Basilides (circa 117-138) was an early Christian religious teacher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. His followers, the Basilideans, formed a Gnostic sect. Very little is known with certainty about the teachings of Basilides. An account of his purported heresy is contained in the work Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies") by Irenaeus of Lyons, but it is impossible to determine how faithful Irenaeus's hostile reading is to the views actually held by Basilides.

Influence

Twentieth-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead and attributed them to Basilides. The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges was interested in Irenaeus' account of Basilides' Gnostic doctrine and wrote an essay on the subject: "A Vindication of the False Basilides" (1932). Basilides is also mentioned in Borges's short story "Three Versions of Judas" (1944), which opens with the striking passage "In Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith, when Basilides published that the Cosmos was a reckless or evil improvisation by deficient angels... "

External links

• Seven Sermons to the Dead
• Fragments of Basilides
• Fragments of his son Isidore
• Catholic Encyclopedia: a balanced point-of-view from a conservative orthodox Catholic position