SYNOD OF DOVIN / PAULICIANS
Synod at Dovin (719 AD). The Paulicians were a Gnostic and Manichaean religious group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Anatolia, Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire.
http://www.baptistpillar.com/bd0547.htm, In Defense of Biblical, Historical, Christianity, “The Paulicians”
Like the Nestorians (declared heretical in 431), who delineated the natures of Christ in their opposition of such heresy, the Paulicians were unjustly accused of being adoptionist. There were other charges, most of them merely ridiculous, i. e. that they were cannibals, making cakes from meal and the blood of infants; that they conducted their prayer meetings naked; they practiced incest; and taught marriage was a sin (in spite of the fact that every one of their leaders was married!). (This stuff is getting pretty easy to stereotype.) It is apparent the first century churches of Armenia remained in the backwaters of "mainstream" Christianity for many years, relatively unchanged in their New Testament simplicity. Nevertheless, such churches had a profound influence upon some major developments in Christian and world history.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/7224/Rick/chron8.htm, Church History Timeline: The Eighth Century:
719 John of Otzun, Catholicus of the Armenian church, held a synod at Dovin which condemned the Paulicians. The Paulicians were dualists, believing that the Heavenly Being and the Demiurge (the creator of the world) were both eternal. They did not believe that Christ took flesh of Mary; instead, he received his body in heaven and merely passed through Mary. They rejected the sacraments and did not revere the cross, though they had no scruples about dissimmulating and pretending to conform to normative Christianity. They rejected marriage, and it was reported that they engaged in licentious behavior. The Paulicians also rejected icons and relics.
http://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/DISS06.html, PAGANS, HERETICS, CHRISTIANS ... AND DEMONS, “Bogomils and vampires | Cosmas the Presbyter”:
Descriptions of Paulicians were still grounded in the early Christian rhetoric against pagans and Manichaean heretics, continuing the tradition of tying them to barbarian practices: (child) sacrifice, sexual licentiousness and orgiasm, incest, etc.
Like I said; easy to stereotype:
http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/4_ch12.htm, HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*: CHAPTER XII: HERETICAL SECTS, “§ 131. The Paulicians” III. (7):
(7) Their morals were ascetic. They aimed to emancipate the spirit from the power of the material body, without, however, condemning marriage and the eating of flesh; but the Baanites ran into the opposite extreme of an antinomian abuse of the flesh, and reveled in licentiousness, even incest. In both extremes they resembled the Gnostic sects.