Montanus

A Recent Convert in Phrygia

Almost everything known about Montanus comes from men who wrote against him. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing early in the fourth century, preserved long extracts from two critics of the late second century: an anonymous author who wrote around 192 and a writer named Apollonius. Epiphanius of Salamis, writing around 375, collected some of the movement's oracles. No account by Montanus's own followers survives, so every detail of his life reaches us through hostile hands.

According to the anonymous writer, Montanus was a recent convert living at Ardabau, a village in Mysia near the border of Phrygia, when he began to prophesy during the proconsulship of Gratus in Asia. Phrygia was the rural heart of Asia Minor, the region of Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis that appears in Paul's letters, and its churches were old and numerous. Writers of the fourth century and later claimed that before his conversion Montanus had been a priest of a pagan cult, of Cybele or of Apollo. Those claims appear only long after his death and may be polemical embellishment.

The date is uncertain. Epiphanius places the first prophecies around 157, while the Chronicle of Eusebius points to about 172. Many historians today settle on a date near 170.