Primary source · Latin
Priscillian, the Würzburg Tractates
Priscillian of Ávila (or his circle) · c. AD 375–385
What this text is
Eleven tractates by the first Christian executed for heresy — utterly lost for fourteen centuries while only his enemies described him. RECOVERY: in 1885 Georg Schepss opened Würzburg M.p.th.q.3, a 5th–6th-century uncial codex, and the dead man spoke again in his own defense. With the canons on Paul, the corpus lets the modern reader judge between heresiarch and slandered ascetic.
Profile of Priscillian of Ávila →
Public-domain translations
Working translation (from the Latin, CSEL 18)
We are what we were made by God: faithful. Let no one bring the name of heresy against those who believe in Christ and confess the whole of the scriptures. (Tractate 1, the Apology, condensed)
Manuscript witnesses
Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek M.p.th.q.3
5th–6th c.Uncial codex, among the oldest Latin theological books in existence — unread as Priscillian until Schepss's identification.
CSEL 18 (Schepss)
1889The first printing, fourteen hundred years after the execution at Trier.
Provenance
Hispania; the condemned bishop's own apologetic and exegesis
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and the Charismatic in the Early ChurchHenry Chadwick, 1976The standard study, cautiously sympathetic.
- The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist ControversyVirginia Burrus, 1995Critical control reading the trial as construction — the anti-bias pair to Chadwick.