Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Authorities: — A letter of S. Ambrose, and several letters of S. Paulinus.] Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux, attended the council of Saragossa, held in 380, along with Phoebadius of Agen, and Idacius of Merida. The canons passed are remarkable for the practical good sense exhibited by those who drew them up. They forbid clergy deserting their charges for the sake of embracing the monastic life; and the veiling of nuns earlier than the age of forty. The council passed judgment on the Priscillianist Instantius, and on Hymus of Cordova, who had received the heretics to communion. Priscillianism was a form of Gnosticism or Manichaeism; it placed flesh and spirit in antagonism, in irreconcilable opposition. The sect lingered on in Spain, spread into Provence, and broke out later in Albigensianism. Like all Manichaean sects, it had a double aspect, one ascetic and pure, the other licentious. Some, living to the spirit, mortified the deeds of the body, others, living in the spirit, thought that the deeds done in the body in no way stained the soul. With this heresy were mixed up mysticism and hysterical devotion: in their paroxysms of religious exaltation they threw off their clothes and prayed and capered in nudity, like the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the Shakers of the present day, the spiritual descendants of these early heretics.

Idacius of Merida, in his wrath against the Priscillianists, appealed to the secular arm, and by a rescript of Gradan they were expelled their churches and the country. Instantius, Salvian, and Prisdllian went to Rome to justify themselves and obtain a repeal of this judgment. On their way they passed through the diocese of S. Delphinus. He refused to receive them.

S. Paulinus of Nola was baptized by S. Delphinus in 392, and that great saint ever after reverenced the bishop of Bordeaux as his spiritual father, and kept up with him a correspondence on matters relating to the practice of perfection.