Carpocrate – Wikipedia

Carpocrate (Alexandria of Egypt, … – 138) He was an Egyptian Greek language philosopher and preacher, who lived under the Roman Empire, founder of a school of Christian Gnostic inspiration characterized by an ethics “libertine” and hedonist.

Disciple of the docestist Cerininto, of his life there are few details: he preached, in Alexandria, a doctrine that united the Platonic foundations to the verb of Christ during the kingdom of Emperor Adriano, founded his Gnostic school (Carpocraziana) and had a son, Epiphanes or epiphanio that succeeded him. These few news can be found in a letter attributed to Epifane himself and in a writing by Ireneo di Lyon. It is also known that Carpocrates never moved to Rome, even if, later, a community of carpocrazians was established there.

According to an interesting theory, Carpocrates is not a proper name, but a title. In fact there was a Greek divinity called Harpocrates which presided over the mysteries and rites. Carpocrates, therefore, could therefore be the title of the charismatic leader of the Gnostic sect of the Carpocrazians.

Carpocrazian doctrine is based on three fundamental points, derived from Gnostic theology but integrated with original additions:

• The world is not the result of the will of the naive and unknown father (one), but of lower powers, demons, in the gnostic doctrine called Arconti and deriving from the demiurge, creator of the matter, son of the Eneum Sophia that the Ophiti saw represented by the Biblical snake of the Eden Garden, performed positive function as it is opposite to the demiurge Yahweh/Yaldabooth; More than Ofiti and Cainiti, however, the carpocrazians were close to the anti -senior school of Nicolaism; The demiurge and these arcons, pairing with each other, then generated the sensitive world trying to copy the divine one. The bodies of men were also born from their couplings, used as prisons for their souls;
• Jesus was actually the son of Joseph and Mary, but, thanks to the virtues of his firm and pure soul who was endowed with the reminiscence of things seen during his stay with his father (who is not the cruel demiurge of the Old Testament), they were granted the particular powers, the same powers that were conferred on the apostles during Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit (in other Gnostic schools he is the Aeon Christ, counterpart of Sophia). He also knew the secret to escaping earthly prison: despising the laws of society, thus ending the tyranny of inhibitions; The decalogue is the work of the demiurge, so it should not be followed for a large part;
• Each man, through metempsicosis, transforming any event in experience, has the possibility of being invested by the same powers of Jesus. Once this stage has been reached, the soul can free up from the yoke of the rebirths, and trace the seven skies dominated by the demons who created the world and then reached the father.

Therefore, the souls, in order to be able to get out of the reincarnation cycle, had to passively accept the desires. As a consequence of this, the Carpocrancians preached libertin, the refusal of marriage, the abolition of social castes and the communion of goods, and devoted themselves to the magical arts and the preparation of love filters. Some particularly powerful souls could leave the cycle in the course of a single life. This behavior scandalized both many Gnostic masters of other schools and Christians, who fought this sect furiously until it completely disappeared in the fourth century, after having destroyed almost all written documents.

However, this news is perhaps to be linked to the sect rather than its founder, of which the Gnostic references are not yet clear.

The few news about his life has been handed down by Clemente Alessandrino. It seems that he was the son of Carpocrates and Alexandria, Alexandrian for part of father, Cefallenio for part of his mother. (Clemente, Stromed , III 5).
In addition to these few biographical notes, Clemente Alessandrino also reports some steps of his work, Of justice . In this the son of Carpocrat, reconnecting to the ancient contrast of pagan origin between nature and law, saw in the human laws (mosaic law), which sanction the right of ownership, a serious transgression of divine laws, based on the commonality of all assets , also “the woman has joined with man and equally coupled all animals and thus manifested justice as commonality with equality. But those who were born thanks to this principle refused the commonality who produces their birth and say: whoever took a woman if they keep it, while everyone may have them in common, as they show the other animals ».
In his letter, he also wrote that God had wanted to joke, establishing the commandment of not wanting the woman or the stuff of others: if it had been God who created sexual desire, his true message, according to Epiphanes, was to share everything with All, or the most pushed libertin.

Clemente’s text, rather generic, does not however present clear references to gnostic conceptions, indeed we speak clearly of a god supreme creator of the world, when instead in the gnosis the creation of the material world is attributed to a lower God.
According to some scholars, Epifane died in Sami of Kefalonia, at the age of 17, due to his vices. Other modern scholars, on the other hand, argue that Epiphane in reality never existed, but that it was a myth created by the carpocrazians, who in his honor had erected a temple on the island of Samo.

The gnosis of the Carpocrazians was widespread in Rome, at the time of Pope Aniceto by such a Marcellina. Ireneo in Against heresies , in addition to various news on magical practices, provides a brief ethical description of the moral principles of the sect, linked only by the needs of faith and love, considering any other feeling indifferent to the redemption of the soul indeed considering essentially committing all sins “and in relation to the transmigration of souls in the bodies they affirm that souls in every life must try every experience “, in order to exhaust all sins and get rid of the material body; proposing as an example to follow the Christ, considered a simple man vivified by a divine power that has allowed him to go back to the divine world. This ethical vision corresponds to a complex cosmology founded on Arconti (angels) creators of the world.

The carpocrazian school disappeared even before the majority gnosticism, of a more ascetic nature, but hedonist components will return to the following heretical Christianity (spiritual erudite libertines followers of Gioacchino da Fiore, Dolciniani, William Blake).

Primary sources

• Clemente, Stromed , III III, III, II, 5-9, 10, 10, 10.
• Irenaeus, Against heresies , I, 25.
• Agostino, of heresies , 7.
• Isidoro, Etymologiae , VIII, V, 7.

Secondary sources

• A. Hilgenfeld, The heretical history of early Christianity , Leipzig 1884, p. 397 and following;
• H. Kraft, Was there a gnostic Karpocrates? , in «Theological Journal», VIII 1952, p. 434 e Seguenti;
• H. Liboron, The Carpocratic Gnosis , Leipzig 1938;
• S. Pétrement, The separate God. The origins of gnosticism , Paris 1984, p. 475 and following;
• Gnostic texts in Greek and Latin , edited by Manlio Simonetti, Milan 1993, p. 181 and following.