Born c.110.
Founder, in Rome in 144, of a sect called the Marcionites. Amazed at what he
considered the opposition between the Old and New Dispensations, Marcion
rejected the former and declared the Apostles had been in error in linking
the New Covenant with the Old. He claimed to be interpreting true
Christianity as taught by Saint Paul. He prepared a mutilated edition of the
New Testament (consisting of a large part of the Gospel of Saint Luke and
ten Epistles of Saint Paul) and organized his church along hierarchical
lines. It is difficult to distinguish some of the doctrines he held from
those of the Gnostics, with which his followers were almost immediately
identified, but he certainly taught that the God of the Jews was a Demiurge
and that Christ had come among men to tell them about the true God, His
Father. Married persons could never rise above the catechumenate in his
sect, in which the baptized were virgins, widows, celibates, and eunuchs.
The Marcionites ceased to flourish in the 7th century.