procured them entrance. They took care to carry with them, concealed among their wares or about their persons, portions of the Word of God, their own transcription commonly, and to this they would draw the attention of the inmates. When they saw a desire to possess it, they would freely make a gift of it where the means to purchase were absent. There was no kingdom of Southern and Central Europe to which these missionaries did not find their way, and where they did not leave traces of their visit in the disciples whom they made. On the west they penetrated into Spain. In Southern In Southern France they found congenial fellow-labourers in the Albigenses, by whom the seeds of truth were plentifully scattered over Dauphiné and Languedoc. On the east, descending the Rhine and the Danube, they leavened Germany, Bohemia, and Poland1 with their doctrines, their track being marked with the edifices for worship and the stakes of martyrdom that arose around their steps. Even the Sevenhilled City they feared not to enter, scattering the seed on ungenial soil, if perchance some of it might take root and grow. Their naked feet and coarse woollen garments made them somewhat marked figures, in the streets of a city that clothed itself in purple and fine linen; and when their real errand was discovered, as sometimes chanced, the rulers of Christendom took care to further, in their own way, the springing of the seed, by watering it with the blood of the men who had sowed it.2 Thus did the Bible in those ages, veiling its majesty and its mission, travel silently through Christendom, entering homes and hearts, and there making its abode. From her lofty seat Rome looked down with contempt upon the Book and its humble bearers. She aimed at bowing the necks of kings, thinking if they were obedient meaner men would not dare revolt, and so she took little heed of a power which, weak as it seemed, was des tined at a future day to break in pieces the fabric of her dominion. By-and-by she began to be uneasy, and to have a boding of calamity. The penetrating eye of Innocent III. detected the quarter whence danger was to arise. He saw in the labours of these humble men the beginning of a movement which, if permitted to go on and gather strength, would one day sweep away all that it had taken the toils and intrigues of centuries to achieve. straightway commenced those terrible crusades which wasted the sowers but watered the seed, and helped to bring on, at its appointed hour, the catastrophe which he sought to avert, He The Paulicians the Protesters against the Eastern, as the Waldenses against the Western Apostacy-Their Rise in A.D. 653-Constantine of Samosata-Their Tenets Scriptural-Constantine Stoned to Death-Simeon Succeeds— Is put to Death-Sergius-His Missionary Travels-Terrible Persecutions-The Paulicians Rise in Arms-Civil War-The Government Triumphs-Dispersion of the Paulicians over the West-They Blend with the Waldenses -Movement in the South of Europe-The Troubadour, the Barbe, and the Bible, the Three MissionariesInnocent III.-The Crusades. BESIDES this central and main body of oppositionists to Rome-Protestants before Protestantism -placed here as in an impregnable fortress, upreared on purpose, in the very centre of Roman Christen 1 Stranski, apud Lenfant's Concile de Constance, quoted by Count Valerian Krasinski in his History of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Reformation in Poland, vol. i., p. 53; Lond., 1838. Illyricus Flaccius, in his Catalogus Testium Veritatis (Amstelodami, 1679), says: "Pars Valdensium in Germaniam transiit atque apud Bohemos, in Polonia ac Livonia sedem fixit." Leger says that the Waldenses had, about the year 1210, Churches in Slavonia, Sarmatia, and Livonia. (Histoire Générale des Eglises Evangéliques des Vallées du Piedment on Vaudois, vol. ii., pp. 336, 337; 1669.) dom, other communities and individuals arose, and maintained a continuous line of Protestant testimony all along to the sixteenth century. These we shall compendiously group and rapidly describe. First, there are the Paulicians. They occupy an 2 M'Crie, Hist. Ref. in Italy, p. 4. 3 Those who wish to know more of this interesting people than is contained in the above rapid sketch may consult Leger, Des Eglises Evangéliques; Perrin, Hist. de Vaudois; Reynerius, Cont. Waldens.; Sir S. Morland, History of the Evangelical Churches of Piedmont; Jones, Hist. Waldenses; Rorenco, Narrative; besides a host of more modern writers-Gilly, Waldensian Researches: Muston, Israel of the Alps; Monastier, &c. &c. PAULICIAN MISSIONARIES AND MARTYRS. analogous place in the East to that which the Waldenses held in the West. Some obscurity rests upon their origin, and additional mystery has on purpose been cast upon it, but a fair and impartial examination of the matter leaves no doubt that the Paulicians are the remnant that escaped the apostacy of the Eastern Church, even as the Waldenses are the remnant saved from the apostacy of the Western Church. Doubt, too, has been thrown upon their religious opinions; they have been painted as a confederacy of Manicheans, just as the Waldenses were branded as a synagogue of heretics; but in the former case, as in the latter, an examination of the matter satisfies us that these imputations had no sufficient foundation, that the Paulicians repudiated the errors imputed to them, and that as a body their opinions were in substantial agreement with the doctrine of Holy Writ. Nearly all the information we have of them is that which Petrus Siculus, their bitter enemy, has communicated. He visited them when they were in their most flourishing condition, and the account he has given of their distinguishing doctrines sufficiently proves that the Paulicians had rejected the leading errors of the Greek and Roman Churches; but it fails to show that they had embraced the doctrine of Manes,' or were justly liable to be styled Manicheans. In A.D. 653, a deacon returning from captivity in Syria rested a night in the house of an Armenian named Constantine, who lived in the neighbourhood of Samosata. On the morrow, before taking his departure, he presented his host with a copy of the New Testament. Constantine studied the sacred volume. A new light broke upon his mind: the errors of the Greek Church stood clearly revealed, and he instantly resolved to separate himself from so corrupt a communion. He drew others to the study of the Scriptures, and the same light shone into their minds which had irradiated his. Sharing his views, they shared with him his secession from the established Church of the Empire. It was the boast of this new party, now grown to considerable numbers, that they adhered to the Scriptures, and especially to the writings of Paul. "I am Sylvanus," said Constantine, "and ye are Macedonians," intimating thereby that the Gospel which 1 Manes taught that there were two principles, or gods, the one good and the other evil; and that the evil principle was the creator of this world, and the good of the world to come. Manicheism was employed as a term of compendious condemnation in the East, as Heresy was in the West. It was easier to calumniate these men than to refute them. For such aspersions a very ancient precedent might be pleaded. "He hath a devil and is mad," it was said of the Master. The disciple is not above his Lord. 33 he would teach, and they should learn, was that of Paul; hence the name of Paulicians, a designation they would not have been ambitious to wear had their doctrine been Manichean.2 The These disciples multiplied. A congenial soil favoured their increase, for in these same mountains, where are placed the sources of the Euphrates, the Nestorian remnant had found a refuge. attention of the Government at Constantinople was at length turned to them; persecution followed. Constantine, whose zeal, constancy, and piety had been amply tested by the labours of twenty-seven years, was stoned to death. From his ashes arose a leader still more powerful. Simeon, an officer of the palace who had been sent with a body of troops to superintend his execution, was converted by his martyrdom, and like another Paul after the stoning of Stephen, began to preach the Paulician faith, which he had once persecuted. Simeon ended his career, as Constantine had done, by sealing his testimony with his blood; the stake being planted beside the heap of stones piled above the ashes of Constantine. Still the Paulicians multiplied; other leaders arose to fill the place of those who had fallen, and neither the anathemas of the hierarchy nor the sword of the State could check their growth. All through the eighth century they continued to flourish. The worship of images was now the fashionable superstition in the Eastern Church, and the Paulicians rendered themselves still more obnoxious to the Greek authorities, lay and clerical, by the strenuous opposition which they offered to that idolatry of which the Greeks were the great advocates and patrons. This drew upon them yet sorer persecution. It was now, in the end of the eighth century, that the most remarkable perhaps of all their leaders, Sergius, rose to head them, a man of truly missionary spirit and of indomitable energy. Petrus Siculus has given us an account of the conversion of Sergius. We should take it for a satire, were it not for the manifest earnestness and 2 "Among the prominent charges urged against the Paulicians before the Patriarch of Constantinople in the eighth century, and by Photius and Petrus Siculus in the ninth, we find the following-that they dishonoured the Virgin Mary, and rejected her worship; denied the life-giving efficacy of the cross, and refused it worship; and gainsaid the awful mystery of the conversion of the blood of Christ in the Eucharist; while by others they are branded as the originators of the Iconoclastic heresy and the war against the sacred images. In the first notice of the sectaries in Western Europe, I mean at Orleans, they were similarly accused of treating with contempt the worship of martyrs and saints, the sign of the holy cross, and mystery of transubstantiation; and much the same too at Arras." (Elliott, Hore Apocalyptica, 3rd ed., vol. ii., p. 277.) to the ancient institutions of the Fathers, was always free, without being subject to the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of Rome had no jurisdiction over their Church as to the government or constitution of it."1 But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A considerable body of Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of these some crossed the Alps, descended the Rhine, and raised the standard of opposition in the diocese of Cologne, where they were branded as Manicheans, and rewarded with the stake. Others retired into the valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, and there maintained their scriptural faith and their ancient independence. What we have just related respecting the dioceses of Milan and Turin settles the question, in our opinion, of the apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys. It is not necessary to show that missionaries were sent from Rome in the first age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to show that these Churches have existed as distinct and separate communities from early days; enough that they formed a part, as unquestionably they did, of the great 1 Petrus Damianus, Opusc., p. 5. Allix, Churches of Piedmont, p. 113. M'Crie, Hist. of Reform. in Italy, p. 2. THE VALLEY OF ANGROGNA. |