Terminology Tuesday
Mani (or Manes) and Manichaeism. It is impossible to state in brief compass the facts relating to the life of Mani (or, acc. to the usual W. form of his name, ‘Manichaeus’), the founder of Manichaeism, as the relatively late sources of his life are mutually contradictory in their details. The chief sources are: (1) the writings of certain of the Church Fathers, notably St *Ephraem Syrus, *Titus of Bostra, *Serapion of Thmuis, and esp. St *Augustine of Hippo (who was himself a Manichee for nine years before his conversion); (2) a report of a reputed dialogue between Mani and a bishop, Archelaus, the so-called ‘Acta Archelai’, which was issued by one Hegemonius; (3) references in various medieval Muslim historians who came across Manichaeism in Babylonia, notably Al-Biruni; (4) a collection of Manichaean documents, discovered in 1904–5 at Turfan and elsewhere in Chinese Turkestan, and published by F. W. K. Müller and others; (5) another collection of Manichaean documents of the 3rd and 4th cents. found in Egypt in 1930 and published by C. Schmidt, H. J. Polotsky, and others, which, if not from Mani himself, embody the teaching of his earliest disciples; and (6) a biography of Mani, prob. translated from a Syriac original, more recently discovered in Egypt. This casts a new light on his evolution as a young man, in the environment of a Judaeo-Christian sect, the *Elkesaites.
From our extant sources it would seem that Mani (c. 216–276) was born near Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire; that he began his own special teaching in 240; that opposition from the *Zoroastrians forced him into exile in India, and that he propagated his teaching rapidly by preaching far and wide in the E.; that in 242 he returned to the capital and may have approached Sapor I, who first gave him active support and then attacked him; and that under his second successor, Bahram I, he was put to death by being flayed alive, and his disciples banished.
Mani’s system was a radical offshoot of the *Gnostic traditions of E. Persia. Deeply influenced by St *Paul (Manichaeism struck Christians as a ‘Pauline heresy’), Mani transformed the cramped, ritualist views of the Judaeo-Christian sect in which he had been brought up into a coherent body of Gnostic dogma, uncompromisingly dualistic, consequential, and deeply conscious of having ‘unveiled’ truths of universal validity. It was based on a supposed primeval conflict between light and darkness. It taught that the object of the practice of religion was to release the particles of light which Satan had stolen from the world of Light and imprisoned in man’s brain and that Jesus, Buddha, the Prophets, and Mani had been sent to help in this task. For the Manichaean believer, the whole physical universe was mobilized to create this release. The Gnostic myth of salvation has seldom been presented on so grandiose a cosmic scale, worked out in rigorous detail; every phase of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars was a stage in the deliverance of the believer’s soul, and every ritual act of the individual had resonance among the heavenly bodies.
To achieve this release, severe asceticism, including vegetarianism, was practised. There existed in the sect a hierarchy of grades professing different standards of austerity; the ‘Elect’ were supported by the ‘Hearers’ in their determined missionary endeavours and in an otherworldly state of perfection. The Manichaeans’ enemies attributed to them many abominable practices, but St Augustine, with his exceptional opportunities for being well informed, nowhere criticized their morals.The sect spread rapidly. It appears to have been established in Egypt before the end of the 3rd cent., and at Rome early in the 4th. In the later 4th cent. Manichaeans were numerous in Africa. How far the sect directly influenced such heretics as the *Albigensians, *Bogomils, and *Paulicians is disputed; for some similarities of practice would account for the charges of ‘Manichaeism’ laid against them. On the other hand, the Turfan fragments attest its survival in Chinese Turkestan down to the 10th cent.; and, as the ‘Doctrine of Light’, it still flourished in 13th-cent. Fukien
Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (Eds.). (2005). In The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed. rev., p. 1033). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
