NEW MANICHEANS.
I. In the East.
Euchites, Predecessors of the Bogomiles (§ 1). Bogomile Doctrine of Creation and Salvation (§ 2). Bogomile Practises and History (§ 3). II. In the West.
Their Diffusion and Names; Cathari, Bulgari, Albi-
genses (§ 1). Forerunners and Foundations (§ 2). Albigensian Doctrines (§3). Doctrines of the Cathari (§ 4). Campaigns Against Them (§ 5).
The term " New Manicheans " may conveniently be applied to certain medieval dualisjtic sects, which both in their dualistic teaching and in their organization and ascetic principles represent a recrudescence of Manicheism (see Mani, Manicheans), with which they are historically related. The principal sects falling under this category are: Euchites and Bogomiles of the East, and the Cathari and Albigenses of the West.
I. In the East: The dualistic Bogomiles, who appeared early in the twelfth century in Bulgaria
New Manicheans
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
and the neighboring districts, arose from the amalgamation of the Paulicians (q.v.) and the Euchites or Messalians (q.v.) . Both these earlier
i. Euchites, sects had wandered, between the eighth
Predecessors and tenth centuries, from Armenia,
of the Mesopotamia, and northern Syria,
Bogomiles. to Thrace, where they had become absorbed in the Slavic Bulgarians. The dogmatic and ethical dualism evolved in Paulicianism from its Marcionitic basis received from the Euchites an ascetic and orgiastic element. [The Key of Truth (Armenian text, Eng. transl., and introduction by F. C. Conybeare, Oxford, 1898), which Conybeare calls " a manual of the Paulician church " and attributes to the early medieval period, contradicts the charge of dualism made by medieval writers against this party, a. h. n.] This was the more easy since an ascetic rigorism, either gnostic or Manichean in origin, had been an important factor in the earlier phases of the Paulician sect. There was also doubtless some intermixture of Persian Manicheism. Paulicianism, deriving its elements partly from Persian Manicheism and partly from Marcionism, brought to the Bulgarian heretic not only the lofty authority of their " apostles "or " perfected," but also the rejection of the Old Testament, an asceticism which commanded to abstain from meat, and a horror of the cross. Euchitism, on the other hand, gave as its ancient Manichean heritage the doctrine of the evil soul generated in man by Satan, to be conquered only by the prayer and intercession of those made perfect in asceticism. All these early elements were overlaid partly by Slavic paganism and partly by the independent speculations of the leaders of the sect. The fully developed system of the Bogomiles of the early twelfth century, therefore, reveals its kinship with the older Gnostic and Manichean dualism only in its simpler basal principles. A prelude to the Bogomilian system is furnished by the doctrines of the Thracian Euchites about 1050, as described by Psellus in " On the Activity of Demons " (ed. F Boissonade, Nuremberg, 1838; also MPG, cxxii.). Their view of God and the universe was one of relative dualism. From the highest God, who ruled over the supramundane regions, emanated two sons, the older, Satanael, controlling the earthly world, and the younger, Christ, the lord of the heavenly world. This dualism, which was regarded as merely transitory, gave rise to three divisions of the Euchites. One honored Satanael and Christ equally; another honored Christ alone, but feared Satanael too much to scorn or blaspheme him; the third reverenced only Satanael as the firstborn of the highest God and the creator of the visible world, considering Christ the cause of injurious phenomena in nature. These Euchites, evidently a development of the earlier Messalians, seem to have become amalgamated with the Paulicians of Thrace and Bulgaria toward the end of the eleventh century, thus giving rise to the great sect of the Bogomiles. Their name signifies " friends of God," evidently a special designation of the " perfected " of the sect.
The Bogomiles rejected the Mosaic writings, but accepted the Psalter, the " Book of the Sixteen
Prophets," four Gospels, the writings of the apostles, and various apocrypha. The Euchite dualism of Satanael and Christ was evolved by them into a cosmogonic drama, which opens
2. Bogomile with the account of the creation and Doctrine of fall in Genesis, Elohim being inter- Creation and preted as Satanael. Falling from
Salvation, heaven, this Satanael-Elohim creates the terrestrial world as recorded in Genesis, and forms man of mud, while the moisture falling from the right great toe of this human figure assumes the form of the serpent. Satanael then endeavors to breathe into the lifeless man, but succeeds only in sending breath through the image's toe into the serpent, which thus receives life. In despair Satanael sends a messenger to the highest God to vivify man, promising that man shall then belong equally to the highest God and to Satanael, thus filling the place in the upper world of angels made vacant by the fall of Satanael. God accepts this agreement, but Satanael, seeking to win Adam and Eve for himself alone, enters the serpent and embraces Eve, thus becoming the parent of Cain and his sister Calomena. Adam later begets by Eve Abel and other sons and daughters. After death entered the terrestrial world, however, the highest God deprived the recreant demiurge Satanael of his divine form and creative power, though permitting him for a time to rule the lower world and humanity. Through his tool, Moses, and through the Decalogue, full of contradictions and folly, Satanael deceived countless men, until, for their salvation, God caused the Logos to emanate from himself as his second born son in 5500 a.m. This Logos, or redeeming principle, known now as Michael or " the angel of great counsel," and again as Jesus or Christ descending from heaven, entered the Virgin by her right ear and seemed to assume the body of an earthly man. Really, however, he brought his spiritual body from the higher world, and with this body, though apparently born of the Virgin, he proclaimed the Gospel to mankind. He thus conquered Satanael, who became the powerless Satan. The passion, death, and resurrection were docetic, and he now occupies Satanael's former place at the right hand of God, though at the last (cf. I Cor. xv. 28) he shall return to the Father whence he emanated. The trinitarianism of the Bogomiles is thus Sabellian.
The cult and the ethics of the Bogomiles show
many parallels with the teachings of the Euchites.
A certain amount of reverence must be shown the
demons whom the highest God per-
3. Bogomile mitted to rule temporarily over the Practises world, lest injury be received from
and History, them. Outward conformity with the Church was therefore required. It was also held, in genuine Euchitic fashion, that demons of Satan dwell in all men and abide, after the death of the sinful, in or near their corpses to punish them. From the Bogomiles, on the other hand, these torturing spirits flee a bow-shot away, for in these " friends of God " dwells the Holy Ghost begotten of the Son. The Bogomiles, therefore, did not die but were painlessly freed from the foul raiment of sinful flesh and clad in the garment of Christ —