AUDAEUS  , or AUDIus, a

church reformer of the 4th century, by birth a Mesopotamian . He suffered much persecution from the Syrian clergy for his fearless censure of their irregular lives, and was expelled from the church, thereupon establishing an episcopal monastic community . He was afterwards banished into Scythia, where he worked successfully among the Goths, not living to see the destruction of his labours by Athanaric . The Audaeans celebrated the feast of Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover, and they were also charged with attributing to the Deity a human shape, an opinion which they appear to have founded on Genesis i . 26 . Theodoret groundlessly accuses them of Manichean tendencies . The main source of information is Epiphanius (Haer . 7o) .