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Coelicolae

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Dictionary of Early Christian Biography
• Coelicolae
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McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Coelicolae

("worshippers of heaven"), the name of an African sect in the 4th century, who appear to have blended together some parts of Judaism and Paganism with Christianity. An edict of Honorius (A. D. 408) forbids their assemblages and demands their disbandment. As they are counted in this edict among the heretics, and as they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the Jewish patriarch, but had their own chiefs, called majores, and as they had a kind of baptism, they are by some regarded as a Christian sect. By others they are regarded as an offshoot of the Essenes. See Schmid, Historia Caelicolarum (Helmst 1704). — Gieseler, Church History, 1, § 73; Bingham, Orig. Eccl. 16:6, 2.