BY LORENZO ALTICOZZI

OF CORTONA

PRIEST OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS The Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, is a Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola. Alticozzi was an 18th-century Jesuit scholar.

DISSERTATION

HISTORICAL-CRITICAL

On the Ancient and New Manichaeans. Manichaeism was a major dualistic religion founded by the Iranian prophet Mani in the 3rd century AD, teaching a struggle between a good world of light and an evil world of darkness.

CHAPTER I.

Concerning the ancient Pagans who were the precursors of the Manichaeans.

The error of the ancient Pagans concerning an eternal evil nature as the cause of all evils.

I. Decorative woodcut initial C featuring a classical landscape with buildings and foliage.WHEN the ancient Pagans original: "Gentiles." This refers to non-Christian, polytheistic peoples of antiquity. perceived themselves oppressed and almost overwhelmed by infinite calamities and the heaviest evils, they sought the cause from which so many and such great evils flowed into the entire human race. Since, however, they thought it wicked and impious to say that God—who is supremely good, and whom they were not ignorant of as nature pointed the way—was the author of all the evils by which we are afflicted, they fell by an easy slip into that error in which they believed that a certain eternal evil nature exists, from which all evils flow and emanate to us. If nothing happens without a cause (1), says Plutarch A famous Greek historian and philosopher (c. 46–120 AD) whose works were often cited by Christian scholars to illustrate pagan thought., and the good does not provide the cause of evil, it is necessary in nature that, just as there is an origin of good, so there exists a particular origin and principle of evil. For some think that there are two Gods, as if devoted to contrary arts, such that one provides good things, and the other The text cuts off here, continuing on the next page.

(1) Plutarch, book On Isis and Osiris, column a, page 211.