Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/646

 PAULICIANS

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PAULICIANS

for fear of persecution; many of them lived exteriorly as Catholics. Their ideal was a i)urely spiritual com- munion of faithful that should obliterate all distinc- tions of race. Their enemies accuse them constantly of gross immorality, even at their prayer-meetings. One of their chief leaders, Baanes, seems to have ac- quired as a recognized surname the epithet "filthy" (6^vTp6. They would recognize no other name for themselves than "Christians"; the Catholics were "Romans" (Pa/xatoi), that is, people who obey the Roman emperor, as the Monophysites called their opponents Melchites. Harnack sums them up as "dualistic Puritans and Individualists" and as "an anti-hierarchic Christianity built up on the Gospel, and Apostle, with emiihatic rejection of Catholic Christianity" (l)ogmengeschichte, II, 528).

Since Gibbon the Paulicians have often been de- scribed as a survival of early and pure Christianity, godly folk who clung to the Gospel, rejecting later superstitions, who were grossly calumniated by their opponents. Conybeare (op. cit.) thinks they were a continuation of the Adoptionists. Dr. Adeney calls them "in many respects Protestants before Protes- tantism" (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). This idea accounts for the fact that the sect has met among modern writers with more interest and cer- tainlj- more sympathy than it deserves.

II. History. — Constantinc of Mananalis, calling himself Silvanus, founded what appears to be the first Paulician community at Kibossa, near Colonia in Ar- menia. He began to teach about 6.57. He wrote no books and taught that the New Testament as he pre- sented it (his "Gospel and Apostle") should be the only text used by his followers (Georgios Monachos, ed. Friedrich, 2). The other Paulician Apostles after Constantine were Symeon (called Titus), sent by the emperor Constantine Pogonatus (66S-85) to put down the sect, but converted to it; then Gegnesius an Armenian (Timothy); Joseph (Epaphroditus); Zach- ary, who was rejected by many and called a hireling; Baanes; Sergius (Tychicus). They founded six con- gregations in Armenia and Pontus, to which they gave the names of Pauline Churches (Kibossa was "Mace- donia", and so on).

Constantine-Silvanus, after having preached for twenty-seven years and having spread his sect into the Western part of Asia Minor, was arrested by the Imperial authorities (by Symeon), tried for heresy and stoned to death. In 690 Symeon-Titus himself, having become a Paulician, was also executed with many others. Tlic history of these people is divided between their persecutions and their own quarrels. An Armenian Paul (thought by some to have given his name to the sect) set up a congregation at Episparis in the (.\rmcnian) district Phanarcca (d. c. 715). His two sons (iegnesius-Timothy and Theodore quar- relled about his succession. Gegnesius went to Con- stantinople in 717 and persuaded the emperor Leo III and the patriarch Germanus I that he was orthodox. Armed with an imperial safe-conduct he came to Mananalis and succeeded in crushing Theodore's op- position. After his death his son Zachary (the "hire- ling") and his son-in-law, Joseph-Epaphroditus, again quarrelled and formed parties as to which should suc- ceed. Zachary's party went under; many of them were destroyed by the Saracens.

Joseph (d. 77.5) founded communities all over Asia Minor. Then came Baanes f\'ahan; d. 801). Under him the sect decreased in numbers and influence. But a certain Sergius-Tychicus, who made a new schism, reformed and strengthened the movement in his party. The Paulician.s were now cither Baanites (the old party), or Sergites (the reformed sect). Sergius was a zealous propagator of the heresy; he boasted that he had spread his Gospel "from East to West, from North to South" (Petrus Siculus, "Historia Mani- chajorum", op. cit., 45). The Sergites meanwhile

fought .against their rivals and nearly exterminated them. From the Imperial government the Paulicians met with alternate protection and persecution. Con- stantine IV, and still more Justinian II, persecuted them cruelly. The first Iconoclast emperors (Leo III and his sucees.sors) protected tliein; Conybe.are counts these emperors as practically Paulicians themselves (op. cit.). Nicephorus I tolerated them in return for their service as soldiers in Phrygia and Lyeaonia. Michael I began to per.secute again and his successor Leo V, though an Iconoclast, tried to refute the accu- sation that he was a Paulician by persecuting them furiously. A great number of them at this time re- belled and fled to the Saracens. Sergius wiis killed in 835. Theodora, regent for her son ^lichacl III, con- tinued the iiersecution; hence a second rebellion under one Karbeas, who again led many of his followers across the frontiers.

These Paulicians, now bitter enemies of the empire, were encouragetl by the khalifa. They fortified a place called Tephrike, and made it their headquarters. From Tephrike they made continual raids into the empire; so that from this time they form a political power, to be counted among the enemies of Rome. We hear continually of wars against the Saracens, Armenians, and PauHcians. Under Basil I the Pauli- cian army invaded Asia Minor as far as Ephesus, and almost to the coast opposite Constantinople. But they were defeated, and Basil destroyed Tephrike in 871. This eliminated the sect as a military power. Meanwhile other Paulicians, heretics but not rebels, lived in groups throughout the empire. Constantine V had already transferred large numbers of them to Thrace; John I Tzimiskes sent many more to the same part to defend it again.st the Slavs. They founded a new centre at Philippopolis, from which they terrorized their neighbours. During the ninth and tenth centuries these heretics in Armenia, Asia Minor, and Thrace constantly occupied the attention of the government and the Church. Ihe "Sclicians", converted by the Patriarch Methodius I (842-46), were Paulicians. Photius wrote against them and boasts in his Encyclical (866) that he has converted a great number. In Armenia the sect continued in the "Thonraketzi" founded by a certain Smbat in the ninth century. Conv'beare attributes to this Smbat a work, "The Key of Truth", which he has edited. It accepts the Old Testament and the Sacraments of Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist. This work especially has persuaded many writers that the Pauli- cians were much maligned [jcople. But in any case it represents a very late stage of their history, and it is disputed whether it is really Paulician at all. Con- stantine IX persuaded or forced many thousands to renounce their errors.

The emperor Alexius Comnenus is credited with having put an end to the heresy. During a residence at Philippopolis he argued with them antl converted all, or nearly all, back to the Church (so his daughter: "Alexias", XV, 9). From this time the Paulicians practically disappear from historj-. But they left traces of their here.sy. In Bulgaria the Bogomile sect, which lasted through the Middle Ages and spread to the West in the form of Cathari, Albigenses, and other Manicha>an heresies, is a continuation of Paulicianism. In Armenia, too, similar sects, derived from them, continue till our own time.

There were Paulician communities in the part of Armenia occupied by Russia after the war of 1828-29. Conybeare piiblishes very curious documents of their professions of faith and disputations with the Grego- rian bishop about 1837 (Key of Truth, xxiii-xxviii). It is from these disputations and "The Key of Truth " that he draws his picture of the Paulicians as simple, godly folk who had kept an earlier (sc. Adoptionistic) form of Christianity (ibid., introduction).

III. So0RCES. — There arc four chief documents: