The New Prophecy of Montanus

Almost everything known about the “New Prophecy” comes from its opponents. Eusebius, writing more than a century later, quotes two of them at length, an unnamed writer of Asia Minor and a certain Apollonius (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.7–9) (Eusebius, Church History 5.18.2). Epiphanius, two centuries after the events, preserves another attack together with some sayings of the prophets (Epiphanius, Panarion 48.2.4). No English translation of his book is in the public domain, and what he says is paraphrased here from the Greek text to which the citations link. A friendly witness is Tertullian, who took the side of the prophecy (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1).

The unnamed writer passes on a report that it began at Ardabau, a village on the border of Mysia and Phrygia. By this account a recent convert, Montanus, fell into a trance and began to utter strange things, “contrary to the constant custom of the Church”. Some hearers rebuked him as possessed; others took it for the Holy Spirit. Two women were seized in the same way (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.7–9). Eusebius names them as Priscilla and Maximilla (Eusebius, Church History 5.14). Their followers spoke of “the new prophecy” (Eusebius, Church History 5.19.2). In a saying that Epiphanius quotes, Montanus speaks in the first person as the one who inspires: a man is like a lyre and the speaker comes upon him like a plectrum; the man sleeps and the speaker keeps watch; it is the Lord who puts men’s hearts into ecstasy (Epiphanius, Panarion 48.4.1).

Apollonius charges that Montanus taught the dissolving of marriages, made rules for fasts, appointed collectors of money, and gave the name Jerusalem to Pepuza and Tymion, two small towns of Phrygia, where he wanted people to gather (Eusebius, Church History 5.18.2). Epiphanius reports the story that a prophetess, Quintilla or Priscilla (he says he does not know which), slept at Pepuza and said that Christ came to her there in the form of a woman and revealed to her that the place was holy and that Jerusalem would come down to it from heaven (Epiphanius, Panarion 49.1). He also quotes a saying of Maximilla that after her there would be no more prophets, only the end (Epiphanius, Panarion 48.2.4). He grants that the group accepted the whole of the Old and New Testaments and the resurrection of the dead (Epiphanius, Panarion 48.1.3).

The same writer says that the Christians of Asia met in many places, examined the sayings, judged them profane and shut their adherents out of communion (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.10). Bishops who came to test the spirit in Maximilla were kept from doing so, and she complained: “I am driven away from the sheep like a wolf. I am not a wolf. I am word and spirit and power” (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.17). The writer repeats a rumour that Montanus and Maximilla hanged themselves, and adds that he does not know whether it is true (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.13–15).

The question went beyond Asia. During the persecution at Lyon (see the Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne) the Christians of Gaul wrote about it to Asia, Phrygia and Rome (Eusebius, Church History 5.3.4). Tertullian says that a bishop of Rome had recognised the prophecies and then, persuaded by one Praxeas, withdrew his letter of peace, and that he himself broke with his opponents over “the Paraclete” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1).

The dispute made the churches ask whether new prophecy could stand beside what the apostles had handed down. The unnamed writer says that he long hesitated to write at all, for fear of seeming to add to “the Gospel of the New Testament” (Eusebius, Church History 5.16.3).