The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire

Abstract

A study of the fate of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire derives its interest from three main problems. First, Manichaeism was invariably associated with Persia: to study the growth of Manichaeism in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and to trace the attitude of the Roman governing-class to its expansion, is to touch on an important sector of the cultural relations between the Sassanian Empire and the Roman world. Secondly, the repression of Manichaeism in the Christian Empire was the spear-head of religious intolerance: the only Christian heretics to be executed in the Early Church were Manichees or those, such as Priscillian, on whom the accusation of Manichaeism could be made to stick. Thirdly, Manichaeism was a missionary religion: its rapid expansion in the third and fourth centuries makes it the last religion from the eastern provinces to attempt to make headway in Roman society, just as its appearance in the T'ang Empire of China, alongside Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity, place it among the leading ‘barbarian’ religions that spread into an Empire which had suddenly opened to the Western World. Conversely, the withering away of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire is a symptom of the growth of a new, more exclusive, more localized society, that foreshadows the embattled Christendom of the Middle Ages.