Paulicianism

The development of Paulicianism

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Paulicians (Classical Armenian: Պաւղիկեաններ, Pawłikeanner; Greek: Παυλικιανοί;^[1] Arab sources: Baylakānī, al Bayālika)^[2] were a Christian sect, also accused by medieval sources of being Adoptionist, Gnostic, and quasi-Manichaean Christian. They flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the eastern themata of the Byzantine Empire. According to medieval Byzantine sources, the group's name was derived from the 3rd century Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata.^[3][4]

History

The sources show that most Paulician leaders were Armenians.^[5] The founder of the sect is said to have been an Armenian by the name of Constantine,^[6] who hailed from Mananalis, a community near Samosata. He studied the Gospels and Epistles, combined dualistic and Christian doctrines and, upon the basis of the former, vigorously opposed the formalism of the church.

According to Christian historian and scholar Samuel Vila,^[7] "in the year 660 [Constantine] received a deacon in his house, who put in his hands a precious and rare treasure in those days before the invention of the printing press: a New Testament. Upon reading the same, he came to know about salvation in Christ; upon sharing said good news with others, he formed a group of sincere believers (later on, of preachers) that became known as Paulicians."

Regarding himself as called to restore the pure Christianity of Paul (of Tarsus), he adopted the name Silvanus (one of Paul's disciples), and about 660, he founded his first congregation at Kibossa, Armenia. Twenty-seven years later, he was arrested by the Imperial authorities, tried for heresy and stoned to death.^[8] Simeon, the court official who executed the order, was himself converted and adopting the name Titus became Constantine’s successor. He was burned to death (the punishment pronounced upon the Manichaeans) in 690.^[8]

The adherents of the sect fled, with Paul at their head, to Episparis. He died in 715, leaving two sons, Gegnaesius (whom he had appointed his successor) and Theodore. The latter, giving out that he had received the Holy Ghost, rose against Gegnaesius but was unsuccessful. Gegnaesius was taken to Constantinople, appeared before Leo the Isaurian, was declared innocent of heresy, returned to Episparis, but, fearing danger, went with his adherents to Mananalis. His death (in 745) was the occasion of a division in the sect; Zacharias and Joseph being the leaders of the two parties.

The latter had the larger following and was succeeded by Baanies in 775. The sect grew in spite of persecution, receiving additions from some of the iconoclasts.^[8] The Paulicians were now divided into the Baanites (the old party) and the Sergites (the reformed sect). Sergius, as the reformed leader, was a zealous and effective converter for his sect; he boasted that he had spread his Gospel "from East to West; from North to South".^[9] At the same time the Sergites fought against their rivals and nearly exterminated them.^[9]

The massacre of the Paulicians in 843/844, from the Madrid Skylitzes.

Baanes was supplanted by Sergius-Tychicus in 801, who was very active for thirty-four years. His activity was the occasion of renewed persecutions on the part of Leo the Armenian. Obliged to flee, Sergius and his followers settled at Argaun, in that part of Armenia which was under the control of the Saracens. At the death of Sergius, the control of the sect was divided between several leaders. The Empress Theodora, as regent to her son Michael III, instituted a thoroughgoing persecution against the Paulicians throughout Asia Minor,^[10] in which 100,000 Paulicians in Byzantine Armenia are said to have lost their lives and all of their property and lands were confiscated by the empire.^[11]

Paulicians under their new leader, Karbeas, fled to new areas. They built two cities, Amara and Tephrike (modern Divriği). By 844, at the height of its power, the Paulicians established a State of the Paulicians^[12][13] at Tephrike. In 856, Karbeas and his people took refuge with the Arabs in the territory around Tephrike and joined forces with Umar al-Aqta, emir of Melitene (who reigned 835-863).^[14] Karbeas was killed in 863 in Michael III's campaign against the Paulicians and was possibly with Umar at Malakopea before the battle of Lalakaon.

His successor, Chrysocheres, devastated many cities; in 867, he advanced as far as Ephesus, and he took many priests as prisoners.^[15][16] In 868, Emperor Basil I dispatched Petrus Siculus to arrange for their exchange. His sojourn of nine months among the Paulicians gave him an opportunity to collect many facts, which he preserved in his History of the empty and vain heresy of the Manichæans, otherwise called Paulicians. The propositions of peace were not accepted, the war was renewed, and Chrysocheres was killed at Bathys Ryax.

The power of the Paulicians was broken. Meanwhile, other Paulicians, sectarians but not rebels, lived in communities throughout the empire. Constantine V had already transferred large numbers of them to Thrace.^[17] According to Theophanes, the Paulicians of Armenia were moved to Thrace, in 747, to strengthen the Bulgarian frontier with a reliable population.^[18]

In 871, the emperor Basil I ended the power of the State of the Paulicians and the survivors fled to east to the Byzantine-Arab border. In 970, 200,000 Paulicians were transferred by the emperor John Tzimisces (of Armenian origin) to Philippopolis in Thrace and, as a reward for their promise to keep back "the Scythians" (in fact Bulgarians), the emperor granted them religious freedom. This was the beginning of a revival of the sect, but it was true to the empire. Several thousand went in the army of Alexius Comnenus against the Norman Robert Guiscard but, deserting the emperor, many of them (1085) were thrown into prison. By some accounts, Alexius Comnenus is credited with having put an end to the heresy. During a stay at Philippopolis, Alexius argued with the sect, bringing most, if not all, back to the Church (so his daughter: "Alexias", XV, 9). For the converts the new city of Alexiopolis was built, opposite Philippopolis. After that episode, Paulicians, as a major force, disappear from history, but as a powerless minority, they would reappear in many later times and places .^[17] When the Crusaders took Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204), they found some Paulicians, whom the historian Gottfried of Villehardouin calls Popelicans.

According to the historian Yordan Ivanov, some of the Paulicians were converted to Orthodoxy and Islam, the rest to the Catholic faith during the 16th or 17th century.^[19]

At the end of the 17th century, the Paulician people still living around Nikopol, Bulgaria and persecuted by the Ottoman Empire, after the uprising of Chiprovtsi in 1688, and a good part of them fled across the Danube and settled in the Banat region.

There are still over ten thousand Banat Bulgarian in Romania today: in the villages of Dudeştii Vechi, Vinga, Breştea, and also in the city of Timişoara, with a few in Arad. However, they no longer practice their religion since they converted to Roman Catholicism. Their folklore is specific.^{[20][21] [22]} After Bulgaria's liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878, a number of Banat Bulgarians resettled in the northern part of Bulgaria and still reside there in the villages of Bardarski Geran, Gostilya, Dragomirovo, Bregare, and Asenovo. There are also a few villages of ex-Paulicians in the Serbian part of Banat, especially the villages of Ivanovo and Belo Blato, near Pančevo.

In Russia, after the war of 1828-29, Paulician communities could still be found in the part of Armenia occupied by the Russians. Documents of their professions of faith and disputations with the Gregorian bishop about 1837 (Key of Truth, xxiii-xxviii) were later published by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare. It is with Conybeare publications of the Paulicians disputations and "The Key of Truth" that Conybeare based his depiction of the Paulicians as simple, godly folk who had kept an earlier (Adoptionistic) form of Christianity (introduction).^[17]

Doctrines

Little is known of the tenets of the Paulicians except the reports of opponents and a few fragments of Sergius' letters they have preserved. Some argue that their system was dualistic,^[23] although others have argued that it was actually adoptionist in nature.^[24][25]

In dualistic theology, there are two principles, two kingdoms. The Evil Spirit is the demiurge, the author and lord of the present visible world; the Good Spirit, of the future world.^[3] Of their views about the creation of humanity, little is known but what is contained in the ambiguous words of Sergius. The passage seems to teach that Adam's sin of disobedience was a blessing in disguise.

The Paulicians accepted the four Gospels; fourteen Epistles of Paul; the three Epistles of John; the epistles of James and Jude; and an Epistle to the Laodiceans, which they professed to have. They rejected the Tanakh, also known as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, as well as the Orthodox-Catholic title Theotokos ("Mother of God"), and they refused all veneration of Mary.^[3] They believed that Christ came down from heaven to emancipate humans from the body and from the world. The reverence for the Cross they looked upon as heathenish. Their places of worship they called "places of prayer." Although they had ascetic tendencies, they made no distinction in foods and practiced marriage.

The Paulicians were not a branch of the Manichæans,^[26] as Photius, Petrus Siculus, and many modern authors have held. Both sects were dualistic, but the Paulicians ascribed the creation of the world to the evil god (demiurge) and, unlike the Manichæans, held the New Testament Scriptures in higher honor. They even condemned Manes, the Manichæan prophet, comparing him to the Buddha. Gieseler and Neander, with more probability, derive the sect from the Marcionites. Muratori, Mosheim, Gibbon, Gilles Quispel and others regard the Paulicians as the forerunners of the Cathars, but the differences between them in organization, ascetic practices, etc., undermine this opinion.The Paulicians were branded as Jews, Mohammedans, Arians, and Manichæans, it is likely that their opponents employed the appellations merely as term of abuse.^[27] They call themselves Christians^[28] or "True Believers".^[2]

Armenians always formed the majority in the provinces where the Paulicians were most influential and successful in spreading their doctrines.^[5]

Conybeare in his edition of the Paulician manual, The Key of Truth',' concluded that "The word Trinity is nowhere used, and was almost certainly rejected as being unscriptural."^[29]

See also

• Paulician dialect
• Banat Bulgarian dialect
• Albigensians
• Bogomilism
• Tondrakians
• Pomaks
• Novgorod Codex
• Roman Catholicism in Bulgaria

Additional reading

• Herzog, "Paulicians," Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 2. Toronto, New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp. 1776–1777
• Nikoghayos Adontz: Samuel l'Armenien, Roi des Bulgares. Bruxelles, Palais des academies, 1938.
• (Armenian) Hrach Bartikyan, Quellen zum Studium der Geschichte der paulikianischen Bewegung, Eriwan 1961.
• The Key of Truth, A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, edited and translated by F. C. Conybeare, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1898.
• S. B. Dadoyan: The Fatimid Armenians: Cultural and Political Interaction in the Near East, Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts 18. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1997, Pp. 214.
• Nina G. Garsoian: The Paulician Heresy. A Study in the Origin and Development of Paulicianism in Armenia and the Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Publications in Near and Middle East Studies. Columbia University, Series A 6. The Hague: Mouton, 1967, 296 pp.
• Nina G. Garsoian: Armenia between Byzantium and the Sasanians, London: Variorum Reprints, 1985, Pp. 340.
• Newman, A.H. (1951). "Paulicians". In Samuel Macaulay Jackson. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. VIII. Baker Book House, Michigan. pp. 417–418. 
• Vahan M. Kurkjian: A History of Armenia (Chapter 37, The Paulikians and the Tondrakians), New York, 1959, 526 pp.
• A. Lombard: Pauliciens, Bulgares et Bons-hommes, Geneva 1879
• Vrej Nersessian: The Tondrakian Movement, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, Allison Park, Pennsylvania, 1948, Pp. 145.
• Edward Gibbon: 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' (Chapter LIV).

References

External links

• Paulicianism article at Medieval Church.org.uk
• Leon Arpee. Armenian Paulicianism and the Key of Truth. The American Journal of Theology, Chicago, 1906, vol. £, p. 267-285
• L. P. Brockett, The Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia - The Early Protestants of the East
• THE PAULICIAN HERESY
• Full text of "The key of truth, a manual of the Paulician church of Armenia