Lim . 2008 . the Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity

8/11/2019 Lim . 2008 . the Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity

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Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism

Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum

Edited by

Peter Schfer (Princeton, NJ)

Annette Y. Reed (Philadelphia, PA)

Seth Schwartz (New York, NY)

Azzan Yadin (New Brunswick, NJ)

119


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Mohr Siebeck

Heresy and Identity

in Late AntiquityEdited by

Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin

Studien zu einer narrativen Anthropologie

im frhen Judentum


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Eduard Iricinschi,born 1968; MA in Philosophy from Bucharest University, and MAin Religious Studies from New York University; is finishing a doctorate in the Depart-ment of Religion at Princeton University.

Holger M. Zellentin,born 1976, is an Assistant Professor of Rabbinics at the RichardS. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley,California.

ISBN 978-3-16-149122-1ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio-graphie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet athttp://dnb.d-nb.de.

2008 Mohr Siebeck, Tbingen, Germany.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permittedby copyright law) without the publishers written permission. This applies particularly toreproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems.

The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tbingen on non-aging paper and bound byBuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier.

Printed in Germany.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151452-4


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Preface

The colloquium held on January 1618 2005, Making Selves and

Marking Others: Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity, follows

in the steps of two earlier Princeton colloquia and volumes, which have

gained wide academic attention. The series of colloquia was initiated by

Peter Schfer in 2000, with generous funding from the Princeton

University Graduate School, and continued in the following years under

his tutelage.* Each year, two graduate students in the Department of

Religion at Princeton University choose a topic of interdisciplinaryinterest and organize a semester-long workshop on the selected theme,

followed by a colloquium. During the workshop, graduate students

present their papers to colleagues and faculty from a variety of fields, and

rework them into a formal presentation. At the concluding colloquium,

the participants discuss their revised work with recognized scholars from

Princeton University and other institutions, invited by the organizers to

present their views on the same topic.

We take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to our

contributors, and to all who so generously supported the colloquium and

this publication. As representative of all those who ensured our success,

we have space to name only the most prominent ones. It is hardly

possible to exaggerate Peter Schfers initiative and support for this

project. Annette Yoshiko Reed has considerably facilitated our task by

providing us with invaluable academic and editorial advice. Baru Saul

and Lorraine Fuhrmann have ensured a pleasant stay at Princeton for all

participants of the colloquium. At Princeton University, the Center for the

Study of Religion, the Department of Religion, and the Program in Judaic

Studies generously provided office space and funding for the colloquium

and the publication. Finally, Henning Ziebritzki and Tanja Mix from

Mohr Siebeck guided the project to its present form.

Holger Zellentin and Eduard Iricinschi

*Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed, eds.The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and

Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, TSAJ 95 (Tbingen: MohrSiebeck, 2003); and Raanan Boustan and Annette Y. Reed, eds., Heavenly Realms andEarthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge, U.K; New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2004). See now also Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh, eds.,Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World(Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming); and the colloquium organized in January 2007

by Philippa Townsend and Moulie Vidas, Revelation, Literature, and Community in

Antiquity.


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Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................... V

Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity

and Late Antique Heresiologies ..................................................................1

KAREN L.KINGSocial and Theological Effects of Heresiological Discourse.....................28

WILLIAM E.ARNAL

Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The PaulineEkklsiai

and the Boundaries of Urban Identities.....................................................50

AVERIL CAMERON

The Violence of Orthodoxy .................................................................... 102

YANNIS PAPADOYANNAKIS

Defining Orthodoxy in Pseudo-Justins Quaestiones

et responsiones ad orthodoxos............................................................... 115

CAROLINE HUMFRESS

Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy ..........128

RICHARD LIM

TheNomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity..................... 143

KEVIN LEE OSTERLOH

Judea, Rome and the Hellenistic Oikoumen: Emulation

and the Reinvention of Communal Identity ............................................ 168

JOHN G.GAGER

Where Does Lukes Anti-Judaism Come from?...................................... 207

PHILIPPA TOWNSEND

Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi ...... 212

EDUARD IRICINSCHI& HOLGERM. ZELLENTIN


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Table of ContentsVIII

ELAINE PAGELS

The Social History of Satan, Part III: John of Patmos and Ignatius of

Antioch Contrasting Visions of Gods People ..................................231

EDUARD IRICINSCHI

If You Got It, Flaunt It: Religious Advertising

in the Gospel of Philip ........................................................................... 253

ANNETTE YOSHIKO REED

Heresiology and the (Jewish-)Christian Novel:

Narrativized Polemics in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies ....................273

BURTON L.VISOTZKYGoys nt Us: Rabbinic Anti-Gentile Polemic

in Yerushalmi Berachot 9:1 .................................................................... 299

GREGG GARDNER

Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis ofBavli Shabbat156 ................. 314

HOLGER M.ZELLENTIN

Margin of Error: Women, Law,

and Christianity inBavli Shabbat116ab............................................... 339

ISRAEL JACOB YUVAL

The Other in Us: Liturgica, Poetica, Polemica........................................ 364

List of Contributors................................................................................. 387

Modern Author Index ............................................................................. 389

Subject Index .......................................................................................... 397


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TheNomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity

RICHARD LIM

In 405/6, a certain Secundinus boldly identified himself in a letter as aManichaeus.1 This educated man from Italy was then responding toAugustines polemical treatise against him, the Contra Secundinum, whichin turn was occasioned by a letter he had written earlier.2 Addressing his

correspondent as dominus, Secundinus began by invoking the Trinity,albeit in a self-consciously unorthodox manner: the ineffable God, hisFirst-born, King of all Lights Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, followedby citations from the sayings of Paul the Apostle.3In so doing, he aimed tounderscore the point that Paul and Mani shared consonant views: This iswhat Paul testifies and this is what Manichaeus himself testifies.4

This letter provides us with an interesting starting point for examiningthe uses of the nomen Manichaeorum in Late Antiquity. At a time whenthe teachings of Mani had already been proscribed by imperial laws and

condemned by ecclesiastical authorities, Secundinus displayed no shynessin declaring his adhesion to the teachings of Mani and, moreover, did sowhile maintaining a claim to being a Christian, indeed, a Christian of asuperior disposition. The Manichaean name stood for him as a badge ofhonor, an honor he bestowed upon himself but refused to concede toAugustine, even to the younger Augustine from the time when the latterwas a Manichaean auditor. Indeed Secundinus went so far as to criticizeAugustine for never having properly understood let alone followed theteachings of Mani and thereby made himself worthy of the nomen

Manichaeorum, a position that was diametrically opposite to that of Julianof Eclanum, who contended that Augustine never ceased to be a

1 Secundinus, Ad sanctum Augustinum epistula, Joseph Zycha, ed., CorpusScriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 25.2 (Vienna/Prague/Leipzig 1891), 893901.On this figure, see Janine Desmulliez et al., eds., Prosopographie Chrtienne du Bas-

Empire, II/2. Prosopographie de lItalie Chrtienne (Paris/Rome: cole Franaise deRome, 2000), 20089, s.v. Secundinus 2.

2Augustine, Contra Secundinum Manichaeum, Zycha, ed., CSEL25.2, 90547.3Secundinus, Ad sanctum Augustinum epistula, Zycha, ed., CSEL25.2, 893: Habeo

et ago gratias ineffabili ac sacratissimae maiestati eiusque primogenito omnium luminum

regi Iesu Christo, habeo gratias et subplex sancto refero spiritui. The title King of AllLights unambiguously refers to the dualistic teachings of Mani.

4Secundinus, ibid.,894: hoc Paulus, hoc ipse testatus Manichaeus.


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Richard Lim144

Manichaean even after he had become a catholic Christian priest andbishop.5

In thus employing the nomen as a term of praise reserved for the lovers

of truth, Secundinus was distinctly in the minority even close to beingunique among the extant writers of Late Antiquity. For him, to beManichaean was to think and act as a rationalist and a true philosopher.Augustine was for Secundinus not so much a follower of Mani, thepurveyor of truth, as that of the ars rhetorica.6 This invocation of thecategorical distinction between sophists and philosophers recalls Jeromesself-accusation of having been a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. Assuch, the charge appears to stem from the world of the literati andphilosophers rather than the rough-and-tumble scene that characterized late

antique religious controversies. The cultural snobbery of the Greco-Romanelite and its observed reluctance to admit that Christians constituted aThird Race indeed surfaced in Secundinus suggestion that Augustine,by forsaking the doctrines of Mani, had gone over to the Jewish tribeswith their barbaric customs.7

Should Secundinus positive construal of the Manichaean name be readas a quaint exception during a time when a variety of public statements,ranging from imperial laws to sermons from the pulpit, portrayedManichaeans as belonging to an evil and foreign sect? This begs thefurther question of how the nomen Manichaeorum was more commonlyemployed in Late Antiquity and to what ends. My paper will examine thisquestion, focusing on the period of the late fourth and fifth centuries whenthe contestations over the meaning of name remained in flux.

5See below n. 23.6 Secundinus, ibid., 895: uisus enim mihi es et pro certo sic est et numquam

fuisse Manichaeum nec eius te potuisse arcana incognita secreti cognoscere atque subManichaei nominee persequi te Hannibalem atque Mithridatem. (For it seems to me that you have never been a Manichaean, and never been able to discover the unknown

mysteries of his secret, and that under the name of Manichaeus you are attackingHannibal or Mithridates); English translation in text from Iain Gardner and Samuel N.C.Lieu, eds., Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire(Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 138.

7 Secundinus, ibid., 896: O utinam a Manichaeo recedens academiam petisses autRomanorum bella, quia omnia superarunt, interpretatus fuisses! Quam magna ibi, quamegregia conperisses, et non castus homo utique totius pudicitiae et pauperitatis isses adIudaeorum gentes barbaras moribus. (How much better it would have been if when youleft Manichaeus you had joined the Academy or written an exposition of the wars of theRomans who conquered the world. What great and noble achievements you would havefound there, and you, a chaste man of absolute modesty and poverty, would not havegone over to the Jewish tribes with their barbaric customs.) Trans. in Manichaean Texts

(ed. Gardner and Lieu), 139. On the uses of the notion of Christians as the tertium genus,see Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford:OUP, 2004), 26065.


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The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity 145

At first glance, the nomen Manichaeorum belonged generically to theclass of sectarian labels that identifies the follower in reference to thefounder of the religion or philosophical sect. Insiders often came to

embrace terms of abuse by outsiders as sources of positive identity. Suchhas traditionally been thought to be the case with thenomen christianum.8According to the author of Luke-Acts, thecitizens of Antioch first coinedthe Christian name to mock the so-called followers of Christ.9This namelater turned from an outsiders term of derision to the self-chosen label ofthose so derided.10 By the early second century, the religious insidersidentification with the Christian name had become so complete that publicpersecutions against Christians turned on, and could be made to turn on,whether accused individuals would, of their own volition, assert a form of

self-identification with the nomen. Geoffrey de Ste Croix has observedthat, from at least 112 onwards, the normal charge against Christian wassimply being Christian: they are punished, that is to say for the Name,the nomen Christianum.11 In Christian acta martyrum, presiding Romanmagistrates would typically inquire of those brought before them whetherthey were Christians or not, and would proceed to punish only those whopersisted in replying in the affirmative. Tertullian (Apologeticus liber) andMinucius Felix (Octavius) were two apologists who challenged those whoused the nomen Christianum as the basis for persecuting Christians tojustify how they could condemn individuals by associating with a groupidentity that had itself not been incontrovertibly linked to the commitmentof punishable crimes. This last point, that crimes Christians were accusedof remain unprove, was indeed confirmed by Pliny the Younger in hisletter to Trajan c. CE 111.

8 See, e.g., Elias Bickerman, The Name of Christians, HTR 42 (1949): 10924;

Harold Mattingly, The Origin of the Name Christiani, JTS n.s. 9 (1958): 2637;Orsolino Montevecchi, Nomen Christianorum, in Paradoxos Politeia: Studi Patristiciin onore di Giuseppe Lazzati, Studia Patristica Mediolanensia 10 (ed. Raniero

Cantalamessa and Luigi F. Pizzolato; Milan: Pubblicazioni della Universit Cattolica delSacro Cuore, 1979), 485500; and Justin Taylor, Why Were the Disciples First CalledChristians at Antioch? (Acts 11, 26),RB101 (1994): 7594.

9Acts 11:26.10See Philippa Townsends article in this volume, Who Were the First Christians?

Jews, Gentiles and the Christianoi, which argues convincingly that the original usage ofthe name hoi Christianoiwas used to refer to Gentile Christians.

11 Geoffrey E.M. de Ste. Croix, Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted? Pastand Present 26 (1963): 638; esp. 9: This is quite certain, from what the Christianapologists say in the second and early third centuries, from several accounts ofmartyrdoms, and from the technical language used by Pliny and Trajan... See also Judith

M. Lieu, I am a Christian: Martyrdom and the Beginning of Christian Identity, inNeither Jew nor Greek: Constructing Early Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001),21131.


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The growth of the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom turned theChristian name into the privileged possession of those who would followChrist even unto death in imitation of his passion.12 Yet we do well to

recall that not all followers of Christ at the time invested their identitiesin martyrdom or indeed in the Christian name. Christians who professeddocetic beliefs did not think that the real Christ was hung on the crossand that he indeed merely appeared to have been crucified; they wouldhave accordingly interpreted the injunction to imitate Christ in a differentmanner from those who actively sought martyrdom as the path toward theimitatio Christi.13 These men and women were also less likely to believethat the defense of the Christian name was somehow a core aspect of theirreligious self-identities. But as many Christians increasingly defined theirs

as the church of the martyrs and the Christian name as a badge reserved forthose with a commitment to martyrdom, Christians with docetic andgnostic leanings increasingly became marginalized and even categorized asnon-Christians.14

Labels of religious ethnicity were rarely ones that remained stable overtime and their ascribed meanings were often fiercely contested duringperiods of foment. The meaning of the name of Jew (Judaios/Iudaeus)came to be sharpened on account of the confrontations of certain Jews withthe Roman authorities. In the aftermath of the Bar Kochba evolt in 135 CE,the emperors briefly imposed the fiscus judaicus, which converted thetraditional contributions that Jews made to the temple cult into a tax paidto the imperial fisc.15 Jews would then have had the choice to decidewhether they wished to pay the tax; if they did not wish to do so they couldsimply not identify themselves as Jews. By thus increasing the cost ofbeing a self-declared Jew, the authorities arguably caused many Jews toreinvest in their inherited identity with deliberate and meaningful action.

In Late Antiquity, Christian and Jewish self-identities came more andmore to be associated with their respective religious labels. In contrast,

12 See Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianityand Judaism(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), esp. 1021.13See, e.g., Jean Doresse, Le refus de la croix: gnostiques et manichens, La Table

Ronde102 (1957): 8997.14 The seminal work on this topic remains Alain Le Boulluec, La notion dhrsie

dans la littrature grecque, IIeIIIesicles,2 vols (Paris: tudes Augustiniennes, 1985).There is a copious, burgeoning literature that uses theories of cultural identity toelucidate the process of religious identity-formation. Many of the basic ideas behind thisapproach are expounded in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections onthe Origins and Spread of Nationalism(rev. ed.; London: Verso, 1991).

15 See Martin Goodman, Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity, JRS 79

(1989): 4044. For a fine study of the intricate processes that shaped the formation of aJewish identity, see Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 152 BCE640 CE(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).


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Manichaeans in the Roman world by and large did not seem to haveexhibited a comparable degree of identification with the nomenManichaeorum. Instead, efforts to turn that name into a meaningful

religious label were made mostly by those who would suppress it. Indeedwe owe the sense of a distinctive Manichaean identity to the works ofcatholic/orthodox Christian writers who,in accordance with the tendenciesof heresiography and their growing alliance with the Roman statefollowing the reign of Theodosius I, sought to invent the image of an alienOther so as to be able to condemn more efficaciously the specificpractices, beliefs and persons.16

It is a well attested but often overlooked nostrum that people whom wehave grown accustomed to calling Manichaeans mainly represented

themselves as Christians. Throughout his own writings, Mani invariablystyled himself an apostle of Jesus Christ after the fashion of Paul.17In theLiving Gospel, he introduces himself as Mannichaeus (sic), apostle ofJesus Christ18 The same reference appears in one of his epistlesdiscovered at Ismant el-Kharab: Manichaios, apostle of Jesus Christ19Throughout the CopticKephalaia, Mani represents himself as an apostle or

phstrwho engages in a dialogue with disciples.20

16 See Samuel N.C. Lieu, Some Themes in Later Roman Anti-Manichaean

Polemics, Bulletin of the Johns Rylands University Library of Manchester 68 (1986):43469; rev. version in idem, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East(Leiden: Brill, 1994), 156202; and Sarah Stroumsa and Gedaliahu A.G. Stroumsa,Aspects of the Anti-Manichaean Polemics in Late Antiquity and under Early Islam,

HTR 81 (1988): 3758.17 See Ernst Waldschmidt and Otto Helmut Wolfgang Lentz, Die Stellung Jesu im

Manichismus, Abhandlungen der preuischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1926,Phil.-hist. Klasse 4 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926); and Eugen Rose, Diemanichische Christologie, Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 32 (1980):21931. The Jesus that Mani invokes is often termed the Iesus Patibilis, a cosmic doceticfigure, to distinguish him from the historical Jesus.

18Cologne Mani Codex65.2368; ed. cit., 445, English translation by Judith M. andSamuel N.C. Lieu, cited in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 156.19 A critical edition of this text is currently under preparation by Iain Gardner and

Wolf-Peter Funk. English translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner andLieu), 167.

20 Carl Schmidt and Hans Jakob Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund in gypten:Originalschriften des Mani und seiner Schler, Sitzungberichte der preuischen

Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse (Berlin, 1933), 190, esp. 2021. SeeIain Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 15ff. The BerlinPapyrusbuch also contains this form of self-representation: Manichaios, der ApostelJesu Christi; see Schmidt and Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund, 24. This usage of

Manichaios the Apostle of Jesus Christ appears also in the Acta Archelai , seeHegemonius, Acta Archelai 5.5.22, in Charles Henri Beeson, ed., Die griechischenchristlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte16 (Leipzig, 1906) [= Epiphanius,


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This was such a consistent practice that outsiders took note of it. In theEpistula Fundamenti, preserved in Augustines Contra EpistulamFundamenti (396/97) and referred to as one of the most widely read

Manichaean texts in Roman North Africa, the same Pauline echoes areevident: Mani, apostle of Jesus Christ21 Augustine himself regardedthis as a common practice in Manichaeans texts. In his Contra Faustum, hesaid that every one of Manis epistles begins this way, with Mani, Apostleof Jesus Christ.22 Educated men were well apprised of this practice, somuch so that Julian of Eclanum, in his attack on Augustines formerassociation with Manichaeans, also took note of this fact in the so-calledLetter of Menoch, likely a forgery.23This epistle begins with these words:

PanarionHaer. 6.6, in Karl Holl, Epiphanius III: Panarion haer. 6580, De Fide,(Berlin, 1933), 25, 14; rev. ed. Jrgen Dummer, Berlin, 1985]. On this problematicalsource, see Samuel N.C. Lieu, Fact and Fiction in the Acta Archelai, in Peter Bryder,ed., Manichaean Studies I, 6994; and Madeleine Scopello, Hgmonius, les Acta

Archelai et lhistoire de la controverse anti-manichenne, in Studia Manichaica: IV.Internationaler Kongre zum Manichismus, Berlin, 14.18. Juli 1997 (ed. Ronald E.Emmerick, Werner Sundermann and Peter Zieme; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 52845.

21 Augustine, Contra epistulam Fundamenti 5.1011, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, 197:Manichaeus apostolus Iesu Christi. Erich Feldman, Die Epistula Fundamenti dernordafrikanischen Manicher: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion (Altenberge: CIS Verlag,

1987) discusses this form of self-address as used in North Africa. This Augustinian textis one of the few works in which he uses direct quotations from a work of Mani tostructure his polemical treatise, see Madeleine Scopello, Lepistula Fundamenti lalumire des sources manichenes du Fayoum, in Augustine and Manichaeism in the

Latin West, Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht International Symposium of the IAMS(ed. Johannes Van Oort, Otto Wermelinger and Gregor Wurst; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 20529, esp. 206, 209ff. The formula was well-known and was uttered by Felix in hisdisputation with Augustine, see Augustine, Contra Felicem1.1, Zycha, ed., CSEL25.2,801.

22 Augustine, Contra Faustum 13.4, Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, p. 381: Omnes tameneius epistulae ita exordiuntur: Manichaeus apostolus Iesu Christi. See also Aug. De

haeresibus 46: unde se in suis litteris Iesu Christi apostolum dicit. On Augustinesengagement with this form of address, see Julien Ries, Jsus sauveur dans la controverseanti-manichene de saint Augustin, in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West(ed. Van Oort, Wermelinger and Wurst), 18594.

23 Preserved in Augustines Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, in CSEL 75.1(Vienna, 1974). English translation by S.N.C. Lieu and Stephen R. Llewelyn, inManichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 17274. On the emerging scholarly consensusagainst the authenticity of this letter, see G.J.D. Aalders, Lptre Menoch, attribue Mani, VC 14 (1960): 24549 and M. Stein, Manichaica Latina, Bd. I, epistula adMenoch. Abhandlungen der Nordhein-Westflischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensa 27/1 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998). On

the controversy between Augustine and Julian, see Robert A. Markus, AugustinesConfessions and the Controversy with Julianum of Eclanum: Manicheism Revisited,

Augustinianum41 (1991): 91325.


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Manes the apostle of Jesus Christ to Menoch his daughter Generally,the catholic Christian authorities bridled at the thought that Mani mighthave thought of himself an agent of Christ and the ecclesiastical abjuration

formulae required of suspected Manichaeans denounced Mani for havingdared to call him the Paraclete and Apostle of Jesus Christ. 24

If Manis preferred self-address blurred the distinction between himselfand [other] Christian teachers, his followers likewise did not always markthemselves off as distinct from [other] Christians. Despite Maniselaborate measures to establish and disseminate his teachings and ecclesialinstitutions, he had not insisted upon a distinctive name for his church.Manis contrast of the earlier churches with his own church (ekklsia)comes through in a number of texts, including the Coptic Kephalaia.25

However, Manis ekklsiawas simply, for him at least, the one true church.When first identified as a distinctive group within the Roman Empire, theso-called Manichaeans were called Akouanitai after Akouas, whom somehave equated with Mar Zaku, a noted Manichaean missionary.26

Elsewhere, leaving aside the debates over the etymology of the wordMani, it was opponents who likely first devised the term Manichaiosboth as an epithet for the founder of the religion (as one finds in Coptictexts) and his individual follower.27 Many were indeed fond of stressingthe similarity of Mani as well as Manichaios to maneis, mad, or mania,madness, in Greek.28 In the late third century, a Christian bishop fromEgypt warned against the false teachers who were the Manichaeans andclaimed to have received a Manichaean text, which he refers to as thedocument of the madness of the Manichaeans.29 Eusebius of Caesareacalls Mani a madman and an Anti-Christ, from whom the profane nameof Manichaean is still commonly on mans lips to this day.30 Polemiciststhus took great delight in taunting the followers of Mani by calling theirreligion the madness of the Manichaeans (h tn Manichain mania).Such a usage became as common as it was to appear (virtually)

24Waldeschmidt-Lentz, Stellung Iesu, 1 c. 59ff., cited in Schmidt and Polotsky, EinMani-Fund, 26.25Schmidt and Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund, 42, 43, 45.26Epiphanius,Panarion66.1.1; see discussion in Gedaliahu Stroumsa, Gnostics and

Manichaeans in Byzantine Palestine, Studia Patristica I, Papers of the NinthInternational Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford 1983(Kalamazoo, 1985), 27378,esp. 275.

27Schmidt and Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund, 26 n5.28See Lieu, Some Themes, 16069.29P. Rylands Greek469.1242. See Colin H. Robert, Catalogue of Greek and Latin

Papyri in the John Rylands Library Manchester, Vol. III:Theological and Literary Texts

(Manchester: University Press 1938), 4243. Cited in Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardnerand Lieu), 11415.

30Eusebius of Caesarea,Hist. eccl.7.31 (J.E.L. Oulton, LCL).


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tautological. A slightly different context obtained in the west where theLatin term Manichaeus. While learned authors such as Augustine whoknew Greek and had access to Greek sources were aware of this word play,

the same in-built imputation of irrationality did not obtain on a morepopular level.31 Perhaps for this reason it was instead given a negativecharge by being associated with particular crimes (of which more later).

One group that did much to reify the identity of Manichaeans was theRoman emperors who issued laws that targeted them. In 302, Diocletianfamously first persecuted Manichaeans, not Christians, in a rescript sent toJulianus, proconsul of Africa, in which he links Manichaeans with Romesenemy Persia.32That North Africa offers up this evidence occasions littlesurprise. The same context of official persecution and judicial inquiries

that had made the nomen christianum a bone of contention and for a timethe cornerstone of official Roman anti-Christian policy greeted theattempts to invoke the Manichaean name.

Condemnatory rhetoric issuing from the emperors and orthodoxChristian authorities came to include crimina in the bill of indictmentagainst the Manichaeans.33 In a manner, this repeated the tactic of thoseearlier critics of Christianity who had, unfairly according to apologists

31See Augustine, Contra Iulianum1.5 on his debt to the Cappadocians for the use of

certain anti-Manichaean arguments.32Collatio Mosaicorum Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum 15.34; in M. Hyamson,ed., Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum Collectio (Oxford: OUP, 1913), 13133: Dequibus sollertia tua serenitati nostrae retulit, Manichaei, audivimus eos nuperime velutinova et inopinata prodigia in hunc mundum de Persica adversaria nobis gente progressavel orta esse et multa facinora ibi committere, populos namque quietos perturbare necnon et civitatibus maxima detrimenta inserere: et verendum est, ne forte, ut fieri adsolet,accedenti tempore conentur per execrandas consuetudines et scaevas leges Persaruminnocentioris naturae homines, Romanam gentem modestam atque tranquillam etuniversum orbem nostrum veluti venenis de suis malivolis inficere. English translationfrom Gardner and Lieu, eds., Manichaean Texts, pp. 11718: As regards the

Manichaean, concerning whom your carefulness has reported to our serenity, who, inopposition to the older creeds, set up new and unheard-of sects, purposing in theirwickedness to cast out the doctrines vouchsafed to us by divine favour in olden times, wehave heard that they have but recently advanced or sprung forth, like strange andmonstrous portents, from their native homes among the Persians a nation hostile to us and have settled in this part of the world, where they are perpetrating many evil deed.

33 Generally, see Peter Brown, The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the RomanEmpire, JRS 29 (1969): 92103. On imperial legislations against Manichaeans in

particular, see Per Beskow, The Theodosian Laws against Manichaeism, inManichaean Studies, Vol. I. Proceedings of the First International Conference onManichaeism, August 57, 1987 (ed. Peter Bryder; Lund, Sweden: Plus Ultra, 1988), 1

11. Also Erich-Hans Kaden, Die Edikte gegen die Manicher von Diokletian bisJustininan, in Festschrift Hans Lewald bei Vollendung des vierzigstens Amtsjahres alsordentlicher Professor im Oktober 1953(Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn 1953), 5568.


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such as Minucius Felix and Tertullian, previously used the nomenchristianum, and an implicit association of the name to crimes, topersecute Christians. In 381 Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius, in an

edict to Eutropius, praetorian prefect, imposed the penalty of perpetualinfamiaupon any male or female Manichaean by denying him or her theability to make a binding will, or to pass on or receive property through theRoman laws of inheritance.34 The emphatic nature of the emperorsdispleasure was underscored by the fact that they stipulated that itsprovisions were to be retroactive, contrary to customary Roman legalusage. This was done knowingly, as the law explains the provision asfollows: We sanction the severity of the present statute not so much as anexample of a law that should be established but as one that should be

avenged, so that the defense of time also shall not be an advantage tothem.35 So extraordinary was this aspect of the anti-Manichaeanlegislation that a subsequent edict was issued in 383 to limit its retroactivescope.36

The efficacy of such laws, if they are not strictly to be read as pieces ofmoral legislation, required first that it be practicable for particularindividuals to be definitively labeled as Manichaeans. There were in factmany obstacles in the path of easy identification. Some of the difficultyarose because the followers of Mani did not generally demonstrate thesame commitment to the nomen Manichaeorumthat earlier Christians hadshown with respect to the nomen christianum. There are few documented

34 CTh 16.5.7; Pharr, ed., p. 451: If any Manichaean man or woman (Manichaeus

Manichaeave), from the date of the law, as previously and originally issued by OurFathers, has transmitted his own property to any person whatsoever, by the execution of atestament or under any title of liberality whatever or any kind of gift, or if any one of theaforesaid persons has become enriched by the bestowal, through any form whatever, ofan inheritance upon which he has entered, inasmuch as We forthwith deprive theaforesaid persons under the perpetual brand of just infamy of all right to make a will andto live under the Roman law (sub perpetua inustae infamiae nota testandi ac vivendi iure

Roma) The inheritance of paternal or maternal goods shall be bestowed only uponthose children who, although born of Manichaeans, nevertheless are immune from such acrime and have dedicated themselves to the pure religion.

35CTh 16.5.7.1; Pharr, ed., 451.36 CTh 16.7.3; Pharr, ed., 466: those who at any time prefer to frequent the

nefarious retreats and the wicked seclusion of the Manichaeans (Manichaeorum nefandasecreta) shall be pursued constantly and perpetually by that penalty which even Ourprogenitor Valentinian, of sainted authority, has prescribed and which Our decrees haveno less frequently commanded But in order that the dead may not be harassed by the

perpetual outrage of criminal accusation or that questions of inheritance which have beenextinguished through various lapses of many years may not be continually agitated into

revived conflicts, We prescribe a time limitation [of five years] for such inquisitionsFor a discussion of this law, see Caroline Humfresss article in this volume, Citizensand Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers on Christian Heresy.


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cases from this time in which individuals would actively claim the namewhen faced with severe sanctions. This is not to say that there were noManichaean equivalents to those Christian martyrs whose literary history

we know so very well. It would appear that Diocletians persecutionsagainst Manichaeans yielded some martyrs in Egypt at any rate.37

But in the cities of the empire, Manichaeans appeared but only asshifting and elusive targets. In one instance, the emperors were informedeither by their local agents or by catholic Christian leaders that variousindividuals who had been charged as Manichaeans were in the habit ofdenying the nomen Manichaeorum. These persons indeed were said tohave claimed that they were the followers of other sectae that had not asyet been banned by imperial law. Attempting to end what they saw as an

evasive tactic, the emperors revised their ban in the following manner:38

Now with malignant fraud they should defend themselves under pretence of thosefallacious names, by which many, as we have discovered, desire to be called and to bedesignated as of approved faith and of rather chaste course of life; especially since someof these persons desire themselves to be denominated Encratitans, Apotactitans,Hydroparastatans, or Saccoforians and by a variety of diverse names falsify as it were the services of their religious profession. For it is not proper that all these persons should

be protected by a profession of names, but should be held notorious and execrable by thecriminality of their sects.

The textual logic of this imperial law presumes that Manichaeans were inthe habit of dissimulating their religious identities to avoid detection andpersecution. Such a view was certainly that of the emperors and many ofthe catholic bishops. But what if we indeed have here a situation in whichindividuals or groups that really did not regard themselves as Manichaeanswere being assigned that name by detractors to serve the latters agendas?There is certainly ample evidence that the practice of labeling onesreligious rivals Manichaeans became a common practice during the laterChristological controversies.39Wandering ascetics, for example, especiallythose who followed a vegetarian diet, were routinely called Manichaeans

37 See the Coptic hymns lauding these Manichaean martyrs; in A. Allbery, A

Manichaean Psalm Book, 142. The author links these martyrs to Mani as well as otherwell-known Christian martyrs including the apostles and Jesus himself. This material isnicely discussed and set in context in David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD180395(London: Routledge, 2004), 32021.

38 CTh 16.5.7.3: Nec se sub simulatione fallaci eorum scilicet nominum, quibusplerique, ut cognovimus, probatae fidei et propositi castioris dici ac signari volent,maligna fraude defendant; cum praesertim nonnulli ex his Encratitas, Apotactitas,Hydroparastatas vel Saccoforos nominari se velint et varietate nominum diversorum velut

religiosae professionis officia mentiantur. Eos enim omnes convenit non professionedefendi nominum, sed notabiles atque execrandos haberi scelere sectarum.

39See above n. 16.


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by others regardless of whether they themselves participated in aManichaean self-identity or not.40

What becomes abundantly clear from the late fourth-century laws is that

finding and labeling individual Manichaeans was no straightforwardmatter. Eventually, the emperors appointed special agents, inquisitores, tolook into the matter closely. What did these imperial inquisitores find?There is little in our evidence that what they reported back to the emperorsallowed the latter to devise a successful strategy to attach individuals to theManichaean name.

Instead the emperors continued to fire large rhetorical salvoes at theperceived problem. In a 383 law to Postumianus, praetorian prefect, theyincluded Manichaeans with several other groups in a list of proscribed

heretical sects:41

All persons whatsoever who are tossed about by the false doctrine of diverse heresies,namely, the Eunomians, the Arians, the Macedonians, the Pneumatomachi, theManichaeans, the Encratites, the Apotactites, the Saccophori, and the Hydroparastatae,shall not assemble in any groups, shall not collect any multitude, shall not attract any

people to themselves, shall not show any walls of private houses after the likenesses ofchurches, and shall practice nothing publicly or privately which may be detrimental tothe Catholic sanctity.

One could argue that, in serially listing all the names that belonged to thegrowing catalogue of heresies, the emperors had simply given up ontrying to determine the interrelationship of these groups. While two yearsearlier they had postulated that the ascetic groups called Encratitae,

Apotactitae, Saccofori, Hydroparastatae were in fact all crypto-Manichaeans, the new law makes no mention of this link. Instead, all thenamed groups are cited individually and, moreover, are put together withEunomians, Arians, Macedonians, and Pneumatomachians, other groups ofbanned heretics.

What the special imperial inquisitores failed to find out surprisinglyalso eluded the catholic Christian authorities. While the latter may be seen

as the lynchpin in the imperial campaign to suppress the religion of Mani,they were in fact often the most interested parties who had petitioned for

40For a study of how the enactment of rituals shaped the body and in turn contributed

to the construction of Manichaean identity in both east and west, see Jason D. BeDuhn,The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 2000).

41 CTh 16.5.11; English translation in text from Pharr, ed., 452: Omnino,quoscumque diversarum haeresum error exagitat, id est Eunomiani, Arriani,Macedoniani, Pneumatomachi Manichaei, Encratitae, Apotactitae, Saccofori,

Hydroparastatae nullis circulis coeant, nullam colligant multitudinem, nullum ad sepopulum trahant nec ad imaginem ecclesiarum parietes privatos ostendant, nihil velpublice vel privatim, quod catholicae sanctitati officere possit, exerceant.


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the various imperial rescripts in the first case. On the other hand, becauseof their local network and knowledge, they were also the ones who mightbe expected to be able to identify Manichaeans. Indeed, none more so than

Augustine of Hippo. Yet, his own works at times reveal how challengingthis task could be even for those in the know.

In De Haeresibus, Augustine discusses how an alleged splinter groupfrom the Manichaeans modified the Christian eucharistic rite by addinghuman semen to the flour that made up the Host. Some contemporariesregarded these Purifiers, or Catharists, so called because of their allegedconcern to liberate Light elements trapped in matter by ingesting humanseed, as Manichaeans. Others, however, vehemently denied that thesePurifiers were Manichaeans at all. Augustine was of the former opinion

and tried to persuade his readers that this disavowal of Manichaeanidentity was just the kind of ruse one would expect from heretics. Indeed,such a notion was popularized by Epiphanius of Salamis who equatedheresy to a many-hued snake that seeks to deceive the human eye so as toimpart a deadly sting to the unsuspecting.42

How are modern historians to approach this question? Quite often,scholars understanding of this and similar situations are heavily reliantupon a master narrative of Manichaeism as both a clearly distinct religioustradition and as one that habitually deceived others regarding its ownidentity in order to attract gain adherents.43Augustine, in one of his lettersto a bishop in Mauretania, called attention to the alleged subterfuge of acertain Victorinus, formerly a subdeacon in the church of Malliana.44Sometime after 395, Victorinus was denounced to Augustine as a Manichaeanand the latter questioned him before the matter reached the level of apublic trial with witnesses. Augustine said:

He was so well known that I questioned him before he could be arraigned by witnesses;he could not deny the accusation (negare non posset), for he knew that there were manysuch to whom he had incautiously given himself away. He would have appearedaltogether too bold, not to say out of his mind, if he had tried to deny it. He admitted that

he was indeed a Manichaean hearer (auditorem Manichaeorum) but not an elect (nonelectum).45

42Cf. Ambrosiaster,Epistula ad Timotheum. 2.3.67.43 Franois Decret, Du bon usage du mensonge et du parjure. Manichens et

Priscillianistes face la perscution dans lEmpire chrtien IIVeVe sicles, inMlanges Pierre Lvque I (ed. Marie-Madeleine Mactoux and velyne Geny; Paris:Belles lettres, 1990), 11149.

44Augustine,Ep. 236; A. Goldbacher. ed., CSEL57 (Vienna/Leipzig, 1911), 52324.

45 Augustine, Ep. 236.1; CSEL 57, 524; English translation in text from WilfridParsons, ed., St. Augustine. Letters, Vol. 5 (Letters 20470), Fathers of the Church Series32 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), 180.


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At this point Augustine offers an extensive gloss regarding the activitiesand beliefs of Manichaean auditors and what they shared (and did notshare) with the elect:46

Those who are called hearers among them eat meat, till the soil, and, if they wish, havewives, but those called elect do none of these things. The hearers kneel before the electthat these may lay a hand on the suppliant, and this is done not only toward their priest or

bishops or deacons, but toward any of the elect. Like these, they adore and pray to thesun and moon. Like them, they fast on Sundays; like them, they believe all the

blasphemies for which the heresy of the Manichaeans is to be abominated; denying, forexample, that Christ was born of a virgin, claiming that his body was not real butapparent, and for this reason insisting that his passion was apparent, too, and that therewas no resurrection

Note, however, that while Victorinus owned up to being a Manichaeanhearer, what someone might understand such a statement to mean has beendeftly shaped by Augustine through the insertion of this extensive gloss;Victorinus himself had not stated either that he did or believed in thespecific things that are enumerated in Augustines gloss. After this,Augustine went on to describe the activities that Victorinus was actuallyalleged to have engaged in and the negotiations that had taken placebetween the two men:47

That subdeacon, posing as a Catholic, not only believed those intolerable blasphemies asthe Manichaeans do, but he taught them as vigorously as he could. He was discovered byhis teachings (docens patefactus est) when he trusted himself, so to speak, to his pupils.Indeed, he asked me, after he had confessed that he was a Manichaean hearer(Manichaeorum auditorem), to lead him back to the way of truth of the Catholic doctrine,

but I confess I was horrified at his duplicity under his clerical guise and I took steps tohave him confined and driven from the city.

If this scenario appears unremarkable, it does so because it conforms to ourexpectations of what Manichaeans tended to do. Here, it seems, we haveyet another case of a crypto-Manichaean whose disguise was stripped barethanks to the vigilance of the catholic Christian authorities. Yet

Augustines own statement of what Victorinus owned up to is suspiciouslylacunose. He failed to mention that Victorinus had connected himself witha Manichaean community or with particular electi; the suspected hereticwas evidently not required to identify individual Manichaeans with whomhe had associated, a common enough line of questioning in suchproceedings that this particular argumentum e silentio may have someforce. Nor was Victorinus condemned in Augustines narrative forpossessing Manichaean books to which the non-elect would not have hadready access to at any rate.

46Augustine,Ep. 236.2; CSEL57, 524; English in text from Parsons, ed., 180.47Augustine,Ep. 236.3; CSEL 57, 525; English in text from Parsons, ed., 181.


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So in what manner was Victorinus a Manichaean? We may surmise thathe was denounced as a Manichaean to the authorities for teaching dualisticdoctrines of a certain sort. But a propensity for dualistic teachings

pervaded the early Christian communities, especially in so-called gnosticand Valentinian circles. Could it be that Victorinus simply regardedhimself as a Christian and therefore saw nothing amiss in holding forth onhis own views on good and evil while discharging the duties of a laysubdeacon? Augustine was the one who thought the two roles incompatibleand did his utmost to make it so for everyone else. A traditional scholarlyinterpretation would represent Augustine as playing the part of proto-inquisitor whose diligent work unmasked Victorinus subterfuge. And yetif we regard the formers role not so much as a discoverer of

Manichaeans as the inventor of them, we will have instead a case inwhich the nomen Manichaeorum was invoked principally to serve theagenda of the self-identified orthodox group.

Finally, Victorinus allegedly confessed that he was a Manichaeanhearer. Such a term readily invites scholars to place him within the table oforganization of the highly structured two-tiered communities with whichManichaeans everywhere were associated. But was he a hearer in thatsense? Perhaps this was simply a way for Victorinus to represent himselfas someone with an interest in the teachings popularly attributed to Mani?Instead of being seen as a crypto-heretic who in actuality belonged toanother church, which was how Augustine represented Victorinus to us,could the man not just as readily be seen as a pious person whose pursuitof truth led him to eclectic (i.e., unorthodox) choices in authoritative textsand ideas?

Victorinus public confession was in any event likely to have beenagreed upon in advance. Making such a declaration allowed him to statefor the record that he was not a real Manichaean, that is, a Manichaeanelect; he would also thus be able avoid a public trial and evaded seriousconsequences such as the demand that he receive re-baptism. In turn, this

scripted public performance allowed Augustine to claim to havesuccessfully uncovered a crypto-Manichaean and, through the exercise ofepiscopal authority and pastoral care, made safe the catholic flock. In theend, Augustine arranged to have Victorinus expelled from the Christianchurch without the opportunity for rehabilitation; on the other hand, he didnot press for more substantial punishments to be imposed upon him.

Augustine and other catholic hierarchs could have prosecuted suspectedManichaeans under the authority of the imperial rescripts that associatedthe nomen Manichaeorumwith crimina. The list of these alleged misdeeds

instantly recalls the accusations that were made against Christians in theearlier centuries. One crimen associated with the Manichaean name was


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Unfortunately, our sources are reticent on this matter. Indeed, fewManichaean texts refer to the community of the faithful as Manichaeans,preferring, as one might reasonably expect, more metaphorical and

scriptural labels such as the just or righteous ones. Evidence thatreveals clear self-identification with the nomen Manichaeorum is rare. InMark the Deacons Life of Porphyry of Gaza, the bishop confronted Juliawho declared that she was Manichaean (hoti Manichaia etugchanen).53But Julias reported self-identification with Mani not only appears withinan orthodox religious narrative; in that narrative itself it only arises as adirect response to specific posed question regarding whose teachings shewas in fact following. She may therefore be described as a Manichaean inthe sense that she followed the teachings of Mani rather than held active

membership in a socio-religious institution called the Manichaeanchurch. Was she essentially a female counterpart to Secundinus then,that is, a Christian who regarded Manis teachings as a superior, morephilosophical brand of the Christian truth? To confuse matters even more,Julia was in fact not identified as a Manichaean electa in the Georgianversion of Marks vitaat all but rather as a female philosopher.54

There exist a number of cases that appear to suggest rather strongpersonal identifications with the nomen Manichaeorum. Specifically, weknow of two instances in which the Manichaean name was invoked withinthe context of the marking of the body and burial. In the first case, awoman who was buried in Salona (Dalmatia) receiving this followingepitaph: Bassa, virgin [from] Lydia, Manichea.55 What is the date andlikely context of this epitaph? The epigraphical style of the inscriptionsuggests a date of late third to early fourth century. There is furthermore asupposition that such a frank and public declaration of ones Manichaeanidentity was hardly practicable after Diocletians edict.56 Yet even if this

53Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry of Gaza87. Henri Grgoire and Marc-Antoine

Kugener, eds., Marc le Diacre, Vie de Porphyre, vque de Gaza (Paris 1930), 68;

English translation in text from Manichaean Texts(ed. Gardner and Lieu), 127.54 See Paul Peters, ed., La vie gorgienne de Saint Porphyre de Gaza, AnalaectaBollandiana 59 (1941): 65217.

55Bassa parthenos Ludia Maniche[a] Text and discussion in Franz Cumont andM.-A. Kugener, Recherches sur le Manichisme II, Extrait de la CXXIIIe Homlie deSvre dAntioche. III. Linscription de Salone (Brussels, 1912), 17577; FranoisDecret, LAfrique manichene (IVe Ve sicles): Etude historique et doctrinale (Paris:tudes augustiniennes, 1976), II, 96 n.68; and idem, Mani et la tradition manichene(Paris: Seuil, 1974).

56 Ibid., 176: notre fragment doit tre plac un moment o le manichismejouisssait dune tolerance assez large pour quune profession de foi publique ne

constitut pas un danger, peut-tre sous le rgne de Julien ou sous celui de Constantin oumme plus anciennement encore, avant le premier dit par lequel Diocltien ordonna de

poursuivre la secte venue de Perse.


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dating is secure, interpreting such a laconic and atypical inscription poses aconsiderable challenge. One cannot assume a priori that the termManicheaor Manichaiaon the inscription must be translated as a female

Manichaean because it remains highly unclear whether such a term meantespecially given its completely unknown context. The explicit citation ofreligious affiliation, as opposed to the mention of religious offices held,may be said to be an unusual feature within the corpus of Greco-Romanfunerary inscriptions generally. Cumont and Kugener have acknowledgedthis fact, suggesting that such a usage is in accord with the reference toLydia, from which Bassa presumably hailed, where we find some of theearliest inscriptions referring to individuals as Christianoi.57They go on tosuggest that the terms parthenos and Manichea derive from the fact that

Bassa was one of the Manichaean electaementioned in other sources.58

Still, the evidence does not rule out possibility that the term Manicheaon Bassas epitaph meant much the same as Manichaeus does inSecundinus writings, that is, as a way to refer to a philosophically inclinedChristian who has chosen to follow the superior teachings of Mani. Just asthere is little reason to suppose that Secundinus was one of the male electsimply because he called himself a Manichaeus, one cannot assume thatBassa, because she is referred to on the inscription as a parthenos, was afemale Manichaean elect.

In general, Manichaeans were, according to the teachings established byMani, not to invest great significance in their own physical bodies. In amonastic text from the Tunhuang Manichaica (the cache of Manichaeanworks in Chinese discovered at Dunhuang), corpses of Manichaeans,presumably both elect and hearers, were to be buried without clothes,bodily adornment or any other grave goods.59But, at least in one case, wehear of the self-marking of the body as part of Manichaean practice inthe later fifth century. Victor of Vita, in his history of the Vandalpersecution, mentioned that an ascetic named Clementianus had inscribedon his own femur bone the following words: Manichaeus discipulus

Christi Iesu.60 Aside from the fact that this reference issues from the

57See Cumont and Kugener,Recherches sur le manichisme, III, 177.58There is also the mysterious Manichaean mythological figure of the parthenos tou

photos, see Ernst Artur Voretzsch, Parthenos tou photos. Archologisches Material ausTurfan zur Deutung der manichischen Lichtjungfrau, in Atti dell VII Congresso

Internazaionale di Storia della Religioni (Florence, 1956), 21821.59Eduard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, Un trait manichen retrouv en Chine(Paris,

1913), 338, 35556.60 See Peter Brown, Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in

Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 197200; and MarkGustafson, Inscripta in fronte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity, Classical Antiquity16 (1997): 79105, esp. 98.


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stylus of a hostile critic of things Manichaean, the meaning of thetattooed words remains highly ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. Dothe words amount to an unequivocal declaration of the mans own

Manichaean religious identity so that they should be translated as follows:I am a Manichaean, a disciple of Jesus Christ? Or is it not in fact a re-statement of the religious claim that we have encountered so often before,to wit: Mani[chaeus is a/the] disciple of Jesus Christ? If the latter, thenthis tattooed message should be interpreted not as a clear declaration ofManichaean religious self-identity but rather as a forceful declaration ofChristianself-identity on the part of those who followed the teachings ofMani. In Arian-ruled Vandal Africa, where the very notion of orthodoxChristianity remained an unsettled question during this time, such a claim

to Christian identity actually makes a certain sense.61

But in the broadercontext of the times, it would have constituted a defiant statement ofreligious identity given the authorities demanded of suspectedManichaeans a public ritual of abjuration in which they must reject thename and teachings of Mani.62Unfortunately, we cannot know the impactof sustained persecution on the outlook of individuals thought to have beenManichaeans due to the nature of the sources. It would hardly besurprising, should some Manichaeans find in religious oppression theimpetus that helped them crystallize their own religious self-identity. Butthe fact that many persisted in maintaining that they were Christiansspeaks to the problem of using the nomen Manichaeorum as astraightforward religious label to designate the essential religious identitiesof such persons.

An ancillary question that emerges in the course of these controversiesis whether the nomen Manichaeorum ought to be applied to the hearersalso, or only to the elect. The Manichaean text from Tebessa clearly showsthat the two grades were clearly distinguished even if the relationshipbetween them was intimate. Outsiders did not always perceive thedifference clearly and, on the whole, it was to the elect that the term

Manichaean was mainly applied. Thus a law of 382 describesManichaeans as solitarii, a Latin translation of hoi monachoiperhaps.63InEutychiuss description of the life of Timothy of Alexandria (38085), the

61On the religious situation of Vandal Africa at the time of Victor of VitasHistoria

persecutorum, see Hans-Joachim Diesner, Religionen, Konfessionen und Hresien imvandalenzeitlichen Nordafrika,Forschungen und Fortschritte41 (1967): 8890.

62 See Samuel N.C. Lieu, An Early Byzantine Formula for the Renunciation ofManichaeism the Capita VII contra Manichaeos of ,

Jahrbuch fr Antike und Christentum 26 (1983): 152218; rev. version in idem,

Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East, 203305.63CTh 16.5.9. Yet other laws (see above) suggest that hearers (who held property andhad children) were to be labeled Manichaeans.


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Manichaean name was associated with those who practiced a form ofvegetarianism. While this ought only to apply to the elect, the authorblurred the distinction by saying that, while initially vegetarians, hearers

later took to eating meat when it was feared that their abstemiousnesswould expose them to persecution by catholic Christians.64

The self-identity of Manichaean hearers remains an elusive topic formodern scholars. While belief in Manis teachings played some role to besure, it was also to a great extent created around the acts of almsgiving andsociability within particular networks of itinerant ascetics and supporters.Augustine was the one Manichaean hearer we know the most about.65Yethis evidence, which heavily colors our understanding, may in fact distractmore than it enlightens. He, having been repeatedly accused by opponents

due to his former association with Manichaeans, was greatly concerned todemarcate the boundaries between catholic Christianity and Manichaeismin his writings. In the disputes with the Italian bishop Julian of Eclanum, adevotee of the teachings of Pelagius, Augustines relationship with thereligion of Mani became a central issue in the early 420s, a time when so-called Manichaeans were being pursued openly in Carthage. In Book Oneof Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, Augustine affirmed his wholesalerejection of Manichaean teachings and insisted upon the incompatibility ofManichaean identity and that of a (catholic) Christian:66

Consider, you who so often accuse us of Manichaeism, if you are alert, whom and whatkind of men and what great defenders of the Catholic faith you dare insult with such adetestable charge.

In any event, he claimed that while he was a hearer among theManichaeans he not only did not know what went on among the elect but

64 Eutychius, Annales, in Michael Breydey ed., Das Annalenwerk des Eutychius von

Alexandria, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 472, Series Arabica 45(Louvain: Peeters, 1985), 83. English translation in text by S. Calderini, in ManichaeanTexts, (ed. Gardner and Lieu), 122.This text is discussed in Gedaliahu Stroumsa, The

Manichaean Challenge to Egyptian Christianity, in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity(ed. Birger Pearson and J. E. Goehring; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 30719.65 J. Kevin Coyle, What did Augustine Know about Manichaeism when He Wrote

his Two Treatises De moribus? in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West (ed.Van Oort, Wermelinger, and Wurst), 4356.

66 Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1.3; English translation in text from Matthew A.Schumacher, ed., Saint Augustine. Against Julian, Fathers of the Church 35 (New York,1957), 67. On Julian of Eclanum, his own conception as a philosopher and his views onthe teachings of Mani, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography(Berkeley: U.of California Press, 1967), 370, 386 and 393; Josef Lssl, Julian von Aeclanum: Studien

zu seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer berlieferung(Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. 12930;

and Mathijs Lamberigts, Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian ofAeclanum, in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West (ed. Van Oort,Wermelinger, and Wurst), 11336.


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that he also did not know that he was actually departing from the worshipof Christ. Did he even regard himself as a Manichaean rather than aChristian? He would naturally consider the two identities as incompatible

by his own writings after he became priest and bishop. At the same time hewas also quick to point out that the distinction was not so clear to himthen. Thus he made the following observation in his Contra Epistulam

Fundamenti(396):67

When I was a hearer among you, I frequently asked why it was that the paschal feast ofour lord was celebrated with little or no interest, though sometimes there were a few half-hearted worshippers, but no special fast was prescribed for the hearers, in short, nosolemn ceremony, while great honour is paid to your (feast of the) bema, that is, theday on which Manichaeus was martyred

The reply that Augustine reported as having been given was that:[T]he day to observe was the day of the passion of him who really suffered, and thatChrist, who was not born, but appeared to human eyes not in real but a semblance offlesh, did not endure but feigned suffering.

If we grant this reportage, it would appear that the local Manichaeancommunity was having its cake and eating it too. The interlocutorsubscribed to a docetic Christology and yet also expressed the wish tocommemorate Christs passio at a time when the passiones of martyrs,those imitators of Christ, were widely celebrated throughout North Africaand elsewhere.

There is ample evidence to suggest that many who were calledManichaeans in Late Antiquity regarded themselves quite simply asChristians. This was similarly the case with many who were labeledgnostics. In rejecting the teachings of the Old Testament as the creation ofthe Demiurge, Manichaeans shared a basic outlook with docetic andgnostic Christians.68 This all contributed to their conceit that they weresuperior Christians who did not subscribe to a carnal or literalunderstandings of Scriptures that marked the general tendency of the

Church catholic in the post-Constantinan era.Such a construction of what the teachings of Mani meant to local

individuals in Late Antiquity draws on hints regarding the localunderstanding of what the teachings meant rather than on a gods eye viewof Manichaeism as a stand-alone universal religion. In this manner, onecould give due consideration to the possibility that not all religious

67 Augustine, Contra epistulam Fundamenti 8; Zycha, ed., CSEL 25.1, 202; English

translation in text from Manichaean Texts (ed. Gardner and Lieu),237.

68On the affinity between the so-called Manichaeans and gnostics and their possibleconflation in the literary testimonia, see the enlightening study by Gedaliahu G.Stroumsa, Gnostics and Manichaeans in Byzantine Palestine.


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identities were regarded as exclusive and that being a follower of Maniwould have been for many another indeed a more rigorist way tofollow Christs teachings.69

Conclusion

Within the Byzantine Empire and medieval west, to accuse someone ofbeing a Manichaean served as a well-known smear tactic.70 Theemployment of the label often accompanied the spread of spurious rumorsin the manner of urban legends. Thus we learn of a tradition in which twomerchants described by the orthodox narrator as Manichaeans confessed to

selling the host.71 The story belongs to the genre of tales of demonicpossession and exorcism, since the merchants allegedly found their bodiesconstrained as if bounded by irons after they sold the host to the Devil inthe Fayum (Egypt). The text goes on:

Judas sold the lord once; these men, on the other hand, have sold him many times. TheJews crucified the lord once; these men, on the contrary, have crucified the lord manytimes. In fact these men we have sent to you are Manichaeans, who sell the lord formoney.

To the extent that such stories are directly comparable to medieval and

early modern blood libels, in which apostate Christians would sell the Hostto Jews for ritual desecration, we must exercise due caution in acceptingtheir veracity.

Even while I have so far only discussed select cases in the uses thenomen Manichaeorum in Late Antiquity, we can readily see that religiousidentities were invariably negotiated, debated and prescribed in theprocess. I shall not go so far as to suggest that there were noManichaeans in Late Antiquity but rather that using the term to label

69The model of dual, non-exclusive identities existed also in the civic sphere wherean individual could be both a citizen of a local city and a citizen of Rome, see MichelClvenot, La double citoyennet: situation des chrtiens dans lempire romain, inMlanges Pierre Lvque,I:10715.

70 Generally on the deployment of such polemic, see Averil Cameron, Texts asWeapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages, in Literacy and Power in the AncientWorld(ed. Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf; Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 198215; and thecollected essays in Susanna Elm, Eric Rbillard, and Antonella Romano, eds.,Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, Collection de lcole Franaise de Rome 270 (Rome:cole Franaise de Rome, 2000).

71 Benjamin of Alexandria, On the Marriage Feast of Cana, in H. de Vies, ed.,

Homlies copte de la Vaticane,I (Hauniae, 1922), 8088; English translation in text fromManichaean Texts(ed. Gardner and Lieu), 123. See Stroumsa, Manichaean Challenge toEgyptian Christianity, 312.


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individuals and groups in the Roman world is a much more problematicoperation than much of the current scholarship on the subject assumes.Cultural theorists have been questioning not just the essential nature but

also the stability of identities. Even identities of the subjective self,according to the leading scholars of life writings, are discursive,provisional, intersectional, and unfixed.72 Part of this process involvesexternalization or embodiment, whereby a person or members of a groupcould find reification of their notions of self-identity through interactionwith others.

Recent works on Jews and Christians have focused on the idea ofethnogenesis to provide a compelling analytical frame to approach to thequestion of religious identities. Judith Lieus recent book Christian

Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World offers a fine synopsis ofthe most pertinent aspects of such an approach.73 The study ofManichaeism will benefit from the same analytical tools that have beenapplied with such telling effect there and elsewhere. But the field ofManichaean studies is probably still years away from the turn fromobjectivist history. Many of its practitioners, admirably skilled andenterprising in their own ways, are still largely focused on the task oflegitimation and recovery, issuing publications that have evocative titlessuch as Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of ManichaeanSources.74 This perhaps parallels the stage through which feministscholarship passed in the 1970s. But just as the latter has now moved on tomore critical reflections on even the premise for womens history,scholars of Manichaeism might ready themselves to enter the next stage oftheoretical sophistication. Critical to such a shift would be a willingness toconsider how their own practices in fact contribute to the creation of thevery subject that is notionally being examined. An even more directanalogy lies in the treatment of Gnosticism and gnostics, which hascaptured both scholarly and popular imagination for many decades but

72 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image,

Performance (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002), 10.73See Denise K. Buell, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric

of Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); eadem, Race andUniversalism in Early Christianity, JECS 10 (2002): 42968; eadem, Rethinking theRelevance of Race for Early Christian Self-definition,HTR 94 (2001): 44976; and alsoJudith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford,2004).

74Jason BeDuhn and Paul A. Mirecki, eds., Emerging from Darkness: Studies in theRecovery of Manichaean Sources, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 43 (Leiden:Brill, 1997).


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which has now been called into question by a growing majority ofacademic specialists.75

Most modern studies of Manichaeism and Manichaeans take for granted

that both of these things existed as meaningfully stable and discernibleentities. That ethnogenesis might have played a role in the continualcreation and re-creation of the religion of Mani seems to be counter-intuitive given the prevalent belief that the religion of light was adesigned religion, even the first modern religion. After all, unlikeChristianity, with its diverse, uncertain early traditions, the religion ofMani supposedly emerged fully-formed from the mind of its founder, andthereafter spread across the landmass of Eurasia. It should therefore be inpossession of a distinctive identity and name for in such a carefully

orchestrated religious phenomenon one might expect to find branding, touse a modern marketing term, a central concern. Manis well-knowninsistence on religious syncretism and his embrace of a docetic Christologyand the idea of a form of religious knowingness (gnsis), both of whichspeak against the stubborn adherence to external forms or labels, mighthave contributed to this phenomenon. The result was that the religion ofMani seems to have had no singular name and few among its ranksembraced the use of a clear, unmistakable label for self-identification.Instead, most in the Greco-Roman world at any rate appeared to haveinsisted that they were just as much the followers of Christ as of Mani.

On their part, modern scholars have devoted themselves to the task ofre-branding Manichaeism and establishing its place in history as one ofthe great late antique universal religions. Their lively intellectual andscholarly cooperation takes the form of international enterprises that areevery bit as transnational, if one may use this term, as the Manichaeanswere supposed to have been in their heyday. The Corpus FontiumManichaeorum based in Macquarie University in Australia (directed byProfs. Alos Van Tongerloo and Samuel Lieu) includes nine series:Syriaca, Arabica, Coptica, Dachlaica, Medio-Iranica, Uighurica, Sinica,

Latina and Graeca. There can be little question that these texts will provideimportant scholarly tools for research and yet, by systematically searchingout and tagging texts and persons as Manichaean, Manichaean studieshas become surprising analogous to its professed object of study. Byinsisting on the identification and recovery of Manichaeans across thecenturies and the continents as one of their chief goals, scholars in the field

75 On this revisionist approach as applied to the study of the so-called gnostics and

Gnosticism, see Michael A. Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for

Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); andKaren L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,2003).


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are unwittingly joining forces with the likes of Augustine to create andsustain a master discourse about who and what the Manichaeans were.

This is not to say that scholars ignore variations in the local

constructions of Manichaeism. Most recognize that Manichaeism had avery different history in the east as it had in the west for instance. In theeast, in Central Asia especially, the monastery served as a key feature ofManichaeism and so it was relatively easy, one may think, to identify bothManichaeism and Manichaeans. In contrast, there was less by way offormal institutions in the west to go by. William H.C. Frend has suggested:that Manichaeism failed to survive in the West as an organised religionmay be due largely to Augustines writings controversies in the years 387389.76 Indeed, one may just as easily turn this comment around by

suggesting that it was Augustines writings and others like them thathelped to create the seemingly solid edifice we now call the Manichaeanchurch.77In Late Antiquity, the nomen Manichaeorumwas after all a labelused less for making selves than for marking the religious Other.

76William H.C. Frend, The Gnostic-Manichaean Tradition in Roman North Africa,

JEH 4 (1953): 1326, esp. 24.77 On the likely connections between figures such as Augustine of Hippo and theimperial rescripts against Manichaeans, see Scopello, Lepistula Fundamenti,207.

Lim . 2008 . the Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity

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