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Valentinus (Greek: Ούαλεντίνος; c. 100 CE – c. 180) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian.[1] He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.[2]
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those quoted in rebuttal arguments in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.[1] His doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians.[1][3] He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser or uncertain form of salvation, and that those of a material nature were doomed to perish. [1] [4] [5]
Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians.[1][3] It later divided into an Eastern and a Western, or Italian, branch.[1] The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.[1]
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