Mesalianie – rygorystyczny ruch ascetyczny czy herezja doktrynalna?
Messalians – Rigorous Ascetical Movement or Doctrinal Heresy?

Summary/Abstract: Messalians were one of the most famous and at the same time mysterious and varied rigorous ascetic movements in the early Church. The author of the article, basing on the early Christian catalogs of heresies, written by Epiphanius of Salamina, Theodoretus of Cyrus, John Damascene and Augustine, and the contemporary literature of the subject, seeks to answer the question whether Messalians should be regarded as a kind of harmless sect or rather as a heresy proclaiming serious doctrinal errors. The conclusion is that the theological argumentation of the practice of continuous prayer in the messalian movement undermined the principal principles of orthodox pneumatology, sacramentology, ecclesiology and soteriology. It is true that in the analyzed descriptions of heresies contained in early Christian sources one must take into account the plentiful use of the invective, which often overwhelms the true image of the described movement, but in the case of the Messalians the repetition of the same allegations orders to see them not only as the ascetic movement but above all as the dangerous doctrinal heresy.

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