No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
About the year 300 it became plain that a new religion was spreading through the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. This was the faith taught by one Manes or Mânî, a native of Babylonia, who was put to death by order of the Shah Bahram or Varanes I in 275. One story is that he began to teach when 13 years old, another when he was 24. We know with fair certainty that he was 60 when he died; so that if we take the more probable date his missionary activity must have lasted for thirty-five years— a longer period than has generally been allowed to founders of new religions. His teaching must also have started in the reign of Ardeshîr, the restorer of the Zoroastrian religion, by whose orders were collected the books known as the Avesta. Ardeshîr's religious restoration was avowedly made for political reasons, and with the view of binding together the newly-founded empire of the Sassanides by a common faith. It seems to have given a good deal of offence to the older Persian nobles, and it was very likely among these that Mânî found his first converts. The later Manichæans boasted that he converted to his doctrines Ardeshîr's successor, Shâpûr or Sapor, the conqueror of the Emperor Valerian, and also the next king, Hormuz or Hormidas, who reigned only a few months.
page 69 note 1 The summary of Manes' history here given is mainly taken from Rochat, , Essai sur Mani et sa Doctrine, Genève, 1897Google Scholar, where the account given by the Christian Fathers is harmonized with that of the Mahommedan writers quoted by Flügel, , Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften, Leipzig, 1862Google Scholar, and Kessler, , Mani, Berlin, 1889Google Scholar. Cf. Baur, , Die Manichaische Religionsyetem, Tübingen, 1831.Google Scholar
page 70 note 1 See note on previous page.
page 70 note 2 Cumont, , Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères du Mithra, Bruxelles, 1896, etc., t. ii, p. 146Google Scholar. Cf. PSBA., 05, 1912, pp. 125sqq.Google Scholar
page 70 note 3 de Stoop, , La Diffusion du Manichaisme dans l'Empire romain, Gand, 1909, p. 34Google Scholar. The date of the edict is there shown to be 296.
page 71 note 1 Ammianus Marcellinus, bk. xv, c. 13.
page 71 note 2 de Stoop, , op. cit., ch. iii.Google Scholar
page 71 note 3 Babut, E. C., Priscillien, Paris, 1909, App. iv.Google Scholar
page 71 note 4 Gibbon, , Decline and Fall (Bury's ed.), vol. iii, p. 152.Google Scholar
page 72 note 1 The case of Barsymes mentioned later (v. note on p. 86) is typical.
page 72 note 2 Gibbon, , op. cit., vol. vi, p. 121.Google Scholar
page 73 note 1 Gibbon, , op. cit., vol. vi, p. 121Google Scholar; see also App. vi, The Paulician Heresy.
page 73 note 2 Schmidt, Carl, Histoire et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, Paris, 1849Google Scholar, passim. Conybeare, , The Kay of Truth, Oxford, 1898, pp. cxxx–liGoogle Scholar, is excellent for the history of the Paulicians and of their relations with other sects. Mr. Conybeare tries hard to prove that the Paulicians were not Manichæans. It is possible that there were many sects among them, but he quotes (p. cxl) the statement of Eckbart, Bishop of Cologne in 1160, that the Cathars of his time used to celebrate the festival of the Bema or anniversary of the death of Manes. Lea, H. C., History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, London, 1888, vol. ii, says (pp. 91–2)Google Scholar that the Cathars of Languedoc believed in transmigration, and wore the sacred thread of Zoroaster. In the “Ritual of the Albigeois”, given in App. vi to Mr. Conybeare's book, is a confession of sins much resembling the Khuastuanift.
page 74 note 1 Proceedings of Society of Biblical Archæology, 1912, p. 141.Google Scholar
page 75 note 1 See Rochat, , op. cit.Google Scholar, for authorities for these statements.
page 76 note 1 Al-Bîrûnî, , Chronology of Ancient Nations (Sachau's ed.), London, 1879, p. 190.Google Scholar
page 76 note 2 Cumont, , Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme romain, Paris, 1906, p. 164.Google Scholar
page 77 note 1 de Stoop, , op. cit., pp. 127 sqqGoogle Scholar. Dufoureq, , de Manichœismo apud Latinos, Paris, 1900, pp. 32 sqq.Google Scholar
page 77 note 2 Contra Fanstum, bk. xiii, c. 14.
page 78 note 1 Forschungen über die Manichäische Religion, Berlin, 1889.Google Scholar
page 78 note 2 Inscriptions Mandaïtes des Coupes de Khouabir, Paris, 1898.Google Scholar
page 78 note 3 JRAS., 1909, pp. 299 sqq.Google Scholar
page 80 note 1 Chuastuanit, das Bussgebet der Manicliäer, St. Petersburg, 1909.Google Scholar
page 80 note 2 JRAS., 04, 1911.Google Scholar
page 81 note 1 Mr. Dennistoun Ross said at the meeting that further investigation had made this date 300 years later.
page 81 note 2 “Un Traité Manichéen retrouvé en Chine”: Journal Asiatique for 11–12, 1911Google Scholar. This is the first part only. It is hoped that the conclusion of the article will shortly follow.
page 82 note 1 It has been pointed out to me that a passage in the Fihrist (Flügel, , op. cit., p. 100)Google Scholar makes Manes say that Jesus was a devil. It is, I think, plain that he is here recording the opinion, not of Manes, but of some late sect of his followers, and this may be due to the fact that Manes belonged, in his youth, to the Mugtasilah, who said that Jesus was a fiend, who had obtained baptism from St. John Baptist by a trick. It is directly contradicted by an earlier statement in the Fihrist that Manes announced himself to be the Paraclete, whose coming had been predicted by Jesus as good news (Flügel, , op. cit., p. 85).Google Scholar
page 82 note 2 The existence and popularity of the Manichæan books at the time may of course account for much.
page 83 note 1 The correspondence between the “degrees” of Manichæism and the worlds of light appears in the Fihrist (Flügel, , op. cit., p. 95)Google Scholar. For St. Augustine's division of the sect see his de Haeresibus, c. 46.
page 83 note 2 Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., p. 581, and n.Google Scholar
page 83 note 3 See de Stoop, , op. cit., p. 35, and n. 2.Google Scholar
page 84 note 1 e.g. Rainerio Saechone. See Lea, 's History of the Inquisition, vol. ii, p. 96Google Scholar; so Peter Martyr was the son of a Cathar, and Robert le Bugre, a third Inquisitor, had been a Cathar for twenty years. See Schmidt, , op. cit., vol. i, p. 159.Google Scholar
page 84 note 2 Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., p. 572, u. 3.Google Scholar
page 85 note 1 Cf. Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., p. 576, n. 2, and p. 577, n. 4Google Scholar, and Schmidt, , op. cit., p. 94Google Scholar. The socius or companion was not bound to be a Perfect.
page 85 note 2 Cyril of Jerusalem. Cf. de Stoop, , op. cit., p. 20, n. 4.Google Scholar
page 85 note 3 Kessler, , op. cit., p. 398.Google Scholar
page 85 note 4 Schmidt, , op. cit., vol. ii, p. 99Google Scholar; Maitland, , Facts and Documents relating to the Alhigenses, London, 1832, p. 141.Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 Kessler, , pp. 398–9Google Scholar. It is even possible that he was supposed to rise higher in the scale of being. Barsymes, the moneylender protected by Theodora (Procopius, , Anecdota, cap. xxiiGoogle Scholar; de Stoop, , op. cit., p. 84)Google Scholar, cannot during most of his life have been anything but a Hearer. But in one of the Turfan fragments he is invoked as “the Lord Barsymes”, an epithet reserved for the “Messengers” of the Light like Buddha, Jesus, and Mânî.
page 86 note 2 St. Augustine, , contra Faust., bk. xx, c. 17.Google Scholar
page 87 note 1 See Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., p. 513, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 87 note 2 Müller, , Handschriften Reste aus Turfan, Berlin, 1904, Fr. 4Google Scholar. Cf. “Khuastuanift”: JRAS., 1911, p. 281Google Scholar. The different allusions to this god in Manichæism are brought together by Chavannes, & Pelliot, in Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., pp. 542–3, n. 2.Google Scholar
page 87 note 3 St. Augustine, , contra Faust., bk. xx, nn. 2 and 6Google Scholar. Cf. Müller, , op. cit., p. 74.Google Scholar
page 87 note 4 Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., p. 587, n. 2.Google Scholar
page 88 note 1 Rainerio Sacchone, the Perfect turned Inquisitor mentioned above, says (in 1240) that there were only 4,000 Perfects in the whole of Europe. See Schmidt, , op. cit., vol. ii, p. 96Google Scholar. As the Slav countries, especially Bosnia, were full of them, these numbers leave very few for Languedoc. At the great “synod” or gathering of the Manichæans at the Château de Pieussan in 1225 there were more than 100 Perfects (ibid., p. 290), and this seems to have been the maximum possible (cf. ibid., p. 292).
page 89 note 1 Contra Faust., bk. ii, c. 5Google Scholar; ibid., Confessions, bk. iii, c. 10.Google Scholar
page 89 note 2 Journal Asiatique, ubi cit., pp. 539–40, nn. 1, 3.Google Scholar
page 90 note 1 Scottish Review, 07, 1893, pp. 133 sqq.Google Scholar
page 92 note 1 Scottish Review, ubi cit., pp. 136–7.Google Scholar
page 92 note 2 Such as the Babylonian. See Bousset, , Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen, 1907, passim.Google Scholar