(also spelled Valentius ) was the best known and for a time most
successful early Christian gnostic theologian . He founded his
school in Rome , in Adversus Valentinianos iv, said that
Valentinus was a candidate for bishop - presumably of Rome
(about the year 143 AD) - but that, when the choice fell instead
on one who had been a confessor for the faith, Valentinus broke
with the Church and developed his gnostic doctrine. Valentinus
produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, not
enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline. His
doctrine is known to us only in the developed and modified form
given to it by his disciples. He taught that only some
Christians, his own followers, received the gnosis (knowledge)
that allowed them to return to the divine pleroma, while other
Christians would attain a lesser form of salvation, while the
rest of humankind was doomed to eternal perdition. Valentinus
had a large following. It later divided into an Eastern and a
Western or Italian branch. The