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…