Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/243

Rh of the teachings and practices of these much maligned people.

Beyond the Taurus mountains in the south-east of Armenia there lived during the eighth and ninth centuries a community of Christians cherishing their own discipline, rites, and doctrines apart from the main body of the Eastern Church and all its later developments. These people, who came to be known in the outside world as Paulicians, and who afterwards accepted the title for themselves, owe their original separateness to their geographical seclusion. Therefore it is quite arguable that they should be regarded as representing the survival of a more primitive type of Christianity rather than as the followers of a heresy which sprang up nearer the time when they emerged into the daylight of history, and Mr. Conybeare connects them with the primitive, whose views can be traced back to very early times. The ideas of these people are now to be seen in The Key of Truth, which is a book of the Throuraketyi, or Paulicians of Thouraki, composed about