Valentinus
Overview
Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος; c. 100 – c. 165 CE) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian.[1] He founded his school in Rome.
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those quoted in rebuttal arguments in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.[1] His doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians.[1][2] He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual (pneumatics), psychical (psychics), and material (hylics); and that only those of a spiritual nature received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser or uncertain form of salvation, and that those of a material nature were doomed to perish.[1][3][4]
Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians.[1][2] It later divided into an Eastern and a Western, or Italian, branch.[1] The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.[1]