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 The School of Alexandria must be considered as a period of the merging of the main philosophies of antiquity, as a gigantic melting pot in which all religions and philosophies of the world came to blend: Judaism, Platonism, Christianity, Christian and Egyptian Gnosis. There, Hellenism revealed the ancient wisdom of the mysteries, drawn from the original common source: Egypt. There, we saw the magnificent bringing together of a Philo and a Plato.
Ammonios Saccas, founder of the Neoplatonic doctrine, became the light of Alexandria: Pagans and Christians alike used his name – which is wonderful!
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Christians met in his place together with 'pagans' like Plotinus or Porphyry.
The Gnostics were actively busy untangling the complexities of philosophy, the sacred science. They audaciously tackled the most important problems (existence of evil, time and eternity, the universal corruption and the path to perfection, man and God) and endeavored to solve them with the help of the Gnosis, the inner revelation of God.
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 This explains why most of the Greek Fathers, nourished with the Alexandrian Gnosis, have kept that footprint of high spirituality: Clement of Alexandria, John Chrisostomos, Origen.
Some years before Augustine (354-430) – who was a Manichean before becoming a Catholic Christian – Athanasius (295-373) bishop of Alexandria, taught a doctrine of the soul worthy of a real Gnostic.
Was not Tertullian one of the first followers of the church of the 'pure ones' (catharoï); just like Montanus, founder of the first Cathar church in 140 A.D.; like Novatius, a Cathar bishop of Carthage; like Novatian who became pope in 250 and remained so for twenty years.*
It is in this genuine spiritual crucible in Alexandria in which the wisdom of Hermes, Essenism and Neoplatonism confronted Christianity that the spirit of Catharism was developed.
(*) According to some sources, Novatian became anti-pope in 251 and remained so for seven years! |
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