Guerre, tasse, contadini ed eresia. Note preliminari per un’analisi socio-economica dell’insorgenza del montanismo in Frigia.

It is well-known that epigraphical sources can be useful for the historical knowledge of religious phaenomena in a specific social and economic context, e.g. the montanist movement, that arose from the rural background of Phrygia in the age of Marcus Aurelius (about 171 AD). An important inscription from Süsüzoren, reproducing a rescript addressed by Septimius Severus to his own coloni of the villages of Tymion and Simoe, has demonstrated that Tymion, already known as one of the two 'holy cities' of montanism (along with the more famous Pepuza), was situated within the imperial dominions of Phrygia. It has also shown the 'complaint' of local peasants against a fiscal collection that was felt as heavily oppressive. Similarly are here analysed some epigraphical documents coming from the province Asia in the Sixties and Seventies of the 2nd cent. AD: these texts sketch out the historical and economic environment which the New Prophecy's apocalyptical movement arose from (the movement was immediately reputed as heretical by the christian bishops of the cities of Asia, such as Apollinaris of Hierapolis). Constant wars and rebellions, barbarian raids, emergency recruitment, increase in taxes, famine and plague: all these tragic events actually happened during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and seem to have directed Montanus' prophetical vision toward a stressed millenarianism, deeply inspired by the Apocalypse of St. John. This historical situation seems also to have conditioned the distinctive development of the first montanits community's social and economic organization in the age of Marcus and Commodus.