paulicians

Updated: May 28, 2025

A sect known as the Paulicians arose in Samosata in Asia Minor, which combined Manicheism with a peculiar reverence for the teaching of St. Paul. Fiercely persecuted by the Christians, they revolted, joined with the Mahommedans, and wasted much of Asia Minor. Thence their doctrines spread fast. It would be of interest to know how much of their physical qualities were transmitted also.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle

To regard this command as the indispensable condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers do now, and as the Moravian brothers, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bogomilites, and the Paulicians did in the past, is a one-sided heresy.

graf Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God Is Within You

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.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

The objects which had been transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared to the eyes of the Paulicians in their genuine and naked colors. An image made without hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their merit or value.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

The testimony of an enemy has ever been deemed weighty. The following is appropriate and decisive from the polished pen of the historian of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:" "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.

David Steele - Notes on the Apocalypse

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.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

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.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

With Chrysocheir, the glory of the Paulicians faded and withered: on the second expedition of the emperor, the impregnable Tephrice, was deserted by the heretics, who sued for mercy or escaped to the borders.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5