§ 71. Dualistic Heretics.Remnants of the Gnostic-Manichæan heresy lingered on into the 7th century in Armenia and Syria, where the surrounding Parseeism gave them a hold and support. Constantinus of Mananalis near Samosata gathered these together about the middle of the 7th century and reformed them somewhat in the spirit of Marcion (§27, 11). The Catholics, sneeringly called by them Ῥομαῖοι, gave the name ofPauliciansto them because they regarded Paul alone as a true apostle. Even before the rise of the Paulicians, a sect existed in Armenia calledChildren of the Sunwho had mixed up the Zoroastrian worship with Christian elements. They, too, during the 9th and 10th centuries, by reorganization reached a position of more importance, and represented, like the Paulicians, a reformatory opposition to the formal institutions of the Catholic church. A similar attitude was assumed by theEuchitesin Thrace during the 11th century. Like the old Euchites (§44, 7), they got their name from the unceasing prayers which they regarded as the token of highest perfection. Their dualistic-gnostic system is met with again among theBogomiliin Bulgaria. These were still more decidedly hostile to the Catholic church, and had adopted the anthropological views of Saturninus and the Ophites as well as the trinitarian theory of Sabellius (§27, 6,9;33, 7). All these sects were accused by their Catholic opponents with entertaining antinomian doctrines and practising licentious orgies and unnatural abominations.
Remnants of the Gnostic-Manichæan heresy lingered on into the 7th century in Armenia and Syria, where the surrounding Parseeism gave them a hold and support. Constantinus of Mananalis near Samosata gathered these together about the middle of the 7th century and reformed them somewhat in the spirit of Marcion (§27, 11). The Catholics, sneeringly called by them Ῥομαῖοι, gave the name ofPauliciansto them because they regarded Paul alone as a true apostle. Even before the rise of the Paulicians, a sect existed in Armenia calledChildren of the Sunwho had mixed up the Zoroastrian worship with Christian elements. They, too, during the 9th and 10th centuries, by reorganization reached a position of more importance, and represented, like the Paulicians, a reformatory opposition to the formal institutions of the Catholic church. A similar attitude was assumed by theEuchitesin Thrace during the 11th century. Like the old Euchites (§44, 7), they got their name from the unceasing prayers which they regarded as the token of highest perfection. Their dualistic-gnostic system is met with again among theBogomiliin Bulgaria. These were still more decidedly hostile to the Catholic church, and had adopted the anthropological views of Saturninus and the Ophites as well as the trinitarian theory of Sabellius (§27, 6,9;33, 7). All these sects were accused by their Catholic opponents with entertaining antinomian doctrines and practising licentious orgies and unnatural abominations.
§ 71.1.The Paulicians.—They called themselves only Χριστιανοί, but were in the habit of giving to their leaders and churches the names of Paul’s companions and mission stations. They combined dualism, demiurgism and docetism with a mysticism that insisted upon inward piety, demanded a strict but not rigorous asceticism, forbade fasting and allowed marriage. Their worship was very simple, their church constitution moulded after the apostolic pattern, with the rejection of the hierarchy and priesthood. They were specially averse to the accumulation of ceremonies and the veneration of images, relics and saints in the Catholic church. They also urged the diligent study of Scripture, rejecting, however, the Old Testament, and the Jewish-Christian gospels and epistles of the New Testament.The Catholic polemists of the 9th century traced their origin and even their name (=Παυλοϊωάννοι) to a Manichæan family of the fourth century, a widow Callinice and her two sons Paul and John. None of the distinctive marks of Manichæism, however, are discoverable in them, and their founding by Constantine of Mananalis is a historic fact, as also that he, inA.D.657, assumed the Pauline name of Sylvanus. The first church, which he calledMacedonia, was founded by him at Cibossa in Armenia. From this point he made successful missionary journeys in all directions. The emperor Constantinus Pogonnatus,A.D.668-685, began a bloody persecution of the Paulicians. But the martyr enthusiasm of Sylvanus, who was stoned inA.D.685, made such an impression upon the imperial officer Symeon, that he himself joined the sect, was made their chief under the name of Titus, and on the renewal of persecution inA.D.690 joyfully died at the stake. His successor Gegnesius, who took the name of Timothy, was obliged by Leo the Isaurian to undergo an examination under the patriarch of Constantinople, had his orthodoxy attested, and received from the iconoclast emperor a letter of protection. Soon, however, divisions sprang up within the sect itself. One of their chiefs Baanes, on account of his antinomian practices, was nicknamed ὁ ῥυπαρός the smutty. But, aboutA.D.801, Sergius Tychicus, converted in earlier years by a Paulician woman, who directed him to the Bible, made his appearance as a reformer and second founder of the sect. He died inA.D.835. Leo the Armenian,A.D.813-820, organized an expedition for their conversion. The penitents were received back into the church, the obstinate were executed. A mob of Paulicians murdered the judges, fled to the Saracen regions of Armenia, and founded at Argaum, the ancient Colosse, a military colony which made incessant predatory and retaliating raids upon the Byzantine provinces. They were most numerous in Asia Minor. The empress Theodora (§66, 4) carried out against them aboutA.D.842 a new and fearfully bloody persecution. Many thousands were put to death. This too was the fate of an officer of high rank. His son, Carbeas, also an officer, incited by an ardent desire for revenge, gathered about 5,000 armed Paulicians around him inA.D.844, fled with them to Argaum, and became military chief of the sect. New crowds of Paulicians streamed daily in, and the Khalifs assigned to them two other fortified frontier cities. With a well organized army, thirsting for revenge, Carbeas wasted the Byzantine provinces far and wide, and repeatedly defeated the imperial forces. Basil the Macedonian after two campaigns, at last inA.D.871, hemmed in the Paulician army in a narrow pass and annihilated it. Their political power was now broken. The sect, however, still continued to gather members in Syria and Asia Minor. InA.D.970, the emperor John Tzimisces transported the greater part of them as watchers of the frontier of Thrace, where Philippopolis became their Zion. They soon had possession of all Thrace. Alexius Comnenus,A.D.1081-1118, was the first earnestly again to attempt their conversion. He himself appeared at Philippopolis inA.D.1115, disputed a whole day with their leaders, promised and threatened, rewarded and punished, but all his efforts were fruitless. From that time we hear nothing more of them. Their remnants probably joined the Euchites and the Bogomili.§ 71.2.The Children of the Sun, or Arevendi were a sect gathered and organized in the 9th century in Armenia by a Paulician Sembat in the country town of Thontrace into a separate community of Thontracians. InA.D.1002 the metropolitan Jacob of Harkh gave a Christian tinge to their doctrine, went through the country preaching repentance and the performances of ritual observances, and obtained much support from clergy and laity. The Catholicus of the Armenian church caused him to be branded and imprisoned. He made his escape, but was afterwards slain by his opponents.§ 71.3.The Euchites, Messelians [Messalians], Enthusiasts, attracted the attention of the government in the beginning of the 11th century as a sect widely spread in Thrace. In common with the earlier Euchites (§44, 7) they had great enthusiasm in prayer, but they were distinguished from them by their dualism. Their doctrine of the two sons of God, Satanaël and Christ, shows a certain relation to the form of Persian dualism, which derives the two opposing principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, from one eternal primary essence, Zeruane Acerene. The germs of this sect may have come from the transplanting of Paulicians to Thrace by the emperor Tzimisces. The Byzantine government sent a legate to Thrace to suppress them. This may have been Michael Psellus (§68, 5) whose Διάλογος περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων is the only source of information we have regarding them.§ 71.4.The Bogomili, θεόφιλοι, taught: that Satanaël, the firstborn son of God, as chief and head over all angels, clothed with full glory of the Godhead, sat at the right hand of the Father; but, swelling with pride, he thought to found an empire independent of his Father and seduced a portion of the angels to take part with him. Driven with them out of heaven, he determined after the pattern of the creation of the Father (Gen. i. 1) to create a new world out of chaos (Gen. ii. 3 ff.). He formed the first man of earth mixed with water. When he set up the figure, some of the water ran out of the great toe of the right foot and spread out over the ground; and after he had breathed his breath into it, that also escaped owing to the looseness of the figure by the toe, permeated the soil moistened with the water and animated it as a serpent. At Satanaël’s earnest entreaty the heavenly Father took pity on the miserable creature, and gave it life by breathing into it His own breath. Afterwards with the Father’s help Eve, too, was created. Satanaël in the form of the serpent seduced, deceived and lay with Eve in order that by his seed, Cain and his twin sister Calomina, Adam’s future descendants, Abel, Seth, etc., might be oppressed and brought into bondage. Jealous lest the latter should obtain that heavenly dwelling place from which they had been driven, Satanaël’s angels seduced their daughters (Gen. vi.). From this union sprang giants who rebelled against Satanaël, but were destroyed by him in the flood. Henceforth he reigned unopposed as κοσμοκράτωρ, seduced the greater part of mankind, and endowed Moses with the power of working miracles as the instrument of his tyranny. Only a few men under the oppression of his law attained the end of their being; the sixteen prophets and those named in Matt. i. and Luke iii. Finally, in the year 5,500 after the creation of man, the supreme God moved with pity caused a second son, the Logos, to go forth from His bosom, who as chief of the good angels is called Michael, and sent Him to earth for man’s redemption. He entered in an ethereal body through the right ear into the virgin to be born of her with the semblance of an earthly body. Mary noticed nothing of all this. Without knowing how or whence, she found the child in swaddling clothes before her in the cave. His death on the cross was naturally in appearance only. After his resurrection he showed himself to Satanaël in his true form, bound him with chains, robbed him of his divine power, and compelled him to abandon his divine designation, by taking the El from his name, so that he is henceforth called Satan. Then He returned to the Father, took the seat that formerly was Satanaël’s at His right hand, and sinks again into the bosom of the Father out of which He had come. This, however, did not take place before a new Aëon [Æon], the Holy Spirit, emanated from the Godhead, and was sent forth as continuator and completer of the work of redemption. This Spirit, too, after he has finished his task will sink back again into the Father’s bosom.—Of the Old Testament the Bogomili acknowledged only the Psalter and the Prophets; of the New Testament books they valued most the Gospel of John. Veneration of relics and images, as well as the sign of the cross they abhorred as demoniacal inventions. Church buildings were regarded by them as the residences of demons. Satanaël himself in earlier days resided in the temple of Jerusalem, later in the church of Sophia at Constantinople. Water baptism, which was introduced by John the Baptist a servant of Satanaël, they rejected; but the baptism of Christ is spiritual baptism (παράκλησις=Consolamentum). It was imparted by laying the Gospel of John on the head of the subject of baptism, with invocation of the Holy Spirit and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. They declared the Catholic mass to be a sacrifice presented to demons; the true eucharist consists in the spiritual nourishment by the bread of life brought down in Christ from heaven, to which also the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer refers. They placed great value upon prayer, especially the use of the Lord’s Prayer. So too they valued fasting. Their ascetism was strict and required abstinence from marriage and from the eating of flesh. But prevarication and dissimulation they regarded as permissible.—The emperor Alexius Comnenus caused their chief Basil to be brought to Constantinople, under the delusive pretext of wishing himself to become a proselyte of the sect, got him to open all his heart, and enticed him under the semblance of a purely private conference to make reckless statements, while behind the curtain a judge of heresies was taking notes. This first act in the drama was followed by a second. The sentence of death was passed upon all adherents of Basil who could be laid hold upon. Two great funeral piles were erected, one of which was furnished with the figure of the cross. The emperor exhorted them, at least to die as true Christians, and in token of this to choose the place of death provided with a cross. Those who did so were pardoned, the rest for the most part condemned to imprisonment for life. Basil himself, however, was actually burnt,A.D.1118. The sect was not by any means thus rooted out. The Bogomili hid themselves mostly in monasteries, and Bulgaria long remained the haunt of dualistic heresy, which spread thence through the Latin church of the West.
§ 71.1.The Paulicians.—They called themselves only Χριστιανοί, but were in the habit of giving to their leaders and churches the names of Paul’s companions and mission stations. They combined dualism, demiurgism and docetism with a mysticism that insisted upon inward piety, demanded a strict but not rigorous asceticism, forbade fasting and allowed marriage. Their worship was very simple, their church constitution moulded after the apostolic pattern, with the rejection of the hierarchy and priesthood. They were specially averse to the accumulation of ceremonies and the veneration of images, relics and saints in the Catholic church. They also urged the diligent study of Scripture, rejecting, however, the Old Testament, and the Jewish-Christian gospels and epistles of the New Testament.The Catholic polemists of the 9th century traced their origin and even their name (=Παυλοϊωάννοι) to a Manichæan family of the fourth century, a widow Callinice and her two sons Paul and John. None of the distinctive marks of Manichæism, however, are discoverable in them, and their founding by Constantine of Mananalis is a historic fact, as also that he, inA.D.657, assumed the Pauline name of Sylvanus. The first church, which he calledMacedonia, was founded by him at Cibossa in Armenia. From this point he made successful missionary journeys in all directions. The emperor Constantinus Pogonnatus,A.D.668-685, began a bloody persecution of the Paulicians. But the martyr enthusiasm of Sylvanus, who was stoned inA.D.685, made such an impression upon the imperial officer Symeon, that he himself joined the sect, was made their chief under the name of Titus, and on the renewal of persecution inA.D.690 joyfully died at the stake. His successor Gegnesius, who took the name of Timothy, was obliged by Leo the Isaurian to undergo an examination under the patriarch of Constantinople, had his orthodoxy attested, and received from the iconoclast emperor a letter of protection. Soon, however, divisions sprang up within the sect itself. One of their chiefs Baanes, on account of his antinomian practices, was nicknamed ὁ ῥυπαρός the smutty. But, aboutA.D.801, Sergius Tychicus, converted in earlier years by a Paulician woman, who directed him to the Bible, made his appearance as a reformer and second founder of the sect. He died inA.D.835. Leo the Armenian,A.D.813-820, organized an expedition for their conversion. The penitents were received back into the church, the obstinate were executed. A mob of Paulicians murdered the judges, fled to the Saracen regions of Armenia, and founded at Argaum, the ancient Colosse, a military colony which made incessant predatory and retaliating raids upon the Byzantine provinces. They were most numerous in Asia Minor. The empress Theodora (§66, 4) carried out against them aboutA.D.842 a new and fearfully bloody persecution. Many thousands were put to death. This too was the fate of an officer of high rank. His son, Carbeas, also an officer, incited by an ardent desire for revenge, gathered about 5,000 armed Paulicians around him inA.D.844, fled with them to Argaum, and became military chief of the sect. New crowds of Paulicians streamed daily in, and the Khalifs assigned to them two other fortified frontier cities. With a well organized army, thirsting for revenge, Carbeas wasted the Byzantine provinces far and wide, and repeatedly defeated the imperial forces. Basil the Macedonian after two campaigns, at last inA.D.871, hemmed in the Paulician army in a narrow pass and annihilated it. Their political power was now broken. The sect, however, still continued to gather members in Syria and Asia Minor. InA.D.970, the emperor John Tzimisces transported the greater part of them as watchers of the frontier of Thrace, where Philippopolis became their Zion. They soon had possession of all Thrace. Alexius Comnenus,A.D.1081-1118, was the first earnestly again to attempt their conversion. He himself appeared at Philippopolis inA.D.1115, disputed a whole day with their leaders, promised and threatened, rewarded and punished, but all his efforts were fruitless. From that time we hear nothing more of them. Their remnants probably joined the Euchites and the Bogomili.
§ 71.2.The Children of the Sun, or Arevendi were a sect gathered and organized in the 9th century in Armenia by a Paulician Sembat in the country town of Thontrace into a separate community of Thontracians. InA.D.1002 the metropolitan Jacob of Harkh gave a Christian tinge to their doctrine, went through the country preaching repentance and the performances of ritual observances, and obtained much support from clergy and laity. The Catholicus of the Armenian church caused him to be branded and imprisoned. He made his escape, but was afterwards slain by his opponents.
§ 71.3.The Euchites, Messelians [Messalians], Enthusiasts, attracted the attention of the government in the beginning of the 11th century as a sect widely spread in Thrace. In common with the earlier Euchites (§44, 7) they had great enthusiasm in prayer, but they were distinguished from them by their dualism. Their doctrine of the two sons of God, Satanaël and Christ, shows a certain relation to the form of Persian dualism, which derives the two opposing principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, from one eternal primary essence, Zeruane Acerene. The germs of this sect may have come from the transplanting of Paulicians to Thrace by the emperor Tzimisces. The Byzantine government sent a legate to Thrace to suppress them. This may have been Michael Psellus (§68, 5) whose Διάλογος περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων is the only source of information we have regarding them.
§ 71.4.The Bogomili, θεόφιλοι, taught: that Satanaël, the firstborn son of God, as chief and head over all angels, clothed with full glory of the Godhead, sat at the right hand of the Father; but, swelling with pride, he thought to found an empire independent of his Father and seduced a portion of the angels to take part with him. Driven with them out of heaven, he determined after the pattern of the creation of the Father (Gen. i. 1) to create a new world out of chaos (Gen. ii. 3 ff.). He formed the first man of earth mixed with water. When he set up the figure, some of the water ran out of the great toe of the right foot and spread out over the ground; and after he had breathed his breath into it, that also escaped owing to the looseness of the figure by the toe, permeated the soil moistened with the water and animated it as a serpent. At Satanaël’s earnest entreaty the heavenly Father took pity on the miserable creature, and gave it life by breathing into it His own breath. Afterwards with the Father’s help Eve, too, was created. Satanaël in the form of the serpent seduced, deceived and lay with Eve in order that by his seed, Cain and his twin sister Calomina, Adam’s future descendants, Abel, Seth, etc., might be oppressed and brought into bondage. Jealous lest the latter should obtain that heavenly dwelling place from which they had been driven, Satanaël’s angels seduced their daughters (Gen. vi.). From this union sprang giants who rebelled against Satanaël, but were destroyed by him in the flood. Henceforth he reigned unopposed as κοσμοκράτωρ, seduced the greater part of mankind, and endowed Moses with the power of working miracles as the instrument of his tyranny. Only a few men under the oppression of his law attained the end of their being; the sixteen prophets and those named in Matt. i. and Luke iii. Finally, in the year 5,500 after the creation of man, the supreme God moved with pity caused a second son, the Logos, to go forth from His bosom, who as chief of the good angels is called Michael, and sent Him to earth for man’s redemption. He entered in an ethereal body through the right ear into the virgin to be born of her with the semblance of an earthly body. Mary noticed nothing of all this. Without knowing how or whence, she found the child in swaddling clothes before her in the cave. His death on the cross was naturally in appearance only. After his resurrection he showed himself to Satanaël in his true form, bound him with chains, robbed him of his divine power, and compelled him to abandon his divine designation, by taking the El from his name, so that he is henceforth called Satan. Then He returned to the Father, took the seat that formerly was Satanaël’s at His right hand, and sinks again into the bosom of the Father out of which He had come. This, however, did not take place before a new Aëon [Æon], the Holy Spirit, emanated from the Godhead, and was sent forth as continuator and completer of the work of redemption. This Spirit, too, after he has finished his task will sink back again into the Father’s bosom.—Of the Old Testament the Bogomili acknowledged only the Psalter and the Prophets; of the New Testament books they valued most the Gospel of John. Veneration of relics and images, as well as the sign of the cross they abhorred as demoniacal inventions. Church buildings were regarded by them as the residences of demons. Satanaël himself in earlier days resided in the temple of Jerusalem, later in the church of Sophia at Constantinople. Water baptism, which was introduced by John the Baptist a servant of Satanaël, they rejected; but the baptism of Christ is spiritual baptism (παράκλησις=Consolamentum). It was imparted by laying the Gospel of John on the head of the subject of baptism, with invocation of the Holy Spirit and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. They declared the Catholic mass to be a sacrifice presented to demons; the true eucharist consists in the spiritual nourishment by the bread of life brought down in Christ from heaven, to which also the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer refers. They placed great value upon prayer, especially the use of the Lord’s Prayer. So too they valued fasting. Their ascetism was strict and required abstinence from marriage and from the eating of flesh. But prevarication and dissimulation they regarded as permissible.—The emperor Alexius Comnenus caused their chief Basil to be brought to Constantinople, under the delusive pretext of wishing himself to become a proselyte of the sect, got him to open all his heart, and enticed him under the semblance of a purely private conference to make reckless statements, while behind the curtain a judge of heresies was taking notes. This first act in the drama was followed by a second. The sentence of death was passed upon all adherents of Basil who could be laid hold upon. Two great funeral piles were erected, one of which was furnished with the figure of the cross. The emperor exhorted them, at least to die as true Christians, and in token of this to choose the place of death provided with a cross. Those who did so were pardoned, the rest for the most part condemned to imprisonment for life. Basil himself, however, was actually burnt,A.D.1118. The sect was not by any means thus rooted out. The Bogomili hid themselves mostly in monasteries, and Bulgaria long remained the haunt of dualistic heresy, which spread thence through the Latin church of the West.