From haereticus as external enemy to haereticus as imperfect Christian in the corpus of Chromatius of Aquileia

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the meaning that the term  haerecticus  acquires in Chromatius of Aquileia’s discourse. We will try to demonstrate that haereticus contains in his corpus two semantic dimensions: on one hand its most immediate meaning is to designate the clearly dissident Christian with regard to local orthodoxy; on the other hand, a careful reading of Sermones and Tractatus in Mathaeum allows to detect that Chromatius employed the concept to refer to some members of his own Christian community whose behaviour and beliefs did not comply with the demands of the new faith. The term haereticus, then, turned out to be, at the same time, a useful means for religious instruction, given that it expected to instruct these imperfect Christians in the specificities of Christian identity, and a coercive means, since it aspired that fear of deserving the punishments assigned to external and archetypal haereticus in life an after death could contribute to the complete acceptance of the consequences of conversion act