- Apotactics• The adherents of a heresy which sprang up in the third century and spread through the western and southern parts of Asia Minor
Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006.
- ApotacticsApot
- Apotactics• The adherents of a heresy which sprang up in the third century and spread through the western and southern parts of Asia Minor
Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006.
- ApotacticsApotactics† Catholic_Encyclopedia ► Apotactics(From Gr., apotassomai, to renounce).The adherents of a heresy which sprang up in the third century and spread through the western and southern parts of Asia Minor. What little we know of this obscure sect we owe to the writings of St. Epiphanius. He tells us that they called themselves Apotactics (i.e. renunciators) because they scrupulously renounced all private property; they also affected the name of Apostolics, because they pretended to follow the manner of life of the Apostles. The saint regards them as a branch of the Tatians, akin to the Encratites and the Cathari. "Their sacraments and mysteries are different from ours; they pride themselves upon extreme poverty, bring divisions into Holy Church by their foolish superstitions, and depart from the divine mercy by refusing to admit to reconciliation those who have once fallen, and like those from whom they have sprung, condemn marriage. In place of the Holy Scriptures, which they reject, they base their heresy on the apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Thomas. They are altogether alien from the rule of the Church". At the time when St. Epiphanius wrote, in the fourth century, they had become an insignificant sect, for in refuting them he says: "They are found in sm