The writings of Tertullian afford the clearest demonstration that what is called Montanism was, at any rate in Africa, a reaction against secularism in the Church. There are no other indi cations that Montanism in Carthage was a very different thing from the Montanism of Montanus. Western Montanism, at the beginning of the 3rd century, admitted the legitimacy of almost every point of the Catholic system. It allowed that the bishops were the successors of the apostles, that the Catholic rule of faith was a complete and authoritative exposition of Christianity, and that the New Testament was the supreme rule of the Christian life. Montanus himself and his first disciples had been in quite a different position. In his time there was no fixed, divinely instituted congregational organization, no canon of New Testa ment Scriptures, no anti-Gnostic theology, and no Catholic Church. There were simply certain communities of believers bound together by a common hope, and by a free organization, which might be modified to any required extent. When Montanus proposed to summon all true Christians to Pepuza, in order to live a holy life and prepare for the day of the Lord, there was nothing whatever to prevent the execution of his plan except the inertia and lukewarmness of Christendom. But this was not the case in the West at the beginning of the 3rd century. At Rome and Carthage, and in all other places where sincere Montanists were found, they were confronted by the imposing edifice of the Catholic Church, and they had neither the courage nor the inclination to undermine her sacred foundations. This explains how the later Montanism never attained a position of influence. In accepting, with slight reservations, the results of the development which the Church had undergone during the fifty years from 16o to 210 it reduced itself to the level of a sect. Tertullian exhausted the resources of dialectic in the
endeavour to define and vindicate the relation of the "spiritual" to what he called the "psychic" Christians; but no one will say he has succeeded in clearing the Montanistic position of its fundamental inconsistency.
BIBLIoGRAPHY.—Ritschl's investigations in his Entstehung der alt katholischen Kirche, 2nd ed. 1857, superseded previous work. The later works, of which the best and most exhaustive is that of N. Bonwetsch, Die Geschichte des Montanismus 0880, all follow the lines laid down by Ritschl. See also Gottwald, De montanismo Tertulliani (1862) ; Reville, "Tertullien et le montanisme" in the Revue des deux mondes (Nov. 1, 1864) ; Stroelin, Essai sur le montanisme (1870) ; De Soyres, Montanism and the Primitive Church (London, 1878) ; W. Cunning ham, The Churches of Asia (London, 1880) ; Renan, "Les Crises du Catholicisme Naissant" in Rev. d. deux mondes (Feb. x5, 1881) ; H. Weinel, Die Wirkungen des Geistes and der Geister im nachapostol. Zeitalter (Freiburg, 1899) ; G. G. Selwyn, The Christian Prophets (London, 190o) ; and articles in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics and Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopiidie. Special points of importance in the history of Montanism have been investigated by Lipsius, Overbeck, Weizsacker (Theol. Lit.-Zeitung, Nov. 4, 1882) ; Harnack, Das Monchthum, seine Ideate and seine Geschichte, 2nd ed., 1882 ; Eng. trans., 1901 ; and Z. f. Kirchengesch. iii. 369-408, and H. J. Lawlor (Journal of Theological Studies, July 1908). Weizsacker's short essays are extremely valuable, and have elucidated several important points previously overlooked. (A. HA.; X.)