Born c110 Founder, in Rome in 144, of a sect called the Marcionites. Amazed at what he considered the opposition between the Old and New Dispensations, Marcion rejected the former and declared the Apostles had been in error in linking the New Covenant with the Old. He claimed to be interpreting true Christianity as taught by Saint Paul. He prepared a mutilated edition of the New Testament (consisting of a large part of the Gospel of Saint Luke and ten Epistles of Saint Paul) and organized his church along hierarchical lines. It is difficult to distinguish some of the doctrines he held from those of the Gnostics, with which his followers were almost immediately identified, but he certainly taught that the God of the Jews was a Demiurge and that Christ had come among men to tell them about the true God, His Father. Married persons could never rise above the catechumenate in his sect, in which the baptized were virgins, widows, celibates, and eunuchs. The Marcionites ceased to flourish in the 7th century.