St. Theodore the Studite and the Problem of the Paulicians

Hieromonk Patapios, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review vol. 43, n. 1-4, Brookline Massachussets 1998, p. 143- 154

It is well known to students of the Byzantine Church that St. Theodore the Studite, together with his followers, underwent all manner of cruel treatment at the hands of the State for his resistance to error and compromise in ecclesiastical affairs. A perusal of his voluminous correspondence is sufficient to reveal this. But what about his attitude to others who were on the receiving end of persecution from the imperial authorities? Out of nearly five hundred letters there survive two in which he addresses the problem of dealing with heretical movements. Neither letter has ever previously been translated into English, nor has much attention been paid to St. Theodore's views on those who lay outside the pale of the Church.

After being released from his second period of exile in 811, St.Theodore interceded with Emperor Michael I Rangabe on two separate occasions to refrain from killing those who were, or were considered to be, enemies of the Empire. I shall begin by describing these cases in brief, although for the purposes of this paper I am going to concentrate on the first case. After putting the persecution of the Paulicians in its historical context, I shall turn to a consideration of Theodore's arguments against applying the death penalty to heretics.

In his Chronographia St. Theophanes the Confessor relates how "out of great zeal for God" Emperor Michael I "moved against the Manichaeans (now known as Paulicians ) and Athinganoi in Phrygia and Lycaonia." At the recommendation of Patriarch Nicephoros "he decreed them liable to capital punishment." Nonetheless, "thanks to other, malignant, advisors he let the pretext of repentance mitigate I this-those captured by heresy cannot repent." According to Theophanes, these advisors mistakenly believed that it was unlawful for priests to use capital punishment for the suppression of heresy. He cites the episode from Acts in which Ananias and Sapphira expire on being reproved by the Apostle Peter for lying to God and tempting His Spirit, and suggests that those opposed the use of force against "men who are absolutely impure in spirit and body and who worship demons" are enemies of the Apostles, and thereby of the Church (1).

In the following year Krum, the Khan of the Bulgarians, who had made a number of gains against the Byzantine Empire in the region of Mesembria, sent an embassy to Emperor Michael, in which he proposed inter alia that "fugitives from each side were to be returned to it, even if they had conspired against the state." Once again, Theophanes blames certain "evil advisors" for dissuading the Emperor from accepting such peace terms. Out of false piety, stupidity and disregard for public affairs, they "declared that it was improper to return fugitives," citing as Biblical warrant the statement of Christ: I him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out. (2)

The Athinganoi need not detain us long. They were a Judaizing sect based, according to St. Theophanes, in Phrygia and Lycaonia. He first mentions them unfavorably in connection with Emperor Nicephoros I, whom he denounces as a "fiery friend of the Manichaeans and his near neighbors the Athinganoi." Nicephoros apparently had invited the Athinganoi to sacrifice a bull in order to put down a rebellion by one Bardanios. Theophanes is dismayed to report that the members of this sect were granted lands and allowed to carry on their business without fear (3).

The origin of the Paulicians is still a matter for scholarly debate. Although their beliefs were characterized by later writers like Peter of Sicily and Patriarch Photios as being Manichcean, they actually bore a closer resemblance to those of Marcion. At any rate, the Paulicians were certainly a dualist sect. The cardinal point of their teaching was "the distinction between the good God, lord of heaven and creator of souls, who alone must be adored, and the bad God, the demiurge, creator and lord of the sensible world" (4). As such, they considered all matter to be evil. They believed that mankind was fallen, but ascribed a happy outcome to this fall on the ground that it had elicited a compassionate response from the good God. Some of them thought that Christ was endowed with a celestial body, since He could not have taken one from the earth, which was the domain of the bad God. Others believed that He was an angel sent by the good God. In neither case did they acknowledge Him to be the Redeemer in anything like the traditional sense; they viewed Him above all as a moral teacher. They rejected all the sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist. Most significantly for our purposes, however, they refused to venerate the Cross, the Saints and the holy Icons. In true Marcionite fashion they rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. From the New Testament they accepted the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, although some of them were willing to admit the Epistles of Saints James, John and Jude, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, to their canon of Scripture.

Such attitudes as these, along with their opposition to any kind of ecclesiastical hierarchy, were not likely to endear the Paulicians to the Byzantine authorities. Nevertheless, Emperor Constantine V Copronymos, who in 752 had succeeded in recapturing the territories of Theodosiopolis and Melitene from the Armenians and had taken some of them prisoner, resettled them in Thrace three years later. Theophanes notes that they were responsible for spreading the Paulician heresy (5). It is possible that they were subsequently caught up in the events surrounding the Seventh (Ecumenical Synod. In 786 Empress Irene and Patriarch Tarasios convened a Synod to restore the veneration of Icons, but the Bishops were prevented from sitting by "the troops of the scholarii , the excubitores , and the rest of the imperial guards," who "bared their blades to attack the bishops and abbots with death" (6). Theophanes makes no explicit reference to the Paulicians at this point in his account. However, in his third Antirrhetic against Constantine V Patriarch Nicephoros relates that those who had been alienated or had fallen into distress sought after a religion in which icons and reminders of Christ's incarnation did not appear, and so "they found one that had appealed to them for some time, I mean the unbelief and atheism of the Manichaeans, which was in harmony with their opinions and permitted them to do as they pleased" (7). Although St. Nicephoros does not mention the Paulicians in this passage, Paul Lemerle argues that it is "very suggestive of what happened in the time of Irene" and is also "the most clear regarding the relation, otherwise very occasional and superficial, between iconoclasm and Paulicianism, a kind of religious refuge for those who could not any longer profess iconoclasm and refused to profess iconodulia " (8).

Whatever the truth of their involvement with the Iconoclast Controversy, the Paulicians appear to have enjoyed a period of relative toleration under Emperor Nicephoros (9). During this period one of the leaders of the sect, Sergios, who was motivated by an almost evangelical zeal to spread the teachings of Paulicianism, (10) "made the majority of his missionary journeys, apparently without being disturbed" (11). Earlier on I mentioned Theophanes ' rather jaundiced account of Emperor Nicephoros ' relations with the Athinganoi. It seems that in addition to their religious zeal the Paulicians were known for their military prowess (12), which they manifested in helping Nicephoros to quell the revolt by General Bardanes Tourkos in 803 (13). But Theophanes connected this willingness on the part of Nicephoros to harness the energies of the Paulicians with the subsequent reverses suffered by the Byzantines at the hands of Khan Krum of the Bulgarians. "This was the wrath of God condemning Nikephoros 'madness; because of it, what appeared to be his successes (over which he had boasted) rapidly crumbled". At the same time "people stopped censuring the wicked doctrines of the presumptuous heresies which opposed God: the many Paulicians, Athinganoi, Iconoclasts, Tetraditoi " (14). It is often claimed that the military failures of iconodule emperors caused iconoclastic counter-reactions. Here, if Theophanes is to be believed, we see an example of such a counter-reaction resulting from earlier concessions granted to openly iconoclast sects like the Paulicians. Theophanes explains the resurgence of iconoclast sentiment as a delayed result of divine displeasure at imperial laxity shown towards the enemies of the Church.

As Paul Alexander puts it, "the decision to persecute the Paulicians was related, on the one hand, to Byzantium's defeats during the war against the Bulgars and, on the other hand, to the highly effective missionary work carried out by the Paulician movement under one of its greatest 'teachers,' Sergios" (15). At this period the threat that they posed to the Empire was religious rather than military. Later in the ninth century they were to become more of a military problem, largely as a result of the severe persecutions unleashed against them(16).

So much for the historical aspects of this issue. What sort of justifications were proposed for reacting against heresy with the kind of harshness that Michael I began to employ until he was dissuaded by ‘evil advisors" like St. Theodore? As we have already seen, St. Theophanes praises this Emperor for his great zeal and piety, which makes sense, given that Michael was Orthodox in his beliefs, and perhaps more so than his predecessor Nicephoros (17). A desire to defend the Faith was certainly reason enough to undertake coercive measures against dissidents. This, however, is about as far as we can legitimately go in trying to account for the attitudes of the authorities. Alexander points out that "except for the treatises against the Paulicians, the surviving literature reflects the point of view of the Anti- Moechians and the Iconophiles." As a result, "any study of the argumentation used by the persecutors must be based on sources emanating from their victims" (18). In the case of the Paulicians we have the History of the Manichceans by Peter of Sicily. But this work does not have much to say about the persecution of the sect in the second decade of the ninth century, and still less about the grounds alleged for the need to eradicate them. Apart from a brief passage in the Vita of Patriarch Nicephoros, we are compelled to rely entirely on the Chronographia of St. Theophanes and two letters by St. Theodore. The difficulties to be encountered in analyzing both the course of events and the reasons underlying them are clearly brought out by Venance Grumel in his masterly survey of documents pertaining to the history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Theophanes mentions that Michael decreed the death penalty against the Paulicians "at the behest of the holy patriarch Nikephoros and other pious men" (19). The text of the recommendations (εἰσηγήσεις ) made by the Patriarch has been lost. However, in the Vita of St. Nicephoros by the Deacon Ignatios there is a reference to an ἔγγραφος τόμος by Nicephoros to Michael in which he informed the Emperor about the religious beliefs and practices of the Jews, the Phrygians and the Manichaeans (20). But, as Grumel observes, the Vita "does not speak of the death penalty, but says simply that the Patriarch obtained the interdiction of the public worship" of these three groups. The hagiographer "avoids anything that could recall a quarrel of his hero with the great champions of Orthodoxy that the Studites were" (21). For his part, Theophanes says nothing about the Jews, while Theodore speaks only about the Paulicians. Apart from the reference to capital punishment in Theophanes, the only other indications of the imperial sentence of death against the heretics are in Peter of Sicily and St. Photios (22).

We have already seen how Theophanes attempts to justify the application of capital punishment to the Paulicians. He claims that those who denied that clergy had the right to resort to such measures to suppress heresy were opposed to Holy Scripture in every respect, but he cites only the example of Ananias and Sapphira to support this claim. Owing to the paucity of extant sources on the side of the hardliners we do not know what other passages were used to justify the death penalty in this case. So it is to St. Theodore that we must now turn for the other side of the story.

The first of the two letters in question was written sometime between 815 and 818 to one Leo, a dealer in perfumes. Theodore was already in exile for the third time as a result of the renewal of iconoclasm by Emperor Leo V the Armenian. Addressing Leo as "an ardent zealot," he observes "what kind of fire it is that burns the Church of God, evidently fed by previous fuels." He ascribes the present turmoil in the Church over the veneration of Icons to the "adulterous wedding ceremony" performed for Constantine VI, which led to the Moechian controversy, to the "persecutions, imprisonments, exiles and earthquakes" that occurred in the wake of the illicit marriage, to the events surrounding the earlier Simoniac controversy (23), and finally to what happened in the case of the Paulicians. In connection with the Simoniac affair he points out that "the Church is not accustomed to vindicate herself by means of whippings, exiles and imprisonments" (24). He then states that "ecclesiastical law does not bring knife, sword and whips against anyone; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword" (25). Like Theophanes he bases his views on Scripture, but he does not believe that clergy should be using any kind of force, let alone capital punishment, against dissenters.

St. Theodore's views on this subject emerge much more clearly from a letter to Bishop Theophilos of Ephesus, one of the few Iconodule Hierarchs at that time. This letter is dated sometime between 821 and his death in 826. Theodore begins by registering his dismay at the increase of quarrels and dissensions among the defenders of the holy Icons, but resolves to defend the truth as he sees it. Theophilos had evidently written a letter to one of Theodore's fellow-strugglers, Athanasios, in which he took the Studite to task for advising "neither that the Manichaeans should be killed nor that they should not be killed." It is not entirely clear why the issue is framed in these terms. Surely it would have made more sense to reproach Theodore for advising that they should not be killed. Perhaps he was trying to adopt a position of neutrality. At any rate, the following words suggest that St. Theodore had come out against killing the Manichaeans, that is, the Paulicians : "but if we had conceded it, we should have done the greatest and noblest deed" (26).

Theodore finds Scriptural warrant for his position in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. To the servants who ask whether they should gather up the tares that have been sown in the field of wheat by the enemy, the householder responds that they should not, lest in gathering the tares they should also root up the wheat with them. Both wheat and tares should be left to grow together until the harvest (27).

At this point in his letter St. Theodore has recourse to the exegetical homilies on St. Matthew's Gospel by St. John Chrysostomos : "and that He called the heretics tares, evidently both those of that time and those who would come later, that is, all heretics, let us listen to Chrysostom interpreting this very point" (28). The householder, that is, Christ the Master, forbade the servants to gather the tares "in order to hinder wars from arising, and blood and slaughter. For it is not right to put heretics to death, since an implacable war would be brought into the world" (29). St. Theodore then continues his citation of Chrysostomos : "What else does He mean by lest ye root up also the wheat with them than this, that if you are going to take up arms and slaughter heretics, many of the saints must of necessity be slain together with them?" (30) He adds that "this has happened even in our times; for bloodshed and slaughter have filled our world and many of the saints have departed at the same time" (31).

It is interesting to note that Theodore does not quote St. John's commentary in its entirety. He omits his observation that if heretics are incurably diseased, punishment will eventually overtake them without harm to the Faithful, and that it is therefore better to wait for the proper season, to let nature take its course, as it were. He also fails to take into account Chrysostomos ' point that the tares have the potential for becoming wheat, that is, that heretics may finally repent of their errors, if given time. "He does not, therefore, forbid us to check heretics, to stop their mouths, to eradicate their freedom of speech, and to break up their assemblies and confederacies, but He does forbid us to kill and slay them" (32). As we shall see from what follows, St. Theodore brings out more clearly than St. John the idea that heretics should be taught rather than punished. He does not advocate even the kinds of repressive measures that St. John concedes to those in authority. This may be the reason why he does not include this passage from St. John's homily.

Theodore goes even further than St. John in the next section of his letter: "And what do we say about not allowing heretics to be killed? It is not given to us even to pray against them." He quotes from an epistle of St. Dionysios in which the Areopagite tells a cautionary tale about the Apostle Carpos, who had prayed against heretics that they should be removed from life (33). Theodore adds that "we should not pray against heretics, but for them, as the Lord indicated at the time of His Passion, when He said to His own Father: Father, forgive them their sin; for they know not what they do " (34).

St. Theodore cites the Areopagite again a little later in the letter when he mentions the passage in the St. Luke's Gospel in which the disciples ask Christ to command fire to come down from Heaven and consume a Samaritan village. The people of this village had not prepared to receive Christ, and so the disciples thought that they deserved to be destroyed as were the Samaritans by the command of Elias (35). St. Dionysios explains that "the disciples did not please Jesus when He heard these examples, since at that time they were not partakers of the gentle and good Spirit. For our most divine Establisher of mysteries told them to teach in gentleness those who were opposed to the teaching of God; He said that it is necessary for those in ignorance to be taught, not punished" (36). As further confirmation of what Dionysios says, St. Theodore cites a passage from St. Ignatios ' Epistle to the Philadeiphians : "We must hate those who hate God and waste away on account of His enemies, but we must not persecute or strike them, as do the nations who do not know God" (37). He amplifies this with the remark that if we must not strike them, still less must we kill them.

Towards the end of his letter St. Theodore deals with two examples of Saints from the past that had been urged as objections to his more lenient approach to the treatment of heretics. St. Symeon of the Wondrous Mountain had apparently recommended a monarch to take punitive measures against a nation that was slaughtering Christian people. Theodore responds that he himself is now exhorting the Emperor to do the same, "to make war on the Scythians and the Arabs, who are slaying the people of God, and not to spare them. In the latter case the war is against enemies, but in the former it is against the heretics who are subjects of the Empire" (38). As for the case of St. John the Faster, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Theodore denies that he ordered magicians to be impaled, being of the opinion rather that he permitted it: "for they were murderers, against whom those in power should not be prevented from putting Roman law into practice; they bear not the sword in vain... they are revengers upon him that doeth evil" (39). He concludes this section of the letter by maintaining that "one should not allow them to use it against those for whom the Lord has forbidden it; for although it is permitted for those who rule over bodies to punish those caught in bodily wrongdoing, it is not permitted for them to punish those who transgress in spiritual matters. This belongs to those who rule over souls, whose means of correction are excommunications and other penalties" (40). In other words, St. Theodore believes that it is perfectly acceptable for those in authority to use force and even violence against the enemies of the Empire and against subjects of the Empire who commit serious crimes. Whether heretics merit capital punishment, therefore, depends on their civic status. The Paulicians evidently fell within the boundaries of the Empire during the reign of Michael I. This was fortunate for them, since Theodore was able to prevail upon the Emperor to desist from putting them to death.

St. Theodore concludes his letter to Bishop Theophilos with the following words: "we have said boldly to our Most Blessed Patriarch that the Church does not avenge herself by the sword (and he agreed), and to the Emperors who committed the slaughter, to the first, "God was not pleased by such a slaying," and to the second, who demanded a defense for the slaying, "sooner will my head be removed than I would consent to this" (41).

As for the fate of the Paulicians after Theodore had successfully interceded for them, it seems that the severe persecution meted out to them by Leo V and Michael II drove them into the arms of the Muslims. Some of them joined the army of the rebel Thomas the Slav in his campaign against Michael II, while others, under the leadership of the charismatic Sergios, established an independent state on the upper Euphrates, which lay within Arab territory. By now they had become a military threat to the Empire, and this may well have led to the harsh action taken against them by Empress Theodora in the early 840s. 42 In the light of the Paulicians ' subsequent militancy, it is interesting to speculate what kind of policy St. Theodore would have recommended the later rulers of Byzantium to adopt against them.

As a historical footnote, I think it is worth adding that over a century later Patriarch Theophylact of Constantinople wrote a letter to King Peter of Bulgaria in which he advised him to refrain from inflicting the death penalty on the Bogomils, who had assumed the religious mantle of the Paulicians. After admitting that the civil laws of Christians prescribe capital punishment for heretics, "especially when they see the evil creeping up, advancing, and causing damage to many people," he nonetheless tells the King that he, as a Churchman, does not and cannot allow it, "in case they look to a conversion of repentance, either all or some of them, and God, Who alone loves mankind and is merciful cures them" (43). It seems that the note of caution and moderation introduced by St. Theodore in the previous century had not disappeared from Byzantine ecclesiastical policy.

It would perhaps be anachronistic to conclude, on the basis of this investigation, that St. Theodore was a champion of human rights, still less a pacifist. He was certainly willing to concede to the State the right, even the duty, to crush foreign invaders. However, he clearly believed that religious dissenters who lived within the confines of the Empire should be persuaded rather than forced to abandon their erroreous beliefs and practices. Contrary to St. Theophanes, he emphatically rejected the idea that clergy had any business recommending the emperor to inflict the death penalty on heretics. He also denied that the correction of heretics was the responsibility of the State. It was up to the Church to apply whatever canonical sanctions she saw fit in order to chastize those in error. Coming from one who had suffered as much as he did from the imperial authorities for his defense of the Canons and the Icons, this attitude of moderation is all the more impressive.

(1)495, trans. Harry Turtledove, The Chronicle of Theophanes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 174-175.

(2) 497-498, ibid., pp. 176-177. The reference is to St. John 6:37.

(3) 488,ibid., p. 169.

(4) R. Janin, "Pauliciens," in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. XII. 1 (Paris: Librairie Letouzey, 1933), col. 57.

(5)429, ibid., p. 118. According to Milan Loos, a "movement which thus consistently discarded the whole system of dogma, worship and organization of the church was bound to come into conflict with the Byzantine state, which was too [sic] closely involved with the Orthodox church. No doubt when iconoclasm was at its height, under Constantine V, the persecution of the Paulicians slackened" (Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages [Prague: Academia, 1974], p. 36). Steven Runciman states that the iconoclast emperors must have felt sympathy for the Paulicians and even that Constantine V held views suggesting a Paulician origin (The Medieval Manichee : A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947], pp. 38-39). (6)Theophanes462, ibid., p. 146.

(7) PG 100, 501BC.

(8)"L'histoire des Pauliciens d'Asie Mineure d'après les sources grecques," Travaux et Memoires 5 (1973), p. 80.

(9)If we believ e Theophanes ' account of Nicephorus, then we must believe that the Emperor almost joined the heresy of Paulicians " (Pavlos E. Niavis, The Reign of the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I (AD 802-811) [Athens: Historical Publications St. D. Vasilopoulos, 1987], p. 116).

(10)According to Runciman, "Once converted, he flung himself into the movement; and under his guidance Paulicianism reached its heyday. His letters have the true ring of the missionary. From East to West, from North to South have I hastened, preaching the Gospel of Christ, tramping on my feet"' (Medieval Manichee, p. 36).

(11) Lemerle, "L'histoire des Pauliciens," p. 80.

(12) J.M.Hussey cites "their aggressive militancy and the close-knit nature of their communities" (The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986], p. 157). According to G.H. Huxley, "Wise emperors had valued the fighting qualities of the Paulicians instead of alienating them" ("The Historical Geography of the Paulician and Tondrakian Heresies," in Medieval Armenian Culture [ Chico, CA : Scholars Press, 1983], p. 82).

(13) Niavis, Reign, p. 116.

(14)496, op. cit., p. 175.

(15)"Religious Persecution and Resistance in the Byzantine Empire of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Methods and Justifications," Speculum 52 (1977), p. 245.

(16) Ibid., p. 253.

(17) On the other hand, Paul Alexander cites hagiographic texts that extol Nicephoros ' piety and concludes that "among his contemporaries Nicephorus had the reputation of being not only an extremely able general and administrator but also an orthodox Christian" (The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958], pp. 72-73).

(18)"Religious Persecution and Resistance," p. 253.

(19)495, op. cit., p. 174: " ἀποφηνάμενος ταῖς Νικηφόρου, τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου πατριάρχου, καί ἄλλων εὐσεβῶν εἰσηγήσεσιν " .

(20) PG100:69BC.

(22) Les Regestes desActes du Patriarcatde Constantinople, vol. I, fasc. II (Chalcedon [ Kadikoy ]: Socii Assumptionistae, 1936), no. 384.

(22) PG 104:1301A (Peter); PG 102:77A (St. Photios ).

(23) At the Seventh (Ecumenical Synod there was much disagreement between those who upheld a rigorist interpretation of the Canons and those who were prepared to be more flexible over how to deal with those Bishops who had paid money for their offices during the first wave of iconoclasm.

(24) Ep . 94 (Ep. 23 in Nova Patrum Bibliotheca VIII.1, ed. J. Cozza - Luzi (Rome 1871), p. 21) ed. Georgios Fatouros, Theodori Studitae Epistulae, vol. II (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 31.2; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1992), p. 214.

(25) The quotation is from St. Matthew 26:52.

(26) Ep. 455 (Ep. II.155 in Migne, PG 99: 1484 AB), Fatouros p. 654.

(27) St. Matthew 13: 24- 30.

(28)Ep . 455 (PG99: 1481D) Fatouros, p. 654. (29) Homilies on the Gospel according to St. Matthew 46. 1 (PG 58: 477).

(30) ibid. 46.2.

(31) Ep. 455, ibid.

(32) Homilies on St. Matthew, ibid.

(33) Let us again hear the Lord, saying to Saint Carpos, as is indicated through the voice of the all-wise Dionysios : 'Strike Me from now on; for I am ready once more to suffer for the salvation of men, and this is pleasing to Me, as long as other men do not sin. But see whether it is good for you to exchange the habitation in the chasm with the serpents for that with God and the good angels who love mankind'" (ibid. The quotation comes from St. Dionysios ' Epistle 8.6 [PG 3:1100C]).

(34)St. Luke 23:34.

(35)St. Luke 9:54; IV Kings 1:9-12.

(36) Ep . 8.5; PG 3- 1096 C .

(37) Philadelphians 3:5 [longer version]; PG 5:821B. Paul Alexander suggests that this passage is a late 4th century interpolation by an unknown heretic, either Apollinarian or Arian ("Religious Persecution and Resistance," p. 254).

(38) Ep . 455 (PG 99:1485B), Fatouros, p. 647.

(39) Romans 13:4.

(40) Ep . 455, ibid.

(41) ibid.

(42)Runciman, Medieval Manichee, pp. 39-40. According to some chroniclers, as many as 100,000 Paulicians perished under Theodora, but there is no way of corroborating this figure.

(43)Ivan Dujcev, "L'epistola sui Bogomili del patriarca costantinopolitano Teofilatto," in Melanges Eugene Tisserant, vol. II (Studi e Testi 232; Citta del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964), p. 89.