Historical-Critical Dissertation on the Ancient and New Manichaeans

tmont, to whom add Possidius of Calama Possidius (370–437 AD) was a close friend of St. Augustine and wrote his first biography, and Bossuet Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), a celebrated French bishop and theologian known for his oratory of more illustrious memory. I have used as most certain witnesses Archelaus, Athanasius, Titus of Bostra, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, Leo the Great, John of Damascus, and others like them.

Since I have decided to deal not only with the old Manichaeans followers of a dualistic religion that saw the world as a struggle between light and dark, but also with the new Manichaeans—or rather the successors of the Manichaeans—such as the Predestinarian Cathars The Cathars were a medieval sect in Europe who held dualistic beliefs similar to Manichaeism, or Albigensians, and those whom I judge to be Lutherans, Calvinists, and Jansenists Jansenism was a Catholic theological movement, later condemned, that emphasized original sin and divine grace in a way the author finds similar to older heresies; regarding the Albigensians, I consulted the work of Moneta Moneta of Cremona (c. 1180–1240), a Dominican inquisitor who wrote a famous refutation of heretics, published from the shadows into the light by the Reverend Father V. C. Richinius, Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace Thomas Augustinus Ricchini (1695–1779), who edited Moneta’s historical manuscripts, and illustrated with most excellent annotations. Regarding the Lutherans, I consulted Martin Luther himself and Wolf; for the Calvinists, John Calvin; and for the Jansenists, I turned to Cornelius Jansen himself. By employing their own testimonies, I might demonstrate what I had proposed for myself: namely, to show not only the antiquity but also the perpetuity perpetuity: the idea of an unbroken, continuous existence through time of the Manichaean heresy.

Perhaps someone here might say that, by this path and reasoning, nearly the whole of Church tradition is being attributed to the Manichaean heresy—which is a monstrous thing to say original: "nefas dictu" and tears up the very foundations of religion. To these concerns I respond: if antiquity and perpetuity alone were sufficient to define tradition, then one would have to say that all errors and all vices—which have invaded the whole human race from the beginning of the world, after the Fall of Adam, even to our own times—belong to the tradition of the Church. Therefore, besides antiquity and per-