D. Who Were the Kollyridians?
It has been correctly pointed out[592] that Epiphanius traced the origin of the Kollyridians to Thrace and Scythia where the goddesses Bendis and Diana were particularly popular.
Bendis, the fertility goddess of Thrace, was identified by the Greeks with Artemis, Persephone, and Hecate; Diana was the protectress of women, whose origin may also go back to Artemis.[593] It is entirely possible that these goddesses in the lower Danube area had influenced Christian piety there, but we need not resort to this solution in our case. In Arabia the worship of “heavenly Aphrodite” was already known to Herodotus,[594] indeed the worship of the great goddess under various names and forms was so universally widespread in the whole Mediterranean area that it did not have to be imported from Thrace or anywhere else. What the Kollyridians did came quite naturally to women in the ancient world, and thus, if Epiphanius is right that it was a revival of paganism, it could have started anywhere. But more needs to be considered. Thrace was, as we have seen, the birthplace of the Dionysiac cult, which had strong connections with the cult of Cybele in Asia Minor. Now, if I am correct that Cybele’s cult powerfully influenced Montanism, then it is no surprise to read in Eusebius[595] that Priscilla, the Montanist prophetess, was also active in Thrace. For the Montanists to go to Thrace in search of converts would have been as natural as for the first Hellenist Christians in Jerusalem to go to Samaria and preach the gospel to Jews there who had rejected the temple and broken the law, as Stephen and his kindred souls had done.[596] In Thrace Priscilla found a predisposition to those qualities which were central for the Montanists, such as ecstasy, a tendency to see visions, prophecy, and full participation of women in the cult.If that indeed is the case, as it seems to be, then Epiphanius offers the solution for the puzzle of the origin of the Kollyridians. As he says, they originated in Thrace. I am proposing (this is no longer Epiphanius) that they were first a local branch of the Montanists. In the religious climate of Thrace, they absorbed a number of pagan practices and eventually integrated into their faith the universally popular mother-goddess idea, which for them was represented by Mary, the mother of Jesus. This is how Epiphanius described them. How they got into Arabia is not known. Perhaps at one time more such congregations were spreading from Thrace and Epiphanius found one of the last groups remaining there. However that may be, they give us a brief but fascinating glance into the development of Mariology by revealing how the feminine aspect of the divine was carried over from one generation to the other.[597]
When did the Kollyridian sect come into being? In a popular book, the British author Geoffrey Ashe[598] suggests that after the death and resurrection of Jesus there was, alongside the church in Jerusalem which was under the leadership of the apostles, another movement under the leadership of Mary. This group, with Mary at its center, left Jerusalem and withdrew into the wilderness as a religious community. When she was in her sixties, Mary went on a pilgrimage. Her followers never saw her again, and consequently believed that she was taken up to heaven like Elijah. Luke and John visited this community and received from it traditions which were incorporated in their gospel narratives. This Marian community, according to Ashe, was the beginning of the Kollyridian sect. In fairness to Ashe, we must add that he himself calls this story “historical fiction”[599] which it is, and thus we will not pursue his arguments any further. There is no historical reference to a “Marian religion” that existed simultaneously with “orthodox” Christianity. But we do know that the Montanist movement carried in itself the seeds of what, under favorable conditions, could develop into the cult that Epipha- nius called the Kollyridians.
These conditions were present in Thrace and that is how and when the sect started. For a long time they were simply known by whatever name the followers of Montanus were called, and that may be why no particular attention was paid to them other than the notice given to Montanists in general.However, by the fourth century, when Eusebius lived, they must have fully developed their distinctive characteristics, because by that time they appear to have become an embarrassment for the mainline church. If we can believe the Patriarch Euty- chius, certain Marianites were condemned as early as the Council of Nicea (325) for teaching that besides the supreme God there were two other gods, Christ and his mother, Mary.[600] Eutychius was a patriarch between 933-944, so his report is open to some doubt. Nevertheless, it was adopted by the medieval author, Ibn Kibr, who died about 1363 and who included in a list of heresies the sect of Marianites who believed that Christ and Mary are two gods besides God.[601] The last definite reference to the Kollyridians is a brief remark by Leontius of Byzantium (died 543/44) who refers to the “bread which the Philomarianites offer in the name of Mary.”[602] This remark gives the impression that Leontius was referring to practices current in his day, so the sect probably still existed then. There is also a reference in the Koran which is sometimes taken as an allusion to the Philomarianites: “And behold, God will say: ‘O Jesus, the Son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, ‘Worship me and my mother, As gods in derogation of God?’ He will say: “Glory to thee! Never could I say what I had no right to say. Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it.’”8S If this is indeed a reference to the Kollyridians, the sect must have survived up to the middle of the seventh century and been known to Mohammed, who died in 632. Since Mohammed was active in Arabia, where the original Kollyridians were supposedly centered, such survival is not impossible; however, given Mohammed’s strict monotheism, this passage may simply refer to the Marian piety of his time.[603] [604] Thus the Kollyridians fade from the history of Christianity. They no longer filled a need, because by the middle of the seventh century the church’s Mario- logy could comfortably accommodate any piety directed to the Queen of Heaven. We have pursued the pagan influence in the development of the Christian concept of the divine female, examining how pagan images and concepts were carried over into the Christian community and found expression in such various ways as the image of the “woman clothed with the sun” and the practices of the Mon- tanists and the Kollyridians. We will now to look at this issue from within the Christian church and see how the Christian genius out, of its own resources, began to restore the image of the feminine aspect of God. The Kollyridians were Christians, but they were an extremist fringe and their story soon leads the historian into a blind alley. The further development of Mario- logy came not from them but from Christian theologians who began to compare Eve with Mary. The significance of Eve was discovered by the Montanists. Two orthodox theologians who were familiar with Montanism first developed the crucial role of the two women in the history of salvation and established a relationship between them. We turn now to this development.