Paulicians

Paulicians , Christian heretical sect. The sect developed in Armenia from obscure origins and is first mentioned in the middle of the 6th cent., where it is associated with Nestorianism . The teachings of the Paulicians seem to show some gnostic influence, possibly that of Marcion or Paul of Samosata , and many of the adherents leaned toward adoptionism . The sect especially valued the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles. They rejected the sacraments but nevertheless considered baptism of the greatest importance. They were iconoclasts and rejected extreme asceticism. By the 7th cent. the sect spread to the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, where it met with strong persecution. The Council of Dvin (719) brought on new persecutions of the Paulicians in Armenia, but the permissive Isaurian emperors allowed them to flourish and even settled them as allies in Thrace. Renewed persecution caused them to side with the Muslims against Byzantium. By 844, at the height of its power, the sect established a Paulician state at Tephrike (present-day Divriğu, Turkey) under the leadership of Karbeas, or Corbeas. In 871 the Byzantine emperor Basil I ended the power of this state and the survivors fled to Syria and Armenia. In 970 the Paulicians in Syria were deported to the Balkans, where they combined with the Bogomils . Those in Armenia became identified with a minor sect, the Tondrakeci. They ceased to be a threat after the 11th cent. and did not survive to modern times.

Bibliography: See N. G. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy (1968).

Paulicians. Christian sect prominent in the 7th–11th cents. in Armenia and the east of the Byzantine Empire. According to Gk. sources they were Manicheans, and by modern scholars they have often been considered a link in the chain between the early gnostics and the Manichees of the Middle Ages. Apart from a period of favour under the Iconoclast emperors of the 8th–9th cents., the Paulicians were persecuted in the Empire, and allied themselves with the Muslim power.

Paulicians. Members of a sect in the Byzantine Empire. Their founder seems to have been Constantine of Mananali, who established a community at Kibossa in Armenia, and was stoned c.684. They were severely persecuted in the 9th cent.; many accepted Islam, and those who sought refuge in Bulgaria seem to have amalgamated with the Bogomils in the 10th cent. They apparently ceased to exist as a separate sect in the 12th cent. They professed a dualistic doctrine, denied the reality of Christ's body and of the Redemption, and considered His teaching to be Christ's most important work. Like Marcion, they repudiated the OT and held Lk. and the Pauline Epistles in particular esteem.