Haemus,
where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently tormented by the
Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The modern Paulicians have
lost all memory of their origin; and their religion is disgraced by the
worship of the cross, and the practice of bloody sacrifice, which some
captives have imported from the wilds of Tartary.

In the West, the first teachers of the Manichaean theology had been
repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince. The favor and
success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be
imputed to the strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most
pious Christians against the church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive,
her despotism odious; less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the
worship of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and
scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of
transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and
the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if
they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns
the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. Three different roads might
introduce the Paulicians into the heart of Europe. After the conversion
of Hungary, the pilgrims who visited Jerusalem might safely follow the
course of the Danube: in their journey and return they passed through
Philippopolis; and the sectaries, disguising their name and heresy,
might accompany the French or German caravans to their respective
countries. The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the
Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of
every climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the Paulicians
were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily: in
peace and war, they freely conversed with strangers and natives, and
their opinions were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms
beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered, that many thousand Catholics
of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean heresy; and
the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the first act and
signal of persecution. The Bulgarians, a name so innocent in its origin,
so odious in its application, spread their branches over the face
of Europe. United in common hatred of idolatry and Rome, they were
connected by a form of episcopal and presbyterian government; their
various sects were di