Manichaeism

http://depts.washington.edu/...haeism/essay.html

The prophet Mani was born in 216 CE in Persian Babylonia (modern day Iraq), into an ascetic community of Judaized Christians (Christians who continued strict observance of traditional Jewish praxis). At the age of twelve he had a vision, followed by a second one at age twenty-four which called him to be the culminating prophet in a chain of teachers including Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus. Mani left home after his second vision and began to proselytize in other regions of Persia before traveling to northern India in the early 240s. In India he became more acquainted with Buddhism and converted a Buddhist king near the Indus River Valley. Returning home shortly after the coronation of the Sassanian king Shapur I (r. 241-272), Mani was granted the right to teach his faith and managed to convert at least two princes in the royal house. Missionaries were sent as far east as the Kushan kingdom of Central Asia, and west to Alexandria, a cultural hub of the Mediterranean. Mani's fate changed when the new ruler Bahram I (r. 273-276) ascended the throne. Due to Bahram's close ties with the traditional Zoroastrian priestly class, Mani was persecuted and eventually executed in 276. His death, however, did not stop the spread of his teachings.

Manichaeism in the West had quite a vibrant life until the fourth and fifth centuries when it came under fierce persecution as heresy by a growing orthodox Christian church. As a young man St. Augustine of Hippo practiced Manichaeism before his conversion to Christianity. For the most part, Manicheans in Western Asia practiced their faith freely into the Islamic period under the Muslim Umayyads, until they were suppressed after the rise of the Abbassid Caliphate in the mid-eighth century. By the end of the sixth century the Manichean church of Central Asia was large enough to declare independence from the head church in Baghdad. As with many other cultural exchanges, the Sogdian merchants played a central role in translating texts and transmitting the faith to both the Chinese and the T¸rkic nomads of the steppe.

n Lance Jenott