Paulicians

The Paulicians were a heterodox Christian group which emerged on the eastern frontiers of Byzantine Anatolia and in Armenia in the seventh century, apparently founded by a certain Armenian, Constantine of Samosata, who took the name Silvanus after one of the apostles of Paul, and who, according to legend, converted the official sent to try and execute him for heresy, with this man becoming his successor under the name of Titus, who would himself be executed by burning under Justinian II Rhinometos. Following the immolation of their second leader, and fearing further persecution, the sect fled in a mass exodus to a certain region on the Eastern frontier known as Episparis, and thence to another adjacent region called Mananalis following the trial and acquittal of their leader Gegnaesius for heresy under the auspices of Leo I for fear of further interventions and potential persecution on the part of the Roman state; nevertheless, the emperor Constantine V effected the forced migration of numerous Paulicians to Thrace to strengthen the Thracian frontier, which would be the first of many forced and imperially mandated migrations from Anatolia to the Balkans. The death of Gegnaesius occasioned a schism in the church between the party of Baanes and that of Sergius, with the Sergites gaining the ascendancy apparently proselytizing widely in the eastern provinces, and inviting renewed persecutions under Leo the Armenian. Under Theodora, a still more intense persecution began, which eventually led to the flight of many Paulicians under their leader Karbeas across the border into the districts of Armenia under Islamic rule, where the Emir of Melitene allowed them to construct the fortress city of Tephrike, which acted as a redoubt and buffer state with Byzantium under Arab protection. Nevertheless, in the late 9th century, Basil I conquered these principalities after prolonged wars with a particularly bellicose leader known as Chrysocheir, and while part of the population retreated further into Armenia, merging, evidently, into the emerging Tondrakian movement, much of the rest was deported to the Thracian provinces by he and his immediate successors, where they continued to exist as a distinct ethnoreligious group, renowned as hill raiders and warriors, and concentrated especially in the vicinity of Philippopolis, where they evidently evangelized the local population to their creed. They are believed to be the ancestors of modern day Banat Bulgarians who converted to Catholicism in the 16th and 17th Centuries, as well as of the Muslim Pomaks. It is also possible they had some influence on the Bogomiil sect and on that of the Cathars, though this may be a mistaken connection. The basic doctrines of the sect are very much a subject of debate, whether they were dualistic, gnostic, adoptionist, or simply a reformist movement unrelated to these designations. Their Christology seems to have been nontrinitarian, and according to the (admittedly biased) accounts of their belief attributed to the pen of to Petros Sikeliotes, they accepted the New Testament though not the Tanakh, and evidently had iconoclastic tendencies and worshipped in simple meetinghouses, though the account may represent a spurious source. Anna Komnene refers to them as Manichaeans in her Alexiad, but this seems to be more an imputation of potential dualism or perhaps a generic term of disparagement rather than any indication that they actually followed the doctrines of Mani. Based on their apparent rejection of imperial ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, they are sometimes considered an egalitarian or proto-Marxist movement, or, conversely, a proto-protestant one, though such arguments are spurious at best.

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