8. THE MANICHEES
It was in this third century, critical in so many ways for Christianity, that a new religion began to be preached which, although proscribed everywhere from its very first appearance, did not cease to trouble the peace of the world for another thousand years. This was that famous Manicheeism which Christians and Mohammedans, Pagan emperors of Rome and Chinese mandarins, all in their turn repressed with all possible severity. It was a cult that very soon disappeared from sight indeed, but it persisted as the strongest religious undergrowth of all time; and it would be a bold assertion to say that we have yet heard the last of it. There are few features of the general history of the Church better known than its persistent struggle against the Manichees -- the Bougres, Cathari, Albigenses of the Middle Ages -- and yet it is only within the last twelve years that we have had any truly reliable information about the origins of the sect and about its founder. [1]
Mani, a Persian by birth, set himself to found a new religion which should contain all the religious wisdom hitherto known. In this conscious and ambitious syncretist, that long drawn out business comes to its final perfection. Mani is the contemporary of those imperial patrons of syncretism, Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus, and in the years during which they enthroned the Syrian influences at Rome, Mani, from the other side of Syria, made the long pilgrimage still further to the East, in his search for yet more religious wisdom, to India and to the Buddhists.
For Mani, there had been, in the career he had chosen, three great practitioners already, Our Lord, Zoroaster, and Buddha, three interpreters of a single wisdom. They had only preached: Mani would also write, and so secure for "my religion" a world empire such as no religion had so far known. The time was indeed to come when it would, for a time, win over the great intelligence of St. Augustine in Africa, and gain a real hold as far to the east as China. And the main arm of its propaganda would be the book, and its illustrations.
There is something of Montanism in the new religion, for Mani declares himself to be one body and spirit with the Paraclete, the spirit sent by Jesus Christ. At the same time it embodies a mythological doctrine about the origin of the universe which is akin to that of such Gnostics of the previous century as Basilidie's and Valentine. And Mani owes much to Marcion also.
In this new amalgam, the existence of two first principles of all things -- the good and the bad -- is all important, for around the unending struggle of the good god and the bad god everything else turns. This the key to the whole system, as it is the key to Mani's explanation of the universe.
The ascetic ideal was pitched high -- so high, indeed, that the sect was divided into the Perfect, bound to practice what it was the unforgiveable sin to fail in even once, and the Hearers, who accepted the ideal indeed but, fearful of their ability to live up to it, put off their reception until the last hour of life. The seeming simplicity with which the theory of a dual first principle solved the torturing riddle of the existence of evil, the stiff ascetic ideals, and the spectacle of the life of the Perfect, fascinated thousands, in Mani's time and for centuries afterwards. For these devotees the moral horrors, and such repugnant practices as the ritual slow suicide, were altogether obscured. Nothing availed, in the end, but to destroy the Manichees, as so much noxious human vermin -- so, everywhere, said those to whom it fell to undertake the work of destruction. Mani was not only a cool headed prophet, but an organiser of genius. The new religion was strongly built, and the prophet's first coadjutors were well chosen. Mani's violent end -- he was crucified by the Persian king Bahram in 272 -- did not appreciably halt the progress of his sect. It gradually drew to itself the remains of the Marcionite church, and established itself in the lands between Persia and China. It was the last phase of organised Gnosticism, and the most successful of all.
1cf. P. ALFARIC Les Ecritures Manicheenes 2 vols. Paris 1918.
F. C. BIRKITT The Religion of the Manichees. Cambridge 1925.
C. SCHMIDT Neue Originalquellen des Manichaismus aus Aegypten. Stuttgart 1933.
J. LEBRETON Gnosticism Marcionism Manichaeism in Studies in Comparative Religions (edit. E. C. Messenger, London 1934) is a good popular account written by a specialist.
It was in this third century, critical in so many ways for Christianity, that a new religion began to be preached which, although proscribed everywhere from its very first appearance, did not cease to trouble the peace of the world for another thousand years. This was that famous Manicheeism which Christians and Mohammedans, Pagan emperors of Rome and Chinese mandarins, all in their turn repressed with all possible severity. It was a cult that very soon disappeared from sight indeed, but it persisted as the strongest religious undergrowth of all time; and it would be a bold assertion to say that we have yet heard the last of it. There are few features of the general history of the Church better known than its persistent struggle against the Manichees -- the Bougres, Cathari, Albigenses of the Middle Ages -- and yet it is only within the last twelve years that we have had any truly reliable information about the origins of the sect and about its founder. [1]
Mani, a Persian by birth, set himself to found a new religion which should contain all the religious wisdom hitherto known. In this conscious and ambitious syncretist, that long drawn out business comes to its final perfection. Mani is the contemporary of those imperial patrons of syncretism, Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus, and in the years during which they enthroned the Syrian influences at Rome, Mani, from the other side of Syria, made the long pilgrimage still further to the East, in his search for yet more religious wisdom, to India and to the Buddhists.
For Mani, there had been, in the career he had chosen, three great practitioners already, Our Lord, Zoroaster, and Buddha, three interpreters of a single wisdom. They had only preached: Mani would also write, and so secure for "my religion" a world empire such as no religion had so far known. The time was indeed to come when it would, for a time, win over the great intelligence of St. Augustine in Africa, and gain a real hold as far to the east as China. And the main arm of its propaganda would be the book, and its illustrations.
There is something of Montanism in the new religion, for Mani declares himself to be one body and spirit with the Paraclete, the spirit sent by Jesus Christ. At the same time it embodies a mythological doctrine about the origin of the universe which is akin to that of such Gnostics of the previous century as Basilidie's and Valentine. And Mani owes much to Marcion also.
In this new amalgam, the existence of two first principles of all things -- the good and the bad -- is all important, for around the unending struggle of the good god and the bad god everything else turns. This the key to the whole system, as it is the key to Mani's explanation of the universe.
The ascetic ideal was pitched high -- so high, indeed, that the sect was divided into the Perfect, bound to practice what it was the unforgiveable sin to fail in even once, and the Hearers, who accepted the ideal indeed but, fearful of their ability to live up to it, put off their reception until the last hour of life. The seeming simplicity with which the theory of a dual first principle solved the torturing riddle of the existence of evil, the stiff ascetic ideals, and the spectacle of the life of the Perfect, fascinated thousands, in Mani's time and for centuries afterwards. For these devotees the moral horrors, and such repugnant practices as the ritual slow suicide, were altogether obscured. Nothing availed, in the end, but to destroy the Manichees, as so much noxious human vermin -- so, everywhere, said those to whom it fell to undertake the work of destruction. Mani was not only a cool headed prophet, but an organiser of genius. The new religion was strongly built, and the prophet's first coadjutors were well chosen. Mani's violent end -- he was crucified by the Persian king Bahram in 272 -- did not appreciably halt the progress of his sect. It gradually drew to itself the remains of the Marcionite church, and established itself in the lands between Persia and China. It was the last phase of organised Gnosticism, and the most successful of all.
1cf. P. ALFARIC Les Ecritures Manicheenes 2 vols. Paris 1918.
F. C. BIRKITT The Religion of the Manichees. Cambridge 1925.
C. SCHMIDT Neue Originalquellen des Manichaismus aus Aegypten. Stuttgart 1933.
J. LEBRETON Gnosticism Marcionism Manichaeism in Studies in Comparative Religions (edit. E. C. Messenger, London 1934) is a good popular account written by a specialist.
