Active during the 2nd century CE, they are mentioned by Iranaeus, the Bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul who was a principal vilifier of Gnosticism, and several times by Clement of Alexandria, one of the great paradoxes of early Christianity in that he was publicly a Christian with an acknowledged reputation as a Hellene and specifically a Platonist, but secretly a Gnostic. Origen Adamantius, Clement's colleague in Alexandria, accused them, inter alia, of rejecting "The Epistles of St Paul".
The Encratites remained a small and minor sect until one Severus became their leader, and changed their name to Severians, which may be the root, or at least a root, of the word "severe" - the alternative etymologies include the Sanskrit "vero" meaning "truth", which also gives us the Latin "veritas"; or possibly the Yehudit "shever", meaning "a breach"; though its use, for example, in Lamentations 2:13, suggests that this gave us the verb "to sever" separately from the adjective "severe".
From whatever root, severity was the order of the day. They accepted both Jewish Law, as in Torah, and the teachings of the Prophets, as well as the Canonical Gospels, but dismissed "The Acts of the Apostles" as a flagrant rewriting of Christ's intentions, and cursed Paul personally, perhaps because Paul had cursed them so roundly, in 1 Timothy 4:1-4.
Epiphanius' account plays down their acceptance of matters Jewish and sees them as Gnostics of the Syrian variety. He is particularly disdainful when describing the source of their hatred of marriage, by then a key doctrine of Christianity, but regarded by the Encratites as the work of Satan (whether the Jewish ha-Satan or the Christian Satan is not clear, but most likely the latter); he also points out, and we must imagine him smiling as he did so, that they described alcohol as "wine drops of venom from the great Serpent" (which makes Christian Satan even more likely in the previous).
In their heyday they were numerous throughout the Middle East, with headquarters in Pisidia, a town in the Adustan district of Phrygia, as well as franchises, so to speak, in Isauria, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Galatia and Antioch. Later they splintered into smaller sects, including the Apostolici, who rejected private property long before Proudhon or Karl Marx, and the Hydroparastatæ, also known as the Aquarians because they used water in the Eucharist, refusing to accept wine. The Encratites were declared heretical around 150 CE.
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