The Migetians or Cassianists were a rigorist Christian sect in Muslim Spain in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
[8] Sometime before 786, probably in 780 or 781, Archbishop Wilchar of Sens, with the approval of Pope Hadrian, consecrated a Goth named Egila as a peripatetic bishop in Spain.
[c] In a third letter addressed to "all the orthodox bishops living throughout the whole of Spain", Hadrian confirms that Egila and John had fallen in with the Migetians and were preaching false doctrines.
[12] He also implies that Egila had usurped a diocese, possibly Elvira or Mérida, although he had been expressly forbidden to take a permanent see when he was commissioned as a peripatetic bishop.
It condemned the "Acephali called Cassianists" who had been founded by a bishop named "Agila of Ementia" and who still had adherents in some parishes, mainly in the Egabrense (the region around Egabro), particularly the village of Epagro.
[13] Saul of Córdoba, writing to Paul Albar in 862, lumps the Migetians together with Donatists and Luciferians as rigorists, but this is not proof that the sect was still active at that date.
Scholars disagree about whether the Migetians were motivated by specific abuses in the church, by political opposition to collaboration with Islamic rule or by apocalypticism.
First, he accuses him of holding priests to an exceedingly high standard of moral purity and of referring to himself as free from sin.
The precise nature of Migetius' claims is difficult to discern in Elipand's letter, but it has been likened to Donatism, an ancient African heresy.
[19] Fourth, Elipand accuses Migetius of teaching that the three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—were incarnated as David, Jesus and Paul, respectively.
[1] Pope Hadrian's first letter to Egila confirms that the issues being disputed by Migetius were the date of Easter, dietary regulations concerning pork, the compatibility of predestination and free will and practices that represented a compromise with Islam, such as living in common with Jews and Muslims, marrying unbelievers and the marriage of priests.
Hadrian responds to the predestinarian controversy by quoting the African theologian Fulgentius, who was especially popular in Spain.