8. They explained away baptism as "words of the Holy Gospel," citing the text "I am the living water." So the Armenians taught that the baptismal water of the Church was "mere bath-water," z.e., they denied it the character of a reserved sacrament. But there is no evidence that they eschewed water-baptism.
9. They permitted external conformity with the dominant Church, and held that Christ would forgive it.
to. They rejected the orders of the Church, had only two grades of clergy, namely, associate itinerants Acts xix. 29) and copyists (vorapcoc), and scorned priestly vestments.
II. Their canon included only the "Gospel and Apostle." 13. Their Christology was as follows : "God out of love for mankind called up an angel and communicated to him his desire and counsel; then he bade him go down to earth and be born of woman. . . . And he bestowed on the angel so commissioned the title of Son, and foretold for him insults, blasphemies, sufferings and crucifixion. Then the angel undertook to do what was en joined, but God added to the sufferings also death." However, the angel, on hearing of the resurrection, cast away fear and accepted death as well ; and came down and was born of Mary, and named himself son of God according to the grace given him from God; and he fulfilled all the command, and was crucified and buried, rose again and was taken up into heaven. Christ was only a creature and obtained the title of Christ the Son of God by way of grace and remuneration for obedience.
The scheme of salvation here set forth recurs among the Latin Cathars. It resembles that of the Key of Truth, in so far as Jesus is Christ and Son of God by way of grace and reward for faith ful fulfilment of God's command. But the Key lays more stress on the baptism. In this scheme the Baptism occupies the same place which the Birth does in the other, but both are adoptionist. The Armenian fathers held that Jesus, unlike other men, possessed incorruptible flesh, made of ethereal fire, and so far they shared the main heresy of the Paulicians. In many of their homilies Christ's baptism is also regarded as his regeneration by water and spirit, and this view goes beyond the modest adoptionism set forth in the Key of Truth. Certain features of Paulicianism noted by Photius and Petrus Siculus are omitted in the Chronicon source. One of these is the Christhood of the fully initiated, who as such ceased to be mere "hearers" (audientes) and themselves became vehicles of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus anointed by the Spirit became the Christ, so they became christs.
Hence their opponents spoke of their "self-conferred priesthood" and "anthropolatrous apostacy," "calling themselves christs." Because they regarded their Perfect or Elect ones as Christs and anointed with the Spirit, the mediaeval Cathars regularly adored them. So it was with Celtic saints, and Adamnan, in his life of St. Columba, i. 37, tells how the brethren after listening to St. Baithene, "still kneeling, with joy unspeakable, and with hands spread out to heaven, venerated Christ in the holy and blessed man." So in ch. 44 of the same book we read how a humble stranger "worshipped Christ in the holy man" (i.e., St. Columba) ; but such veneration was due to every presbyter. The Christ is an elect one, who, as the Cathars put it, having been consoled or become a Paraclete in the flesh, stands in prayer with his hands outspread in the form of a cross, while the congregation of hearers or audientes adore the Christ in him. It was because they believed themselves to have living christs among them that the Paulicians rejected the fetish worship of a material cross, in which orthodox Armenian priests imagined they had by prayers and anointings confined the Spirit of Christ.
The later Cathars of Europe repudiated marriage on the ground that the only true marriage is of Christ with his bride the Virgin church, and perhaps this is why Paulicians and Thonraki would not make of marriage a religious rite or sacrament. The Cathars adhere to adult baptism, which in ancient wise they confer at thirty years of age or later, and have retained in its primitive significance the rite of giving a Christian name to a child on the eighth day.
BIBLioGRAPHY.—Beside the works mentioned in the text see J. C. L. Gieseler, Ecclesiastical History, ii. 208 (Edinburgh, 5848) and "Unter suchungen fiber die Geschichte der Paulicianer" in Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, Heft I. s. 79 (Jahrg., 1829) ; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Century IX. ii. 5; G. Finlay, History of Greece, vols. ii. and iii.; Gib bon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. liv.; Ign. von Dellinger, Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, chs. i.–hi.; Kara pet Ter-MKrttschian, Die Paulikianer (Leipzig, ; Ariak Ter Mikelian, Die armenische Kirche (Leipzig, 1892) ; Basil Sarkisean, A Study of the Manicheo-Paulician Heresy of the Thonraki (Venice, San Lazaro, 1893, in Armenian) ; F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (Oxford, 1898) ; C. A. Scott, art. "Paulicians" in Hastings, Encyclo paedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ix.