Euchites

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The Euchites or Messalians were a

Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and Thrace. The name 'Messalian' comes from the Syriac ܡܨܠܝܢܐ, mṣallyānā, meaning 'one who prays'.[1]
The Greek translation is εὐχίτης, euchitēs, meaning the same.

History

They are first mentioned in the 370s by

Christ.[8] Before being stoned to death for his blasphemies, he promised his followers that after three days he would rise from his tomb in the shape of a wolf, attracting the title of Lycopetrus or Peter the Wolf.[8] Christians believed it was not Peter who would come out of the grave, but a devil in disguise.[9]

They continued to exist for several centuries, influencing the

Bogomils of Bulgaria, who are called Lycopetrians in an abjuration formula of 1027.[10][8] and, thereby, the Bosnian Church and Catharism.[11] By the 12th century the sect had reached Bohemia and Germany[citation needed
] and, by a resolution of the Council of Trier (1231), was condemned as heretical.

Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes.[12]

Modern scholarship has also questioned whether a coherent heretical movement existed behind these condemnations, and has emphasised instead the friction in the

ascetical practices and imagistic language far more characteristic of Syriac Christianity than of the imperial Church centred on Constantinople".[13]

Teachings

The sect's teaching asserted that:

  1. The essence (ousia) of the Trinity could be perceived by the carnal senses.
  2. The Threefold God transformed himself into a single hypostasis (substance) in order to unite with the souls of the perfect.
  3. God has taken different forms in order to reveal himself to the senses.
  4. Only such sensible revelations of God confer perfection upon the Christian.
  5. The state of perfection, freedom from the world and passion, is therefore attained solely by prayer, not through the church, baptism and or any of the sacraments, which have no effect on the passions or the influence of evil on the soul (hence their name, which means "Those who pray").

Messalians taught that once a person experienced the essence of God they were freed from moral obligations or ecclesiastical discipline.

John Damascene and Timothy of Constantinople, expressed the view that the sect espoused a sort of mystical materialism. Their critics also accused them of incest, cannibalism and "debauchery" (in Armenia, their name came to mean "filthy")[16] but scholars reject these claims.[17]

In Mandaean texts

Gelbert (2013, 2023) suggests that in the Ginza Rabba (Right Ginza 9.1), the Mandaic term minunaiia ("Mnunaeans" or "Minunaeans") is actually a reference to the Messalians or Euchites.[18][19]

See also

Bibliography

  • OCLC 10145807
    .
  • Plested, Marcus (2004). The Macarian legacy : the place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian tradition. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press.
    OCLC 56319750
    .
  • Obolensky, Dimitri (2004) [1948]. The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism. Cambridge University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-521-60763-6
    .
  • Runciman, Steven (1947). The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy. Cambridge University Press.

References

  1. ^ Payne Smith, Jessie. A Compendious Syriac Dictionary. pp. 294, 478 (for the root).
  2. ^ Ephrem the Syrian, Against the Heresies, 22.4
  3. ^ Epiphanius, Ancoratus 13, and Panarion 80
  4. ^ Jerome, Dialogue against the Pelagians
  5. ^ Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, (2nd edn, 2010), p118
  6. ^ Plested 2004, pp. 20–23.
  7. ^ Pearse, Roger. "Photius, Bibliotheca or Myriobiblion (Cod. 1-165, Tr. Freese)".
  8. ^ a b c Janet Hamilton, Bernard Hamilton, Yuri Stoyanov Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World, C. 650-c. 1450: Selected Sources, Manchester University Press, 1998
  9. ^ John Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History ... Second edition, Volumen 2, 1846
  10. ^ M. Loos, Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages, Volume 10, Academia Publishing, Prague, 1974, p.29
  11. ^ Runciman 1947.
  12. ISBN 0-8014-9429-X
    .
  13. ^ Columba Stewart, 'Working the Heart of the Earth': The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts and Language to AD431, (1991); Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, (2nd edn, 2010), p118
  14. ^ Lossky 1983, pp. 111–112.
  15. ^ Plested 2004, pp. 16–27.
  16. ^ Arendzen, John Peter (1911). "Messalians" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  17. ^ Salmon, George (1880). "Euchites". In Smith, William; Wace, Henry (eds.). A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines. Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 258–261.
  18. OCLC 853508149
    .
  19. ISBN 9780648795414
    .
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