats cruel to the point of killing their slaves; of people who did not shy away from resorting to the magical arts to procure the death of their enemies. The council also denounced the plague of mixed marriages between Christians and pagan priests, the existence of masters who allow their slaves to exercise pagan cults. The moral life of the Spanish faithful itself leaves much to be desired: there is no moral disorder or vice, even of the most serious and abject, that the council fathers do not denounce and repress against the faithful, lay people, ecclesiastics and even bishops. This strange mixture of pagan and Christian practices, this juxtaposition of contrasting mentality and positions, this deficient moral conscience of Spanish Christianity,Actsof Elvira to reveal it in a sensational way) in the face of those religious debates, those doctrinal complaints, which reveal, already in the century. II, the intrinsic vitality of contemporary Christianity, affirmed in the other regions of the Roman West. This uncertain, adventitious and superficial character of Spanish Christianity, revealed by the solicitous concerns of Elvira’s fathers, if on the one hand confirms the difficulties encountered in wanting to link the origins of Spanish Christianity to a personality like that of St. Paul, is on the other hand, the key to explaining the further developments of Christianity in Spain after the “Constantinian peace” which occurred only a few years after the council of Elvira. Substantially absent in the Aryan controversy (this is not the case of insist here on the personality of Osio of Cordova, the action of which takes place almost exclusively outside the sphere of the Spanish church), as it will be in the Pelagian one (even the anti-Pelagian activity of Paolo Orosio takes place outside Spain), the Spanish church that produces from its womb poor poets and writers (such as Giovenco and Prudenzio) instead of theologians (the only exception being the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira), has its first and characteristic religious crisis, the first and only one at the ancient time, in the episode priscillianist. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see action of which takes place almost exclusively outside the sphere of the Spanish church), as it will be in the Pelagian one (even the anti-Pelagian activity of Paolo Orosio takes place outside Spain), the Spanish church that produces mediocre poets and writers from its bosom (like Giovenco and Prudenzio) instead of theologians (the only exception being the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira), has its first and characteristic religious crisis, the first and only one in the ancient era, in the Priscillianist episode. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see action of which takes place almost exclusively outside the sphere of the Spanish church), as it will be in the Pelagian one (even the anti-Pelagian activity of Paolo Orosio takes place outside Spain), the Spanish church that produces mediocre poets and writers from its bosom (like Giovenco and Prudenzio) instead of theologians (the only exception being the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira), has its first and characteristic religious crisis, the first and only one in the ancient era, in the Priscillianist episode.
But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see Paolo Orosio’s anti-Pelagian activity takes place outside Spain), the Spanish church that produces from its bosom mediocre poets and writers (such as Giovenco and Prudenzio) instead of theologians (the only exception being the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira), has its first and characteristic crisis religious, the first and only one in ancient times, in the Priscillianist episode. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see Paolo Orosio’s anti-Pelagian activity takes place outside Spain), the Spanish church that produces from its bosom mediocre poets and writers (such as Giovenco and Prudenzio) instead of theologians (the only exception being the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira), has its first and characteristic crisis religious, the first and only one in ancient times, in the Priscillianist episode. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see first and only in ancient times, in the Priscillianist episode. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, see first and only in ancient times, in the Priscillianist episode. But to understand the intimate genesis of this movement and the profound reasons for its diffusion, it is necessary to refer precisely to those observations suggested by the synod of Elvira. If on the one hand Priscillian (for details, seepriscillian) shows itself in a certain sense adhering to the singularly syncretistic spirit of Spanish Christianity in its very lack of a well-defined theological orientation and in its preoccupation with formulas, Christian position and concerns derived from the reading of Apuleius and Firmico Materno, which gives a exact awareness of the doctrinal values of Christianity; on the other hand, it reveals and testifies to the intimate insufficiency and moral mediocrity of Spanish Christianity through the rigidly ascetic and rigorist approach he impressed on his movement, in marked opposition to the corruption and accommodating spirit of so many of the clergy and episcopate Spaniards hostile to him. Itacius, Priscillian’s great opponent, “must have had little sympathy – wrote Leclercq – for the faithful, the priscillianists, whose mortified life condemned his intemperance. There the reason for his hatred for Priscilliano must be sought. But it is not a question of personal hostility: Itacius and Priscillian are representative of an entire society. “The heartfelt words that Sulpicius Severus addresses, at the conclusion of hisChronica, against the courtly bishops opposed to Priscilliano, they are the best confirmation of what has been said; and on the other hand the indignation raised everywhere by the brutal execution of Priscilliano and his companions would not alone explain the persistence of priscillianism for over a century in the northern regions of Spain, if at the bottom of the movement there was not also a reaction of one part of Spanish Christianity against the original defect that undermined the team of the other part, the largest. On this ground, the Arianism of the invaders Vandals, Alani and Visigoths arrives. The Spanish church does not know how to put up any resistance and passes from Catholicism to Arianism and from this to Catholicism (with Recaredo, in 587), almost without difficulty, according to the will of the new rulers.
