Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/565

 APPENDIX 543 b}' the Bogomils of the west (Albigenses, &c. ) except at Toulouse and Albano on Lake Garda (Jirecek, op. cit. p. 213). The kinship of the Bogomil doctrines to the Paulician is obvious. But it has not been proved that they are historically derived from the Paulician ; though there are historical reasons for supposing Paulician influence. Since the above was written, Mr. Conybeare published (1898) the Armenian text and an English translation of the book of the Paulicians of Thoiirak in Armenia. This book is entitled the Key of Truth and seems to have been drawn up by the beginning of the ninth century. This liturgy considerably modifies our views touching the nature of Paulicianism, which appears to have had nothing to do with Marcionism, but to have been a revival of the old doctrine of Adoptiouism according to which Jesus was a man and nothing more until in his thirtieth year he was baptized by John and the Spirit of God came down and entered into him ; then and thereby he became the Son of God. Of this Adoptionist view we have two ancient monuments, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Acts of Archelaus. The doctrine survived in Spain until the 8th and 9th centuries ; and this fact suggests the conjecture that it also lingered on in southern France, so that the heresy of the Cathars and Albigenses would not have been a mere imported Bogomilism, but an ancient local survival. Mr. Conybeare thinks that it lived on from early times in the Balkan peninsula, ' ' where it was probably the ba^is of Bogomilism ". There can be no doubt that Mr. Conybeare's discovery brings us nearer to the true nature of Paulicianism. In this book the Paulicians speak for themselves, and free themselves from the charges of Manichaeism and dualism which have been always brought against them. Mr. Conybeare thinks that Paulician, the Ar- menian form of PauUan, is derived from Paul of Samosata, whose followers were known to the Greeks of the 4th century as Pauliani. Gregory Magistros (who in the 11th century was commissioned by the Emperor Constantine IX. to drive the Paulicians or Thonraki out of Imperial Armenia) states that the Paulicians " got their poison from Paul of Samosata," the last great representative of the Adoptionist doctrine. Mr. Conybeare suggests that, the aim of the Imperial government having been to drive the Adoptionist Church outside the Empire, the Paulians  took refuge in Mesopotamia and later in the Mohammedan dominions generally, where they were tolerated and where their own type of belief, as we see from the Acts of Archelaus, had never ceased to be accounted orthodox. They were thus lost sight of almost for centuries by the Greek theologians of Constan- tinople and other great centres. WTien at last they again made themselves felt a-s the extreme left wing of the iconoclasts — the great part}- of revolt against the revived Greek paganism of the eighth century- — it was the orthodox or Grecised Armenians that, as it were, introduced them afresh to the notice of the Greeks " (Introduction, p. cvi. ). 7. THE SLAVS IX THE PELOPOXXESUS— (P. 69) All unprejudiced investigators cow admit the cogency of the evidence which shows that by the middle of the eighth century there was a verj' large Slavonic element in the population of the Peloponnesus. ^ The Slavonic settlements began in the latter half of the sixth century, and in the middle of the eighth century the depopulation caused by the great plague invited the intrusion of large mas.ses. The general complexion of the peninsula was so Slavonic that it was called 5 Mr. Conybeare publishes a translation of letters of Gregory which bear on Paulicianism, in Appendix iii. 1 The thesis of Fallmerayer, who denied that there were any descendants of the ancient Hellenes in Greece, was refuted by Hopf (and Hertzberg and others); but all Hopfs argu- ments are not convincing. Fallmerayer's brilliant book stimulated the investigation of the subject (Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea im Mittelalter, 2 vols., 1830-6).