A Discourse on the Albigensian Heresy

[Ma]nichaean is also that point which follows in that passage (1) from the same Peter; That Christ, who was born in the earthly and visible Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was evil... For the good Christ, as they said, never ate or drank, nor took on true flesh, nor was he ever in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul. Moreover, we said "in the earthly and visible Bethlehem" because the heretics imagined there to be another new and invisible earth; and in that land, according to some, the good Christ was born and crucified. It is clear from those authors I have named, and from Epiphanius (4), that it was among the tenets of the ancient Manichaeans Followers of Manichaeism, a dualistic religion that taught a struggle between a good spiritual world and an evil material world. that Christ suffered death only in appearance, or as a phantom original Greek: phantasia; a reference to Docetism, the belief that Christ's body was not human but a celestial illusion., as Theodoret says (2); and as Augustine says (3), that he faked his passion, for he had not been born, nor had he shown true flesh to human eyes, but only a simulated likeness of it. Indeed, I judge these men to be suitable witnesses of this matter, however differently Beausobre Isaac de Beausobre (1659–1738), a Protestant historian who argued that Manichaeans were often misrepresented by their enemies. may think. But even Beausobre (5) himself confesses this, and grants that the other idea concerning the invisible world was likewise Manichaean (6).

The fact that Peter added "according to some" clearly shows that among these more recent Manichaeans, there were certain divisions of doctrine; just as there were in those slightly older ones, known as the Paulicians A dualistic Christian sect that emerged in Armenia in the 7th century, often viewed as the ancestors of the Bogomils and Albigensians.. For in the formulas of anathema A formal curse or decree of excommunication used by the Church to define the boundaries of orthodox belief. which were prescribed for them to pronounce when they came to the Catholic Church—which Cotelerius (7) published from the Royal Codex, and Tollius (8) published even more extensively from the Imperial Codex—one reads the following:

I anathematize those who say that our Lord Jesus Christ was manifested to the world only in appearance, and who refuse to confess that he truly took on flesh from the Blessed Virgin Mary... and was made consubstantial Meaning "of the same substance" or "of the same essence." This term was used to affirm that Christ was fully human and fully divine. with us and a perfect man... I anathematize those who hold opinions contrary to these, and want there to be one Christ who was born of Mary and baptized—or, as they mockingly say, "dipped"—and another who ascended from the water and received the testimony, whom they call the unbegotten Jesus and the light, who appeared in the form of a man; and they fabricate that the former came from an evil principle, but the latter from a good one. I anathematize those who say our Lord Jesus Christ suffered only in appearance, and that he who was on the cross was one person, while another stood far from it and laughed, as if someone else were suffering in his place.

This formula pertains, as I said, to those Manichaeans who were called Paulicians in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, and whose history Photius Photius I (c. 810–893), the Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote a famous history of the Paulician heresy....

(1) Chapter 2. (2) Book 1, Compendium of Heretical Fables, chapter 26. (3) Against the Fundamental Epistle, chapter 8. (4) Heresies, 66, number 26. (5) Book 8, chapters 1, 2, 3. (6) Book 6, chapter 1. (7) On book 4 of the Recognitions, number 27. (8) Notable Italian Travels, page 126.