Paulicians

The Paulicians were a Christian sect of Armenia and eastern Anatolia, recorded from the 7th century, who rejected the church hierarchy and the veneration of icons and were described by their opponents as dualists. Persecuted by Byzantium, they set up a militarised state at Tephrike in the 9th century and raided imperial lands until Basil I destroyed it in the 870s. Many were resettled in the Balkans, where their ideas influenced the Bogomils.