Writings in Connection with the Manichaean Heresy

Sapor, and won his confidence by presenting only the Magian side of his system. But no sooner did he permit the Christian element to appear, and call himself the apostle of the Lord, and show a desire to reform Magianism, than his sovereign determined to put him to death as a revolutionist. Forced to flee, he took refuge in Turkestan and gained influence there, partly by decorating the temples with paintings. To lend his doctrines the appearance of divine authority, he adopted the same device as Zoroaster and Mohammed. Having discovered a cave through which there ran a rill of water, he laid up in it a store of provisions and retired there for a year, giving out that he was on a visit to heaven. In this retirement he produced his Gospel,¹—a work illustrated with symbolical drawings, the ingenuity of which has been greatly praised. This book Manes presented to Hormizdas, the son and successor of Sapor, who professed himself favorable to his doctrine and even built him a castle as a place of shelter and retirement. Unfortunately for Manes, Hormizdas died in the second year of his reign; and though his successor, Varanes, was at first willing to shield him from persecution, yet, finding that the Magians were alarmed for their religion, he appointed a disputation to be held between the opposing parties. Such trials of dialectic in Eastern courts have not unfrequently resulted in very serious consequences to the parties engaged in them. In this instance the result was fatal to Manes. Worsted in argument, he was condemned to die, and thus perished in some sense as a martyr. The mode of his death is uncertain;² but it seems that his skin was stuffed with chaff and hung up in public in terrorem [as a warning]. This occurred in the year 277, and the anniversary was commemorated as the great religious festival of the Manichaeans.

This is not the place to attempt any account or criticism of the strange eclecticism of Mani.³ An adequate idea of the system may be gathered from the accompanying treatises. It

¹ Called Erteng or Arzeng, i.e., according to Renaudot, an illustrated book.
² Böhringer adopts the more horrible tradition: "His fate was that, persecuted by the Christians and by the Magians, after many changes, he was flayed alive under Baharam" (p. 386).
³ Böhringer characterizes it briefly in the words: "It is the old pagan..."