RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Paul the Deacon Paulicians
guished ancestry, the epitaph by Jerome summing up in two lines the fact that she could trace descent from Scipio, Agamemnon, the iEmilian gens, and the illustrious iEmilius Paulus. She was also possessed of very large wealth. She was married when quite young to the Senator Toxotius, a member of the Julian gens, and was the mother of four daughters, one of them Julia, generally called Eustochium, and one son, named after his father. Her connection with Christianity seems to have come through her family, as there is no report of her conversion; she was quite early in life inclined to asceticism, and this bent was probably intensified by her intercourse with Epiphanius of Salamis and Paulinus of Antioch, whom she entertained during their presence at the Roman synod of 382. Through these bishops she became an intimate of Jerome, who so largely dominated her later life. She lost her husband in 380 and one of her daughters in 384 (another of her daughters died possibly in 386); and in that year she decided to leave Rome and take up her residence in the East. She disregarded the entreaties of her unmarried daughter Blaesilla, who desired her mother to delay departure until after her marriage, and the laments of her son, whom she left to the guardianship of the praetor. She then sailed for the East, joined Jerome at Antioch, passed through Palestine to Egypt, and returned to settle at Bethlehem in 386. She was influential in inducing Marcella (q.v.) to reside in Palestine; the letter of Paula and Eustochium to Marcella is in annotated English translation in Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society Publications (London, 1896). At Bethlehem Paula and Eustochium built a convent, where they resided, and a hospice, then a monastery, and after that a convent of three degrees for women. She pursued her studies of the Bible with Jerome, having learned Hebrew and already being versed in Greek and of course in Latin. By her incessant charities and largess she impoverished herself and laid a weight of debt upon her daughter, even the counsels of Jerome (who records in De vir ill., cxxxv., that he wrote daily to her and her daughter) being unavailing in the direction of greater prudence. It was partly by the mortifications to which she subjected herself that her death was occasioned. At her death the bishops of the surrounding cities were present, and her funeral showed by the numbers present and the demonstrations made the estimation in which she was held. She was buried in the cave of the nativity.
Paula was the name also of a granddaughter of Saint Paula, the daughter of her son Toxotius. Under Jerome's influence she was probably sent to Bethlehem and there brought up to the ascetic life under the care of her aunt Eustochium. She figures in Jerome's correspondence, and several of his commentaries are dedicated to her and her aunt (cf. Jerome, Epist., cvii., Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2 ser., vi. 189-195).
Bibliography: The principal source is Jerome, Epist., cviii., reproduced in ASB, Jan., ii., 711 sqq., and is in Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2 ser., vi. 195-212; Paula is mentioned in other letters (cf. the index in the cited vol. of NPNF, under Paula). Consult further Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca, lxxix.; DCB, iv. 218-219; KL, ix. 1644-46.
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PAULICIANS: An Oriental sect whose members claimed to be the true Church, caUing themselves " Christians " and the orthodox " Romanists." They distinguished between the creator and lord of this world and the true God of heaven, to whom alone the spirit returns, and consequently rejected an incarnation through Mary; for them the mother of God was the heavenly Jerusalem from which Christ proceeded and into which he has entered. Out of pity God sent an angel whom he called his son and caused to be born, and faith in him frees from judgment. The significance of Christ they found chiefly in his teaching. Instead of the cross they honored the Gospel, because containing Christ's words. The words of Christ were true baptism, although they allowed their children to be baptized by captive clerics. Toward the Lord's Supper they adopted a similar attitude. They rejected the hierarchy and monasticism, teaching that Peter at baptism had seen the lord of the world fall from heaven in monk's garb and give monastic institutions to men. They appear to have rejected the writings of Peter, but accepted the other New-Testament books. In general, they laid stress upon a pious life rather than on doctrine and external observances, and herein lay their chief ground of offense to the orthodox.
The origin of the Paulicians is obscure. The name occurs first in canon xxxii. of a synod held at Turin (q.v.) in Armenia by the Patriarch John of Otzun in 719 and in a writing of the same John against the sect. The Scorialensis (i.) and Gregory the Master (Mkrttschian, p. 148) derive the sect from Paul of Samosata, and Conybeare (p. cv.) strongly favors this assumption; but what is known of the Paulicians does not point to this Paul as their founder. A connection with Manicheism has often been asserted; and the Scorialensis (i.) states that a certain Kallinike sent her sons, Paul and John, to Episparis in Armenia to spread Manichean doctrine. The Paulicians themselves, however, knew of no connection with the Manicheans and were always ready to reject Manes as well as the afore-mentioned Paul and John. Gieseler (pp. 103 sqq.), Neander (p. 344), and Mkrttschian (p. 110) assert a Marcionitic origin. Dollinger (p. 2) favors a connection with Marcionites and Archontici. It is hardly possible to believe there were no relations with earlier heresies; yet the sources ascribe the origin of the sect solely to a certain Constantine of Mananalis near Samosata, who is said to have lived for twenty-seven years as head of a congregation at Kibossa and to have suffered death under Constantine Pogonatus (668-685). He taught that the New Testament was the only guide and wrote nothing. Later leaders, called by their followers by names of companions of Paul (Constantine having been known as Silvanus) and honored as true apostles of Christ and manifestations of the Spirit, were Symeon-Titus; Gegnesius-Timothy, an Armenian; Joseph-Epaphroditus, who is said to have been for thirty years head of a congregation at Antioch in Pisidia; Zacharias (rejected by some as a hireling); Baanes, called the Filthy from his manner of life, which was patterned after that of Diogenes the Cynic; and Sergius-Tychicus. The last-
Paulicians Paulinus of Nola