Aërius of Pontus
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Aërius of Pontus was a friend and fellow ascetic of Eustathius of Sebaste, who became Bishop of Sebaste (355), and who ordained Aërius and placed him over the hospital or asylum in that city. Aërius fell out with Eustathius, upbraided him for having deserted ascetic practices, and began to preach new doctrines, insisting that there was no sacred character distinguishing bishop or priest from laymen, that the observance of the feast of Easter was a Jewish superstition, and that it was wrong to prescribe fasts or abstinences by law, and useless to pray for the dead. For a time, he had many followers in Sebaste, but he could not make his tenets popular, and gradually he and his sect became an occasion of abuses, which made them odious. His movement is considered important by Protestants as indicating a tendency to some of their views even at this early period. Epiphanius of Salamis names Aerius as the leader of the Aerian sect. The Aerians were one of the eighty heresies condemned in Epiphanius' Panarion.
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
