The word Ascitae (“heresy”) is derived from the Greek word meaning “wine skin” or “leather bottle” (ἀσκός) and refers to a heresy described as a group of individuals who, while intoxicated, would dance around an inflated wine skin or leather bottle “claiming to be what the gospel refers to as new wine skins filled with new wine” (Aug. Haer. 62). Augustine of Hippo uses the term Ascitae (Haer. 62) in his De haeresibus written in 427 or 428 CE. His knowledge of this heresy is based on the Diversarum hereseon liber (c. 384 CE), written by Filastrius, bishop of Brescia. Augustine discloses in De haer…