Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Part II

About the middle of the eight century, Constantine, surnamed
Copronymus by the worshippers of images, had made an expedition
into Armenia, and found, in the cities of Melitene and
Theodosiopolis, a great number of Paulicians, his kindred
heretics. As a favor, or punishment, he transplanted them from
the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by
this emigration their doctrine was introduced and diffused in
Europe. 21 If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon mingled
with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep
root in a foreign soil. The Paulicians of Thrace resisted the
storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with
their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their
preachers, who solicited, not without success, the infant faith
of the Bulgarians. 22 In the tenth century, they were restored
and multiplied by a more powerful colony, which John Zimisces 23
transported from the Chalybian hills to the valleys of Mount
Haemus. The Oriental clergy who would have preferred the
destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the
Manichaeans: the warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their
valor: their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant with
mischief; but, on the side of the Danube, against the Barbarians
of Scythia, their service might be useful, and their loss would
be desirable. Their exile in a distant land was softened by a
free toleration: the Paulicians held the city of Philippopolis
and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their subjects; the
Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a line of
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native
Bulgarians were associated to the communion of arms and heresy.
As long as they were awed by power and treated with moderation,
their voluntary bands were distinguished in the armies of the
empire; and the courage of these dogs, ever greedy of war, ever
thirsty of human blood, is noticed with astonishment, and almost
with reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks. The same spirit
rendered them arrogant and contumacious: they were easily
provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often
violated by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy.
In the midst of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred
Manichaeans deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus, 24 and
retired to their native homes. He dissembled till the moment of
revenge; invited the chiefs to a friendly conference; and
punished the innocent and guilty by imprisonment, confiscation,
and baptism. In an interval of peace, the emperor undertook the
pious office of reconciling them to the church and state: his
winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the thirteenth
apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole
days and nights in theological controversy. His arguments were
fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the honors and rewards
which he bestowed on the most eminent proselytes; and a new city,
surrounded with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified
with his own name, was founded by Alexius for the residence of
his vulgar converts. The important station of Philippopolis was
wrested from their hands; the contumacious leaders were secured
in a dungeon, or banished from their country; and their lives
were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an
emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt
alive before the church of St. Sophia. 25 But the proud hope of
eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by
the invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or
refused to obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they
soon resumed their civil and religious laws. In the beginning of
the thirteenth century, their pope or primate (a manifest
corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and
Dalmatia, and governed, by his vicars, the filial congregations
of Italy and France. 26 From that aera, a minute scrutiny might
prolong and perpetuate the chain of tradition. At the end of the
last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the valleys of Mount
Haemus, where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently
tormented by the Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The
modern Paulicians have lost all memory of their origin; and their
religion is disgraced by the worship of the cross, and the
practice of bloody sacrifice, which some captives have imported
from the wilds of Tartary. 27

21 (return) [ Copronymus transported his heretics; and thus says
Cedrenus, (p. 463,) who has copied the annals of Theophanes.]

22 (return) [ Petrus Siculus, who resided nine months at Tephrice
(A.D. 870) for the ransom of captives, (p. 764,) was informed of
their intended mission, and addressed his preservative, the
Historia Manichaeorum to the new archbishop of the Bulgarians,
(p. 754.)]

23 (return) [ The colony of Paulicians and Jacobites transplanted
by John Zimisces (A.D. 970) from Armenia to Thrace, is mentioned
by Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 209) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad,
l. xiv. p. 450, &c.)]

24 (return) [ The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (l. v. p. 131, l. vi.
p. 154, 155, l. xiv. p. 450-457, with the Annotations of Ducange)
records the transactions of her apostolic father with the
Manichaeans, whose abominable heresy she was desirous of
refuting.]

25 (return) [ Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a
sect of Gnostics, who soon vanished, (Anna Comnena, Alexiad, l.
xv. p. 486-494 Mosheim, Hist. Ecclesiastica, p. 420.)]

26 (return) [ Matt. Paris, Hist. Major, p. 267. This passage of
our English historian is alleged by Ducange in an excellent note
on Villehardouin (No. 208,) who found the Paulicians at
Philippopolis the friends of the Bulgarians.]

27 (return) [ See Marsigli, Stato Militare dell’ Imperio
Ottomano, p. 24.]

In the West, the first teachers of the Manichaean theology had
been repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince. The
favor and success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries must be imputed to the strong, though secret,
discontent which armed the most pious Christians against the
church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive, her despotism odious;
less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the worship of saints
and images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous: she
had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of
transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more
corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of
the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who
wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. Three
different roads might introduce the Paulicians into the heart of
Europe. After the conversion of Hungary, the pilgrims who visited
Jerusalem might safely follow the course of the Danube: in their
journey and return they passed through Philippopolis; and the
sectaries, disguising their name and heresy, might accompany the
French or German caravans to their respective countries. The
trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the Adriatic,
and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of
every climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the
Paulicians were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy
and Sicily: in peace and war, they freely conversed with
strangers and natives, and their opinions were silently
propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms beyond the Alps. 28
It was soon discovered, that many thousand Catholics of every
rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean heresy; and
the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the first
act and signal of persecution. The Bulgarians, 29 a name so
innocent in its origin, so odious in its application, spread
their branches over the face of Europe. United in common hatred
of idolatry and Rome, they were connected by a form of episcopal
and presbyterian government; their various sects were
discriminated by some fainter or darker shades of theology; but
they generally agreed in the two principles, the contempt of the
Old Testament and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the
cross or in the eucharist. A confession of simple worship and
blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was
their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations
were divided into two classes of disciples, of those who
practised, and of those who aspired. It was in the country of the
Albigeois, 30 in the southern provinces of France, that the
Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes
of martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the
neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth
century on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the Eastern
emperors were revived by Frederic the Second. The insurgents of
Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of Languedoc:
Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora. It
was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the heroes of
the Crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by
the founders of the Inquisition; 31 an office more adapted to
confirm, than to refute, the belief of an evil principle. The
visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were
extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by
flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. But the invincible
spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the
Western world. In the state, in the church, and even in the
cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of
St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the
Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the
visions of the Gnostic theology. 3111 The struggles of Wickliff
in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual;
but the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced
with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.

28 (return) [ The introduction of the Paulicians into Italy and
France is amply discussed by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii
Aevi, tom. v. dissert. lx. p. 81-152) and Mosheim, (p. 379-382,
419-422.) Yet both have overlooked a curious passage of William
the Apulian, who clearly describes them in a battle between the
Greeks and Normans, A.D. 1040, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital.
tom. v. p. 256:)

Cum Graecis aderant quidam, quos pessimus error
Fecerat amentes, et ab ipso nomen habebant.

But he is so ignorant of their doctrine as to make them a kind of
Sabellians or Patripassians.]

29 (return) [ Bulgari, Boulgres, Bougres, a national appellation,
has been applied by the French as a term of reproach to usurers
and unnatural sinners. The Paterini, or Patelini, has been made
to signify a smooth and flattering hypocrite, such as l’Avocat
Patelin of that original and pleasant farce, (Ducange, Gloss.
Latinitat. Medii et Infimi Aevi.) The Manichaeans were likewise
named Cathari or the pure, by corruption. Gazari, &c.]

30 (return) [ Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the
Albigeois, a just, though general, idea is expressed by Mosheim,
(p. 477-481.) The detail may be found in the ecclesiastical
historians, ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and
amongst these Fleury is the most impartial and moderate.]

31 (return) [ The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition of
Tholouse (A.D. 1307-1323) have been published by Limborch,
(Amstelodami, 1692,) with a previous History of the Inquisition
in general. They deserved a more learned and critical editor. As
we must not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will
observe, that of a list of criminals which fills nineteen folio
pages, only fifteen men and four women were delivered to the
secular arm.]

3111 (return) [ The popularity of “Milner’s History of the
Church” with some readers, may make it proper to observe, that
his attempt to exculpate the Paulicians from the charge of
Gnosticism or Manicheism is in direct defiance, if not in
ignorance, of all the original authorities. Gibbon himself, it
appears, was not acquainted with the work of Photius, “Contra
Manicheos Repullulantes,” the first book of which was edited by
Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana, pars ii. p. 349, 375, the
whole by Wolf, in his Anecdota Graeca. Hamburg 1722. Compare a
very sensible tract. Letter to Rev. S. R. Maitland, by J G.
Dowling, M. A. London, 1835.—M.]

A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and the
value of their reformation, will prudently ask from what articles
of faith, above or against our reason, they have enfranchised the
Christians; for such enfranchisement is doubtless a benefit so
far as it may be compatible with truth and piety. After a fair
discussion, we shall rather be surprised by the timidity, than
scandalized by the freedom, of our first reformers. 32 With the
Jews, they adopted the belief and defence of all the Hebrew
Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden of Eden to
the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound, like the
Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine
law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation the
reformers were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the
theology of the four, or the six first councils; and with the
Athanasian creed, they pronounced the eternal damnation of all
who did not believe the Catholic faith. Transubstantiation, the
invisible change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of
Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and
pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their
senses, of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first
Protestants were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the
words of Jesus in the institution of the sacrament. Luther
maintained a corporeal, and Calvin a real, presence of Christ in
the eucharist; and the opinion of Zuinglius, that it is no more
than a spiritual communion, a simple memorial, has slowly
prevailed in the reformed churches. 33 But the loss of one
mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of
original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which
have been strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtile
questions had most assuredly been prepared by the fathers and
schoolmen; but the final improvement and popular use may be
attributed to the first reformers, who enforced them as the
absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the weight of
supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a
sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that
God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

32 (return) [ The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are
exposed in the second part of the general history of Mosheim; but
the balance, which he has held with so clear an eye, and so
steady a hand, begins to incline in favor of his Lutheran
brethren.]

33 (return) [ Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and
perfect, but in the fundamental articles of the church of
England, a strong and explicit declaration against the real
presence was obliterated in the original copy, to please the
people or the Lutherans, or Queen Elizabeth, (Burnet’s History of
the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 82, 128, 302.)]

Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and
important; and the philosopher must own his obligations to these
fearless enthusiasts. 34 I. By their hands the lofty fabric of
superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercesson of
the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground. Myriads of both
sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and
labors of social life. A hierarchy of saints and angels, of
imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their
temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial
happiness; their images and relics were banished from the church;
and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the
daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of
Paganism was supplied by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer
and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of
the Deity. It only remains to observe, whether such sublime
simplicity be consistent with popular devotion; whether the
vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not be
inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and
indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which
restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave
from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils,
were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world;
and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the
Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom,
however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the
Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding
the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal
rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of
the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or
personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus 35 the guilt
of his own rebellion; 36 and the flames of Smithfield, in which
he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists
by the zeal of Cranmer. 37 The nature of the tiger wa s the same,
but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual
and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff; the
Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without
revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the
antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and disputes
were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private
judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and
enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret
reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the
reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and
the disciples of Erasmus 38 diffused a spirit of freedom and
moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a
common benefit, an inalienable right: 39 the free governments of
Holland 40 and England 41 introduced the practice of toleration;
and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the
prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has
understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows
that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly
reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs:
the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the
knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of
orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh, or
a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity
are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism.
The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the web of
mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians,
whose number must not be computed from their separate
congregations; and the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those
men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who
indulge the license without the temper of philosophy. 42 4211

34 (return) [ “Had it not been for such men as Luther and
myself,” said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, “you
would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred.”]

35 (return) [ The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique
of Chauffepie is the best account which I have seen of this
shameful transaction. See likewise the Abbe d’Artigny, Nouveaux
Memoires d’Histoire, &c., tom. ii. p. 55-154.]

36 (return) [ I am more deeply scandalized at the single
execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in
the Auto de Fes of Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin
seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps
envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the
judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred
trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not
varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In
his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger, who
neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic
inquisition yields the same obedience which he requires, but
Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by;
a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicocle,
tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie) four hundred years before the
publication of the Gospel. * Note: Gibbon has not accurately
rendered the sense of this passage, which does not contain the
maxim of charity Do unto others as you would they should do unto
you, but simply the maxim of justice, Do not to others the which
would offend you if they should do it to you.—G.]

37 (return) [ See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and
humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the
primate.]

38 (return) [ Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational
theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by
the Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in
England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge,
(Burnet, Hist. of Own Times, vol. i. p. 261-268, octavo edition.)
Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.]

39 (return) [ I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of
the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly
defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and
philosophers.]

40 (return) [ See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on
the Religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with
Grotius, (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in
12mo.,) who approves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only
condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.]

41 (return) [ Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p.
53, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the
Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the
Trinity, would still have a tolerable scope for persecution if
the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred
statutes.]

42 (return) [ I shall recommend to public animadversion two
passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of
his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of
Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276) the priest, at the second
(vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble!]

4211 (return) [ There is something ludicrous, if it were not
offensive, in Gibbon holding up to “public animadversion” the
opinions of any believer in Christianity, however imperfect his
creed. The observations which the whole of this passage on the
effects of the reformation, in which much truth and justice is
mingled with much prejudice, would suggest, could not possibly be
compressed into a note; and would indeed embrace the whole
religious and irreligious history of the time which has elapsed
since Gibbon wrote.—M.]