St. Epiphanius of Salamis

• Native of Palestine and bishop of Salamis in Cyprus.
• He is referred to as a zealous champion of Orthodox faith and monastic piety.
• Much of his early lifetime was spent with the monks of Egypt, among whom he not only acquired a burning zeal for ecclesiastical Orthodoxy and the forms of ascetic life, but also first came in contact with various kinds of heretics.
• He founded a monastery at Eleutheropolis in Judea (ca. 335).
• The bishops of Cyprus made him their metropolitan in 367, because of his sincere concern for the faith and his organizational abilities.
• He encouraged ascetic life by word and example, leading St. Jerome to call Cyprus a meeting place for monks from the whole world. But his main concern was to keep them in purity of faith, for him the guarantee of the Church’s unity.
• St. Jerome visited St. Epiphanius on his way to Bethlehem, bringing a train of monks to Cyprus, to salute, “the father of almost the whole episcopate, the last relic of ancient piety.”
• A veteran of the struggle against Origenism, aged ca. 80, he was involved in St. Theophilus’ campaign against the Tall Brothers, who had taken refuge with St. John Chrysostom. He had known them at the time of his education in the Egyptian monastery and had condemned their subordinationist Christology and their theories on pre- existence and resurrection.
• St. Jerome says he was averse to quarrels and was admired

by the unlearned as well as the erudite; Socrates praises his piety and his rectitude; Sozomen admires him. Palladius of Helenopolis, so favorable to St. Chrysostom, had nothing to say against St. Epiphanius. Nor did the case of Origen do any immediate harm to St. Epiphanius’ reputation.

• St. Epiphanius labored to wipe out Apollinarian and Melitian sympathizers. After meeting St. Jerome in Rome during 392, he joined forces with him in attempting to root out Origenistic influence, particularly within monastic communities.
• He attacked John, bishop of Jerusalem, as an Origenist while a guest preaching in John’s pulpit.
• In 400, he made his way to Constantinople to assist St. Theophilus of Alexandria’s apparent efforts against Origenism.
• He left Constantinople and died on the journey back to Cyprus.

• St. Epiphanius’ reputation rests primarily on his attempts to refute heresy and uphold Nicene Orthodoxy. He was a heresy hunter who insisted on Nicene Orthodoxy. 1. He wrote thePanarion
• It deals with 80 heresies in three books in which he attacked every heretical opinion and group known to him from the beginning of the Church through his own era.
• It contains information unavailable elsewhere, and is by far the most extensive ancient account of heresies.
• The Panarion is also called “Medicine Chest” in Greek. In it, he tried to furnish an antidote to those who have been bitten by the serpent of heresy and protect those who have remained sound in their faith. 2. Ancoratus -A doctrinal treatise
• Though he did not himself attend the second ecumenical council of Constantinople (381), his shorter confession of faith, which is found at the end of his Ancoratus and seems to have been the baptismal creed of the Church of Salamis, agrees almost word for word with the Constantinopolitan formula.
• In his Ancoratus, and still more in his Panarion, he attacked Origen as the ancestor of the Arian heresy and whose allegorical interpretation he regarded as the root of all heresies.
• Condemning Origenism as the most dangerous of them,he was unyieldingand relentless in itspursuit.

3. De mensuris et ponderibus (On Weights and Measures)

• A work composed at Constantinople in 392 for a Persian priest.
• It is the preliminary form of a dictionary of the Bible, which deals in its first part with the Canon and the translations of the Old Testament, in the second with biblical measures and weights, and in the third with geography of Palestine. 4. De XII gemmis (On Twelve Precious Stones in the breastplate of the high priest of the Old Testament)
• It was written in 394 at the request of Diodore of Tarsus to whom it is dedicated.
• St. Epiphanius said, “God sells righteousness at a very low price to those who wish to buy it: a little piece of bread, a cloak of no value, a cup of cold water, a mite.”