The Paulicians (in Greek Paulikianoi) are a Christian movement born in Byzantine Armenia around the middle of the 7th century, which rejects the Old Testament, the divine motherhood of Mary, the veneration of the cross, the sacraments and all ecclesiastical hierarchy, and which professes a Christ adopted by the Father at his baptism rather than true God from all eternity. Persecuted by the emperors, the movement took up arms in the 9th century and founded around Tephrike a genuine heretical state allied with the Arabs, before being crushed by Basil I in 872.
Transplanted en masse to the Balkans, to Thrace from the 8th century onward, then around Philippopolis in 970, the Paulicians survived there until the 12th century, when the emperor Alexios I Komnenos disputed with them and converted them in large numbers. Their trail then fades, but scholarship has placed them at the heart of a great debate: are they the link between the dualists of the East and the Bogomils and then the Cathars of the West?
This article sets out what is solidly known, from the hostile Byzantine sources, the Armenian sources and the findings of Nina Garsoïan and Paul Lemerle, what the Paulicians believed according to these sources, their history over two and a half centuries, and the judgment the Catholic Church passes on their doctrine.
Where does the name "Paulician" come from?
The disciples of the Apostle, or the sons of Paul of Samosata?
Two etymologies compete, and the choice between them alone sums up the problem of the sources: almost everything known about the Paulicians comes from their enemies[1].
According to the Byzantine polemicists, Peter of Sicily around 870, then Patriarch Photius, the name would come from two heretical brothers, Paul and John, sons of a certain Callinice of Samosata, who allegedly spread error in Armenia[2]. Deriving a heresy from an obscure eponymous ancestor is a classic device of ancient heresiology: it deprives the movement of any apostolic root and reduces it to a private invention.
According to the Paulicians themselves, the name would come from the Apostle Saint Paul: they claimed to be the true disciples of Paul, exclusive readers of his epistles, and their leaders took the names of the Apostle's companions, Silvanus, Titus, Timothy, Epaphras, Tychicus[3]. Their communities bore the names of the Churches founded by Paul: Macedonia, Achaia, Philippi, Laodicea, Ephesus, Colossae[4].
What does modern scholarship retain?
The historian Nina Garsoïan, in the most complete study ever devoted to the subject from the Greek and Armenian sources, decides in favour of the second etymology: Paulicianism is first of all a movement of claimed return to Paul, rooted in Armenian and Syrian Christianity, not the importation of a foreign Gnosticism[5]. The Byzantinist Paul Lemerle, who reworked the whole dossier from the Greek sources, confirms that the polemicists' origin stories are hostile constructions, useful for dating the leaders of the movement but worthless on its deep nature[6].
"Jesus does not appear to have been born Son of God, but rather to have been acknowledged by the Father as a reward for the virtue of his life and the quality of his faith. The acknowledgement of Jesus as Son of God came only at his baptism, which was the most important sacrament." — Nina Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy, The Hague, Mouton, 1967, p. 152[7]
What is known about them? The dossier of sources
Peter of Sicily, the envoy of Basil I
The master source is the Useful History against the Manichaeans, also called Paulicians (Historia Manichaeorum qui et Pauliciani dicuntur), written around 870 by Peter of Sicily, a high official whom Emperor Basil I had sent to Tephrike to negotiate the ransom of Byzantine prisoners[8]. Peter spent nine months in the heretical capital: he observed its leaders there, collected their discourses and, on his return, addressed his indictment to the Archbishop of Bulgaria as a warning, proof that the heresy already threatened the Balkans[9]. To him we owe the list of the seven didaskaloi, the doctrine attributed to Sergius and the account of the origins.
"He boasted of having spread his Gospel 'from East to West, from North to South'." — Peter of Sicily on Sergius, History of the Manichaeans, 45, quoted by the Catholic Encyclopedia[10]
Photius and the Byzantine chroniclers
Patriarch Photius devoted to the Paulicians an Account of the Manichaeans called Paulicians and four books Against the Manichaeans, which take up and complete Peter of Sicily[11]. The chronicles, Theophanes the Confessor, the Continuator of Theophanes, Genesios, later Skylitzes, Zonaras and Anna Komnene (Alexiad, book XIV) for the Thracian period, supply the framework of events: persecutions, battles, deportations[12]. All these pens are imperial and Orthodox: they constantly call the Paulicians "Manichaeans", a generic insult Byzantium applies to any supposed dualism, which must never be taken as proven filiation with Mani[13].
The Armenian sources and the modern debate
On the Armenian side, testimonies are rarer and disputed: catholicosal letters, the chronicle of Aristakes of Lastivert, and above all the Key of Truth (Ban Ulug), an Armenian ritual edited and translated by Frederick Conybeare in 1898, which he attributed to the Paulicians but which more probably belongs to the neighbouring Thondrakians, an attribution Garsoïan strongly qualified[14]. It was on this fragile ground that Conybeare had built his thesis of a primitive Adoptionist Paulicianism, a survival of Jewish Christianity: received with scepticism in its day, it was taken up on better foundations by Garsoïan[15].
Modern scholarship therefore holds the dossier in balance between three poles: Steven Runciman, who made the Paulicians the first link of a dualist chain reaching to the Cathars (The Medieval Manichee, Cambridge, 1947)[16]; Garsoïan (1967), who demonstrated the Armenian and Adoptionist rootedness; and Lemerle (1973), who reconstructed the history of events with exemplary caution and cut several legends down to size[17]. The present article follows these three guides, signalling each time the degree of certainty.
What did the Paulicians believe?
Every account of Paulician doctrine must begin with a warning of honesty: no authentic and undisputed Paulician writing has come down to us. We read their faith through the indictment of their executioners and their controversialists. When Peter of Sicily and Photius agree, when Garsoïan finds the same trait in an independent Armenian source, probability grows; when a grievance appears under only one pen, caution is required[18].
A Christ adopted at his baptism
The heart of the system is an Adoptionist Christology: Jesus, a mere man of eminent virtue, is said to have been adopted as Son of God at his baptism, around the age of thirty, hence the capital importance the Paulicians attached, according to Garsoïan, to the baptism of Christ[19]. Mingled with this Adoptionism are Docetic traits: the body of Christ is said to be a heavenly body, passed through Mary "as through a conduit", taking nothing from her[20]. The result is the exact inverse of the faith of Nicaea: instead of the Word, true God become true man, a virtuous man raised up to God and clothed in a borrowed humanity.
The Old Testament set aside, Mary effaced, the cross refused
Everything else follows from this Christ. The Paulicians received, says Peter of Sicily, only the four Gospels and the epistles of Paul, with an exclusive predilection for the Apostle, and rejected the Old Testament, the epistles of Peter and, according to some testimonies, the Acts of the Apostles[21]. The God of the Old Testament, creator of this visible world, was distinguished from the heavenly Father announced by Christ: it is this mitigated dualism, two principles of which the lower one governs matter, that earned the Paulicians the Byzantine label of "Manichaeans", even though their system probably owes nothing to Mani[22].
Logically, Mary is no longer the Mother of God (Theotokos): a mere conduit of a heavenly body, she receives neither title nor cult[23]. The cross, instrument of the torment, is held accursed, and all veneration of images, relics and holy places is refused, a point on which the Paulicians objectively met the iconoclasts without thereby merging with them[24].
A Church without priests, without temples and without sacraments?
Paulician ecclesiology is a clean slate: no priesthood, no hierarchy, no church buildings, the temple, they say, being the assembly of the faithful, no water baptism (replaced by a baptism of spirit), no Eucharist in the Catholic sense[25]. The leaders, called didaskaloi (didaskaloi, "masters"), teach surrounded by travelling companions, without ordination or apostolic succession[26]. The sources further credit them with a rigorist morality, multiplied fasts, valued continence, distrust of marriage, in which it is hard to separate ascetic reality from polemical slander[27].
| What the Church confesses | What the Paulicians made of it |
|---|---|
| Christ true God and true man (Nicaea, Chalcedon) | A man adopted at baptism, with a heavenly body |
| All Scripture inspired, Old and New Testaments | The Gospels and Paul alone; the Old Testament set aside |
| Mary Mother of God, venerated | Mary a mere conduit, without cult |
| The glorious cross, icons, relics | The accursed cross, images refused |
| Water baptism, Eucharist, ordained priesthood | Baptism of spirit, commemorative meal, didaskaloi without ordination |
| The visible, hierarchical and sacramental Church | The assembly of the faithful, without temples or priests |
This table sums up the concordant grievances of Peter of Sicily and Photius, reread by Garsoïan: it stands as a documented indictment, not as a profession of faith signed by the accused[28].
Dualists or not? The disputed question
Should the Paulicians be ranked among the dualists, alongside the Manichaeans and the Marcionites? The polemicists say yes; Garsoïan answers: Adoptionists first, become dualists by their own development, by pushing certain premises, notably iconoclast ones, to their conclusion rather than by importing a foreign system[29]. Recent work even stresses that their ideas on the devil fit badly with either absolute dualism or classical mitigated dualism: the dossier remains open, and that is one more reason not to reduce the Paulicians to "Manichaeans" on the faith of a Byzantine insult[30].
Two centuries of didaskaloi: the chronology
Peter of Sicily lists seven successive masters, Constantine-Silvanus, Symeon-Titus, Genesios-Timothy, Joseph-Epaphras, Zacharias, Baanes and Sergius-Tychicus, most of them decked with the name of a companion of Saint Paul: the list counts less for its exactness, its durations overlap and its joins are artificial, than as the chronological framework accepted by all historians since Lemerle[31].
- About 660 to about 681Constantine-Silvanusthe founder of Mananalis
A native of Mananalis, near Samosata, Constantine receives from a passing deacon the Gospels and the epistles of Paul, takes the name of Silvanus and founds his first community at Cibossa, near Colonia in Armenia[32]. Stoned to death around 681-684 by order of the authorities, under Constantine IV[33].
- About 684 to about 690Symeon-Titusthe converted executioner
The officer Symeon, sent to execute Constantine, lets himself be convinced by the faithful, makes his way to Cibossa and becomes Titus. Arrested under Justinian II, he is burned alive with some of his own around 690[34].
- About 690 to about 715Paul and Genesios-Timothycrossing the 8th century
After an obscure interval around a certain Paul, Genesios takes the name of Timothy. Summoned to Constantinople under Leo III, around 722-726, he is examined there and then released, a sign that the nascent iconoclasm does not (yet) hold him for an enemy[35].
- About 715 to about 770Joseph-Epaphras, Zacharias and Baanes the Filthygrowth and schism
Joseph (Epaphras) then Zacharias lead expanding communities; around 745, Baanes, nicknamed the Filthy, provokes a schism over which the polemicists gloat and which historians struggle to reconstruct[36].
- About 801-835Sergius-Tychicusthe missionary reformer
Sergius takes the name of Tychicus and leads the movement for thirty-four years: he reorganises it, disciplines it and launches preaching in every direction, of which he himself boasts. Assassinated in 835, he leaves a sect transformed into a power, and, eight years later, the imperial persecution will make an army of it[37].
From preaching to war: persecutions and revolts
The first martyrs: Constantine IV and Justinian II
Imperial power strikes early and hard: Constantine IV has the founder stoned, Justinian II has his successor burned. But repression fails as it often does: the blood of the executed makes proselytes, and the communities scattered across Armenia and Cappadocia survive their leaders[38].
The iconoclast lull and the first transfer to Thrace
A paradox noted by all historians: the iconoclast emperors, Leo III, Constantine V and their successors, treat the Paulicians relatively gently, since their hostility to images coincides with their own, and use them as garrisons of the frontiers[39]. Around the middle of the 8th century, Constantine V transfers Syrian and Armenian populations, including many Paulicians, to Thrace, facing the Bulgars: this is the first western transplantation of the movement, a century before the great deportation[40]. The Catholic Encyclopedia goes so far as to write, following Conybeare, that these emperors were "practically Paulicians themselves", an excessive formula, but revealing a real convergence of interests[41].
Theodora (843): the great persecution
Everything changes with the regency of Theodora, who restores the icons (843) and undertakes the eradication of the heresy: imperial inquisitors travel through the eastern provinces, and the chronicles count the executed, hangings, crucifixions, beheadings, drownings, up to the manifestly inflated figure of a hundred thousand victims, which the 1911 edition of the Britannica repeats without criticism[42]. Exaggerated or not, the figure bespeaks the scale of the trauma: thousands of Paulicians, rather than abjure, cross the frontier and place themselves under the protection of the Arab emir of Melitene[43]. Religious persecution has just given the Empire what it dreaded: an army of trained heretics, led by a first-rate military chief.
Tephrike, the heretical State allied with the Arabs
Karbeas and the foundation (about 843-863)
The founder of the Paulician principality is Karbeas, an imperial officer who went over to the Arabs with several thousand of his own at the height of the persecution[44]. Welcomed by the emir Umar al-Aqta of Melitene, he fortified Tephrike, present-day Divrigi in eastern Turkey, and made it, with the strongholds of Amara and Argaoun, a military march from which his horsemen raided the Byzantine themes, in coordination with the Arab incursions[45]. Karbeas dies in 863, the very year General Petronas crushes the Arabs at Lalakaon: his work outlives him.
Chrysocheir as far as Ephesus (863-872)
His successor, Chrysocheir ("Golden Hand"), nephew, or son-in-law according to the sources, of Karbeas, carries the war into the heart of the Empire: Nicaea, Nicomedia, and in 867 a thrust as far as Ephesus, whose chroniclers claim he turned the basilica of Saint John into a stable[46]. For nearly ten years, Byzantium endures what no heresy had ever inflicted on it: no longer clandestine preachers, but a territorial power allied with Islam, capable of striking within a few days of the capital.
Bathys Ryax (872): the fall
Emperor Basil I, himself of Armenian origin, takes the matter in hand: after a first campaign in 871, his generals surprise the Paulician army at Bathys Ryax ("the Deep Torrent"), in northern Cappadocia, in 872, a date established by Lemerle against a manuscript variant proposing 878[47]. The heretical army is cut to pieces; Chrysocheir, in flight, is caught and killed near Sebaste, at the place called the Hill of Constantine[48]. Tephrike falls, its fortifications are razed, and the Paulician principality disappears from the map after thirty years of existence.
"In 872 (or, according to other scholars, in 878), the forces of Chrysocheir, chief of the Paulicians, clashed with the Byzantines in a battle fought at Bathys Ryax, in northern Cappadocia, and fled in disorder. The Byzantines pursued them north-east to a hill called the Bounos of Constantine, near Sebaste, and there killed Chrysocheir with many of his soldiers." — Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Asia Minor, entry "Battle of Bathys Ryax"[49]
From Philippopolis to Alexios Komnenos: the Byzantine end
The deportation of Tzimiskes (970)
Defeated in the East, the Paulicians resurface in the West. In 970, Emperor John I Tzimiskes, an Armenian too, has the Paulicians of the East transplanted en masse around Philippopolis (present-day Plovdiv, in Bulgaria), with religious freedom in exchange for frontier guard service[50]. Zonaras puts the transplantation at two hundred thousand souls, a figure taken up by Gibbon and the 1911 Britannica, to be received with the same prudence as Theodora's hundred thousand victims[51]. Philippopolis becomes for two centuries the world centre of Paulicianism: from there the heresy will radiate toward Bulgaria and the Balkans.
Patriarch Theophylact and Bulgaria
From the middle of the 10th century, Patriarch Theophylact of Bulgaria alerts Tsar Peter to a "new heresy" winning over his people: mingled with the Slav populations, some of the Paulicians slide toward the nascent movement of the priest Bogomil, without dissolving into it entirely, since distinct Paulician communities subsist in Thrace until the 12th century[52]. For the detail of this filiation, the reader is referred to the article Bogomilism, treated in this encyclopedia as a subject in its own right.
Alexios Komnenos disputes and converts
At the beginning of the 12th century, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos stays at Philippopolis and personally attacks the heresy: according to his daughter Anna Komnene, he disputes daily with the Paulician leaders, converts a great number of them and founds for the converts, facing the city, a new town, Alexiopolis, or Neokastra, endowed with churches and privileges[53]. The die-hards are pushed back toward the Bogomil heresy, whose leader Basil will be burned at Constantinople in 1118[54]. After Alexios, the Paulicians cease to exist as a distinct body in the Empire: converted, absorbed or effaced, they leave Byzantine history.
"During his stay at Philippopolis, [Alexios] conversed daily with the Manichaeans, who inhabited the town and its surroundings in great numbers, and he brought many of them back to the true faith, for whom he built a new town facing Philippopolis." — Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book XIV, summarised from the edition by B. Leib (Paris, Les Belles Lettres)[55]
What posterity? Bogomils, Cathars and Pavlikeni
The Runciman thesis and its limits
In 1947, Steven Runciman proposed in The Medieval Manichee the great synthesis that made the Paulicians famous: an unbroken dualist chain, from the Paulicians of Armenia to the Bogomils of Bulgaria, then to the Cathars and Waldensians of the West[56]. The thesis charms by its simplicity and keeps a share of truth, the Thracian relay between Paulicians and Bogomils is documented, but medievalists have since strongly qualified it: Hamilton, Barber, Brenon and Pegg have shown that Western Catharism also springs from local preaching, Gregorian anti-clericalism and Gospel readings of its own, without any direct and continuous filiation being demonstrable[57]. Ignispedia treats Catharism and the Waldensians in their own articles: their case will not be remade here.
The Pavlikeni of Bulgaria, reunited with Rome
An unexpected epilogue: in the 17th century, Catholic villages of northern Bulgaria, around Nikopol and Plovdiv, claim Paulician ancestry: these are the Pavlikeni, evangelised by the Franciscans and reunited with Rome, some of whom will later reach the Banat[58]. Biological continuity with the medieval Paulicians remains disputed, recent work speaks of a "legend of Rome" kept up by the people concerned themselves, but the name, thirteen centuries on, testifies to the extraordinary longevity of the memory[59].
The judgment of the Catholic Church
The Christological error: another Christ
Paulicianism flatly contradicts the faith defined at Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451): Christ is not an adopted man, but the Word true God, born of the Father before all ages, become true man, "and the Word was God" (Jn 1, 1), "in the form of God" (Phil 2, 6), "My Lord and my God" (Jn 20, 28)[60]. The Catechism sums up: "The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man" (CCC 464-469)[61]. An adopted Christ can neither reveal the Father in fullness nor divinise man: as Saint Athanasius had already decided against the Arians, only God saves[62].
"The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man, our brother." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 469[63]
The ecclesiological error: another Church
The rest follows: Mary is truly Mother of God (CCC 495; cf. Lk 1, 43: "the mother of my Lord")[64]; the cross is the glorious instrument of salvation (cf. Gal 6, 14) and its veneration is legitimate[65]; water baptism enters into the death and resurrection of Christ (Mt 28, 19; CCC 1213)[66]; the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of the Lord (1 Cor 11, 23-25; CCC 1324)[67]; and the Church is a visible, hierarchical and apostolic society (Mt 16, 18; 1 Tim 3; CCC 857-860)[68]. To reject the Old Testament is finally to reject the Scripture Christ himself declared impossible to abolish (Mt 5, 17-18) and which the Church receives whole as inspired (CCC 121-123)[69].
That does not forbid recognising, as Lemerle does, the share of Byzantine responsibility: a State Church that stones, burns and deports manufactures martyrs for the heresy it claims to extirpate[70]. But the violence of repression never made the victims' doctrine true: Paulicianism remains, in Catholic judgment, a characterised Christological and ecclesiological heresy, whose study illuminates in return the coherence of the faith, from Christ true God to the visible Church, everything holds together.
To go further
Notes and References
"Paulicians", Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11, New York, Robert Appleton, 1911 — full text at newadvent.org/cathen/11583a.htm: origin of the name, the two brothers Paul and John sons of Callinice according to the polemicists, and the Paulicians' own apostolic claim.
1 2 3N. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy, The Hague-Paris, Mouton, 1967: the communities named after the Pauline Churches and the leaders decked with the names of the Apostle's companions.
4N. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy (1967): the central thesis of Armenian and Adoptionist rootedness, against Gnostic or Manichaean importation.
5P. Lemerle, "L'histoire des Pauliciens d'Asie Mineure d'après les sources grecques", Travaux et Mémoires du Centre de recherche d'histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 5, Paris, 1973: prudent reconstruction of events, criticism of the polemical legends.
6 17N. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy, The Hague, Mouton, 1967, p. 152: Christ acknowledged Son of God at his baptism, "the most important sacrament".
7 19Peter of Sicily, History of the Manichaeans called Paulicians (Historia Manichaeorum qui et Pauliciani dicuntur), about 870: the author, envoy of Basil I to Tephrike for the ransom of the captives, spent nine months there.
8Peter of Sicily, History of the Manichaeans, address to the Archbishop of Bulgaria: warning against a heresy already threatening the Balkans.
9Peter of Sicily, History of the Manichaeans, 45: Sergius "boasted of having spread his Gospel from East to West, from North to South" — quoted by the Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Paulicians".
10Photius of Constantinople, Account of the Manichaeans called Paulicians (Narratio de Manichaeis qui et Pauliciani dicuntur) and Against the Manichaeans, in four books.
11Theophanes the Confessor, Chronography; Continuator of Theophanes; Genesios, Histories; Skylitzes, Synopsis; Zonaras, Epitome; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book XIV: framework of events of the persecutions, battles and deportations.
12On the Byzantine use of "Manichaeans" as a generic insult against any supposed dualism, see S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, Cambridge, 1947, and the methodological warning of P. Lemerle (1973).
13The Key of Truth (Ban Ulug), an Armenian ritual edited and translated by F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1898: attribution to the Paulicians disputed, more probable attachment to the Thondrakians; see N. Garsoïan (1967).
14F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (1898): thesis of a primitive Adoptionist Paulicianism, a Jewish-Christian survival — sceptical reception by contemporaries, critical revival by Garsoïan.
15S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, Cambridge University Press, 1947 (French transl. Le manichéisme médiéval, Paris, Payot, 1949): the Paulicians-Bogomils-Cathars chain.
16 56No authentic and undisputed Paulician writing survives: the whole doctrine is known through the polemicists (Peter of Sicily, Photius) and the imperial chronicles — hence the rule of convergence followed in this article.
18The heavenly body passed through Mary "as through a conduit": concordant grievance of Peter of Sicily and Photius, noted by N. Garsoïan (1967) and the Catholic Encyclopedia.
20Peter of Sicily: reception of the four Gospels and the Pauline epistles, rejection of the Old Testament and the epistles of Peter; Acts are disputed according to the testimonies — see Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Paulicians".
21Distinction of the creator God of this world and the heavenly Father: mitigated dualism lent to the Paulicians by the polemicists; see N. Garsoïan (1967) on its own development, without Manichaean importation.
22Refusal of the title Mother of God and of all Marian cult: Photius, Against the Manichaeans; Peter of Sicily; see Catholic Encyclopedia.
23The cross held accursed as instrument of the torment, refusal of images, relics and holy places: Peter of Sicily; objective convergence with iconoclasm without confusion of the movements — see P. Lemerle (1973).
24No priesthood, no temples, no water baptism, no Catholic Eucharist: Peter of Sicily; Photius; see Catholic Encyclopedia, and the critical discussion of N. Garsoïan (1967).
25The leaders called didaskaloi, surrounded by companions, without ordination or succession: Peter of Sicily, list of the seven masters.
26Rigorist morality lent to the Paulicians (fasts, continence, distrust of marriage): polemical testimonies to be received with caution — see N. Garsoïan (1967).
27Table drawn from the concordant grievances of Peter of Sicily (about 870) and Photius, reread by N. Garsoïan (1967): a documented indictment, not a profession of faith by the accused.
28N. Garsoïan (1967): Adoptionism first, dualism developed by its own logic, notably by radicalising iconoclast premises, rather than imported.
29On the difficulties of classifying Paulician dualism (neither absolute nor classical mitigated), see C. Dixon, The Paulicians: Heresy, Persecution and Warfare on the Byzantine Frontier, c. 750-880, and "Polemics and Persecution: East Romans and Paulicians (c. 780-880)", recent work in the line of N. Garsoïan (1967).
30The list of the seven didaskaloi and their borrowed Pauline names: Peter of Sicily; critical revival by P. Lemerle (1973).
31Constantine of Mananalis, the Gospels and Paul received from a deacon, the name of Silvanus, the foundation of Cibossa near Colonia: Peter of Sicily; Catholic Encyclopedia; Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. "Paulician".
32Stoning about 681-684 under Constantine IV: Peter of Sicily; datings vary by one to three years across manuscripts — see P. Lemerle (1973).
33Symeon the converted executioner, become Titus, burned alive under Justinian II about 690: Peter of Sicily; Catholic Encyclopedia.
34Genesios-Timothy examined at Constantinople under Leo III (about 722-726) then released: Peter of Sicily; see P. Lemerle (1973) on the relative tolerance of the first iconoclasts.
35Joseph-Epaphras, Zacharias, then the schism of Baanes the Filthy about 745: Peter of Sicily — hostile account, fragile reconstruction — see P. Lemerle (1973).
36Sergius-Tychicus, thirty-four years of leadership (about 801-835), reorganisation and preaching in every direction, assassination in 835: Peter of Sicily; T. Wolińska, "Sergius, the Paulician Leader, in the Account by Peter of Sicily", Studia Ceranea, 9, 2019, p. 123-140.
37Persecutions of Constantine IV and Justinian II, growth despite repression: Peter of Sicily; Continuator of Theophanes; Catholic Encyclopedia.
38Relative tolerance and military use of the Paulicians under the iconoclast emperors: P. Lemerle (1973); Catholic Encyclopedia.
39Transfer of Syrian and Armenian populations, including Paulicians, to Thrace under Constantine V, in the middle of the 8th century: Theophanes the Confessor, Chronography.
40"The early iconoclast emperors (Leo III and his successors) protected them; Conybeare holds these emperors themselves to have been practically Paulicians" — Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Paulicians": excessive formula, real convergence of interests.
41Persecution of the regency of Theodora (from 843), mass torments, figure of a hundred thousand victims put forward by the chronicles and taken up by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, art. "Paulicians": manifestly inflated, but significant of the scale.
42Flight of the survivors to the emirate of Melitene: Continuator of Theophanes; Genesios; see P. Lemerle (1973).
43Karbeas, officer gone over to the Arabs with his own about 843: Continuator of Theophanes; see P. Lemerle (1973).
44Tephrike (Divrigi), Amara, Argaoun: the Paulician march allied with Emir Umar al-Aqta of Melitene — Continuator of Theophanes; entry "Paulician principality of Tephrike", synthesis of the sources.
45Chrysocheir, successor of Karbeas (863), raids as far as Nicaea, Nicomedia and Ephesus (867): Continuator of Theophanes; the tradition of the basilica of Saint John turned into a stable belongs to the chroniclers — see P. Lemerle (1973).
46Battle of Bathys Ryax, 872 — date established by P. Lemerle (1973) against the 878 variant of some manuscripts; see also the entry "Battle of Bathys Ryax", Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Asia Minor.
47Chrysocheir killed in his flight near Sebaste, at the place called the Hill of Constantine; capture and dismantling of Tephrike: Continuator of Theophanes; entry of the Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World.
48Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Asia Minor (ehw.gr), entry "Battle of Bathys Ryax": account of the 872 battle and the death of Chrysocheir.
49Deportation of the Paulicians of the East around Philippopolis by John I Tzimiskes, in 970, with religious freedom against military service: Skylitzes; Zonaras; see the study "Essence and Ways of Infiltration of the Paulician Heresy in the Medieval Bulgarian Lands" and "Continuity between Early Paulicianism and the Seventeenth-Century Bulgarian Paulicians", Studia Ceranea.
50Figure of two hundred thousand transplanted put forward by Zonaras, taken up by Gibbon then by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, art. "Bogomils": to be received with prudence, like all the chroniclers' effectives.
51Patriarch Theophylact of Bulgaria, letter to Tsar Peter (about 950) against the new heresy: Paulician presence in Bulgaria and slide of some toward the nascent Bogomilism.
52Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book XIV: stay of Alexios I at Philippopolis, daily disputes with the Paulician leaders, mass conversions, foundation of Alexiopolis (Neokastra) for the converts.
53Trial and stake of Basil the Bogomil at Constantinople (1118): Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book XV — see the article Bogomilism.
54Anna Komnene, Alexiad, book XIV, ed. B. Leib, Paris, Les Belles Lettres: the daily interviews of Alexios with the Paulicians of Philippopolis and the foundation of the converts' town.
55Qualifications brought to Runciman: B. Hamilton, Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusades; M. Barber, The Cathars; A. Brenon; M. G. Pegg — Western birth of Catharism: local preaching, anti-clericalism, Gospel readings of its own, without demonstrable continuous filiation.
57The Catholic Pavlikeni of northern Bulgaria (regions of Nikopol and Plovdiv), evangelised by the Franciscans in the 17th century and reunited with Rome, whose ancestors include those of the Banat: see "Continuity between Early Paulicianism and the Seventeenth-Century Bulgarian Paulicians", Studia Ceranea.
58On the "legend of Rome" and the disputed continuity between medieval Paulicians and modern Pavlikeni, see the same study (Studia Ceranea): claimed memory, undemonstrated biological filiation.
59Jn 1, 1; Phil 2, 6; Jn 20, 28: the Word God, in the form of God, confessed "My Lord and my God".
60Catechism of the Catholic Church, 242-248 (the Trinity) and 464-469 (Christ true God and true man) — full text at vatican.va.
61Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 54: "For He was made man that we might be made God" — only God saves; same argument taken up in the Discourses against the Arians (I-II).
62Catechism of the Catholic Church, 469: Jesus "inseparably true God and true man".
63Catechism of the Catholic Church, 495: Mary truly Mother of God; cf. Lk 1, 43.
64Gal 6, 14: "Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
65Mt 28, 19; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1213: water baptism, the door of the sacraments.
661 Cor 11, 23-25; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1324: the Eucharist "the source and summit of the Christian life".
67Mt 16, 18; 1 Tim 3; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 857-860: the apostolic, visible and hierarchical Church.
68Mt 5, 17-18; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 121-123: the Old Testament, an inspired and irrevocable part of Scripture.
69P. Lemerle (1973): bloody repression as a factory of martyrs — a methodological lesson that takes nothing away from the doctrinal judgment.
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