that Mary had other children; Jerome later claimed that Helvidius was misinterpreting Victorinus. Epiphanus invented a name "Antidicomarians" for a group of people who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, which Epiphanus attacked. Their same views were also mentioned earlier by Origen, although he too rejected them as heretical. They were active from the 3rd to the 5th century. According to Epiphanius the Antidicomarians claimed that Apollinaris of Laodicea or his disciples denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, though Epiphanus doubted the claim. Early Christian theologians such as Hippolytus (170–235), Eusebius (260/265–339/340) and Epiphanius (c. 310/320–403) defended the perpetual virginity of Mary. Establishment of orthodoxy: 4th century By the early 4th century the spread of monasticism had promoted celibacy as the ideal state, and a moral hierarchy was established with marriage occupying the third rank below life-long virginity and widowhood Eastern theologians generally accepted Mary as Aeiparthenos, but many in the Western church were less convinced. The theologian Helvidius objected to the devaluation of marriage inherent in this view and argued that the two states, of virginity and marriage, were equal. His contemporary Jerome, realising that this would lead to the Mother of God occupying a lower place in heaven than virgins and widows, defended her perpetual virginity in his immensely influential Against Helvidius, issued c.383. In the 380s and 390s the monk Jovinian denied Mary's virginity in partu (virgin during childbirth), writing that if Jesus did not undergo a normal human birth, then his body was something other than a truly human one. As reported by Augustine, Jovinian "denied that the virginity of Mary, which existed when she conceived, remained while she gave birth." Augustine goes on to say that the reason for Jovinian's denial of Mary's virginity in partu was that the doctrine was too close to the Manichean view that Christ was simply a phantom. According to Ambrose, Jovinian maintained that Mary had conceived as a virgin, but she had not given birth as a virgin. Jerome wrote against Jovinian but failed to mention this aspect of his teaching, and most commentators believe that he did not find it offensive. Jovinian also found two monks in Milan, Sarmatio and Barbatian, who held similar views as Jovinian. The only important Christian intellectual to defend Mary's virginity in partu was Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, who was the chief target of the charge of Manicheism. For Ambrose, both the physical