Epiphanius

Epiphanius, a Christian bishop and writer of the 4th century, was born of Jewish parents in Palestine. He was educated among the Egyptian monks, who imbued his mind at once with a fervent piety and an intolerant bigotry that together led him in after-life into most unchristian excesses. He rose gradually to the rank of Bishop of Constantia (formerly Salamis) in Cyprus, and continued in that office from 367 till his death in 403. His polemical zeal was conspicuously manifested against Origen. He had proclaimed him a heretic in his writings, and in 394 he went to Palestine, the stronghold of Origen's adherents, and called upon John, Bishop of Jerusalem, to condemn him. Both in this instance and in his conduct to Chrysostom afterwards, he displayed a tyrannical and intolerant passion. Among his writings, collected by Petavius (2 vols. Paris, 1622), the most important is his Panarion, or catalogue of all heresies (80 in number), a work which strikingly shows his unfitness for the task of a historian. See a monograph by Lipsius (Vienna, 1865).