name. His successors were Simeon, called Titus; Gegnesius,
an Armenian, called Timotheus; Joseph, called Epaphroditus;
Zachariah, rejected by some; Baanes, accused of immoral
teaching; lastly Sergius, called Tychicus. As Cibossa, so their
other congregations were renamed, Mananali as Achaea, Argaeum
and Cynoschora as Colossae, Mopsuestia as Ephesus, and so on.
Photius and Petrus Siculus supply a few dates and events. Constantine was martyred 684 by Simeon whom Constantine Pogonatus had sent to repress the movement. His victim’s death so impressed him that he was converted, became head of the sect, and was martyred in 690 by Justinian II. About 702 Paul the Armenian, who had fled to Episparis, became head of the church. His son Gegnesius in 722 was taken to Constantinople, where he won over to his opinions the iconoclast emperor, Leo the Isaurian. He died in 745, and was succeeded by Joseph, who evangelized Phrygia and died near Antioch of Pisidia in 775. In 752 Constantine V. transplanted many Paulicians from Germanicia, Doliche, Melitene, and Theodosiupolis (Erzerum), to Thrace, to defend the empire from Bulgarians and Sclavonians. Early in the 9th century Sergius, greatest of the leaders, profiting by the tolerance of the emperor Nicephorus, began that ministry which, in one of the epistles canonized by the sect, but lost, he describes thus: “I have run from east to west, and from north to south, till my knees were weary, preaching the gospel of Christ.” The iconoclast emperor Leo V., an Armenian, persecuted the sect afresh, and provoked a rising at Cynoschora, whence many fled into Saracen territory to Argaeum near Melitene. For the next 50 years they continued to raid the Byzantine empire, although Sergius condemned retaliation. The empress Theodora (842–857) hung, crucified, beheaded or drowned some 100,000 of them, and drove yet more over the frontier, where from Argaeum, Amara, Tephrike and other strongholds their generals Karbeas and Chrysocheir harried the empire, until 873, when the emperor Basil slew Chrysocheir and took Tephrike.
Their sect however continued to spread in Bulgaria, where in 969 John Zimiskes settled a new colony of them at Philippopolis. Here Frederick Barbarossa found them in strength in 1189. In Armenia they reformed their ranks about 821 at Thonrak (Tendarek) near Diadin, and were numerous all along the eastern Euphrates and in Albania. In this region Smbat, of the great Bagraduni clan, reorganized their Church, and was succeeded during a space of 170 or 200 years by seven leaders, enumerated by the Armenian Grigor Magistros, who as duke of Mesopotamia under Constantine Monomachos harried them about 1140. Fifty years later they were numerous in Syria and Cilicia, according to the Armenian bishops Nerses the Graceful and Nerses of Lambron. In the 10th century Gregory of Narek wrote against them in Armenian, and in the 11th Aristaces of Lastivert and Paul of Taron in the same tongue. During these later centuries their propaganda embraced all Armenia. The crusaders found them everywhere in Syria and Palestine, and corrupted their name to Publicani, under which name, often absurdly conjoined with Sadducaei, we find them during the ages following the crusades scattered all over Europe. After 1200 we can find no notice of them in Armenian writers until the 18th century, when they reappear in their old haunts. In 1828 a colony of them settled in Russian Armenia, bringing with them a book called the Key of Truth, which contains their rites of name-giving, baptism and election, compiled from old MSS.,[1] we know not when.
Regarding Paulician beliefs we have little except hostile evidence, which needs sifting. Esc. gives these particulars:—
1. They anathematized Mani, yet were dualists and affirmed two principles—one the heavenly Father, who rules not this world but the world to come; the other an evil demiurge, lord and god of this world, who made all flesh. The good god created angels only. The Romans (i.e. the Byzantines) erred in confusing these two first principles. Similarly the Armenian writer Gregory Magistros (c. 1040) accuses the Thonraki of teaching that “Moses saw not God, but the devil,” and infers thence that they held Satan to be creator of heaven and earth, as well as of mankind. The Key of Truth teaches that after the fall Adam and Eve and their children were slaves of Satan until the advent of the newly created Adam, Jesus Christ. Except Gregory Magistros none of the Armenian sources lays stress on the dualism of the Paulicians. John IV. does not hint at it.
2. They blasphemed the Virgin, allegorizing her as the upper Jerusalem in which the Lord came in and went out, and denying that he was really made flesh of her. John IV. records that in the orthodox Armenian Church of the 7th century many held Christ to have been made flesh in, but not of, the Virgin; and Armenian hymns call the Virgin mother church at once Theotokos and heavenly Jerusalem. It is practically certain that Paulicians held this view.
3. They allegorized the Eucharist and explained away the bread and wine of which Jesus said to His apostles, “Take, eat and drink,” as mere words of Christ, and denied that we ought to offer bread and wine as a sacrifice.
Such allegorization meets us already in Origen, Eusebius and other early fathers, and is quite compatible with that use of a material Eucharist which Nerses II. attests among the Paulicians of the early 6th century, and for which the Key of Truth provides a form. The Thonraki, according to Gregory Magistros, held that “Jesus in the evening meal, spoke not of an offering of the mass, but of every table.” We infer that the Paulicians merely rejected the Eucharistic rites and doctrine of the Greeks. According to Gregory Magistros the Thonraki would say: “We are no worshippers of matter, but of God; we reckon the cross and the church and the priestly robes and the sacrifice of mass all for nothing, and only lay stress on the inner sense.”
4. They assailed the cross, saying that Christ is cross, and that we ought not to worship the tree, because it is a cursed instrument. John IV. and other Armenian writers report the same of the Armenian Paulicians or Thonraki, and add that they smashed up crosses when they could.
5. They repudiated Peter, calling him a denier of Christ, and would not accept his repentance and tears.[2] So Gregory
- ↑ That this is so, is proved by the presence of a doublet in the text of the rite of baptism, the words “But the penitent” on p. 96, as far as “over the person baptized” on p. 97, repeating in substance the words “Next the elect one” on p. 97 to “am well pleased” on p. 98. This rite therefore was compiled from at least two earlier MSS. In the colophon also the compiler (as he calls himself) excuses the errors of orthography and grammar on the ground that they are not due to himself but to earlier and ignorant copyists. The division (often inept) of the text into chapters, the references to chapter and verse of a printed N.T., and sundry pious stanzas which interrupt the context, are due to a later editor, perhaps to the copyist of the existing text of 1782. The controversial introduction is later than the Crusades; but the rituals, as far as the language is concerned, may belong to the remote age which alone suits the adoptionist Christology of the prayers.
- ↑ In a fragmentary Syriac homily by Mar Jochanis, found in a Sinai MS. written not later than the 10th century and edited by J. F. Stenning and F. C. Burkitt, Anecdota oxon. (Clarendon Press, 1896), the same hostility to Peter is expressed. Compare the following passages: "O Petros, thou wast convicted of fault by Paulos thy colleague. How do men say that upon Petros I have built the church? . . . “The Lord said not to him, upon thee I build the church, but he said, upon this rock (the which is the body wherewith the Lord was clothed) I build my church. . . . Behold, I have made thee know from the N.T. that that rock was the Messiah. . . . “O Petros, after that thou didst receive the keys of heaven, and the Lord was seen by thee after he rose from the dead, thou didst let go of the keys, and thy wage is agreed with thy master when thou saidst to him. Behold we have let go of ever>'thing and have come after thee. What then shall be to us? And the Lord said to him. Ye shall be sitting on twelve thrones and judging the tribes of Israel. And after all these signs, O Petros, thou wentest away again to the former catching of fish. Wast thou ashamed of me, O Petros?” Yet the same homilist “concerning the one who is made a priest,” writes thus: “Lo, thou seest the priest of the people, with what care the Lord instructed Peter! He said not to him once and stopped, but three times. Feed my sheep.” The Syriac text is rendered from a Greek original of unknown age, which from its complete correspondence with the Key of Truth may be judged to have been a Paulician writing.
