other · 140 · Rome
Valentinus was Egyptian, educated at Alexandria, and by far the most sophisticated of the teachers the church classed as Gnostic — Irenaeus wrote five books largely against his school, and the school outlasted him in two branches for two centuries. He came to Rome about 136 and taught there through the episcopates of Hyginus, Pius and Anicetus. Tertullian says he was a candidate for the see, was passed over for a confessor, and broke with the church afterwards, which is a hostile account and the only one there is. His system has the fullness of thirty aeons, the fall of Sophia, a demiurge who makes the material world in ignorance, and a redemption that is knowledge rather than forgiveness; the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi is often attributed to him or his circle and is a far more attractive document than the summaries of his enemies suggest. What matters for this dataset is the shape of the response. Against a teacher who claimed a secret tradition, the church argued from a public one — Irenaeus' answer is the list of bishops of Rome, name after name in the open, which is the structure this whole project is built to display.
How close did Gnosticism come to the centre?
Its ablest teacher spent fifteen years at Rome and, according to Tertullian, expected to be made its bishop.