Marcosians

The Marcosians were a Gnostic sect founded by Marcus in Lyon, France and active in southern Europe from the 2nd to the 4th century.

Women held special status in the marcosian communities; they were regarded as prophetesses and participated in administering the Eucharistic rites.

Marcus holds his knowledge to be the product of a divine revelation of the body of the Anthropos: The infinitely exalted Tetrad descended upon him from the invisible and indescribable places in the form of a woman .

Behold, then, her head on high, Alpha and Omega; her neck, Beta and Psi; her shoulders with her hands, Gamma and Chi; her breast, Delta and Phi; her diaphragm, Epsilon and Upsilon; her back, Zeta and Tau; her belly, Eta and Sigma; her thighs, Theta and Rho; her knees, Iota and Pi; her legs, Kappa and Omicron; her ankles, Lambda and Xi; her feet, Mu and Nu.

And he calls this element Anthropos (Man), and says that is the fountain of all speech, and the beginning of all sound, and the expression of all that is unspeakable, and the mouth of the silent Sige.Sometimes Marcus counts the number of letters in a name, sometimes he reckons up the sum total, when to each letter is given its value in the Greek arithmetical notation: sometimes he uses a method which enables him to find still deeper mysteries.

This comparison shows an interesting point of agreement in liturgical usage between the Gnostics of the 2nd century and the Roman church of the time of Jerome, whose well-known words are "ad similitudinem caelestis tonitrui Amen reboat."

What is stated about the limited knowledge of each Aeon may be compared with what Hippolytus of Rome tells of the Docetae (viii.

Either Hippolytus, or an early copyist of his, makes an attempt to solve the mystery of the unspoken names by writing at full length the letters of the name χρειστός; χεῖ, ῥώ, εἴ, ἰῶτα, σίγμα, ταῦ, οὐ, σάν; but we have here only twenty-four letters instead of thirty, so we must be content to remain in ignorance of what would seem to have been one of the most valuable secrets of this sect.

16); but this cannot be called a quite independent illustration, for the coincidences are found to be such as to put it beyond doubt that Clement, in his account of the mysteries of the number 6, makes unacknowledged use of the same writings of Marcus as were employed by Irenaeus.

), suggests, as a way of reconciling the difference between the evangelists as to whether the Lord suffered at the third or the sixth hour, that a transcriber's error may have arisen from the likeness of Gamma and the Episemon, i.e. apparently Γ and Ϝ.

The source whence all modern writers have learned their use of the word episemon is Joseph Justus Scaliger's essay on the origin of the Ionic letters.

[2] He there quotes as from Bede, de Indigitatione, a statement of an old grammarian, who, having mentioned that the Greeks denote numbers by letters, and for this purpose join to the letters of their alphabet three other characters, goes on as follows:— Prima est ς quae dicitur Episimon et est nota numeri VI.

; tertia est ϡ quae dicitur enneacosia quia valent DCCCC.Here, as well as in the preceding passages, episemon is used with special reference to the character for six; but Scaliger turns into Greek the phrase "nota numeri VI."

In calculating the numerical value of χρειστός he counts the σ and τ separately; and he calls the former s Sigma, and the latter San.

With regard to the properties of the number 6, Marcus and Clement were in part indebted to Philo of Alexandria, who explains (De Op.

); that being 2 × 3 it arises from the marriage of a male and female, i.e., odd and even number; that there are six directions of motion, forward, backward, right, left, up, down; etc.

Clement, if not Marcus, finds the Saviour's higher nature represented by the episemon, which is not taken into account by one who looks merely at the order of the letters in the alphabet, but reveals itself in the system of numeration.

Eusebius of Caesarea writes that the Marcosians baptised people "Into the name of the unknown father of the universe, into truth, the mother of all things, into the one that descended upon Jesus.

"[4] This may show that the Trinitarian baptismal formula existed at least at that time, and probably earlier,[5] and that the Marcosians adopted it as their own.

By confirmation the Gnostics intended not so much to give the Holy Ghost as to seal the candidates against the attacks of the Archons, by which the initiated would after death become incomprehensible and invisible, and leaving their bodies in this lower creation and their souls with the Demiurge, ascend in their spirits to the Pleroma.

Sometimes he would hand the cup to women, and bid them in his presence pronounce the eucharistic words: May that Charis who is before all things, and who transcends all knowledge and speech, fill thine inner being, and multiply in thee her own knowledge, by sowing the grain of mustard seed in thee as in good soil.Then he would pour from their consecrated cup into a much larger one held by himself, and the liquor, miraculously increased at this prayer, would be seen to rise up and fill the larger vessel.