Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis on Cyprus from about 367 until 402, was a witness to and participant in the troubled era after the Council of Nicaea. His "Panarion, or "Medicine Chest," is an historical encyclopedia of ideas and movements he considered heretical, and of the replies Christians ought to make to them. Book II and III deal with the Trinity, the Person of Christ, the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit, Manichaeism, penance, matrimony and celibacy, monastic regulations, the Christian Calendar, all hotly contested topics in the fourth century.
Book I, issued by Brill in 1987, concerns Gnosticism and Jewish Christianity. Together, the two volumes are the only complete translation of the "Panarion in a modern language.

Frank Williams, Ph.D. (1961) Oxford University; Religious Studies Faculty, the University of Texas at El Paso; recent publications: "The Apocryphon of James" and "The Concept of Our Great Power" in Reader's Guide to the Nag Hammadi Library, (Polebridge Press); The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I, (Brill, 1987).