PRISICILLIAN AND GALLAECIA
In the academic world,
it has been a while since the the Würzburg Treatise ,
but he was not rehabilitated in society,
very little is known about Priscillian.
ANCIENT HISTORY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OVIEDO AND ARCHAEOLOGIST
He is linked to many things, but without accuracy.
That is why it is important
in an educational documentary, done with rigor,
to work with the representatives
of the research about this figure.
Champion his figure but on solid claims,
based on the available documentation.
We have to locate Priscillian
in the 4th century Roman province of Gallaeica,
very big in that period.
While researching it, we notice
that is not only territorial and geographical amplitude.
Many important characters of the time
are linked to this territory.
It gained a lot of importance in the Western Roman Empire
of that period.
Figures like Priscillian were essential to the territory,
not only to Gallaeica and Hispania,
but to the entire Western Empire.
These are the 4th and 5th centuries, the end of the Roman Empire.
PHD IN HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS BY THE LUSÍADA UNIVERSITY (LISBON)
It is a very rich period.
I feel an affinity with the characters,
with the history, with what was happening,
with that spiritual effervescence.
It is the meeting between the East and the West,
which had started with Augustus,
but now, it was being implemented
quite strongly in the West.
Even if the whole Western Roman structure, administrative and political, remains
it was already giving up to that restlessness.
I believe it was a restless time.
We are in the Roman villa of La Olmeda, in Palencia,
a villa from the 4th century AD.
It is a very important example,
with 2000 square meters of mosaics,
a very big, well preserved, and musealized structure,
in which, I believe, we can understand and contextualize Priscillian.
What we know about the early years of Priscillian's life, is not much.
We have accounts by Sulpicius Severus,
an Aquitanian chronicler,
saying that he was from a rich family.
There is no information about when he was born,
but we have the hypothesis
that he was born in the middle of the 4th century AD,
around the year 345, 350.
Why?
Because he was named bishop of Ávila in 381.
and people became bishop when they were around 30.
When Priscillian arrived at Ávila, around the year 381,
ARCHAEOLOGIST. COUNCIL OF CASTILE AND LEÓN
he came across a city founded around four centuries earlier,
Obila , as it was called at the time,
never became a city of the magnitude of other Hispanian ones,
like Emerita, Caesaraugusta, or Hispalis...
however, it was a kind of valuable administrative center,
a referent in an area where there were no cities like that,
and Priscillian arrives in the 4th century.
With all certainty, Priscillian was here.
Not in this one, but the one previous to it,
which would have been a bigger or smaller temple.
Priscillian was made bishop of Ávila
and several conflicts between Priscillians and his opponents at the Church occur.
In the end, his opponents take the problem to the administration,
and they get the emperor Gratian
BUST OF GRATIAN
to issue a rescript in which Priscillians were expelled from their sees.
This is when Priscillians decide to travel to Rome.
First, they stopped in Bordeaux,
HYPOTHETICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF PRISCILLIAN'S TRIP TO ROME
looking for support from bishops from the Council of Saragossa
and that could, before they met with Pope Damasus,
give support, even ideological.
They are expelled from Bordeaux,
went to the region of Elusa as well,
and then travelled to Italy. They cross Gaul,
reached Italy and went to Milan
to meet with the bishop Ambrose.
Ambrose refuses to see them, and they decide to go to Rome.
AMBROSE OF MILAN
to meet with the Pope himself.
But he does not welcome them either.
Sulpicius and Instancio, another bishop,
POPE DAMASUS
decide to go back to Hispania.
Before that, they stop again in Milan
and they bribed a member of the administration
magister officiorum Macedonius,
and they are able to get the rescript issued by emperor Gratian annulled.
Through the study of the sources, the spread of Priscilianism,
the chronology, the geography,
of the findings that we will discover in the places we will go to
we can, with certain limitation,
link Priscillian or Priscillianism with them.
We are in the valley of the Mera river, a tributary of the Minho.
PHD IN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY BY THE AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF MADRID
It's a territory with incredible archaeological richness.
From my point of view, this is a funerary monument
from Ancient Rome,
reused in the last phases of the transition.
It was a kind of crypt of the church above it.
The quality of its paintings caught people's attention.
Evidently, with anxiety to dig it up and found out more.
What happened to it?
A paradox: The more we digged and the more data we had, the less we knew.
A lot of theories came up,
maybe a Roman temple, a lyceum...
It was even said that it could be a worship to Priscillian.
PICTURE OF THE DISCOVERY
GROUND PLAN OF SANTA EULALIA
This idea appears in the 70s, with Celestino Fernández de la Vega,
who found a parallel
between this monument and another important one in Nicaea.
This is one is more important that the one in Nicaea, bigger,
almost double the volume.
Who was important in Galicia at the time?
Priscillian, so he is buried here.
The arguments are not good, they don't have much basis
We are here because this is a key location of the research about Priscilian.
Priscillian was one of those men with an education,
with great wealth and properties,
he studied rhetoric, probably in Bordeaux, in the Roman Empire of the time.
When he studies the Bible, he becomes a notorious biblical exegete.
He's a Christian that wants to live his faith authentically,
PATROLOGY PROFESSOR. THEOLOGY FACULTY OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF ARGENTINA
clashing with some customs
with which Christianity was looser, let's say.
Here, in the 19th century, a marble disc with a Christian inscription
was located, it became known in the academic world.
The inscription allows us to link it with Prisicillian and Priscillianism.
It's a marble disc,
the original is at the Lugo Diocesan Museum,
with an inscription in Latin:
"Aurum vile tibi est," gold is bad for you,
"argenti pondera cedant," as it is silver,
"plus est quod propria felicitate nites",
It is better that you shine through your own happiness.
It's a ascetic message,
which links it to Priscillianism.
The Priscillianists, and Priscillian, were the ascetics of the time.
They met far from the episcopal power and the cities.
In the Council of Saragossa it was stated that they did so.
Priscillian is a fundamental character in Galician culture.
THEOLOGIST AND PHILOSOPHER PRISCILLIAN EXPERT
Maybe at the grass-roots level Priscillian is less known than Rosalia de Castro,
Ramón Cabanillas, Curros Enriquez, or Pondal,
but Priscillian is a fundamental character.
In fact, Otero Pedrayo even said that
he was the most important figure of Galician culture, that is saying a lot.
Castelao was fascinated by the figure of Priscillian.
This is portrayed in what everybody knows,
the procession in Alba de Gloria
which Priscillian leads.
We have fresher news about him than other more known characters,
and so, this myth has a historical basis
and a link with Galicia.
That's why Castelao said he was "the mystic soul of Galicia".
Evidently, I cannot guarantee
that Compostela was built above Priscillian's tomb.
Against the other hypotheses, which are many,
I defend this one as the most possible one.
He had a very frenetic life,
we are talking 380, Council of Saragossa, 381, he's named bishop,
then he had some conflicts in Mérida,
travels to Rome in 382,
comes back in 383,
and in 384, at the Council of Bordeaux, he is judged.
He chooses civil jurisdiction,
PROFESSOR OF ROMAN LAW UNIVERSITY OF VIGO
he makes a provocatio ad principem .
That is, he doesn't want or recognize ecclesiastical jurisdiction
and chooses the civil one.
He believed that, as he had a similar experience in the past,
and that went well,
in this case, it would go well.
Ah! But the emperor is a different one, he is a usurper who needs support.
Magnus Maximus is a usurper who overthrows emperor Gratian
BUST OF MAGNUS MAXIMUS
and becomes the usurper emperor
of the Western Empire.
This is an key moment that changes the political game.
He needs support from civilians, he has it from the army.
He has to be known by his strength, by his example to civilians.
COIN WITH MAGNUS MAXIMUS REPRESENTED AS DEFENDER OF CHRISTIANITY.
Further, Priscillian will be convicted, and he wasn't poor,
neither were his followers,
and the seizure of their assets would be personal,
from Priscillian and his followers to the emperor.
The crime that Prisicillian confessed during his trials,
PROFESSOR IN ANCIENT HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF ZARAGOZA
as it is stated in the sources, under torture, it must be said,
despite being nobilis ;
was maleficium , harmful magic.
They are taken to Trier, and there, after two trials,
PORTA NIGRA - TRIER
he is tortured, confesses, and ends up being beheaded
alongside seven of his followers,
named by Sulpicius Severus. They were probably more.
Therefore, the legality,
the formality, the materialization of this conflict
from a legal point of view,
was completely legitimate.
But, in reality, the consideration of the Priscillian doctrine
and its followers,
as heresy, as maleficium ,
was a lot more aggravated than it should have.
It cannot be forgotten that Priscilian,
(ANCIENT HISTORY PROFESSOR. SAARLAND UNIVERSITY)
at least about certain aspects,
thought just like his episcopal adversaries did,
those who were responsible for his sentence and execution.
One may think that when you behead the leaders of a movement,
it's going to disappear, but the contrary happened here.
Hydatius, a 5th century chronicler from Gallaecia,
says that after the beheading of Priscillian
the movement spread out, invaded,
he uses the term invasit ,
invaded the entire Gallaecia.
We're in the Os Martores chapel, in the Valga municipality.
In the year 1972, the Monsignor Guerra Campos,
MONSIGNOR JOSÉ GUERRA CAMPOS
who did a study on the tomb of the apostle James,
proposed this as the possible burial place of Priscillian and some of his followers.
His theory was that this place name, Os Martores,
didn't exist in the entire Galician geography
and that it was very similar to the name Priscillian and his followers
were known after their death: The Martyrs of Trier
We are in Valga, close to Caldas de Reis,
former Aquis Celenis,
where we know there were Priscillianist bishops.
The main members of the Church and main theorists of Christianity,
repeat this ideological tradition of saying that
Priscillian was a heretic, a Manichean, an heir to Zoroaster, said Jerome.
This tradition was kept alive because this was the pushed image.
In the 1880s,
HISTORY PROFESSOR EMERITUS SEATTLE PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
a group of manuscripts were discovered in Würzburg, Germany,
called "The Würzburg Tractates".
These are writings which some were written directly by the hand of Priscillian,
and some directly by the hand of his followers.
On a theological level, these writings
ANCIENT CHRISTIAN LITERATURE PROFESSOR UNIVERSITY OF PADUA
give us an image, maybe not a completely orthodox one,
of the postconstantinopolitan theology
after the year 381.
But it is a Christology, a strongly unitarian theology,
strongly focused on God's unity,
and against the difference between people.
Priscillian was indeed considered a heretic,
I.R.E.R. HISTORIAN SORBONNE UNIVERSITY
even a heresiarch, the leader of a heresy.
I have been studying this man and his work for 25 years,
I believe the accusations of gnosticism or manichaeism
are heresiological ones, that is,
they respond to a distortion of the information
but they are also the result of a misunderstanding
between the different sides of that moment
and that will have a deep effect in things.
For the first time, we could read what he truly said,
what they truly said.
And at least in that first phase that I am talking about,
you will not find heresy, you can see a tendency
but you will not find material heresy.
He is not a gnostic, he is not a maniquean,
he is not a heretic, etc...
In reality, after Priscillian's death,
heresy, spread by his initiative, not only was it not repressed,
but it became stronger and spread even more.
His followers, who worshipped him as a saint before,
started to do so as a martyr.
We are in Marialba de la Ribera,
a district of the Council of Villaturiel,
close to the city of León, near the Astur-Roman city of Lancia.
Right now, we're in the apse of the Paleochristian Basilica of Marialba.
One of the thesis about Priscillian's burial place
is precisely this fascinating and fantastic place.
It's believed that it was an 18-meter-tall building,
with a central nave, its baptistery, an atrium...
It was of great importance in the 4th century.
GROUND PLAN OF THE MARIALBA BASILICA
It must have been someone really important to be in the apse
ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORKS IN MARIALBA
of practically the first Christian church, let's call it that way, in this region.
We're in the entrails of the ancient city of Asturica Augusta,
which was one of the main cities of Gallaecia.
Specifically, we're in the slave pit,
a cryptoportico from the High Roman Empire,
used to hold some of the city forum structures.
In the discourse, debate, research, about where Priscillian is buried.
this is one of the possible destinies of Priscillian's relics.
I defend the theory that Priscillian of Avila
could be buried in Asturica Augusta.
This was the see of Simposio and Dictinio,
the heirs of the movement,
who could be interested in bringing Priscillian's remains back here.
We're in one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in Galicia.
This site was classified as a hillfort,
but in latter research, it was said that these circular structures
could be part of an Iron Age shrine.
An author, Michael Koch, published a book in 2019
in which he said that some of the shrines found here,
SHRINES WITH CROSS-SHAPED ELEMENTS
had a symbology, cruciforms, an iconography,
that could be linked with the presence of Christianity
and above all, with Priscillianism.
He says that the destruction of this shrine could be linked
with the persecution of the Priscillianists.
The situation ends up stabilizing for Priscillianists,
and they are able to fight this convulsive and complex period for the movement,
and establish themselves and get strength again.
Priscillianism is going to be preserved specially among the people,
not in the episcopal hierarchy, but among the people.
KNOWN ANTIPRISCILLIANISTS BY WRITTEN SOURCES (379-651)
We've recovered news about Priscillianism
as far as the year 651.
We have a epistle of the bishop of Zaragoza, Braulio,
who writes to Fructuosus, bishop of Braga,
warning him of Priscillian's heresy
which had been present in the region, in Gallaecia, until recently.
Even important and famous people, like Paulo Orosio,
had been infected, always using degrading terminology,
had been infected by the Priscillian doctrine.
Why should Priscillian be rehabilitated?
I think justice demands it.
Priscillian deserves great respect,
respect as a historical character.
Rehabilitate... that is a question that I,
as a historian, cannot answer.
Priscillian is a fundamental figure
that allow us to better understand
the historical and cultural context and climate
of Christianity.
We should seek the contrary of what happened,
the unity of the Church.
He could be the example of someone
with a curiosity to know his truth,
which today doesn't make sense.
He awarded women the possibility, within the Holy Order,
to be even deaconesses.
Priscilian's story, his persecution,
the fact that the Priscillianists were expropriated and exiled
deeply impacted me, because it made me relive
my ancestors' story.
I remember a journalist of a newspaper of A Corunna
asking me "are you a Priscilianist?"
and I told him "I've never been asked that but I could say that I am"
A thrilling character, who leaves me yearning to know more
about what he could have done here.