BOOK IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE, A.D. 590-814

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ORIENTAL SECTS.

 

 

It has been mentioned, in the sketch of the Mahometan conquests, that the Arabs took advantage of the enmity between the Catholics and the Jacobites (or Monophysites) to enlist the depressed and persecuted sectaries on their side. For the services thus rendered, the Jacobites were repaid by a superior degree of favour from their new masters when Egypt and Syria had fallen under the rule of the caliphs. Many of those whom the measures of Heraclius had driven to profess Catholicism now returned to the open avowal of their old opinions; and the church further lost, not only by the progress of the sword and doctrines of Islam, but by the defection of many of its own members to the heretical Christianity.

The Jacobites continued to be strong in Egypt, and also in the more westerly countries of Asia, where they were now under the government of a patriarch resident at Amida. But the party had been extirpated in Persia, and it made no further progress towards the east.

 The history of the Nestorians during this period was more remarkable. They, like the opposite sect, were at first courted and afterwards favoured by the Mussulmans on account of their hostility to the orthodox church. At their head was a bishop known by the title of catholic or; patriarch of Babylon; his residence was originally at Seleucia or Ctesiphon, but on the foundation of Bagdad by Almansur, in 762, the patriarch removed his seat to that city. In the eighth century, the Nestorians got a footing in Egypt; and in the east they laboured with great activity to propagate their form of Christianity, without, apparently, meeting with any rivalry on the part of the Catholics. Following the course of trade, Nestorian missionaries made their way by sea from India to China, while others penetrated across the deserts to its northern frontier. A stone discovered at Singanfoo in 1625 bears a long inscription, partly Syriac and partly Chinese, recording the names of missionaries who had laboured in China, with the history of Christianity in that country from the year 636 to 781. Its fortunes had been varied by success and persecution; but in the eighth century it had usually, enjoyed great favour from the emperors, and many churches had been built. With these details the inscription contains a summary of Christian doctrine and practice, in which a tinge of Nestorianism is discernible. It would seem that this early Christianity of China fell with the dynasty which had encouraged it; for some missionaries who about the year 980 were sent by the catholic of Babylon into that country found the churches destroyed, and could hear of only one native who continued to profess their own religion.

The patriarch Timothy, who held his office from 777 to 820, reduced the Nestorian metropolitan of Persia to subjection, and was especially active in organizing missions. By the preachers whom he sent out a knowledge of Christianity was spread in Hyrcania, Tartary, Bactria, and other countries of central Asia, where it long retained a hold. Bishops and metropolitans, owning allegiance to the patriarch of Babylon, were established in those vast regions, and with a view to this a singular ritual provision was made by Timothy—that, if no more than two bishops could be procured for the consecration of a brother, the canonical number should be made up by allowing a book of the Gospels to supply the place of the third consecrator.

The tenets and character of the Paulicians have been the subject of controversy, which too often has been largely influenced by the party interests of those who have shared in it. Writers of the Roman church have professed to discover in the Paulicians the ancestors of the protestant reformers, and have transferred to these the charges of Manichaeism which are brought against the ancient sect. On the other hand, some protestants have ventured to accept the pedigree, and, with a confidence which equally disdains facts and reason, have asserted that the Paulicians were guiltless of the heresies imputed to them—that they were the maintainers of what such writers suppose to be a purely scriptural Christianity. It would be useless to enter here into a dis­cussion of these rival extravagances.

Although it is agreed that the word Paulician is a barbarous formation from the name Paul, there is a question as to the person from whom the designation was taken. Some trace it to one Paul of Samosata—not the notorious bishop of Antioch, in the third century, but a Manichaean of later, although uncertain, date; others to an Armenian who was eminent in the sect about the time of Justinian II. But the most probable supposition appears to be that it is derived from the name of the great apostle, whom the Paulicians affected especially to regard as their master.

Gnosticism, banished from other parts of the empire, had taken refuge in the countries bordering on the Euphrates, where in course of time the remnants of its various parties had come to be confounded under the general name of Manicheans. In this region, at the village of Mananalis, near Samosata, lived about the year 653 one Constantine, who is described as descended from a Manichaean family. A deacon, who was returning from captivity among the Saracens, became his guest, and in acknowledgment of his hospitality left with him a manuscript containing the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles. Constantine read these, applying the principles of his old belief to the interpretation of them; and the result was, that he renounced some of the grosser absurdities in which he had been trained, burnt the heretical books which it was a capital crime to possess, and put forth a system which, by means of allegorical and other evasions, he professed to reconcile with the letter of the New Testament, while in reality it was mainly derived from the doctrines of his hereditary sect. Although he is usually styled a Manichaean, it would appear that the term is not to be strictly understood. His opinions were probably more akin to Marcionism, which is known to have been strong in the region of the Euphrates two hundred years earlier; and his followers freely anathematized Manes, among other heresiarchs.

Constantine styled himself Silvanus, and the leaders who succeeded him assumed the names of Titus, Epaphroditus, Timothy, and others of St. Paul’s companions. In like manner they affected to transfer to the chief communities of their sect the names of churches in which the apostle and his associates had laboured. The Paulicians acknowledged St. Paul’s epistles, with those of St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, and the Acts of the Apostles. They also originally admitted the four Gospels, although it would seem that they afterwards rested exclusively on those of St. Luke and St. John, if they did not absolutely reject the others. They rejected the Old Testament, and they especially denounced St. Peter, as a betrayer of his Lord and of the truth; nor was their enmity without reason, says Peter of Sicily, since that apostle had prophesied against their misuse of St. Paul.

The Paulicians held that matter was eternal; that there were two Gods—the one, generated of darkness and fire, the creator and lord of the present world, the God of the Old Testament and of the church; the other, the Supreme, the object of their own worship, the God of the spiritual world which is to come. They held that the soul of man was of heavenly origin, and imprisoned in a material body. They not only refused to the blessed Virgin the excessive honours which the Catholics had gradually bestowed on her, but are said to have altogether disparaged her; they denied her perpetual virginity, while they maintained that our Lord did not really take of her substance, but brought his body from heaven, and that his birth was only in appearance. They objected to the order of presbyters, because the Jewish presbyters or elders had opposed the Christ; their own teachers were not distinguished by any special character, dress, manner of life, or privileges. Of these teachers several grades are mentioned, but they did not form a permanent hierarchy; thus, when the “companions in travel”, who had been associated with the last great master of the sect, died out, the “notaries”, whose business it was to copy the writings which were acknowledged as authoritative, became its chief instructors. The Paulicians reverenced Constantine and three others of their leaders as apostles or prophets. They rejected the sacraments : Christ, they said, did not give his disciples bread and wine, but by the names of these elements He signified his own sustaining words; and the true baptism is He Himself, who declared Himself to be the “living water”. They spat on the cross and attacked the Catholics on account of their reverence for images, while they themselves paid reverence to the book of the Gospels, as containing the words of Christ. They allowed themselves a great license of equivocation as to their opinions; and in the same spirit they did not scruple to attend the catholic worship or sacraments. They claimed for themselves exclusively the title of Christians, while they styled the Catholics Romans, as having merely a political religion. Their own places of worship were not styled temples or churches, but houses of prayer. By the modern patrons of the Paulicians, their opposition in some of these points to the current errors or superstitions of the time has been traced to an unbiassed study of holy Scripture; but it may be more truly explained by their connexion with older sects, which had become separate before the corruptions in question were introduced into the church itself.

Constantine fixed himself at Cibossa, in Armenia, where he presided over his sect for twenty-seven years, and made many converts, both from the church and from the Zoroastrian religion. At length the matter was reported to the emperor Constantine Pogonatus, who sent an officer named Symeon to Cibossa, with orders to put the heresiarch to death, and to distribute his followers among the clergy and in monasteries, with a view to their being reclaimed. Symeon carried off Constantine and a large body of the sectaries, whom he drew up in a line, and commanded to stone their chief. Instead of obeying, all but one let fall the stones with which they were armed; but Constantine was killed, like another Goliath (as we are told), by a stone from the hand of a youth—his own adopted son Justus. As the sectaries proved obstinate in their errors, Symeon entered into conference with some of them; the effect was, that, being ignorant as to the grounds of his old religion, he became their convert, and, after spending three years at Constantinople in great uneasiness of mind, he fled, leaving all his property behind him, and took up his abode at Cibossa, where, under the name of Titus, he became the successor of Constantine. After a time, Justus was struck by the seeming inconsistency of the Paulician doctrines with a text which refers the spiritual as well as the material world to the same one Creator. He proposed the difficulty to Symeon, expressing a fear that they might both have been in error, and might have misled their followers; and, on finding that Symeon would not satisfy him, he went to the bishop of a neighbouring town, Colonia (now About Calahissar), and exposed the tenets of the sect. The bishop reported the case to the emperor, Justinian II, and in consequence of this information, Symeon, Justus himself, and many of their followers, were burnt to death on one large pile.

Among those who escaped this fate was an Armenian named Paul, who took up his abode near Phanaroea, at a place which is said to have derived its name, Episparis, from the sowing of spiritual tares there by the elder Paul, the Samosatenian. The sect revived under the Armenian Paul, but at his death the headship of it was contested his two sons. Gegnaesius, the elder, to whom his father had given the name of Timothy, rested his claims on hereditary succession, while the younger, Theodore, relied on an immediate commission from heaven and their dispute reached the ears of Leo the Isaurian, who ordered Germanus, patriarch Constantinople, to examine Gegnaesius. The Paulician was skilful enough to meet all questions with answers which appeared satisfactory. He anathematized all who denied the orthodox faith, for by that name he secretly intended his own heresy. He anathematized all who refused to worship the cross, for by the cross he meant our Lord Himself stretching out his arms in prayer or benediction. He anathematized all who refused worship to the Theotokos, into whom the Saviour entered—understanding under this description the heavenly Jerusalem, into which Christ has entered as the forerunner of his elect. By the catholic church he meant his own sect; by baptism, Christ the living water by the body and blood of Christ, the Saviour’s words of instruction : he therefore anathematized all who rejected any of these, and having thus satisfied Germanus, he was sent home with favourable letters from the emperor.

The abhorrence which the Paulicians professed for images might have been supposed likely to recommend the party to the iconoclastic emperors. But it would seem that these princes rather feared to connect themselves with the disrepute which its other opinions had brought on it; and thus we find that Leo and his son, instead of favouring the Paulicians, transported many of them from Armenia into Thrace. After various fortunes, the headship of the sectaries had fallen to one Baanes, who is styled “the filthy”, and may therefore be probably supposed to have sanctioned some of the immoralities which are too often lightly imputed to all heresiarchs. But when the Paulicians had sunk thus low, a reformer appeared in the person of a young man named Sergius.

Sergius was converted to Paulicianism by a female theologian. The historians of the sect relate that this woman, having fixed on him as one whom it was desirable to gain, entered into conversation with him, and, after some compliments on his learning and character, asked him why he did not read the Scriptures. He answered that such studies were not lawful for Christians in general, but only for the clergy—an idea which Chrysostom had strongly opposed, but which since his time had become fixed in the popular belief, although without any formal authority from the Church. “It is not as you think”, she rejoined; “for there is no acceptance of persons with God, since He will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. And she went on to tell him that the clergy mutilated and corrupted the word of God, and that such of them as did miracles would be found among those to whom Christ will say in the judgment day, “I never knew you”. Sergius began to read the Scriptures, and under the tuition of his instructress, he learnt to apply to the Catholics all that is there said against the fleshly Israel, and to regard the Paulicians as the true spiritual church of Christ. He assumed the name of Tychicus and became a new founder of the sect, which is said to have held his writings in equal veneration with the Scriptures themselves. His own morals would seem to have been unimpeachable, since Photius and Peter of Sicily can only charge him with hypocrisy; and he reformed the morality of the Paulicians, in opposition to the principles of Baanes. For thirty-four years—from the reign of Irene to that of Theophilus—Sergius laboured indefatigably in the cause of Paulicianism. He is said to have indulged in unseemly boasting of his success; to have preferred himself to the earlier teachers of the party; to have styled himself the resplendent lamp, the shining light, the life-giving star, and even the Paraclete.

The emperor Nicephorus was friendly to the sect, and granted it toleration in Phrygia and Lycaonia. Theophanes tells us that he engaged in magical practices with the Manicheans who are called Paulicians, in order to obtain victory for his arms. Under Michael Rhangabé severe laws were enacted against these heretics; such of them as should be obstinate in their errors were to be put to death. A party in the church, headed by Theodore the Studite, opposed the infliction of death as the punishment of heresy; but Theophanes argues that this view is absurd, since St. Peter inflicted death on Ananias and Sapphira, and St. Paul says that persons who are guilty of certain sins are worthy of death. To these scriptural authorities for persecution Peter of Sicily adds another—the command, “Those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me”.

Leo the Armenian, iconoclast as he was, continued the persecution of the Paulicians. The sectaries, as usually happens, were exasperated by such treatment. The deaths of some of their chiefs were avenged by the slaughter of a prefect and a bishop who had been active against them. They lived in constant hostility to their neighbours, and, as opportunity favoured, they broke out from their bounds, devastated, plundered, and slaughtered. Their female captives, it is said, were given up to promiscuous lust; the children were either killed or sold to the Saracens; and Sergius found himself unable to restrain the excesses of his followers. Sergius himself was slain with his own axe by a man who had found him cutting wood, in the year 835. His reforms had led to the separation of the sect into two hostile branches; and after his death, his followers, wishing to clear themselves from the obloquy attached to the Baanites, fell on these, and carried on a bloody contest with them, until a “companion in travel” of Sergius, named Theodotus, succeeded in recalling both parties to a remembrance of their common faith.

  After the re-establishment of images, under the regency of Theodora, the empress was urged by the victorious party to undertake the suppression of Paulicianism, whether by conversion or by force; and, as the sectaries resisted all attempts which were made to gain them, the fury of persecution was let loose among them. It is said that not less than 100,000 were slain by the sword, beheaded, drowned, or impaled. Among the victims was the father of Carbeas, captain of the guard to the prefect of the east. Carbeas, on hearing of his parent’s fate, renounced his allegiance to the empire, and, with 5000 companions, sought a refuge among the Saracens. The caliph gladly welcomed the fugitives, and granted them leave to settle within his territory, where, on the same principle by which they had justified their occasional conformity to the church, they adopted externally the rites of Islam. Carbeas built or enlarged and fortified several towns, of which Tephrica was the chief and became the headquarters of the sect. Paulicians from other quarters flocked to the new home which was opened for them; and the numbers of the party were swelled by refugees who sought an asylum from the imperial laws, and, according to its enemies, by others who found an attraction in the license of morals which it granted to its members. The Paulicians harassed their neighbours of the empire by continual aggressions. Under the command of Carbeas, their forces, in conjunction with the Saracens, gained a great victory over Michael, the son of Theodora, under the walls of Samosata; and in the reign of the emperor Basil, Chrysocheir, the son-in-law of Carbeas, advanced through Asia Minor with an army made up of Paulicians and Saracens, pillaged Ancyra, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and other cities, gave up images and relics to his followers for profanation, and stabled his horses in the cathedral of Ephesus. Basil was reduced to sue for peace; but Chrysocheir refused it except on the intolerable condition that he should give up the east to “the servants of the Lord”. The emperor had no choice but to carry on the war; he advanced into the Paulician country, and took some of the towns, but was obliged to relinquish the siege of Tephrica. Chrysocheir again invaded the imperial territory; but his troops were defeated by one of Basil's generals, and he himself, as he fled, was closely followed by one Pylades, who had formerly been his captive. It was in vain that he reminded his pursuer of the kindness with which he had treated him; a wound from the lance of Pylades compelled him to drop from his horse, and, as he lay stunned by the fall, some other Greeks despatched him. His head was carried to the emperor, who fulfilled a vow and gratified his enmity by piercing it with three arrows. After the death of Chrysocheir, the Paulicians ceased to be formidable. Tephrica was destroyed, yet a remnant of the sect continued to assert its independence for a century later.

In another quarter, the heresy had been kept up by the descendants of those who were transported into Thrace by Constantine Copronymus. It was in order to guard the newly-founded church of Bulgaria from the infection of its Thracian neighbours, that Peter of Sicily, about the year 870, addressed to the archbishop of the Bulgarians the tract which is a chief source of information as to the sect, drawing his materials in part from the observations and inquiries which he had made during a residence of nine months at Tephrica, on a mission for negotiating an exchange of prisoners.

 

CHAPTER IX.

SUPPLEMENTARY