The Euchites or Messalians were a Christian sect from Mesopotamia that spread to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and Thrace.
[11] By the 12th century the sect had reached Bohemia and Germany[citation needed] and, by a resolution of the Council of Trier (1231), was condemned as heretical.
Such charges have a long history, and historians debate whether they are truthful to any degree: the idea of these unholy acts can be traced back further to alleged practices of certain Gnostic sects; indeed, a similar literary tradition regarding heresies seems to have been brought into existence well before the Christian era, during the reign of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
[13] The sect's teaching asserted that: Messalians taught that once a person experienced the essence of God they were freed from moral obligations or ecclesiastical discipline.
Their critics also accused them of incest, cannibalism and "debauchery" (in Armenia, their name came to mean "filthy")[16] but scholars reject these claims.