Месопотамиялық христиан тобы: Эвхиттер мен Мессалиандар

Christian group from Mesopotamia
The Euchites or Messalians were a Christian sect from Mesopotamia that spread to Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and Thrace. The name 'Messalian' comes from the Syriac ܡܨܠܝܢܐ, mṣallyānā, meaning 'one who prays'. The Greek translation is εὐχίτης, euchitēs, meaning the same.

They are first mentioned in the 370s by Ephrem the Syrian, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Jerome, and are also mentioned by Archbishop Atticus, Theodotus of Antioch, and Archbishop Sisinnius. They were first condemned as heretical in a synod of 383 AD (Side, Pamphylia), whose acta was referred to in the works of Photius. Their leader was supposedly a man named Peter who claimed to be Christ. Before being stoned to death for his blasphemies, he promised his followers that after three days he would rise from his tomb in the shape of a wolf, attracting the title of Lycopetrus or Peter the Wolf. They continued to exist for several centuries, influencing the Bogomils of Bulgaria, who are called Lycopetrians in an abjuration formula of 1027. Modern scholarship has also questioned whether a coherent heretical movement existed behind these condemnations, and has emphasised instead the friction in the Eastern Church caused by Messalianism's "ascetical practices and imagistic language far more characteristic of Syriac Christianity than of the imperial Church centred on Constantinople".

Gelbert (2013, 2023) suggests that in the Ginza Rabba (Right Ginza 9.1), the Mandaic term minunaiia ("Mnunaeans" or "Minunaeans") is actually a reference to the Messalians or Euchites.