It
is important to remember that whatever the different names used
to describe the Paulicians during different periods and in different
places, theirs was a single and unified living movement. Like
a plant, the seed of their teaching was continually sown, grown,
flowered, fruited, withered, and almost dead, only to take root
and spring up elsewhere.
The movement of the Paulicians was extensive. Wherever there are
accounts of 'the destruction of the heretics', if they do not
describe the persecution of the Arians or Donatists, then they
are quite probably describing the persecution of a group of the
Paulicians, or of a group of people who were influenced by them.
The Nestorian Church, for example, was greatly influenced by the
teaching which was transmitted through Paul of Samosata and the
Paulicians. It spread as far east as China and eventually spread
back the way it had come. Under the reign of the Muslim Khalifs,
who tolerated anyone who wished to practise Christianity in peace,
the Nestorian Church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and
Cyprus. Their numbers, with those of the Jacobites who were another
Christian sect, were computed to surpass the members of the Greek
and Latin official churches. Unitarian Christians flourished under
the protection of the Muslims.
The
Nestorian Church was also well-established further afield. In
Malabar, in India, they united with the followers of St St. Thomas
who is reputed to be buried near Madras. They were hardly bothered
by anyone until the sea routes to the East were opened up in the
sixteenth century [by this time Muslims had ruled major parts
of India for six centuries]:
When
the Portuguese first opened the navigation of India, the Christians
of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar.
Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most cordial
allies of the Portuguese, but the inquisitors soon discerned in
the Christians of St. Thomas, the unpardonable guilt of a 'heresy'....Instead
of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual
and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their ancestors,
to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch....they united their
adoration of the two persons of Christ; the title of Mother of
God was offensive to the ear, and they measured with scrupulous
avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition
of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When
her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas,
they indignantly exclaimed, 'We are Christians, not idolaters!'....Their
separation from the western world had left them in ignorance of
the improvements or corruptions of a thousand years. [1]
The leaders of the Nestorian Church in Malabar were killed by
drowning, and the remainder were 'converted' to Roman Catholicism
by the Jesuits, whose leader was Alexes de Menezes. After sixty
years the Portuguese official clergy were driven out, and the
Nestorian pattern of worship was reestablished.
A similar story is revealed about the Nestorian Church in Abyssinia.
The Jesuits arrived there in 1557 and in 1626 their leader, Alphonso
Mendez,'converted' the Abyssinian emperor and his subjects to
the official religion of Rome:
A
new baptism, a new ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and
they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead were
torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of the living
were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defence of their
religion and their liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with
desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished
in the blood of the insurgents...neither merit, nor rank, nor
sex, could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome.
[2]
The Jesuits, however, were finally driven from Abyssinia, and
its inhabitants returned to Unitarian worship.
It is also quite possible that some of the first Christians in
Great Britain were Paulicians, although it is more likely that
they were Arians. In the reign of Theodosius, for example, two
Arian bishops, who were followers of Priscillian, were banished
to the isles of Scilly. Worship of the Divine Unity in Great Britain
may well have spread through them, or by means of other earlier
Unitarian exiles.
Certainly
the first form of Christianity in Great Britain was Unitarian,
and England was one of the last countries to be taken over by
the Roman Catholic Church. As we have seen, Roman Catholicism
was not well established in this country until the late seventh
century.
Toland's
description of the Unitarian Christians of Ireland in his book,
'Nazarenus', bears a marked resemblance to the Paulicians whose
ways are described in The Key of Truth [3]. Toland says that the
first Christians in Ireland believed in One God, and not in the
doctrine of the Trinity. There were no images in their places
of worship. They had no doctrine of transubstantiation. They had
no doctrine of confession, and believed that no-one had the power
to absolve wrong actions except God. Their gospel was written
in their native tongue, and was not one of the four gospels officially
approved by the Official Church. Their saints were not the same
as those of the Church, and they were not canonised. Their marriage
ceremonies were not necessarily in the church. There was no doctrine
of celibacy. All their leaders married and had families. They
practised temperance at all times, and usually ate only once a
day. They regarded their church not as a political empire or as
an organisation, but as a congregation of faithful men and women
who were present throughout the world. They called themselves
the Children of the Church.
When
the first Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in Ireland, they
denounced the Irish Unitarians as 'pagans' and 'heretics', and
set about changing their way of life. The chief leader of the
Catholic missionaries was called Patrick (390- 460). His success
is demonstrated by the fact that today he is ironically regarded
as the apostle and patron saint of Ireland. He was responsible
for burning more than three hundred of the Celtic gospels. No
Irish Unitarian gospel exists today. As with the Gothic alphabet,
the Gaelic alphabet is no longer alive today.
These
three brief examples of the Unitarian Churches in Malabar, Abyssinia
and Ireland, indicate the probable extent of the influence of
the Paulicians. However their main activity was in and around
Europe, and it was there that they were persecuted more severely.
Notes:
[1] E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VI, p. 64.
[2] Ibid, p. 84.
[3] E.C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth.
