Cony_keyoftruth

xxxii THE KEY OF TRUTH
one great teacher who has spent his life in ministering to them.
The ' supreme necessity ' must surely have been the approach of
fierce persecution and perhaps of death. The reference in the
context to the transitoriness of our life implies as much.
Who can this teacher have been ? Gregory Magistros records 1
that the ordinances of the Paulicians, whom a. d. 1042-1054 he
drove out of the district of Thonrak and Khnus, had been drawn
up for them 170 2 to 200 years before by Smbat, whom Gregory of
Narek 3
, c. 960, also accuses of being the founder of the sect. This
Smbat seems from their accounts to have madeThondrak or Thonrak
the focus from which his missionary efforts radiated. That he also
died in this region, or that anyhow his tomb was there, may
perhaps be inferred from the words of Gregory Magistros 4 .
It is at least certain that the district of Thonrak continued to be
after his death the religious centre of the Paulicians, who on that
account were called Thonraki or Thonraketzi by the Armenians,
just as the boni homines of the south of Fiance were called
Albigenses, from their association with Albi. If we may take the
words of Magistros to imply that Smbat left writings regulating the
faith and rites of his church, what more natural than to see in
The Key of Tnclh one of these writings ? It is even not rash to
suppose that our Key of Truth was actually in the hands of
Gregory Magistros ; since this writer ascribes to the ' accursed
Smbat ' the teaching that dogs and wolves appear in the form of
priests, a tenet which is thoroughly in keeping with Chapter viii
of the Key. We do not, it is true, find the exact words, but they
may well have stood in the lost chapters. But after all we here
are moving in a realm of surmise only, and we cannot assume as
a fact, but only suggest as a hypothesis, that this Smbat was the
author of The Key of Truth. Apart from the notices of Gregory
of Narek and Gregory Magistros, we should be inclined to refer
the work to Sergius, the great Paulician apostle of the ninth
century, concerning whom we have many notices in the Greek
writers of that and the two following centuries.
Even if Smbat's authorship be questioned, there can be no
doubt that the Key accurately reflects the opinions and rites of the
Paulicians of the four centuries, 800-1200. We may discount the
falsehood and ferocity of the orthodox or persecuting writers in
1 See below, p. 148 :
2 See pp. 142, 145.
' Smbat giving them their laws.'
3 See pp. 126, 127, 129: ' theirfounder Smbat.'
* ' Cp. p. 146 : where the leaven of the Saclclucecs was buried.'