a stable (867), but was killed by the Greeks in 871, and the sect had to submit to the Emperor Basil
the Macedonian. He sent among them the monk Petrus Siculus, who thus became acquainted with
their doctrines and collected the materials for his work.
After this the sect lost its political significance, and gradually disappeared from history.
Many were transferred to Philippopolis in Thrace about 970, as guards of the frontier, and enjoyed
toleration. Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118) disputed with their leaders, rewarded the converts, and
punished the obstinate. The Crusaders found some remains in 1204, when they captured
Constantinople.
III. The doctrines and practices of the Paulicians are known to us only from the reports of
the orthodox opponents and a few fragments of the epistles of Sergius. They were a strange mixture
of dualism, demiurgism, docetism, mysticism and pseudo-Paulinism, and resemble in many respects
the Gnostic system of Marcion.
(1) Dualism was their fundamental principle.^757 The good God created the spiritual world;
the bad God or demiurge created the sensual world. The former is worshipped by the Paulicians,
i.e. the true Christians, the latter by the "Romans" or Catholics.
(2) Contempt of matter. The body is the seat of evil desire, and is itself impure. It holds the
divine soul as in a prison.
(3) Docetism. Christ descended from heaven in an ethereal body, passed through the womb
of Mary as through a channel, suffered in appearance, but not in reality, and began the process of
redemption of the spirit from the chains of matter.
(4) The Virgin Mary was not "the mother of God," and has a purely external connection
with Jesus. Peter the Sicilian says, that they did not even allow her a place among the good and
virtuous women. The true theotokos is the heavenly Jerusalem, from which Christ came out and
to which he returned.
(5) They rejected the Old Testament as the work of the Demiurge, and the Epistles of Peter.
They regarded Peter as a false apostle, because he denied his master, preached Judaism rather than
Christianity, was the enemy of Paul (Gal. 2:11) and the pillar of the Catholic hierarchy. They
accepted the four Gospels, the Acts, fourteen Epistles of Paul, and the Epistles of James, John and
Jude. At a later period, however, they seem to have confined themselves, like Marcion, to the
writings of Paul and Luke, adding to them probably the Gospel of John. They claimed also to
possess an Epistle to the Laodiceans; but this was probably identical with the Epistle to the Ephesians.
Their method of exposition was allegorical.
(6) They rejected the priesthood, the sacraments, the worship of saints and relics, the sign
of the cross (except in cases of serious illness), and all externals in religion. Baptism means only
the baptism of the Spirit; the communion with the body and blood of Christ is only a communion
with his word and doctrine.
In the place of priests ( and ) the Paulicians had teachers and pastors ( and
μ ), companions or itinerant missionaries ( μ ), and scribes ( ). In the place of churches
they had meeting-houses called "oratories" ( ); but the founders and leaders were esteemed
757
Petrus Siculus puts this first (p. 16):Πρω̑τονμὲν γάρ ἐστι τὸ κατ̓ αὐτοὺςγνώρισματὸ δύο ἀρχὰςὁμολογει̑ν,πονηρὸν
θεὸν καὶ ἀγαθόν.. He says the Paulicians reject the impious writings of the Manichaeans, but propagate their contents by
tradition from generation to generation.