Christian Communities in Late Antiquity: Luciferians and the Construction of Heresy

600 Pages·2015·4.81 MB·English

UC Riverside
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Christian Communities in Late Antiquity: Luciferians and the Construction of Heresy
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5wd9s8s8
Author
Whiting, Colin M.
Publication Date
2015

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

Christian Communities in Late Antiquity:
Luciferians and the Construction of Heresy

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

History

by

Colin M. Whiting

December 2015

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. Michele R. Salzman, Chairperson
Dr. Thomas Scanlon
Dr. Denver Graninger
Dr. Piotr Gorecki
Copyright by
Colin M. Whiting
2015
The Dissertation of Colin M. Whiting is approved:

Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside
Acknowledgments
As with any major project, this work would not have been possible without the
support, advice, and care of many others.
First and foremost is Michele Salzman, who has spent seven years as a mentor,
guide, and friend. No thanks could ever express sufficient gratitude for her tireless work
on my behalf over my entire career in graduate school and the countless opportunities she
offered me while I was at UC Riverside. She is everything one could ask for in an advisor
and more. I am proud to have been her student.
Second is my partner, Heather Van Mouwerik. Her love and patience in spite of
long distances and heavy workloads has been an immeasurable source of support. She has
been understanding beyond reason and my cornerstone. This dissertation would never
have been completed without her; that it is dedicated to her is paltry compensation for the
meaning that she has given my life.
There are others I would like to acknowledge as well. My committee members,
Thomas Scanlon, Denver Graninger, and Piotr Gorecki, have provided me with advice
and suggestions not only in the course of the dissertation but throughout my academic
career. I have benefitted from knowing many others at UC Riverside, and while I cannot
name them all here, Randolph Head, Lucille Chia, Ray Kea, and Georg Michels all
deserve special mention as both keen scholars and good friends.
Outside of UC Riverside, I would like to thank Elizabeth Digeser at UC Santa
Barbara, who set me on this journey in the first place and whom I am always happy to
encounter. The late Thomas Sizgorich of UC Irvine was the first scholar outside of UC
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Riverside who read any of my work and provided valuable comments; he is dearly
missed. Shane Bjornlie at Claremont McKenna College and Amanda Podany at CSPU
Pomona also deserve mention for their efforts on my behalf.
My parents (all four of them!) have always been supportive of me and never
questioned my decision to enter the strange world of academia. Years of sometimes
sporadic contact have done nothing to diminish their love of me. I cannot imagine what
my world would look like without their love and encouragement. My friends, too
numerous to name individually, have left me with good memories even in difficult times.
These include my fellow graduate students at UC Riverside, many friends made in
Athens, and my coworkers at the Princeton office of the American School of Classical
Studies in Athens.
My work as a graduate student could not have been completed without the
support of the staff of the Department of History at UC Riverside, and I would like to
mention the work of Iselda Salgado and Christina Cuellar in particular. Furthermore, the
Interlibrary Loan office at UC Riverside was invaluable. Their ability to rapidly manage
scores of requests made the otherwise impossible task of obtaining obscure books,
articles, and dissertations quite easy.
I was fortunate to receive generous financial support from the Department of
History at UC Riverside throughout my tenure there. I also received funding from the
Graduate Student Association in order to travel to present my ideas at conferences on
several occasions. I also received travel funding from the Mediterranean
Seminar/University of California Multi-Campus Research Project.
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From 2013-2014, I was the Lucy Shoe Meritt fellow at the American School of
Classical Studies in Athens. It would be impossible in this small space to describe how
the experiences of that year and the individuals I met there have changed me both as a
scholar and as a person. It will suffice to say that anyone who has had the opportunity to
spend a year in the company of Margaret Miles, Jeremy McInerney, and Richard Janko
has led a privileged life.
Three of the translations that serve as appendices to this dissertation were
presented in my M.A. Thesis in 2011. They have been substantially revised in some
places. The standard caveat applies: none of the individuals mentioned above are to be
blamed for any mistakes that appear in this dissertation; errors are mine and mine alone.

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for Heather

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Christian Communities in Late Antiquity:
Luciferians and the Construction of Heresy

by

Colin M. Whiting

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History
University of California, Riverside, December 2015
Dr. Michele R. Salzman, Chairperson

The so-called Luciferians were a community of Christians that flourished in the
late fourth century. They emerged following the Council of Alexandria in 362 as a
rigorist Nicene community. However, by the early fifth century, they had apparently
completely dissipated. The classic interpretation of how the Luciferians emerged is that
they were led by a bishop named Lucifer of Cagliari. A more modern approach has seen
the ‘Luciferians’ as a community constructed by rigorists in Rome in the 380s, reaching
out to other dissatisfied Christians. I instead argue that this community was neither led by
Lucifer nor a later coalescing of dissident Christians, but rather emerged in the 360s out
of a network of clerics dissatisfied with the decisions of the Council of Alexandria.
Furthermore, no convincing explanation has yet been provided for this brief
florescence and sudden disappearance. This dissertation draws upon the Libellus precum,
an understudied petition written by two Luciferian presbyters, in order to examine the
internal mechanisms of the community and propose an explanation as to why they
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dissolved so suddenly. The community is examined in comparison with two other rigorist
Nicene communities, the Novatians and the Donatists, who remained vibrant over a much
longer period of time.
I argue that the Luciferians dissolved not for any one reason, as some scholars
have suspected, but owing to a combination of factors. These factors included the
consequences of their initial geographic distribution; a lack of clear doctrinal differences
with their opponents; a failure to define their opponents as doctrinally deviant while they
themselves fell prey to such attempts; a promotion of asceticism while lacking male
ascetics; and an insistence upon suffering as a means of proving one’s faith combined
with an end of persecution of Luciferians. These factors in combination, not individually,
led to the dissolution of the Luciferian community.

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