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CHAPTER V

THE PAULICIANS

 

(a) George Monachias; Photius; "Continuator"; Nicetas; Anna Comnena; Michael Psellus; Euthymius, The Key of Truth; Petrus Siculus; Zonaras.

(b) Gibbon, chap. liv., and Bury, Appendix 6; Finlay, Byzantine Empire, Book i. chap. iii.; Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog., article "Pauliciani"; F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth, 1898; Karapet Ter-Urkrttschian, Die Paulikianer in byzantinischen kaiserreiche, 1893.

 

The Paulicians, to whom Gibbon devotes a whole chapter of his history, have been the most egregiously libelled of all the Christian sects. The orthodox Church accused them of the very scandals that the pagans had imagined with regard to the early Christians, and with no more basis of fact to rest their charges upon. Even ecclesiastics who behaved more reasonably confounded them with the hated Manichæans, or at best with the heretical Marcionites. The simplicity of their religious faith and life, and their rejection of the extravagances and superstitions of the later Church, led to their history and tenets being dragged into theological controversies with which they had no immediate concern, and therefore, of course, to monstrous perversions of them. But quite recently, following minor results of research, Mr. Conybeare has rendered a great service to their memory by his publication and translation of the ancient Paulician work. The Key of Truth,^[1] together with a valuable historical and critical study of it. We are now able to brush away the libels of centuries and go to an original source for our knowledge

1. From a MS. written a.d. 1782 and found by Mr. Conybeare in the archives of the Holy Synod of Edimatzin.

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