Primary source · Latin

Philastrius of Brescia, The Book of Diverse Heresies

Name: Philastrius of Brescia, The Book of Diverse Heresies
Author: Philastrius of Brescia

Philastrius of Brescia · c. AD 380–390

What this text is

One hundred fifty-six heresies — twenty-eight before Christ — catalogued with more zeal than discrimination: it is a heresy, Philastrius rules, to name the days of the week after planets. Augustine used him warily; Gaudentius, his successor, preached his memorial. The archive cites him as it cites Epiphanius: a net, not a scale.

Profile of Philastrius of Brescia →

Public-domain translations

Working translation (from the Latin, CCSL 9)

[Entry after entry, from the 'serpent-worshippers' before the flood to the star-namers of his own day — the catalogue that counts everything.]

Manuscript witnesses

Early medieval Latin tradition

8th–9th c. onward

Carried beside Augustine's De haeresibus, which quietly corrects it.

EARLIEST WITNESSES

CSEL 38 (Marx) / CCSL 9

1898 / 1957

The modern texts.

CRITICAL EDITIONS

Provenance

Brescia; the West's most enthusiastic heresy-counter

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Filastrii episcopi Brixiensis Diversarum hereseon liber (CCSL 9)
F. Heylen (ed.), 1957
Critical edition.
Sermon 21 of Gaudentius (the memorial of Philastrius)
Gaudentius of Brescia, c. AD 397
The ancient tribute — allied testimony, so weighed.

Figures named in this text (1)

Philastrius of Brescia