risen to eminence among his countrymen, and attracted
the notice of several successive sovereigns.
He is said to have been a skilful physician, an accomplished
painter, and an excellent astronomer, as well as an
acute metaphysician. Like Montanus, he laid claim
to a divine commission, and alleged that he was the
Paraclete who was promised to guide into all truth.
He maintained that there are two First Principles
of all things, light and darkness: God, in the
kingdom of light, and the devil, in the kingdom of
darkness, have existed from eternity. Mani thus
accounted for the phenomena of the world around us—“Over
the kingdom of light,” said this heresiarch,
“ruled God the Father, eternal in His sacred
race, glorious in His might, the truth by His very
essence.... But the Father himself, glorious
in His majesty; incomprehensible in His greatness,
has united with Himself blessed and glorious Aeons,
in number and greatness surpassing estimation.”
[439:1] He taught that Christ appeared to liberate
the light from the darkness, and that he himself was
now deputed to reveal the mysteries of the universe,
and to assist men in recovering their freedom.
He rejected a great portion of the canon of Scripture,
and substituted certain writings of his own, which
his followers were to receive as of divine authority.
His disciples, called Manichees or Manichaeans, assumed
the name of a
Church, and were divided into
two classes, the
Elect and the
Hearers.
The Elect, who were comparatively few, were the sacred
order. They alone were made acquainted with the
mysteries, or more recondite doctrines, of the sect;
they practised extreme abstinence; they subsisted chiefly
upon olives; [439:2] and they lived in celibacy.
They were not to kill, or even wound, an animal; neither
were they to pull up a vegetable, or pluck a flower.
The Hearers were permitted to share in the business
and pleasures of the world, but they were taught only
the elements of the system. After death, according
to Mani, souls do not pass immediately into the world
of light. They must first undergo a two-fold
purification; one, by
water in the moon; another,
by
fire in the sun.
Mani had provoked the enmity of the Magians; and,
at their instigation, he was consigned, about A.D.
277, by order of the Persian monarch, to a cruel and
ignominious death. But the sect which he had organized
did not die along with him. His system was well
fitted to please the Oriental fancy; its promise of
a higher wisdom to those who obtained admission into
the class of the Elect encouraged the credulity of
the auditors; and, to such as had not carefully studied
the Christian revelation, its hypothesis of a Good
and of an Evil Deity accounted rather plausibly for
the mingled good and evil of our present existence.
The Manichaeans were exposed to much suffering in
the country where they first appeared; and, as a sect
of Persian origin, they were oppressed by the Roman
government; but they were not extinguished by persecution,
and, far down in the middle ages, they still occasionally
figure in the drama of history.