Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/251

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THE PAULICIANS
252

charged with the curious dualism of believing in two sons of God. Satanaël the elder corresponds to the Gnostic demiurge, while the younger is Christ to whom heavenly things are assigned. The sect was said to worship both sons, as springing from the same Father. If so, these Euchites could not be Manichæan, and their dualism must be different from the Persian. But some were reported only to reverence the younger son, since he had chosen the better part, the heavenly—still without saying anything ill of the senior; while others were said to honour the elder as the first-born and creator of the world, and even to ascribe envy to the younger son, on account of which he sends earthquakes, hail, pestilence. But this is confusing and uncertain. What seems clear is that the Euchites were an ecstatic sect who attributed great value to long, exciting prayers. We first hear the name as early as the fourth century; and traces of them in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor are to be met with again and again during the intermediate ages. There is therefore reason to suppose that they lingered on to the time of the activity of the Paulicians, under whose influence they were quickened into renewed earnestness. If it is true that they held every man to be inhabited by a demon from his birth, they would seem to have accepted a very extravagant doctrine of original sin, which would be in sharp conflict with the belief of the Paulicians, who denied anything of the kind. But demonology was now rampant in Christendom, and people would not look too nicely at the question of consistency in accepting it. Still, if the Euchites held this view, they must not be identified with the Paulicians, who show no trace of it.

Another body commonly associated with the Paulicians, especially in Bulgaria, was that of the Bogomiles, or "Friends of God."[1] The fullest account of their tenets is given by Euthymius,[2] according to whom they rejected the Mosaic

  1. Θεόφιλοι.
  2. Panoplia, Tit. 23, Narratio de Bogomilis. The Princess Anna Comnena will not describe their tenets lest she should pollute her lips. She writes: ἰνα μὴ γλῶτταν μολύνω τὴν ἑμαυτῆς (Alexias, xv. 9; vol. ii. p. 357).

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