Paulicianism (Classical Armenian: Պաւղիկեաններ, ; , "The followers of Paul"; Arab sources: Baylakānī, al Bayāliqa )Nersessian, Vrej (1998). The Tondrakian Movement: Religious Movements in the Armenian Church from the 4th to the 10th Centuries. London: RoutledgeCurzon. p. 13. . was a Christian sect which originated in Armenia in the 7th century.Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium / Editor in chief Alexander P. Kazhan. — Oxford University Press, 1991. — vol. 3. — p. 1606. Followers of the sect were called Paulicians and referred to themselves as Good Christians. Little is known about the Paulician faith and various influences have been suggested, including Gnosticism, Marcionism, Manichaeism and Adoptionism, with other scholars arguing that doctrinally the Paulicians were a largely conventional Christian reform movement unrelated to any of these currents.
The founder of the Paulicians is traditionally held to have been an Armenian by the name of Constantine, who hailed from a Syrian community near Samosata in modern-day Turkey. The sect flourished between 650 and 872 around the Byzantine Empire's frontier with the Arab Caliphate in Armenia and Eastern Anatolia, despite intermittent persecutions and deportations by the imperial authorities in Constantinople. After a period of relative toleration, renewed Byzantine persecution in the mid 9th century prompted the Paulicians to establish a state centered on Tephrike in the Armenian borderlands under Arab protection.
After prolonged warfare, the state of Tephrike was destroyed by the Byzantines in the 870s. Over the next century, some Paulicians migrated further into Armenia, while others were relocated by the imperial authorities to the Empire's Balkan frontier in Thrace. In Armenia, the Paulicians were assimilated into the related religious movement of Tondrakism over the next century. In Thrace, the sect continued practicing their faith for some time, in some places until the 17th–18th centuries, before gradually converting to other religions and are considered to be the ancestors of the modern Roman Catholic Banat Bulgarians and the Muslim Pomaks. The movement may have also been an influence on medieval European Christian heterodox movements such as Bogomilism and Catharism.
Etymology The Paulicians called themselves "Good Christians"John Goulter Dowling. A letter to S. R. Maitland. On the Opinions of the Paulicians, London, 1835. p. 16. or "True Believers", and referred to orthodox Christians as "Romanists". The name 'Paulician' was used by outsiders to refer to the sect and literally means 'the followers of Paul'. The identity of the Paul for whom the movement was named is disputed. It is most likely to be Paul the Apostle, a figure whom the Paulicians are consistently stated as according special veneration from the earliest sources up to their apparent extinction in the early modern period.Dixon 2022, pp. 3–4, 51. Certain medieval Byzantine and Muslim sources associate the sect with the 3rd century Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata.Dixon 2022, pp. 3–4, 64, 114; p. 285 n. 20. Melik-Bakhshyan, Stepan. «Պավլիկյան շարժում» (The Paulician movement). Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. vol. ix. Yerevan, Armenian SSR: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1983, pp. 140-141. This may be a conflation with the separate Paulianist sect, however, and the earliest Byzantine source to describe the movement explicitly distinguishes the "Paul of Samosata" supposed to have given the movement its name from the more famous heresiarch.Dixon 2022, pp. 3–4: "Our earliest Byzantine source against the heresy claims that they took their name from Paul, a resident of Samosata (Sumaysāṭ) ... however, [it] immediately problematises the link with Paul [the bishop], remarking that the Paulicians anathematise both him and Mani". Another possible source is Paul the Armenian, an otherwise obscure Paulician figure said to have led the sect in its migration to Episparis following its persecution by Justinian II at the close of the 7th century.Dixon 2022, pp. 4, 33.
History Origins and growth The sources indicate that most Paulician leaders were ArmeniansNersessian, Vrej: The Tondrakian Movement, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, Allison Park, Pennsylvania, 1948, p.53. and the founder of the sect is said to have been an Armenian by the name of Constantine, who hailed from Mananalis, a community near Samosata. He studied the Gospels and Epistles, combined dualistic and Christian doctrines and vigorously opposed the formalism of the church. Regarding himself as having been called to restore the pure Christianity of Paul the Apostle, he adopted the name of Silvanus (one of Paul's disciples), and about 660, he founded his first congregation at Kibossa, Armenia. Twenty-seven years later, he was arrested by the Imperial authorities, tried for heresy and stoned to death. Simeon, the court official who executed the order, was himself converted, and adopting the name Titus, became Constantine's successor. He was burned to death, the punishment pronounced upon the Manichaeans, in 690.
The adherents of the sect fled, with their new leader Paul at their head, to Episparis. He died in 715, leaving two sons, Gegnaesius (whom he had appointed his successor) and Theodore. The latter, giving out that he had received the Holy Ghost, protested against the leadership of Gegnaesius but was unsuccessful. Gegnaesius was taken to Constantinople, appeared before Emperor Leo III, was declared innocent of heresy and returned to Episparis, but, fearing danger, went with his adherents to Mananalis in Eastern Anatolia. His death (in 745) was the occasion of a division in the sect.
In 747, Emperor Constantine V is reported to have moved a significant number of Paulicians from Eastern Anatolia to Thrace to strengthen the Bulgarian frontier, beginning the presence of the sect in Europe.Nersessian, Vrej: The Tondrakian Movement, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, Allison Park, Pennsylvania, 1948, p.51. Despite deportations and continued persecution the sect continued to grow, receiving additions from some of the iconoclasts.
Patriarch John of Otzun wrote extensively against Paulicianism in his Dogmatic and Theological Treatises , and this was one of the topics discussed at the Fifth Council of Dvin (720) and again at the Council of Manzikert in 726.Simon Payaslian, The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 56.
In the late eighth century, the Paulicians suffered a schism and split into two groupings; the Baanites (the old party) and the Sergites (the reformed sect). Sergius, the reformed leader, was a zealous and effective converter for his sect; he boasted that he had spread his Gospel "from East to West; from North to South".Petrus Siculus, "Historia Manichaeorum", op. cit., 45 Sergius succeeded in supplanting Baanes, the leader of the old party, by 801 and was active for the next thirty-four years. His activity was the occasion of renewed persecutions on the part of Leo the Armenian. Upon the death of Sergius, the control of the sect was divided between several leaders.
Formation of Paulician state
In 843, the Empress Theodora, as regent to her son Michael III, instituted a major persecution against the Paulicians throughout Asia MinorLeon Arpee. A History of Armenian Christianity. The Armenian Missionary Association of America, New York, 1946, p. 107. in which 100,000 adherents in Byzantine Armenia alone were said to have lost their lives or property.Norwich, John Julius: A Short History of Byzantium Knopf, New York, 1997, page 140
In response to the renewed persecution many Paulicians, under their new leader Karbeas, fled across the border to the areas of Armenia under Arab control. Under the protection of Umar al-Aqta, the Emir of Melitene, the sect was permitted by the Arabs to build two fortress cities, Amara and Tephrike, and establish an independent state.Digenis Akritas: The Two-Blooded Border Lord. Trans. Denison B. Hull. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1972 Karbeas died in 863 during Michael III's campaign against the Arabs and possibly was with Umar at Malakopea before the Battle of Lalakaon.
Karbeas's successor, Chrysocheres ('the goldenhand'), devastated many cities in the continued wars with the Byzantines; in 867, he advanced as far as Ephesus, where he took many priests as prisoners. In 868, Emperor Basil I dispatched Petrus Siculus to arrange for their exchange. His sojourn of nine months among the Paulicians gave him an opportunity to collect many facts, which he preserved in his History of the empty and vain heresy of the Manichæans, otherwise called Paulicians. The propositions of peace were not accepted, the war was renewed, and Chrysocheres was killed at Battle of Bathys Ryax in 872 or 878.
Destruction of Paulician state and displacement By 878, the emperor Basil I had conquered the Paulician strongholds in Asia Minor (including Tephrike) and the survivors from the destruction of the Paulician state were largely displaced. One group migrated east further into Armenia, where they were assimilated into the emerging Tondrakian sect throughout the 10th century. Others were transferred to the Western frontier of the empire, including a military detachment of some 20,000 Paulicians serving in Byzantine Italy under the general Nikephoros Phokas the Elder.
In 970, 200,000 Paulicians on Byzantine territory were reportedly transferred by the emperor John Tzimisces to Philippopolis in Thrace. As a reward for their promise to keep back "the Scythians" (in fact Bulgars), the emperor granted the group toleration to practice their faith unmolested. This marked the start of a revival for the sect in the West.
Revival in Thrace The policy of transferring Paulicians to the West proved to be harmful for the Byzantines, with the group bringing limited economic and military benefits for the empire's Balkan frontier. The sect also failed to assimilate with the orthodox Roman and Bulgarian inhabitants and are reported to have successfully converted many existing inhabitants of Thrace to their heresy. According to Anna Komnene, by the end of the 11th century, Philippopolis and its surroundings were entirely inhabited by Paulicians and were being joined by new groups of Armenian migrants.
According to Annales Barenses, several thousand Paulicians served in the army of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos against the Norman Robert Guiscard in 1081 but subsequently deserted the emperor and were imprisoned. The Alexiad, written by the emperor's daughter Anna, reports that Alexios I succeeded in converting many of the sects around Philippopolis to Christian orthodoxy, building a new city of Alexiopolis for the converts.
During the First Crusade some Paulicians, called "Publicani", were present in the Muslim armies although others were reported as assisting the Crusaders. When Frederick Barbarossa passed near Philippopolis during the Third Crusade, on the contrary to the Greek inhabitants, they welcomed him as a liberator. In 1205, the Paulicians cooperated with Kaloyan to surrender Philippopolis to the Second Bulgarian Empire.
Later history
According to the historian Yordan Ivanov, some of the remaining Thracian Paulicians converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity during the Second Bulgarian Empire. After the fall of the Bulgarian Empire and the conquest of Thrace by the Ottoman Empire, this group then converted with some Bulgarians to Islam, forming the heterogenous community of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, commonly known as Pomak.