L'heresiologie chez epiphane de salamine

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the conception that epiphanius, bishop of salamis in cyprus and a father of the church in the 4 th century had of heresiology, a literary genre which had appeared two centuries earlier, and with the methods that he used. The author and his catalogue of heresies are first of all placed in their historical and heresiological contexts and then the study itself is carried out through a detailed analysis of ten characteristic notices taken from his main work, the panarion, in such a way as to reveal his sources, analyse his way of exploiting them and elucidate his thought and composition processes. The notices chosen for this study are the notice against noetus, the gnostic heresies of menander, satornilus, basilides, carpocrates and nicolas, the notice against tatian, the heresy of the quartodecimans, that of the cathari and lastly the judeo-christian heresy of the nasoreans. The conclusions make it possible to identify or confirm the primary as well as the extremely varied secondary sources of epiphanius, to see how he composes his notices, to reconstitute the corresponding notices in hippolytus' lost syntagma and to become familiar with the traditional techniques of heresiology and the way epiphanius adapts them for his own use. Despite the difficulties of his style and his rather disconcerting language, epiphanius remains a mine of information about the 4 th century church and heresies thanks to his concern with detail, the abundance of his sources and the sufficiently faithful use he makes of them, provided that one does not stop at a simple reading of his writings but takes into account his sources and heresiological methods he employs. The greek text, with improvements on that of corpus of berlin, and my translation of the notices are added to the work.

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