EPIPHANIUS, SAINT (c. 315-402), Bishop of Constantia or Salamis, a celebrated Church Father, born at Bezanduca, a village of Palestine, and probably of Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egypt, where he freed himself from Gnostic influences. Returning to Palestine he was ordained presbyter and became the president of a monastery which he founded near his native place. In 367 he was nominated bishop of Constantia, pre viously known as Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus—an office which he held till his death. Epiphanius devoted himself to the spread of monasticism, and the confutation of heresy, of which he regarded Origen and his followers as the chief representatives. He denounced John, bishop of Jerusalem from his own pulpit at Jerusalem so violently that the bishop sent his archdeacon to re quest him to desist. Instigated by Theophilus, bishop of Alex andria, he summoned a council of Cyprian bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. Later he came into conflict with Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, who had given temporary shelter to four Nitrian monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism. The monks gained the support of the em press Eudoxia, and when she summoned Theophilus to Constan tinople the aged Epiphanius went with him, but died on his way home. The principal work of Epiphanius is the Panarion, or treatise on heresies, the accounts of the earlier errors (where he has preserved large excerpts from the original Greek of Irenaeus) being the more reliable. He also wrote the Ancoratus, or dis course on the true faith, a treatise on Jewish weights and meas ures, another (incomplete) on ancient gems, and two epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome. His other works are lost. In allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek and Latin, Jerome styles Epiphanius IIEvra•yX o coos (Five-tongued). His erudition is outweighed by his borrowing, his prejudice, and his credulity.
See the church histories of Socrates and Sozomen, Palladius' De Chrysostomi and Jerome's De vir. illust. 114. His works were published by Petau (Petavius) 2 vols. (Paris, 1622) and by Migne, Patr. Graec. 41-43. The last edition of the Ancoratus and Panarion is by K. Holl, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1915) . His Discourses on the Holy Virgin was edited with an Eng. trans. by Wallis Budge in Misc. Coptic Texts (1915).
Other theologians of the same name were: (i) Epiphanius Scholas ticus, friend of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum (Pavia), c. 438-496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger), c. A.D. 68o, to whom some critics have ascribed certain works supposedly by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution has been made.