[8] He gave the Revelation of St John a Moslem application: and prophesied the end of the world in the near future. See letter of Beatus, book i., sec. 23—"Novissima hora est ... nunc Antichristi multi facti sunt. Omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesum est illius Antichristi, quem audistis quoniam venit, et nunc in mundo est." See also Alcuin's letter to the Spanish bishops.
[9] "Elipandus and bishops of Spain to those of Gaul," sec. 1.
[10] This practice of punning on names is very common in these writers. "Infelix Felix" is a poor witticism which constantly occurs. So Samson says of Hostegesis that he ought to be called "hostis Jesu"; and in the account of the Translation of the bodies of Aurelius, etc., we find Leovigild spoken of as a very "Leo vigilans."
But in spite of outbreaks like these we must beware of judging the venerable Elipandus too hardly. Alcuin himself, in his letter to the bishop, written, as he says, "with the pen of charity," speaks of him as most blameless,[1] and confesses that he has heard much of his piety and devotion, an admission which he also makes with regard to Felix, in a letter to him.[2] Yet in his book against Elipandus, he exclaims, not without a touch of bathos: "For all the garments of wool on your shoulders, and the mitre upon your brow, wearing which you minister to the people, for all the daily shaving of your beard[3] ... if you renounce not these doctrines, you will be numbered with the goats!" Another testimony (of doubtful value, however) in Elipandus' favour is to be found in the anonymous life of Beatus,[4] where Elipandus is said to have succeeded Cixila in the bishopric of Toledo, because of his reputation for learning and piety, which extended throughout Spain.
[1] "Sanctissime praesul," sec. 1. Cp. sec. 6, "Audiens famam bonam religiosae vitae de vobis."
[2] "Celeberriman tuae sanctitatis audiens famam." The "Pseudo Luitprand" calls him "Vir humilis, prudens, ae in zelo fidei Catholicae fervens."
[3] Beards were the sign of laymen, see Alvar, "Ep.," xiii., and probably the distinction was much insisted on because of the Moslem custom of wearing long beards. For the distinctive dress of the clergy see the same letter of Alvar, ... "Quern staminia et lana oviuin religiosum adprobat."
[4] See Migne, xcvi., 890 ff.
Elipandus, who boasted of having refuted and stamped out the Migetian errors, and who also took up so independent an attitude with regard to the See of Rome, was not the man to endure being dictated to in the matter of what was, or what was not, sound doctrine, and, in the letter quoted above, he scornfully remarks that he had never heard that it was the province of the people of Libana to teach the Toledans. Here, as in the defiant attitude taken up towards the Pope, we may perhaps see a jealousy, felt by the old independent Church of Spain under its own primate, towards the new Church, that was growing up in the mountains of the North, the centre of whose religious devotion was soon to be Compostella, and its spiritual head not the primate of Spain, but the bishop of Rome.
It is now time to explain what the actual heresy advocated by Elipandus and Felix was. Some have held the opinion that Adoptionism was merely a revival of the Bonosian errors, which had long taken root in Spain;[1] others, that it was a revival of the Nestorian[2] heresy, a new phase of the controversy between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria;[3] or that it was an attempt to reform Christianity, purging it from later additions.[4] Alcuin, however, speaks of its followers as a new sect, unknown to former times.[5] Stated briefly, the new doctrine was that Jesus, in so far as His manhood was concerned, was son of God by adoption. This error had been foreseen and condemned in advance by Cyril of Alexandria (348-386):[6] by Hilary of Arles (429-449).[7] The Eleventh Council of Toledo had also guarded against this same error a hundred years before this (675), affirming that Christ the Son of God was His Son by nature, not by adoption.