TheJosephines (LatinJosephini orJosepini) wereChristian heretics condemned byPope Lucius III's decreeAd abolendam in 1184 with the support of theEmperor Frederick I. They were "subject to a perpetualanathema" along with theCathars and Patarenes,Humiliati,Poor Men of Lyon,Passagians andArnaldists.[1]
Almost nothing is known about the Josephines.[2] They are mentioned, again alongside the Passagians, who practisedcircumcision, in a bull ofPope Gregory IX in 1231 and in charters ofEmperor Frederick II in 1239. From this,Robert Eisler concludes that they wereJudaizers. He connects them to a seventh-centuryPaulician sect claiming descent from Josephus Epaphroditus, already recognised as a spurious figure byPeter of Sicily andPseudo-Photius in the ninth century. He represents a conflation ofFlavius Josephus and the freedmanEpaphroditus. For Eisler, such ideas were transmitted by theSlavonic Josephus, which he accepted as authentic. He thus traced the western Josephines, whom he placed inLombardy andProvence, to the Paulicians resettled in Europe in the eighth century.[3]
The Josephines are sometimes identified with the Josephists (Josephistae) mentioned by a 13th-century German writer. The latter are accused of practising onlyspiritual marriage and condemning sexual activity, in which case they probably took their name fromSaint Joseph, who, on theCatholic view of theperpetual virginity of Mary, did not consummate his marriage. Ilarino da Milano, however, rejected the identification of the two sects as baseless.[2]
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