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Carpistes

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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was one of the five alternative appellations employed in the system of Valentinus, to denote the mon Horus. The application of so many different names to the same personage seems to be best explained by the fact that in what is apparently an older form of the Valentinian system, known to us by a fragment in Eusebius (Haer. 31:6), there correspond to Horus five different eons, Carpistes being the name of one of them. It is intelligible that when the system was simplified by the reduction of the five aeons to one, this one should be considered as entitled to receive any of the older appellations. The name is supposed by Grabe; to be derived from the rod with which the praetor emancipated a slave. then denotes an emancipator, and is completely parallel to one of the other titles of Horus. The functions attributed to Horus are stated by Irenaeus (1, 3) to be two fold; that of supporting, and of restraining or limiting; as it is by him that each aeon is sustained in its own place, and restrained from intruding into that which does not belong to it.