Simon Magus

Simon was a 1st-century religious figure in Samaria, a magus who converted to Christianity and received baptism from Philip the Evangelist. His defining moment came when he attempted to buy the power of the Apostles from Peter - the transaction that gave the church the term "simony." By the 2nd century, writers like Justin Martyr reported that nearly all Samaritans followed Simon of Gitta, and church heresiologists began casting him as the founder of Gnosticism and leader of the Simonians, a claim some modern scholars accept and others dispute. Traditions grew: apocryphal texts transformed him into a formidable sorcerer capable of levitation and flight, "the Bad Samaritan," accused of lawlessness. Works attributed to him or his followers - the Great Declaration, The Four Quarters of the World, The Sermons of the Refuter - are now lost, leaving only the shadow of a man whose reach for power made his name a synonym for corruption.