position to very much else which belonged to the
earliest Christian tradition, as in their rejection of the Old
Testament and the perpetual virginity of the Lord's Mother. Armenia
became the headquarters of a large and prosperous sect, towards which
emperors alternately were persecuting or favourable. Nicephorus I.
(802-11) was friendly to it, but his successor put it down with
relentless savagery; and after it had led to a formidable rebellion,
its votaries were finally suppressed by the generals of Basil the
Macedonian, 871. But its tenets lingered on in Thrace, whither it had
been transported when some of its disciples were expropriated by
Constantine V., till the eighteenth century, and still later in Armenia
itself. The authoritative book of the Armenian Paulicians, the _Key of
Truth_, has been thought to have been completed by one Smbat, minister
of Chosroes of Persia, whose date is 800-50,[5] but the history of
those days is certainly very confused and may have been distorted.

The intervention of Charles the Great in this controversy is but one
illustration of the importance of theological questions in the outlook
of the reviver of the Empire in the Catholic West. Other theological
doctrines had a like interest in his view and in that of his house; and
in some of them also Spain was concerned. At Toledo, in 589, Reccared,
when he accepted the Catholic creed, had inserted his belief in {81}
the double procession of the Holy Ghost. This was again discussed in
767 at Gentilly, and at Aachen in 809.

[Sidenote: The "Veni Creator."]

Alcuin, as in the Adoptianist controversy, played a great part in
stating the view which the West was coming generally to accept. Leo
III. was consulted, and advised that no addition should be made to the
Creed for fear of widening the breach with the East. It would seem
that the great hymn, "Veni Creator Spiritus," is the expression of this
doctrine by the ninth century, and is the work of Rabanus Maurus, a
monk of the famous house of Fulda.

[Sidenote: The "Quicunque Vult."]

While this sums up in devotional form the Christian thought as to one
of the mysteries of faith, the hymn of a character more distinctly
credal, called "Quicunque vult," enshrines it in another aspect. The
"Quicunque" has, indeed, a much earlier history. In 633 the Fourth
Council of Toledo quoted many of its clauses. Leodgar, Bishop of Autun
(663-78), directed his clergy to learn it by heart; and