as "apostles" and "prophets." There is no trace of the Manichaean distinction between two classes
of the electi and credentes.
(7) Their morals were ascetic. They aimed to emancipate the spirit from the power of the
material body, without, however, condemning marriage and the eating of flesh; but the Baanites
ran into the opposite extreme of an antinomian abuse of the flesh, and reveled in licentiousness,
even incest. In both extremes they resembled the Gnostic sects. According to Photius, the Paulicians
were also utterly deficient in veracity, and denied their faith without scruple on the principle that
falsehood is justifiable for a good end.
§ 132. The Euchites and other Sects in the East.
I. Michael Psellus (a learned Constantinopolitan, 11th cent.): Diavlogo" peri; ejnergeiva" daimovnwn,
ed. Gaulmin. Par. 1615; also by J. F. Boissonade. Norimbergae, 1838. Cedrenus (in the 11th
cent.): Histor. Compend. (ed. Bonn. I. 514).—On the older Euchites and Messalians see
Epiphanius (Haer. 80), Theodoret (Hist. Eccl. IV. 10), John of Damascus (De Haer., c. 80),
Photius (Bibl. cod. 52), and Walch: Ketzer-Historie, III. 481 sqq. and 536 sqq.
II. Schnitzer: Die Euchiten im elften Jahrh., in Stirm’s "Studien der evang. Geistlichkeit
Würtemberg’s," vol. XI., H. I. 169. Gieseler, II. 232 sq. Neander, III. 590 sqq., comp. II. 277
sqq.
The Euchites were mystic monks with dualistic principles derived from Parsism. They held
that a demon dwells in every man from his birth, and can be expelled only by unceasing silent
prayer, which they exalted above every spiritual exercise. Hence their name.^758 They were also
called Enthusiasts by the people on account of their boasted ecstasies, in which they fancied that
they received special revelations. Psellus calls them "devil-worshippers." They despised all outward
forms of worship. Rumor charged them with lewdness and infanticide in their secret assemblies;
but the same stories were told of the early Christians, and deserve no credit.
They appear in the eleventh century in Mesopotamia and Armenia, in some connection with
the Paulicians. They were probably the successors of the older Syrian Euchites or Messalians of
the fourth and fifth centuries, who in their conceit had reached the height of ascetic perfection,
despised manual labor and all common occupations, and lived on alms—the first specimens of
mendicant friars.
From the Euchites sprang towards the close of the eleventh century the Bogomiles (the
Slavonic name for Euchites),^759 and Catharists (i.e. the Purists, Puritans), and spread from Bulgaria
into the West. They will occupy our attention in the next period.
Another Eastern sect, called Thondracians (from the village Thondrac), was organized by
Sembat, a Paulician, in the province of Ararat, between 833 and 854. They sprang from the
Paulicians, and in spite of persecution made numerous converts in Armenia, among them a bishop,
(^758) ΕὐχήταιorΕυχι̑ται, fromΕὐχή,prayer. The Syriac name Messalians( ), praying people, from oravit(Dan.
6:11; Ezra 6:10).
(^759) From Hospodi pomilui, the Slavonic Kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy upon us. It is the response in the Russian litany,
and is usually chanted by a choir with touching effect. Schaffarik derives the name from a Bulgarian bishop named Bogomil,
who represented that heresy in the middle of the tenth century.