PAULICIANS, an evangelical Christian Church spread over Asia Minor and Armenia from the 5th century onwards. The Armenian patriarch John IV. (c. 728) states that Nerses, his predecessor, had chastised the sect, but ineffectually; and that after his death (c. 554) they had continued to lurk in Armenia. An anonymous account was written perhaps as early as 84o, and incorporated in the Greek Chronicon of Georgius Monachus. It was also used by Photius (c. 867), bk. i., chs. 1-10 of his Historia Manicheoruin, who, having held an inquisition of Paulicians in Constantinople was able to supplement it with a few additional details; and by Petrus Siculus (c. 868), who visited the Paulician fortress Tephrike to treat for the release of Byzantine prisoners. His History of the Manicheans is dedicated to the archbishop of Bulgaria, whither the Paulicians were sending missionaries.
The Paulicians were, according to the Chronicon, Manicheans, and were called after Paul of Samosata (q.v.). One Constantine, however, of Mananali, a canton on the western Euphrates, was regarded by the Paulicians as their real founder. He based his teaching on the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, repudiating other scriptures; and taking the Pauline name of Silvanus, began to organize churches, whose numbers soon increased. From the few facts and dates supplied by Photius and Petrus Siculus it may be inferred that with the exception of a period early in the ninth century (when Sergius, the greatest of their leaders, carried on a powerful missionary propaganda) they were in conflict, frequently armed conflict, with the Byzantine Empire until the loth century. Nevertheless the movement spread in Bulgaria and then revived and became stronger than ever in Armenia. The crusaders found them everywhere in Syria and Palestine, and corrupted their name to Publicani, under which name, of ten absurdly conjoined with Sadducaei, we find them during the ages following the crusades scattered all over Europe. After 1200 we can find no trace of them in Armenian writers until the 18th century, when they re appear in their old haunts. In 1828 a colony of them settled in Russian Armenia, bringing with them a book called the Key of Truth, which contains their rites of name-giving, baptism and elec tion, compiled from old mss., we know not when.
2. They denied the virgin birth of Jesus, and allegorized the Virgin as the upper Jerusalem in which the Lord came in and went out and denying that he was really made flesh of her.
3. They allegorized the Eucharist and explained away the bread and wine of which Jesus said to His apostles, "Take, eat and drink," as mere words of Christ, and denied that we ought to offer bread and wine as a sacrifice. Such allegorization meets us already in Origen, Eusebius and other early fathers, and is quite compatible with that use of a material Eucharist which Nerses II. attests among the Paulicians of the early 6th century, and for which the Key of Truth provides a form.
4. They assailed the cross, saying that Christ is a cross, and that we ought not to worship the tree, because it is a cursed instru ment. John IV. and other Armenian writers report the same, and add that they smashed up crosses when they could.
5. They repudiated Peter, calling him a denier of Christ, and would not accept his repentance and tears. The Key of Truth, however, merely warns us that all the apostles constitute the Church universal and not Peter alone.
6. The monkish garb was revealed by Satan to Peter at the baptism, when it was the devil, the ruler of this world, who, so costumed, leaned forward and said, "This is my beloved son." 7. They called their meetings the Catholic Church, and the places they met in places of prayer, rpocrevxaL The Armenian Paulicians equally denied the name of church to buildings of wood or stone, and called themselves the Catholic Church.