APOTACTITA

APOTACTITA, or Ἀποτακτικά, an ancient Sect, who affecting to follow the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, and the Examples of the Apostles, and primitive Christians, renounced all their Effects and Possessions. See APOSTOLIC. It does not appear that they gave into any Errors during their first State: Some Ecclesiastical Writers assure us, they had divers Holy Virgins, and Martyrs, under the Persecution of Diocletian, in the 5th Century: but they afterwards fell into the Heresy of the Encratite, and taught that the renouncing of all Riches, was not only a Matter of Counsel and Advice, but of Precept and Necessity—And hence the 6th Law in the Theodosian Code joins the Apotactite with the Eunomians and Arians. See EUNOMIAN and ARIAN. The Word is formed of the Greek ἀποτάσσομαι (apotassomai), I renounce.

APOTACTITA