Montanism, a heresy which grew up within the Christian church in the second half of the 2d century; its founder was Montanus, a religious enthusiast who appeared at Ardaban in Phrygia in the year 156, with a mission to purify and re-organise the church. Christianity had now become adopted by men in all classes, and already it had to a great extent ceased to be what it was originally—a society of enthusiastic devotees shut off from the world. At the same time the church adapted to her use everything of value in the social and political arrangements of the world around her, and thus fitted herself for the rôle of a great world-religion. Side by side with this growing secularism there sprung up a natural reaction in favour of the old discipline and severity, and nowhere was this so strong as in Phrygia, where it was linked with a belief in a new and final outpouring of the Spirit. Here there quickly formed themselves societies of spiritual Christians who gladly hailed the appearance of the 'Paraclete,' and were gradually compelled to withdraw from the church, branded as Montanists and Kataphrygians. Montanus selected the small Phrygian towns of Pepuza and Tymion as the Jerusalem of the church, and for twenty years his movement was limited to Phrygia and the surrounding district. He himself enjoyed a continuance of the prophetic gift, as well as the two women Prisca and Maximilla; his most zealous missionaries were Alcibiades and Theodotus. The persecution that began after the year 177 spread the movement wider by deepening the earnestness of conviction in those that held fast their faith. In Phrygia they were sternly repressed by the bishops, and formally excommunicated; but elsewhere than in Asia Minor they did not at once leave the church, but formed small conventicles within it. In Gaul and Rome it was long held that communion should be maintained with them. But gradually separation became necessary, as the Montanists became stronger in their demand for a return to primitive discipline, for more fasting, the prohibition of second marriages, and a severer life generally. Denunciation and exclusion produced their natural effect in making them still more narrow, severe in their judgments, and arrogant in their asceticism. At Carthage a numerous body of Montanists had grown up, and from 202 to 207 they strove hard, but in vain, to remain within the church, but at length quitted it because it refused to recognise the new outpouring of the Spirit. It was now that the great Tertullian joined their ranks, having become profoundly convinced of the necessity for a return to primitive Christianity in order to heal the secularism of the church. Montanism survived in the East till the 4th century; in the West it was ever less aggressive, and did not grow up until the Catholic Church had firmly established its organisation. Therefore it never became more than a mere sect; and from a genuine desire for reform and simplicity it degenerated into an artificial strictness and mere legalism. Yet down to 400 A.D. there were still Tertullianists at Carthage.
See Ritschl's Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche (2d ed. 1857); De Soyres, Montanism and the Primitive Church (1878); Bonwetsch, Die Geschichte des Montanis- mus (1881); Weizsäcker in Theol. Lit.-Zeitung (1882); and Harnack, Das Mönchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte (2d ed. 1882).