Paulicians
PAULICIANS
A branch of the ancient Manichees; so called from their founder, one Paulus, an Armenian, in the seventh century, who, with his brother John, both of Samosata, formed this sect; though others are of opinion that they were thus called from another Paul, an Armenian by birth, who lived under the reign of Justinian II. In the seventh century, a zealot, called Constantine, revived this drooping sect, which had suffered much from the violence of its adversaries, and was ready to expire under the severity of the imperial edicts, and that zeal with which they were carried into execution. The Paulicians, however, by their number, and the countenance of the emperor Nicephorus, became formidable to all the East. But the cruel rage of persecution, which had for some years been suspended, broke forth with redoubled violence under the reigns of Michael Curopalates, and Leo the Armenian, who inflicted capital punishment on such of the Paulicians as refused to return into the bosom of the church. The empress Theodora, tutoress of the emperor Michael, in 845, would oblige them either to be converted, or to quit the empire; upon which several of them were put to death, and more retired among the Saracens; but they were neither all exterminated nor banished. Upon this they entered into a league with the Saracens, and, choosing for their chief an officer of the greatest resolution and valour, whose name was Carbeus, they declared against the Greeks a war, which was carried on for fifty years with the greatest vehemence and fury.
During these commotions, some Paulicians, towards the conclusion of this century, spread abroad their doctrines among the Bulgarians: many of them, either of a principle of zeal for the propagation of their opinions, or from a natural desire of flying from the persecution which they suffered under the Grecian yoke, retired about the close of the eleventh century from Bulgaria and Thrace, and formed settlements in other countries. Their first migration was into Italy; whence, in process of time, they sent colonies into almost all the other provinces of Europe, and formed gradually a considerable number of religious assemblies, who adhered to their doctrine, and who were afterwards persecuted with the utmost vehemence by the Roman pontiffs. In Italy they were called Patarmi, from a certain place called Pataria, being a part of the city of Milan where they held their assemblies: and Gathari, or Gazari, from Gazaria, or the Lesser Tartary.
In France they were called Albigenses, though their faith differed widely from that of Albigenses, whom Protestant writers generally vindicate (see Albigenses.) The first religious assembly the Paulicians had formed in Europe, is said to have been discovered at Orleans in 1017, under the reign of Robert, when many of them were condemned to be burnt alive. The ancient Paulicians, according to Photius, expressed the utmost abhorrence of Manes and his doctrine. The Greek writers comprise their errors under the six following particulars:
1. They denied that this inferior and visible world is the production of the Supreme Being; and they distinguish the Creator of the world and of human bodies from the Most High God who dwells in the heavens; and hence some have been led to conceive that they were a branch of the Gnostics rather than of the Manicheans.
2. They treated contemptuously the Virgin Mary, or, according to the usual manner of speaking among the Greeks, they refused to adore and worship her.
3. They refused to celebrate the institution of the Lord’s supper.
4. They loaded the cross of Christ with contempt and reproach, by which we are only to understand that they refused to follow the absurd and superstitious practice of the Greeks, who paid to the pretended wood of the cross a certain sort of religious homage.
5. They rejected, after the example of the greatest part of the Gnostics, the books of the Old Testament; and looked upon the writers of that sacred history as inspired by the Creator of this world, and not by the Supreme God.
6. They excluded presbyters and elders from all part in the administration of the church.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Paulicians
Eastern heretics, derived from Manichaeism, begun by Constantine Mananalis c.657 and existing till about the middle of the 11th century. During the Saracen attacks many of them formed a political party disloyal to the cause of the Roman Empire. Originally they held the following:
the God of the material universe and the God of the spirItual world are distinct
all matter is evil
the Old Testament is to be rejected
Christ was not incarnate but was an angel whose mother was the heavenly Jerusalem
Baptism and the Eucharist consist in hearing the Word of God
there are no other sacraments
They were also Iconoclasts . Their perversions were later embodied in the tenets of the Bogomili , the Cathari , the Albigenses , and exist even today in more or less modified forms amongst some Armenians.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Paulicians
A dualistic heretical sect, derived originally from Manichaeism. The origin of the name Paulician is obscure. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, liv), says it means “Disciples of St. Paul” (Photius, op. cit., II, 11; III, 10; VI, 4). Their special veneration for the Apostle, and their habit of renaming their leaders after his disciples lend some colour to this view. On the other hand, the form (Paulikianoi, not Paulianoi) is curious; and the name seems to have been used only by their opponents, who held that they were followers of Paul of Samosata (Conybeare, op. cit., cv). The birthplace of their founder evidently suggested this; but there is no connection between their doctrine and his. Photius relates that a certain Manichee woman, named Kallinike sent her two sons Paul and John to Armenia to propagate this heresy; the name is corrupted from Pauloioannoi (Friedrich op. cit., I). The existence of such persons is now generally denied. The latest authority, Ter-Mkrttschian (Die Paulicianer, 63), says the name is an Armenian diminutive and means “followers of little Paul”, but does not explain who little Paul may be. It occurs first in the Acts of the Armenian Synod of Duin in 719, a canon of which forbids any one to spend the night in the house of “the wicked heretics called Pollikian” (Ter-Mkrttschian, 62).
I. DOCTRINE
The cardinal point of the Paulician heresy is a distinction between the God who made and governs the material world and the God of heaven who created souls, who alone should be adored. They thought all matter bad. It seems therefore obvious to count them as one of the many neo-Manichaean sects, in spite of their own denial and that of modern writers (Ter-Mkrttschian, Conybeare, Adeney, loc. cit.; Harnack, “Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschicte”, Tubingen, 1909, II, 528). But there is a strong Marcionite element too. They rejected the Old Testament; there was no Incarnation, Christ was an angel sent into the world by God, his real mother was the heavenly Jerusalem. His work consisted only in his teaching; to believe in him saves men from judgment. The true baptism and Eucharist consist in hearing his word, as in John, iv, 10. But many Paulicians, nevertheless, let their children be baptized by the Catholic clergy. They honoured not the Cross, but only the book of the Gospel. They were Iconoclasts, rejecting all pictures. Their Bible was a fragmentary New Testament. They rejected St. Peter’s epistles because he had denied Christ. They referred always to the “Gospel and Apostle”, apparently only St Luke and St. Paul; though they quoted other Gospels in controversy.
The whole ecclesiastical hierarchy is bad, as also all Sacraments and ritual. They had a special aversion to monks. Their own organization consisted first of the founders of their sect in various places. These were apostles and prophets. They took new names after people mentioned by St. Paul, thus Constantine called himself Silvanus; apparently they claimed to be these persons come to life again. Under the apostles and prophets were “fellow-workers” (synechdemoi) who formed a council, and “notaries” (notarioi), who looked after the holy books and kept order at meetings. Their conventicles were called, not churches, but “prayer-houses” (proseuchai). They maintained that it was lawful to conceal or even deny their ideas for fear of persecution; many of them lived exteriorly as Catholics. Their ideal was a purely spiritual communion of faithful that should obliterate all distinctions of race. Their enemies accuse them constantly of gross immorality, even at their prayer-meetings. One of their chief leaders, Baanes, seems to have acquired as a recognized surname the epithet “filthy” (ho ryproz). They would recognize no other name for themselves than “Christians”; the Catholics were “Romans (Romaioi), 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 emphatic rejection of Catholic Christianity” (Dogmengeschichte, II 528).
Since Gibbon the Paulicians have often been described 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 Protestantism” (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). This idea accounts for the fact that the sect has met among modern writers with more interest and certainly more sympathy than it deserves.
II. HISTORY
Constantine of Mananalis, calling himself Silvanus, founded what appears to be the first Paulician community at Kibossa, near Colonia in Armenia. He began to teach about 657. He wrote no books and taught that the New Testament as he presented 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 (668-85) to put down the sect, but converted to it; then Gegnesius an Armenian (Timothy); Joseph (Epaphroditus); Zachary, who was rejected by many and called a hireling; Baanes; Sergius (Tychicus). They founded six congregations in Armenia and Pontus, to which they gave the names of Pauline Churches (Kibossa was “Macedonia”, 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. The 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 congregation at Episparis in the (Armenian) district Phanaroea (d. c. 715). His two sons Gegnesius-Timothy and Theodore quarreIled about his succession. Gegnesius went to Constantinople 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 opposition. After his death his son Zachary (the “hireling”) and his son-in-law, Joseph-Epaphroditus, again quarrelled and formed parties as to which should succeed. Zachary’s party went under; many of them were destroyed by the Saracens.
Joseph (d. 775) founded communities all over Asia Minor. Then came Baanes (Vahan; 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 Paulicians were now either 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 Manichaeorum”, 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. Constantine IV, and still more Justinian II, persecuted them cruelly. The first Iconoclast emperors (Leo III and his successors) protected them; Conybeare counts these emperors as practically Paulicians themselves (op. cit.). Nicephorus I tolerated them in return for their service as soldiers in Phrygia and Lycaonia. Michael I began to persecute again and his successor Leo V, though an Iconoclast, tried to refute the accusation that he was a Paulician by persecuting them furiously. A great number of them at this time rebelled and fled to the Saracens. Sergius was killed in 835. Theodora, regent for her son Michael III, continued the persecution; 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 encouraged 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 Paulicians. Under Basil I the Paulician 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 against 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. The “Selicians” 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. Conybeare 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 Paulicians were much maligned people. But in any case it represents a very late stage of their history, and it is disputed whether it is really Paulician at all. Constantine 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 and converted all, or nearly all, back to the Church (so his daughter: “Alexias”, XV, 9). From this time the Paulicians practically disappear from history. But they left traces of their heresy. In Bulgaria the Bogomile sect, which lasted through the Middle Ages and spread to the West in the form of Cathari, Albigenses, and other Manichaean 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 publishes very curious documents of their professions of faith and disputations with the Gregorian 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 Paulicianis as simple, godly folk who had kept an earlier (sc. Adoptionistic) form of Christianity (ibid., introduction).
III. SOURCES
There are four chief documents: (1) Photius, Four books against the Paulicians(Diegesis peri tes ton neophanton manichaion anablasteseos), in P.G., CII, 15-264. (2) Euthymius Zigabenus, in his “Panoplia”, XXIV [P.G., CXXX, 1189, sqq., separate edition of the part about the Paulicians, ed. Gieseler (Gottingen, 1841)]. (3) Peter the Abbot, “Concerning the Paulicians and Manichees”, ed. Gieseler (Gottingen, 1849), who idlentifies the author with Petrus Siculus, who wrote a “Historia Manichaeorum qui Pauliciani dicuntur”, first published by Rader (Ingolstadt, 1604), of which work Gieseler considers “Concerning the Paulicians” to be merely an excerpt. (4) George Monachos, “Chronikon”, ed. Muralt (St. Petersburg, 1853).
Of Photius’s work only book I contains the history; the rest is a collection of homilies against the heresy. There is interdependence between these four sources. The present state of criticism (due chiefly to Karapet Ter-Mkrttschian) is this: — Photius’s account (book I) falls into two parts. Chapters i-xiv are authentic, xv-xxvii a later edition. The original source of all is lost. George Monachos used this. Peter the Monk either copied George or used the original work. Photius may have used Peter (so Ter-Mkrttschian) or perhaps the original. Derived from these are Zigabenus and the spurious part of Photius’s book. Bonwetsch (Realencyklopädie für prot. Theol., 3rd ed., Leipzig 1904, XV, 50) represents (according to Friedrich and as probable only) the order of derivation as: (1) An account contained in a MS. of the tenth century (Cod. Scorial. I, phi, 1, fol. 164 sqq.) ed. Friedrich in the “Sitzungsbericht der Münchener Akademie”, (1896), 70-81; (2) Photius, i-x; (3) George Monachos; (4) Peter the Abbot; (5) Zigabenus; (6) Pseudo-Photius, x-xxvii; (7) Petrus Siculus.
Other sources are the Armenian bishop John Ozniensis [ed. by Aucher (Venice, 1834) and used by Dollinger and Conybeare] and the “Key of Truth” [Mrkttschian in “Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte”, 1895, and Conybeare’s edition, Armenian and English, with introduction and notes (Oxford, 1898)].
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TER-MKRTTSCHIAN, Die Paulicianer im byzantinischen Kaiserreich und verwandte ketzerische Erscheinungen in Armenien (Leipzig, 1893); DOLLINGER, Beitrage zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, I (Munich, 1890), 1-31; LOMBARD, Pauliciens, Bulgares et Bonshommes (Geneva, 1879); HERGENROTHER, Photius, III (Ratisbon, 1869), 143-53: GIBBON, Decline and Fall, ed. BURY, VI London, 1898), liv, and appendix 6; ADENEY, The Greek and Eastern Churches (Edinburgh, 1908), v.
ADRIAN FORTESCUE Transcribed by Richard L. George Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Paulicians
is the name of a powerful Eastern sect, which originated probably in or before the 6th century. According to Peter of Sicily and Photius, the sect was originated in Armenia by two brothers, one named Paul (from whom they are alleged to have received their name) and the other named John, who flourished as far back as the 4th century. Others trace them to an Armenian named Paul who lived under Justinian II (A.D. 670-711). Still others trace them back to even an earlier period than the 4th century, and hold that their name was probably derived from the high esteem which they cherished as a body for the apostle Paul. According to Gieseler and Neander they had their origin from one Constantine of Mananalis (near Samosata), an Armenian, who had received a present of two volumes one containing the four Gospels, and the other the Epistles of Paul and who afterwards assumed the name of Paul, in testimony of his great veneration for that apostle. They were undoubtedly believers in the two original principles of good and evil; but they combined with this dualism a high value for the universal use of the Scripture, a rejection of all external forms in religion, and a special abhorrence of the use of images. Their opinions are known, like so many other sects, only through the representations of their adversaries, by whom they have been designated as Manichaeans.
It seems, indeed, most probable that they were descended from some one of the ancient Gnostic sects; but they differed widely from the Manichaeans, at least in Church government; for they rejected the government by bishops, priests, and deacons, to which the Manichaeans adhered; and admitted no order or individuals set apart by exclusive consecration for spiritual offices. They were charged by their enemies with gross immorality, and at one time there seems to have been good ground for the accusation. Baanes, their leader at the end of the 8th century, was notorious for his immorality; but about the year 800 a reformer arose among them named Sergius, whose opposition to this immorality, together with his exertions to extend the sect, gained him the reputation of a second founder. Both before and after this reform they were subject to much suspicion and bitter persecution, and were repressed with great severity by the Eastern emperors: Constans, Justinian II, and especially Leo the Isaurian opposed them. Indeed, with the exception of Nicephorus Logotheta (802-811), it may be said that all the emperors persecuted them with more or less rigor. Their greatest enemy, however; was Theodora (841-855), who, having ordered that they should be compelled to return to the Greek Church, had all the recusants cruelly put to the sword or driven into exile. A bloody resistance, and finally an emigration into the Saracen territory, was the consequence. About A.D. 844 some of the Paulicians, especially the adherents of Baanes, entered into a league with the Sergists, under the leadership of Carbeus, an officer of the greatest valor and resolution, and, supported by the Saracens, declared war against the Greeks, and for fifty years the conflict was waged with the greatest vehemence and fury.
The Paulicians were more or less successful in the combat, made inroads upon the Byzantine territory, and in 867 reached as far as Ephesus, but they were ultimately overpowered and forced to submission. In 970 the greater part of them were removed into the neighborhood of Philippopolis, in Thrace, where they were granted religious freedom. Thence the Paulicians became settlers also of Bulgaria, and there made many converts to their sect. The renewal of persecutions against them in the the century forced them into Western Europe. Their first migration was into Italy (comp. Baird, Sketches of Protestantism in Italy, p. 14), whence, in process of time, they sent colonies into almost all the other provinces of Europe, and gradually formed a considerable number of religious assemblies who adhered to their doctrine, and who were afterwards persecuted with the utmost vehemence by the Roman pontiffs. In Italy they were called Patarini (q.v.), from a certain place called Pataria, being a part of the city of Milan, where they held their assemblies; and Gathari, or Gazari, from Gazaria, or the Lesser Tartary. In France they were called Albigenses (q.v.). The first religious assembly which the Paulicians formed in Europe is said to have been discovered at Orleans in 1017, under the reign of Robert, when many of them were condemned to be burned alive. A few Paulicians, of course, remained in the East for some time after the migration of the general body. As late as the 17th century there was a remnant of them existing in Bulgaria (Mosheim, 2:238). Whether any Paulicians exist at present it is difficult to tell. There are so-called Paulicians in the Danubian provinces, but these heretics practice bloody sacrifices, and by their barbarism would seem to have more kinship with the Bogomiles (q.v.). At present an accurate account of the religion and opinions of the Paulicians is really a desideratum.
The Paulicians, as we have said above, have been accused of Manichaeism; but there is reason to believe this was only a slanderous report raised against them by their enemies, and that they were, for the most part, men who were disgusted with the doctrines and ceremonies of human invention, and desirous of returning to the apostolic doctrine and practice. They refused to worship the Virgin Mary, the saints, and the cross, which was sufficient in those ages to procure for them the name of atheists; and they also refused to partake of the sacraments of the Greek and Roman churches, which will account for the allegation that they rejected them altogether, though it is asserted by Neander and Gieseler that they simply denied the material presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is, however, barely possible that some may, like the Quakers and some other sects, actually have discarded them as outward ordinances. See Mosheim, Church Hist. 2:363; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (student’s edition, p. 506 sq.; large edition, ch. liv); Jones, Hist. of the Christian Church; Neander, Church Hist. vol. iii; Gieseler, Eccles. Hist. vol. i; and Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1829, vol. ii, No. 1; Journal der theol. Lit. by Winer u. Engelhart, vol. vii, No. 1 and 2; Hardwick, Church Hist. of the Middle Ages, p. 84, 91, 201, 302, 305 sq.; Marsden, Dict. of Church Hist. (see Index).