Not all heresies focussed on the issues of the trinity and Christ's nature. Here are the leading examples.

Donatism: Named for its leader, the theologian Donatus the Great (d. 355), Donatism included a group of extremist sects, mostly in North Africa, that emphasized asceticism. They valued martyrdom, found lapses of faith (even under torture or threat of death) inexcusable, and believed that the sacraments required a pure priest to be effective.

Pelagianism: Another group of sects, centered in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland, is associated with the Irish monk Pelagius (fl. 410). He believed that original sin was not transmitted from Adam and Eve to their children (and thereby to us). Baptism was not considered necessary, and people could be "saved" by their own efforts, that is, they did not necessarily require the grace of God. Many modern liberal Christians agee with Pelagius.

Gnosticism: Discussed in my article on Roman philosophy and religion, the Christian versions were, obviously, considered serious heresies. Gnosticism has never entirely disappeared, and can be seen in the traditions of Alchemy and Astrology, and even in modern times in the works of Carl Jung.

Manicheanism: Also discussed in that article, Manicheanism is actually a separate religion which blends Christianity with Gnosticism, Mithraism, neo-Platonism, and even Buddhism. Again, it was considered a very serious heresy. It survived well into the Middle Ages, where it strongly influenced the Bogomils in the Balkans and the Cathars in southern France.

The Bulgarian Heresy: This heresy is worth a few extra paragraphs!

In the 10th century, there arose in Bulgaria a gnostic heresy credited to a priest by the name of Bogomil. The beliefs of the Bogomils, as they were called, were adoptionist, meaning that they considered Jesus to have been "adopted" by God at the time of his baptism, but did not consider him to be a part of a trinity. Neither did they consider Mary in any way the mother of God.

Simplicity and strict adherence characterized their practices, with priests elected from their own groups and congregations meeting at homes rather than churches. Infant baptism was not practiced, marriage was not considered a sacrament, and saints were considered false idols.

The heresy had a strong Manichean flavor to it. They believed that God had two sons, Michael and Satan. Satan created the material world and attempted to create Adam, but was unable to create a soul. God added the soul to Adam, but mankind was bound in service to Satan. Michael came to earth in the form of the holy spirit, which entered into Jesus. As Christ, he broke the original agreement which bound mankind to Satan. But it was Satan who orchestrated the crucifixion, and he is still working to recapture mankind by means of the mainstream churches.

The basic ideas of this Bulgarian heresy spread rapidly west, through northern Italy to Southern France. There, the believers called themselves Cathars, from the Greek word meaning pure. Others called them Albigensians, after the town of Albi, or Bougres, for Bulgarians. This last name is the source of the word bugger, due to (false) accusations of sodomy.

Even stricter than the Bogomils, the Cathars attempted to live simple, exemplary lives, with the most serious believers refraining from sex and other physical pleasures. Many adopted strict veganism. They had only one sacrament, the consolamentum, which was something of a last rites in which sin was removed.

The Cathars believed that the God of the old testament was actually Satan, and that he was responsible for the creation of the material world. Jesus was therefore purely spirit (Docetism), since he would have been tainted if he had had a real body. By purity of living, anyone could cast off the physical body and awaken in heaven. The impure were doomed to rebirth into this physical world. One interesting side effect of this belief was that women were treated as equal to men, since we have all been men or women at some time in our past lives.

The Bogomils and the Cathars were harshly persecuted by the Orthodox church in the east and the Catholic church in the west. By the 14th century, the Bulgarians were absorbed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, and the Cathars were virtually eliminated by Crusades and the Inquisition. They had laid the foundations, however, for the Reformation.

For considerably more detail on these and other heresies (from an admittedly Catholic perspective) see the online Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org.

© Copyright 2004 C. George Boeree