Saint, a celebrated father of the church, was born in the beginning of the fourth century at Besanduca, a village of Palestine, near Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egypt, where, under the Gnostics, he began an ascetic course of life; and on his return to Palestine he became a zealous disciple of the patriarch Hilarion, and eventually the president of a monastery which he founded near his native place. About A.D. 368, he was nominated bishop of Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus—an office which he held till his death (A.D. 402). The latter part of his life was spent chiefly in carrying on a series of contests with Origen and his disciples. The first of those whom he attacked was John, bishop of Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit; and afterwards, instigated by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council of Cyprian bishops and condemn the errors of Origen. His next blow was aimed at Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, and a pretext was found in the shelter which he had given to four Nitrian monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism. Finding himself baffled by the authority of Chrysostom, Epiphanius endeavoured to subvert his influence at the court; but having presumptuously announced to the Empress Eudoxia that her son, who was then ill, would die unless she ceased to favour the friends of Origen, he was immediately dismissed, and died on the passage home to Cyprus. At his parting interview with Chrysostom, he is said to have expressed the hope that that patriarch "would not die a bishop;" and Chrysostom, in retaliation, uttered a wish that "he would never get back in safety to his own country." Whether uttered by these two individuals or not, both of these malevolent wishes were literally accomplished. The principal works of Epiphanius are his Panarion, or treatise on heresies, of which he also wrote an abridgment; his Ancoratus, or discourse on the faith; and his treatise on the weights and measures of the Jews. These, with Two Epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome are his only genuine remains. The best edition of his works is that of the Jesuit Petavius, 2 vols. fol., Paris, 1622. In allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, Jerome styles Epiphanius Pentaglottos or Five-tongued; but if his knowledge of languages was really so extensive, it is certain that he was utterly destitute of critical and logical power. His early asceticism seems to have imbued him with a love of the marvellous; and his religious zeal served only to increase his credulity, so that many of the most absurd legends in the early church have received the sanction of his authority. His works are, in fact, chiefly valuable from the quotations which they embody.