Valentinus

Alexandrian-trained, a superb Greek stylist, and a preacher in Rome in the 140s. Tertullian reports — sourly — that he was a candidate for the bishopric and turned to his own teaching only after another man got it. His system is the most architecturally beautiful thing in the corpus: thirty aeons in fifteen married pairs unfolding out of Depth and Silence, and one aeon at the outer edge whose longing breaks the symmetry and makes the world.

The most formidable Gnostic teacher, and the furthest thing from the wild-eyed heretic of the polemics. His pupils built schools across the empire; his opponents preserved him by quoting him in order to attack him.