I know that the answer from traditional scholarship is - the 'Marcionites' just 'died out.' That's why there is no further mention in any of the ancient legal sources. But here is my problem. The 'Marcionites' are identified by Patristic writers as having continued into the sixth century in Armenia, Syria, Osrhoene and all sorts of place in the east of the Empire. So why aren't they mentioned in the legal documents of the period or the region?Here is my problem. The later patristic writers are notoriously unreliable. They are free to write anything they want, guided by what ever purpose they want to be guided by. They exaggerate the extent to which disgraced contemporaries were connected with 'disgusting' heretical practices.
But legal codes are a different kettle of fish. In order to get governments to make laws about something there has to be an acknowledged crisis that needs solving.
When you comb through the ancient legal sources in the period you find the Montanists have over sixteen laws written against them. The Manichaeans have over sixty; the Samaritans are mentioned over a hundred times.
There are also nine references in the various legal codes to a sect as stupid as the 'Tascodrogi' - so called from their habit of putting the finger to the nose when praying!
The 'Borborites' - i.e. those who are supposed baptize themselves in mud or filth - have eleven reference are the subject of various prohibitions in TEN ancient legal codes.
Even the Ophites - those who think a snake was nailed to the Cross - appear in nine codes.
Come on all you 'Marcionophiles' there's something wrong here. The Marcionites are supposed to have rivaled the Catholic Church in the middle of the second century. How many Ophites - or 'finger to the nose' sectarians for that matter - does anyone imagine that there ever were on this earth? Five? Three? Or perhaps none?
Yet these 'stupid' sects are mentioned time and again in Roman legal documents.
'Marcion' on the other hand was the subject of at least eight works detailing his heresy down through to the fifth century - the very period that most of our earliest surviving legal codes come from. There is well-documented physical evidence that there were 'Marcionite' churches in the fourth century Syria.
There most certainly wasn't an 'Tascodrogi' church anywhere at any time ... but people might have put their fingers up to their nose in certain customs, or offered cheese or took an interest in serpents. As such they were 'real' and had laws written against those who practices these things.
I don't believe there ever was a 'Marcion.' I don't believe there ever was a 'Marcionite church.' But I do believe that there were followers of St. Mark in Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Asia Minor, Syria, Osrhoene and all the places that the current Coptic Church claims their tradition once had churches.
Irenaeus, Hippolytus, the anonymous author of the Treatise on Baptism and Jerome all report on the contemporary spread of the worldwide Church of Mark in the first five hundred years of Christianity. The reason why laws weren't written against 'Mark' was because he was a accepted member of the canon of Catholic saints.
The Church decided early on to treat the symptoms rather than the ultimate source of the disease.
The bottom line still is however. If the Marcionites were 'real' why don't they then appear in any legal documents in the period?
