In Rome, Victor (bishop c.189-c.198/99)
had been on the point of officially endorsing the New Prophecy until persuaded
to do otherwise. (William Tabbernee, “Diversity around a prophet: The case of Montanism,”
in T&T Clark Handbook of The Early Church, ed. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli;
John Anthony McGuckin; Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski [London: T&T Clark, 2022], 231)
Probably Victor (a.d. 190), who
is elsewhere called Victorinus, as
Oehler conjectures, by a blunderer who tacked the inus to his name, because he was thinking of Zephyrinus, his immediate successor. This
Victor “acknowledged the prophetic gifts of Montanus,” and kept up communion
with the Phrygian churches that adopted them: but worse than that, he now seems
to have patronized the Patri-passion heresy, under the compulsion of Praxeas.
So Tertullian says, who certainly had no idea that the Bishop of Rome was the
infallible judge of controversies, when he recorded the facts of this strange
history. Thus, we find the very founder of “Latin Christianity,” accusing a
contemporary Bishop of Rome of heresy and the patronage of heresy, in two
particulars. Our earliest acquaintance with that See presents us with
Polycarp’s superior authority, at Rome itself, in maintaining apostolic
doctrine and suppressing heresy. “He it was, who coming. to Rome,” says
Irenæus, “in the time of Anicetus, caused many to turn away from the aforesaid
heretics (viz. Valentinus and Marcion) to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the Apostles.” Anicetus was a pious
prelate who never dreamed of asserting a superior claim as the chief depositary
of Apostolic orthodoxy, and whose beautiful example in the Easter-questions
discussed between Polycarp and himself, is another illustration of the independence
of the sister churches, at that period. Nor is it unworthy to be noted, that
the next event, in Western history, establishes a like principle against that
other and less worthy occupant of the Roman See, of whom we have spoken.
Irenæus rebukes Victor for his dogmatism about Easter, and reproaches him with
departing from the example of his predecessors in the same See. With Elcutherus
he had previously remonstrated, though mildly, for his toleration of heresy and
his patronage of the raising schism of Montanus. (Tertullian, Against
Praxaes, Postcript: Elucidations, II [ANF 3:630-31])
