long persecuted, and at length provoked. In a holy cause they are no
longer susceptible of fear or remorse: the justice of their arms hardens
them against the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their fathers'
wrongs on the children of their tyrants. Such have been the Hussites of
Bohemia and the Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century,
were the Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces. They were
first awakened to the massacre of a governor and bishop, who exercised
the Imperial mandate of converting or destroying the heretics; and
the deepest recesses of Mount ArgÊus protected their independence
and revenge. A more dangerous and consuming flame was kindled by the
persecution of Theodora, and the revolt of Carbeas, a valiant Paulician,
who commanded the guards of the general of the East. His father had been
impaled by the Catholic inquisitors; and religion, or at least nature,
might justify his desertion and revenge. Five thousand of his brethren
were united by the same motives; they renounced the allegiance of
anti-Christian Rome; a Saracen emir introduced Carbeas to the caliph;
and the commander of the faithful extended his sceptre to the implacable
enemy of the Greeks. In the mountains between Siwas and Trebizond he
founded or fortified the city of Tephrice, which is still occupied by a
fierce or licentious people, and the neighboring hills were covered with
the Paulician fugitives, who now reconciled the use of the Bible and
the sword. During more than thirty years, Asia was afflicted by the
calamities of foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads,
the disciples of St. Paul were joined with those of Mahomet; and
the peaceful Christians, the aged parent and tender virgin, who were
delivered into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant
spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief, so intolerable
the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son of Theodora, was
compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was defeated
under the walls of Samosata; and the Roman emperor fled before the
heretics whom his mother had condemned to the flames. The Saracens
fought under the same banners, but the victory was ascribed to Carbeas;
and the captive generals, with more than a hundred tribunes, were either
released by his avarice, or tortured by his fanaticism. The valor and
ambition of Chrysocheir, his successor, embraced a wider circle of
rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful Moslems, he boldly
penetrated into the heart of Asia; the troops of the frontier and
the palace were repeatedly overthrown; the edicts of persecution were
answered by the pillage of Nice and Nicomedia, of Ancyra and Ephesus;
nor could the apostle St. John protect from violation his city and
sepulchre. The cathedral of Ephesus was turned into a stable for mules
and horses; and the Paulicians vied with the Saracens in their contempt
and abhorrence of images and relics. It is not unpleasing to observe
the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which had disdained
the prayers of an injured people. The emperor Basil, the Macedonian,
was reduced to sue for peace, to offer a ransom for the captives, and
to request, in the language of moderation and charity, that Chrysocheir
would spare his fellow-Christians, and content himself with a royal
donative of gold and silver and silk garments. "If the emperor," replied
the insolent fanatic, "be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East,
and reign without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants
of the Lord will precipitate him from the throne." The reluctant Basil
suspended the treaty, accepted the defiance, and led his army into the
land of heresy, which he wasted with fire and sword. The open country
of the Paulicians was exposed to the same calamities which they had
inflicted; but when he had explored the strength of Tephrice, the
multitude of the Barbarians, and the ample magazines of arms and
provisions, he desisted with a sigh from the hopeless siege. On his
return to Constantinople, he labored, by the foundation of convents and
churches, to secure the aid of his celestial patrons, of Michael the
archangel and the prophet Elijah; and it was his daily prayer that he
might live to transpierce, with three arrows, the head of his impious
adversary. Beyond his expectations, the wish was accomplished: after a
successful inroad, Chrysocheir was surprised and slain in his retreat;
and the rebel's head was triumphantly presented at the foot of the
throne. On the reception of this welcome trophy, Basil instantly called
for his bow, discharged three arrows with unerring aim, and accepted the
applause of the court, who hailed the victory of the royal archer. 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. The city
was ruined, but the spirit of independence survived in the mountains:
the Paulicians defended, above a century, their religion and liberty,
infested the Roman limits, and maintained their perpetual alliance with
the enemies of the empire and the gospel.
Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.--Part II.
About the middle of the eight century, Constantine, surnamed Copronymus
by the worshippers of images, had made an expedition into Armenia, and
found, in the cities of Melitene and Theodosiopolis, a great number
of Paulicians, his kindred heretics. As a favor, or punishment, he
transplanted them from the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople
and Thrace; and by this emigration their doctrine was introduced and
diffused in Europe. If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon mingled
with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep root in
a foreign soil. 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. In the tenth
century, they were restored and multiplied by a more powerful colony,
which John Zimisces transported from the Chalybian hills to the valleys
of Mount HÊmus. The Oriental clergy who would have preferred the
destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the ManichÊans: the
warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their valor: their attachment to
the Saracens was pregnant with mischief; but, on the side of the Danube,
against the Barbarians of Scythia, their service might be useful,
and their loss would be desirable. Their exile in a distant land
was softened by a free toleration: the Paulicians held the city of
Philippopolis and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their subjects;
the Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a line of
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native Bulgarians
were associated to the communion of arms and heresy. As long as they
were awed by power and treated with moderation, their voluntary bands
were distinguished in the armies of the empire; and the courage of these
_dogs_, ever greedy of war, ever thirsty of human blood, is noticed with
astonishment, and almost with reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks. The
same spirit rendered them arrogant and contumacious: they were easily
provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often violated
by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy. In the midst
of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred ManichÊans deserted the
standard of Alexius Comnenus, and retired to their native homes. He
dissembled till the moment of revenge; invited the chiefs to a friendly
conference; and punished the innocent and guilty by imprisonment,
confiscation, and baptism. In an interval of peace, the emperor
undertook the pious office of reconciling them to the church and state:
his winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the thirteenth
apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole days and
nights in theological controversy. His arguments were fortified, their
obstinacy was melted, by the honors and rewards which he bestowed on
the most eminent proselytes; and a new city, surrounded with gardens,
enriched with immunities, and dignified with his own name, was founded
by Alexius for the residence of his vulgar converts. The important
station of Philippopolis was wrested from their hands; the contumacious
leaders were secured in a dungeon, or banished from their country; and
their lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an
emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt alive
before the church of St. Sophia. But the proud hope of eradicating the
prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by the invincible zeal
of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or refused to obey. After
the departure and death of Alexius, they soon resumed their civil and
religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, their pope
or primate (a manifest corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria,
Croatia, and Dalmatia, and governed, by his vicars, the filial
congregations of Italy and France. From that Êra, a minute scrutiny
might prolong and perpetuate the chain of tradition. At the end of the
last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the valleys of Mount HÊmus,
where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently tormented by the
Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The modern Paulicians have
lost all memory of their origin; and their religion is disgraced by the
worship of the cross, and the practice of bloody sacrifice, which some
captives have imported from the wilds of Tartary.
In the West, the first teachers of the ManichÊan theology had been
repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince. The favor and
success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be
imputed to the strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most
pious Christians against the church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive,
her despotism odious; less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the
worship of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and
scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of
transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and
the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if
they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns
the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. 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. The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the
Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of
every climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the Paulicians
were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily: in
peace and war, they freely conversed with strangers and natives, and
their opinions were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms
beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered, that many thousand Catholics
of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the ManichÊan heresy; and
the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the first act and
signal of persecution. The Bulgarians, a name so innocent in its origin,
so odious in its application, spread their branches over the face
of Europe. United in common hatred of idolatry and Rome, they were
connected by a form of episcopal and presbyterian government; their
various sects were discriminated by some fainter or darker shades of
theology; but they generally agreed in the two principles, the contempt
of the Old Testament and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the
cross or in the eucharist. A confession of simple worship and blameless
manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was their standard
of perfection, that the increasing congregations were divided into two
classes of disciples, of those who practised, and of those who aspired.
It was in the country of the Albigeois, in the southern provinces of
France, that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same
vicissitudes of martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the
neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth century
on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the Eastern emperors were revived
by Frederic the Second. The insurgents of Tephrice were represented by
the barons and cities of Languedoc: Pope Innocent III. surpassed the
sanguinary fame of Theodora. It was in cruelty alone that her soldiers
could equal the heroes of the Crusades, and the cruelty of her priests
was far excelled by the founders of the Inquisition; an office more
adapted to confirm, than to refute, the belief of an evil principle. 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. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome,
embraced the Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from
all the visions of the Gnostic theology. The struggles of Wickliff
in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the
names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced with gratitude as
the deliverers of nations.
A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and the value
of their reformation, will prudently ask from what articles of faith,
_above_ or _against_ our reason, they have enfranchised the Christians;
for such enfranchisement is doubtless a benefit so far as it may be
compatible with truth and piety. After a fair discussion, we shall
rather be surprised by the timidity, than scandalized by the freedom, of
our first reformers. With the Jews, they adopted the belief and defence
of all the Hebrew Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden
of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound, like
the Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine
law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation the reformers
were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the theology of the four, or
the six first councils; and with the Athanasian creed, they pronounced
the eternal damnation of all who did not believe the Catholic faith.
Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the
body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument
and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their senses,
of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first Protestants
were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus in
the institution of the sacrament. Luther maintained a _corporeal_, and
Calvin a _real_, presence of Christ in the eucharist; and the opinion
of Zuinglius, that it is no more than a spiritual communion, a simple
memorial, has slowly prevailed in the reformed churches. But the loss
of one mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of
original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which have
been strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtile questions had
most assuredly been prepared by the fathers and schoolmen; but the final
improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers,
who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation.
Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the
Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer
is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and important; and
the philosopher must own his obligations to these fearless enthusiasts.
I. By their hands the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse of
indulgences to the intercession of the Virgin, has been levelled with
the ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession were
restored to the liberty and labors of social life. A hierarchy of saints
and angels, of imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their
temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial happiness;
their images and relics were banished from the church; and the credulity
of the people was no longer nourished with the daily repetition of
miracles and visions. The imitation of Paganism was supplied by a pure
and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy
of man, the least unworthy of the Deity. It only remains to observe,
whether such sublime simplicity be consistent with popular devotion;
whether the vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not
be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and
indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which restrains
the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he
thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme
and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught
to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own
conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than
the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of
succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal
rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the
magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal
animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus the guilt of his own
rebellion; and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterwards
consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.
The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of
his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by
the Roman pontiff; the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble
rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. _His_ decrees were consecrated
by the antiquity of the Catholic church: _their_ arguments and disputes
were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private judgment was
accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the
days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently
working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice
were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus diffused a spirit of
freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as
a common benefit, an inalienable right: the free governments of Holland
and England introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow
allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of
the times. In the exercise, the mind has understood the limits of its
powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can
no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are
overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a Protestant church is far
removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members; and the
forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh,
or a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity
are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism. The
predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the web of mystery is
unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians, whose number must
not be computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of
Revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the
substance of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of
philosophy.
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.--Part I.
The Bulgarians.--Origin, Migrations, And Settlement Of The
Hungarians.--Their Inroads In The East And West.--The
Monarchy Of Russia.--Geography And Trade.--Wars Of The
Russians Against The Greek Empire.--Conversion Of The
Barbarians.
Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius, the ancient
barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was
irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress
was favored by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries:
the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria,
Egypt, and Africa, the CÊsars were twice reduced to the danger and
disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the
account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and
original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my
transgression, or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war,
in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the
Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the
church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the
disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the
Oriental world. But the same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the
swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century,
descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual
emigration. Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their
actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valor brutal, and
the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened
by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne
repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of
these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their
existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue,
to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities
of, I. _Bulgarians_, II. _Hungarians_, and, III. _Russians_, I
shall content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be
remembered. The conquests of the, IV. Normans, and the monarchy of the,
V. Turks, will naturally terminate in the memorable Crusades to the Holy
Land, and the double fall of the city and empire of Constantine.