ABRAMITI. — Two sects bore this name: 1) certain heretics of the 9th century, scattered throughout Syria, who, accepting the ideas of Abramo di Antiochia, denied the divinity of Gesù Cristo; 2) a Protestant sect of little importance and short duration, Hussites (v.), which arose toward the end of the 18th century near Pardubice, in Bohemia.
This may be regarded as a sect of deists. Its adherents, recruited secretly especially among Jewish and Protestant peasants, preached that they wished to conform to the religion professed by Abramo before circumcision. They repudiated the Holy Trinity, original sin, the Incarnation, and the other truths contained in Scripture, of which they retained only the Ten Commandments, interpreted in their own way, and the Lord’s Prayer. They admitted only the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments of the future life, without the eternity of hell. Solely in order to avoid possible persecutions, they had their children baptized and contracted religious marriages. Invited by Giuseppe II to enroll in one of the confessions recognized by the Edict of Toleration (1780), they refused to obey; Giuseppe then dispersed them (1783), forcibly organizing the men into frontier battalions.