Mani

(216–276/7)

   Sect Founder.

   Mani was born into an aristocratic family in South Babylon. In 204, he embarked on a mission, preaching throughout the Persian Empire and even spending time in India. During the reigns of King Shapur I and Hormizd I, he enjoyed royal protection, but, with the accession of Bahram I, he was imprisoned and eventually executed. His religious system was dualistic. The two forces, light and darkness, God and matter, were eternal. Particles of light had been imprisoned by darkness and Jesus, the Buddha, the Prophets and Mani himself had been sent to help release the light. In order to contribute to the process, the Manichaean believer embarked on a hierarchical life of austerity. Augustine of Hippo was one of several Christian theologians who wrote against these doctrines. The Manichaeans were much persecuted, but none the less Manichaean documents have survived in Coptic, Greek, Persian and even Chinese. Scholars disagree as to the extent of Buddhist, Christian and Gnostic elements within Manichaeism and also as to the extent of its influence on later heresies such as that of the Bogomiles of the tenth-century Balkans and the Albigensians of late twelfth-century France. Recently an early biography of Mani himself has been discovered in Egypt which fills in the details of his early life.

   S. Lieu, Manichaeism (1985);

   L.J.R. Ort, Mani (1967).