The Key of Truth. A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia

412 Pages·2016·17.45 MB·English

by  Conybeare Fr. (Ed.)

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THE KEY OF TRUTH
CONYBEARE
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
THE
KEY OF TRUTH
A MANUAL OF THE
PAULICIAN CHURCH OF ARMENIA
£(Se dRnnentan 'Ztjct
EDITED AND TRANSLATED WITH ILLUSTRATIVE
DOCUMENTS AND INTRODUCTION
BY
FRED. C. CONYBEARE, M.A.
FORMERLY FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1898
©;efor&
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TOTHE UNIVERSITY
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VRL
PREFACE
In the autumn of the year 1891, 1 went to Armenia for a second
time, in the hope of finding an ancient version of the Book of
Enoch, and of recovering documents illustrative of the ancient
heretics of that land, particularly of the Paulicians. For Gibbon's
picture of their puritanism, fresh and vigorous in an age when
Greek Christianity had degenerated into the court superstition of
Constantinople, had fascinated my imagination; and I could not
believe that some fuller records of their inner teaching did not
survive in the Armenian tongue. In this quest, though my other
failed, I was rewarded. I learned during my stay at Edjmiatzin,
that in the libraryof the Holy Synod there was preserved a manu-
scriptofTheKeyofTruth,thebookofthe Thonraketzior Paulicians
ofThbnrak, with whom I was familiar from reading the letters of
Gregory Magistros, Duke ofMesopotamia in the eleventh century.
I was permitted to see the book, ofwhich a perfunctory exami-
nation convinced me that it was a genuine monument, though, as I
then thought it, a late one ofthe Paulicians. For I found in it the
same rejection ofimage-worship, of mariolatry, and of the cult of
saints and holy crosses, which was characteristic of the Paulicians.
I could not copy it then without leaving unfinished a mass of
other work which I had begun in the conventual library; and I
was anxious to get to Dathev, or at least back to Tifiis, before the
snowfell on the passes ofthe anti-Caucasus. However, I arranged
that a copy ofthe book should be made and sent to me; and this
I received late in the year 1893 from the deacon Galoust Ter
Mkherttschian.
My first impression on looking into it afresh was one of
disappointment. I had expected to find in it a Marcionite, or at
VI PREFACE
least a Manichean book; but, beyond the extremely sparse use
made in it of the Old Testament, I found nothing that savoured
ofthese ancientheresies. AccordinglyI laidit aside, in the press of
other work which I had undertaken. It was not until the summer
of 1896 that, at the urgent request of Mr. Darwin Swift, who had
come to me for information about the history of Manicheism in
Armenia, I returned to it, and translated it into English in the hope
that it might advance his researches.
And now I at last understood who the Paulicians really were.
All who had written about them had been misled by the calumnies
of Photius, Petrus Siculus, and the other Greek writers, who
describe them as Manicheans. I now realized that I had stumbled
on the monument of a phase of the Christian Church so old and
so outworn, that the very memory of it was well-nigh lost. For
The Key ofTruth contains the baptismal service and ordinal of
the Adoptionist Church, almost in the form in which Theodotus
of Rome may have celebrated those rites. These form the oldest
part ofthe book, which, however, also contains much controversial
matter ofa later date, directed against what the compiler regarded
as the abuses of the Latin and Greek Churches. The date at
which the book was written in its present form cannot be put later
than the ninth century, nor earlier than the seventh. But we can
no more argue thence that the prayers and teaching and rites
preserved in it are not older, than we could contend, because our
present English Prayer Book was only compiled in the sixteenth
century, that its contents do not go back beyond that date. The
problem therefore of determining the age of the doctrine and rites
detailed in TheKey of Truth is like any other problem of Christian
palaeontology. It resembles the questions which arise in con-
nexion with the Didache or The Shepherd of Hernias and can
;
only be resolved by a careful consideration of the stage which it
represents in the development of the opinions and rites of the
church. In my prolegomenaI have attempted tosolve thisproblem.
I may here briefly indicate the results arrived at.
The characteristic note of the Adoptionist phase of Christian
opinion was the absence of the recognized doctrine ofthe Incarna-
tion. Jesus was mere man until he reached his thirtieth year,
when he came to John on the bank of the Jordan to receive
baptism. Then his sinless nature received the guerdon. The
heavens opened and the Spirit of God came down and abode with