Paulicianism

Paulicianism arose in Armenia in the seventh century and flourished on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire and the caliphate. Its founder was said to be Constantine of Mananalis, who founded his first congregation about 660 and was stoned to death twenty-seven years later. Byzantine writers also charged the Paulicians with rejecting the cross.

Persecution drove them to found a state around the fortress of Tephrike, whose leader Chrysocheres raided as far as Ephesus in 867. Basil I destroyed it by 878, and emperors then moved Paulicians to Thrace, where they lasted for centuries.

Under the Second Bulgarian Empire some Thracian Paulicians turned Orthodox. After the Ottoman conquest others became Muslims, and the rest were converted to Catholicism in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.