Paulicians, a heretical Eastern sect, who owe their name to their peculiar reverence for the apostle Paul and his writings; but they called themselves 'Christians' only. Their founder was Constantine of Mananalis, near Samosata, who founded his first congregation at Cibossa in Armenia about 660. He was put to death by the emperor's order in 687, his successor, Titus, in 690; whereupon the adherents of the sect fled to Episparis under the Armenian Paul as leader. Later heads were Sergius, who carried them from the persecutions of Leo the Armenian to Argæum in Saracen Armenia; Karbeas, who built the cities of Amara and Tephrica for the rennant saved from the Empress Theodora's merciless severity, and Chrysocrates, on whose defeat by an army of the Emperor Basil they were utterly crushed. In 970 some of their remnants were transferred by the Emperor John Tzimises to Philippopolis in Thrace; a century later great efforts were made for the conversion of these, and the new city of Alexiopolis was built opposite for the converts. The sect, called Popelicans by Villehardouin, continued to exist in Thrace into the 13th century. And it has been affirmed that remnants survived at Philippopolis and in Bulgaria into the 19th century. The Cathari (q.v.) and Bogomili (q.v.) were similar or related sects.
The only Scriptures which they accepted were the four Gospels, fourteen Epistles of Paul, the three Epistles of John, James, Jude, and an Epistle to the Laodiceans. They rejected the title of Theotokos, refusing all worship to the Virgin, as well as any reverence to the symbol of the cross, and even the outward administration of the Lord's Supper and baptism. Photius, Petrus Siculus, and others identified them erroneously as a branch of the Manichæans; and the statement heretofore accepted that they maintained, like the Manichæans, a dualistic system (the Evil Spirit being the ruler of the visible universe) is denied by Conybeare, who affirms them to have been simply Unitarians, holding Christ to have been one with the Holy Ghost, and a creature. Gieseler and Neander connected them with the Gnostic Marcionites.
See the Church Histories of Gieseler and Neander; F. Schmidt, Hist. Paulic. Orientalium (Copen. 1836); Lombard, Pauliciens, Bulgares, et Bons-hommes (Geneva, 1879); Ter-Mkrtschian, Die Paulicianer (Leip. 1893); and F. C. Conybeare's translation of The Key of Truth: the Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia (1898).