which case Eleutherus is represented as having hardened himself against Montanism in spite of the entreaties of Irenæus, while Victor was the first who for a season had been brought to think otherwise.--Yet even after their condemnation a small body of Montanists continued to exist in Rome, whose mouthpiece during the time of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217) was Proclus, whom the Roman Caius (§ 31, 7) opposed by word and writing. § 40.3. =Montanism in Proconsular Africa.=--When and how Montanism gained a footing in North Africa is unknown, but very probably it spread thither from Rome. The movement issuing therefrom first attracted attention when Tertullian, about A.D. 201 or 202, returned from Rome to Carthage, and with the whole energy of his character decided in its favour, and devoted his rich intellectual gifts to its advocacy. That the Montanist party in Africa at that time still continued in connection with the Catholic church is witnessed to by the Acts of the Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas (§ 32, 8), composed some time after this, which bear upon them almost all the characteristic marks of Montanism, while a vision communicated there shows that division was already threatened. The bishop and clergy together with the majority of the membership were decided opponents of the new ecstatic-visionary prophecy already under ecclesiastical ban in Asia Minor. They had not yet, however, come to an open breach with it, which was probably brought about in A.D. 206 when quiet had been again restored after the cessation of the persecution begun about A.D. 202 by Septimius Severus. Tertullian had stood at the head of the sundered party as leader of their sectarian services, and defended their prophesyings and rigorism in numerous apologetico-polemical writings with excessive bitterness and passion, applying them with consistent stringency to all the relations of life, especially on the ethical side. From the high esteem in which, notwithstanding his Montanist eccentricities, Tertullian’s writings continued to be held in Africa, _e.g._ by Cyprian (§ 31, 11), and generally throughout the West, the tendency defended by him was not regarded in the church there as in the East as thoroughly heretical, but only as a separatistic overstraining of views allowed by the church. This mild estimate could all the easier win favour, since to all appearance the extravagant visionary prophesying, which caused most offence, had been in these parts very soon extinguished.--Augustine reports that a small body of “Tertullianists” continued in Carthage down to his time († 430), and had by him been induced to return to the Catholic church; and besides this, he also tells us that Tertullian had subsequently separated himself from the “Cataphrygians,” _i.e._ from the communion of the Montanists of Asia Minor, whose excesses were only then perhaps made known to him.