Polycarp lived to see the rise of the Marcionite and Valentinian sects and vigorously opposed them.
Their existence was believed in, and they did actually exist, not only in the catholic congregations - if the expression may be used - but also in the Marcionite Church and the Gnostic societies.
Its adherents were recruited on the one hand from the old gnostic sects (especially from the Marcionites - Manichaeism exerted besides this a strong influence on the development of the Marcionite churches of the 4th century), on the other hand from the large number of the "cultured," who were striving after a "rational" and yet in some manner Christian religion.
In Church history a sect founded by Patricius (c. 387), teacher of Symmachus the Marcionite, are known as the Patricians; they believed that all flesh was made by the devil.
Of ecclesiastical organizations the most important, next to Catholicism, was the Marcionite community.