heresiarch

1. (religion) The founder of a heresy, or a major ecclesiastical proponent of such a heresy.Examples: "He died in 1223, and seems to have had no successor; not is it an ascertained point that more than one such hæresiarch was ever recognized."; "Is the heresiarch a less pernicious member of society than the murderer? Is not the loss of one soul a greater evil than the extinction of many lives? […] If then, the heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason,—a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort against which it is the end of government to guard."; "Sermons, whose writers played such dangerous tricks / Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, […]"Synonyms: arch-heretic