1. The year of Manes's death we can scarcely determine, unless we rely on certain fixed conjectures. Of these, some pertain to that time in which the heretic himself wished to hold two conferences, first with bishop Archelaus, then with the presbyter Diodorus, in which he disputed concerning the principles and dogmas of his false sect; but others must be drawn from those things which we described in the second chapter of this work, in which, against Paschasius Quesnel, we treated the question of the time at which the Manichaean heresy became known to the world as one to be condemned—namely, when that most wicked man began to scatter his depraved dogmas throughout the globe.
For there, relying chiefly on the testimony of the great pontiff Leo, whereby he affirmed that Manes became known as one to be condemned at that time when Probus and Paulinus held the consulship, when now the eighth persecution was raging against the Christians, it was made sufficiently clear. And that these men held the consulship after the death of the emperor Aurelian, we proved—led by the weightiest considerations drawn from the tables, chronicles, and catalogues of both ancient and more recent writers—and we determined that it must be assigned to the year 277 of Christ, with those writers, namely, lending their support, whom we noted at the foot. But whether that year was indeed the year of Manes's death, the Acts of Archelaus nowhere intimate.
Rather, the writer of these Acts is charged by Beausobre as careless, because he seems to affirm that the whole Manichaean tragedy occurred under one and the same king of the Persians, whereas one ought to reckon this altogether impossible. The most illustrious Alexander Zacagni, however, who recalled this argument to examination neither cursorily nor drowsily, reasons otherwise. He therefore, first of all, relies on the testimony of St. Leo the Great praised above, proving that the Manichaean heresy became known to the world as one to be condemned when Probus and Paulinus held the consulship.
Wherefore (that same learned writer Zacagni subjoins) it must necessarily be said that Archelaus's disputation with Manes, through which the error of Manes became known to the whole world, took place between July and December of the year 277 of the Christian era. Hence he judged that those words of Archelaus ought to be kindly interpreted which occur to be read in chapter 27 of the disputation—when, namely, before the judges who were present at the disputation, wishing to press Manes hard, he urges upon him that he is not the Paraclete promised by Christ;
otherwise, contrary to his own divine promises made, confirmed by testament, passion, and death, he would long have left his apostles and disciples as orphans without ruler, leader, and master, if that Spirit of truth, who was to teach all things, had come after nearly three hundred years and had confirmed himself, as it were, to be the heir of the Church. It is therefore to be believed that Archelaus did not burst into these words in order to exaggerate the stupidity of Manes (as Zacagni will have it), but we judge that he spoke with propriety of words.
For although he set down the round number of three hundred years, nevertheless he used a certain qualification, employing and interposing the adverb 'nearly,' namely to intimate that the third century of the Church was then verging and running toward its close when the aforesaid disputation was being held. But Archelaus himself in this matter needed no interpreter or excuse. For in the progress of that argument, in order to press Manes more and more, he appeals to those signs by which it behooved the coming of the Holy Spirit to be made plain to the whole world; and although, whether through a copyist's lapse or a translator's drowsiness,
in dealing with this number of years he seems, as it were, to depart from an a priori mode of reckoning, namely when, taking up that promise of Christ the Lord, by which it was attested that not long afterward he would send the Paraclete who would wipe away the mourning and tears of the apostles and disciples—by which he is understood to have sent, after three hundred years and more, this one who bears witness to himself. But who does not see that either an error crept in, or that Archelaus followed another mode of reckoning? For he does not there make mention of the Christian era, but only of the years which had run from the reign of Tiberius Caesar to Probus himself, being led by this persuasion, that he might more and more press and reproach Manes from the promises of Christ the Lord.
For from the death of Tiberius up to the reign of Probus, only two hundred and forty-one years flowed by, as can clearly become known from the Petavian tables. Wherefore I can by no means persuade myself that Archelaus, carried away by the heat of the disputation, fell into so grave an error, especially since the affairs of the Roman empire could not lie hidden from him; because at that time the Romans already ruled over the regions of the East and of Mesopotamia, as is ascertained by all. But that Archelaus in that place discoursed not of the beginning of the Christian era to be reckoned from the Nativity of the Savior, but from his death—which occurred while Tiberius ruled over the Romans and Jews—the very aim of his procedure clearly makes manifest.
For what did he strive to prove throughout that whole praised chapter, but that Manes falsely assumed to himself the name of the Holy Spirit, and feigned that the virtue, power, and gifts of the Spirit sacrilegiously belonged to him? Wherefore, in order to accomplish this the more happily in his disputation, he appeals first to those certain promises of Christ the Lord, by which he had said in John that he would return most speedily to the Father, in order to prepare a place for his disciples, and would ask the Father to give another Paraclete who might remain in the Church forever. Which Paraclete he then calls the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you shall know, because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you.
At length, to confirm the truth of what he had said still more, he subjoined: 'I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.' That Christ therefore made this promise to his apostles and disciples whom he was addressing can scarcely be called into doubt. Who indeed were also to receive that Spirit, not after many days, that they might be true and sincere witnesses in all the earth of his preaching, passion, death, and resurrection. But that Christ made such promises while Tiberius reigned, on the day before he suffered, and after the Passover had been celebrated with his disciples—when, the last testament of his will now completed, the Jews had by counsel decreed to inflict a horrible and bloody death upon him—who can be ignorant? 2.
In order, then, that they might be fulfilled, there could not have run by so great a span of time as is computed to have elapsed from the reign of Tiberius to the emperor Probus. For that two hundred and forty years were consumed between the two reigns we understand without any hesitation from the tables of the Roman consuls and emperors. And when Archelaus had taken notice of this very interval of time, he demonstrates that the Manichaean is to be cast out and driven off like a thief and a robber;
since he brought forward no signs or examples of the divine promises by which he might show himself to be the Paraclete who was prefigured by Jesus—in which matter, ignorant, he perhaps represents Jesus as a liar, who indeed had said that he would send the Paraclete not long afterward (he says), yet is found to have sent this one after three hundred years and more, as he himself bears witness. So great a deferral of time, therefore, would have rendered the divine pledges utterly void, as Archelaus asserts. And taking up the part of those whom Christ the Lord will come to judge on the last day of judgment, he brings them on, as if speaking upon the stage—all those, that is, who from the reign of Tiberius up to Probus departed from this light—and thus, addressing Manes, he reasons.
'What will those say to Jesus on the day of judgment who have already departed from life from that time until now? Will they not allege these things: Torment us not, if we did not do your works; for indeed, since you promised under Tiberius Caesar that you would send the Paraclete, who should convict us of sin and of righteousness, you sent him only at last under Probus; you left us orphans, though you yourself said, I will not leave you orphans, though you yourself said that you would soon go to send the Paraclete.' Who then will deny that the time of this disputation was determined by Archelaus?
For if he asserts that Probus then held the reins of empire, he has most evidently signified that the present conference with the Manichaean is to be assigned to the year 277 of Christ, if we lend credence to Petavius's computations; or to the year 282, if we rely on the testimony and reasonings of the most illustrious Pagi. 3. But now I very well understand that all the things which have hitherto been written by no means clear Archelaus of error and drowsiness, although he indicated clearly enough that his disputations with Manes took place when Probus already ruled over the Roman empire.
Furthermore, Probus reigned for six years, since he had received the scepter in the year 277 praised above, and had remained in it until the year 282; and to this latter year Pagi assigns the praised disputations and the death of the Manichaean, which Beausobre puts earlier, judging rather that it occurred in the first year of that reign. Which controversy it cannot now be part of the present leisure to settle. For the rest, we are persuaded that those words which we meet with in the Acts of Archelaus—namely, 'that he sent this one after three hundred years and more'—crept into that disputation of Archelaus through a translator's error or a copyist's negligence, since rather one ought to read: 'after two hundred years and more.'
For Tiberius departed this life in the year 37, and from his death to the reign of Probus, two hundred and thirty-nine years intervened. Nevertheless, we judge that we have disputed enough on this matter—especially since strength is added to this conjecture of ours by those other preceding words of Archelaus, in which he clearly indicated that not yet three whole hundred years had run by. And so either it would have to be said that Archelaus was not sufficiently consistent with himself in the same chapter of the disputation—which lacks probability—or the error of the anachronism must be laid to the charge of the translator or the copyists. But now it behooves us to take a step to other matters, that we may pursue the remaining things which we judge to pertain to the destruction of Manes. 4.
And first indeed the succession and catalogue of the kingdom of the Persians must be consulted, so that we may understand whether all those things which we have written above concerning the Manichaean tragedy took place under one and the same king—as Beausobre affirmed that Archelaus, or the author of the disputation which is circulated under the name of Archelaus, had indicated, condemning him as it were with a censorious pen for negligence.
As, therefore, regards the catalogues of the kings of the Persians of the middle age, it is certain that, the stock of the Parthian kings being extinct and their empire abolished in the year 226 of Christ, Artaxares—or, as Petavius notes, Artaxerxes—then began to rule over the Persians; and when he had held the reins of the kingdom for fifteen years, Sapor the first of that name succeeded him, who, enjoying a more lasting principate, afflicted even the Romans with enormous losses, as Agathias affirmed. With these statements Beausobre does not disagree, who, following the criticism of the illustrious Pagi, prolongs the reign of Sapor up to the year 271, or to the beginning of the following year 272.
But the praised Beausobre, having devised a new system concerning the Manichaean history, not only, adhering to the Edessene Chronicle, persuades himself that his birthday fell in the year 240; but from the silence of the Oriental writers he denies that Manes was bound to a servile condition, judging rather that he drew his origin from the stock of the Magi, and had as a father a man who was a Magus, who once attained an episcopate and was called Manes. In short, he invents by his writing that Manes, having consumed many periods of time, was the son of that man;
and that this Manes, versed in the reading of the Greeks, devoted his labor to mathematics and music, astronomy, geography, astrology, medicine, and painting, and excelled most of all in the art of painting, as also in the understanding or interpretation of the sacred Scriptures. He then asserts that Manes fell into heresy. Who therefore, cut off from the Church by excommunication, obtained the favor and benevolence of the praised Sapor, king of the Persians, and, dwelling among the courtiers, is bidden to accompany the king when he was arranging his battles against the Romans—in the persuasion that he could heal himself and his soldiers. 5. But in what year he was taken on by Sapor to exercise the most excellent office of physician, he did not relate.
But it can be conjectured from that time in which Sapor, leading the forces of his army, inflicted violence and slaughter upon the Romans. That this happened chiefly in the time of the emperor Valerian, the records of Roman affairs report. Valerian indeed, by the treachery of the general Macrianus, being about to pay atrocious penalties—with God as avenger—for the innocent blood of Christians that had been shed, was captured by Sapor, king of the Persians, and led into Persia; for a long time held as an object of mockery, at last by the king's command he was flayed, and paid the penalties of his crimes.
But since battles of this kind occurred after the year 254, and Valerian, worn out by his punishments, put off the man in the seventh year of his own reign, I do not see by what reason, by what knowledge of the sciences, by what skill, finally, of the medical art, Manes could then have been equipped—so that, on account of his cultivation of nearly all the sciences, he was very pleasing to Sapor's heart, and was even employed as a most excellent and most noble physician. But that this could have come to pass, no one—unless dull and leaden-witted—can persuade himself. For, on Beausobre's authority, the birth of Manes must be assigned to the year 241. But Sapor began to inflict disasters upon the Romans in the year 245, according to Baronius; the servitude and betrayal of Valerian occurred around the year 256; his death in the year 260.
When therefore Valerian paid the penalties of his wickednesses, Manes was scarcely reaching the nineteenth year of his age; and when Sapor was leading his forces and army against the Romans, he could still have been an infant and a tender child; since the aforesaid betrayal and servitude of Valerian must be referred to the fifteenth or sixteenth year of his age—which mode of reckoning proves very well that Manes could not then have practiced the art of a most excellent and most noble physician with Sapor. No less fabulous seem the things which the same Beausobre relates concerning the ordination or priesthood of Manes, concerning his understanding and interpretation of all the sacred Scriptures, on account of which, having fallen into heresy and been deprived of catholic communion, he could betake himself to the court of Sapor.
by procuring for himself those safeguards of benevolence which the same author has recounted above. Equally fabulous must be reckoned the things said concerning his ministries and parochial office, and concerning the disputations held on behalf of the catholic religion against the Jews and Magi and gentiles before he was cut off from the Church—which our critic there invents without any author worthy of belief. For what? When Sapor, the first king of the Persians of that name, closed his day, Manes was scarcely reaching the nineteenth or twentieth year of his age, as we have already seen. How then, against the rules of the sacred
canons, be thought to have been initiated into the priesthood, then, on account of heresy, deprived of communion and expelled from the Church, before Sapor should die—namely, at the time when that king, harsh in fortune and with a multitude of forces, was leading his armies to inflict disasters upon the Romans? No one of sound mind, who does not lend credence to dreams, will be able to persuade himself of this. Nay more, the same Beausobre supposes that several years ran by between Manes's fall into heresy and Sapor's death. For that very reason it behooved him to affirm that his ordination was still more premature.
But the diligent writer in the art of criticism, such as Beausobre boasts himself to be, by no means took notice of this incongruity of facts, being intent only on this pursuit: to weaken and cast down the testimonies of the ancient Greek and Latin Fathers. Therefore, indulging rather in novelties, he transferred many paradoxes and fables into his own work, praising the testimonies of Persian and Assyrian writers who flourished far from the age of Manes. 6. He then describes the characters and endowments of mind, the zeal, and the manner of acting of the Persian kings, in order to display a certain abundance of erudition. And using a certain digression, he commemorates the ancient religion of that people, and asserts that this, long obsolete, was made to flourish by the zeal of Sapor, king of the Persians.
Having, moreover, praised the prudence, fortitude, and justice of this king, he takes a step toward explaining the etymology of that word 'Magi.' By which appellation the presbyters and philosophers of Persia were accustomed to call themselves. He also adds many things concerning the philosophy, studies, theology, religion, and worship of Zoroaster. And at last he wove in so many trifles, inept and jocular interpretations, which to relate we judge would exceedingly ill befit a sensible and religious man treating of Christian matters, and therefore we have deemed it necessary to pass over these and other things of this kind in silence. 7. And so it will rather remain for us to inquire under which king of the Persians Manes was compelled to pay the due penalties of his wickednesses.
In which leisure we should not have to expend much labor, if we did not likewise have as our adversary Beausobre, who is but little consistent with himself in his statements. We therefore first call to mind those things which a little before we described concerning the year of the death of king Sapor. Whom, when his son Hormisdas had succeeded—as the Persian annals prove, and as Beausobre too freely concedes—it is ascertained that he spent only two years in the empire. But this man had as his successor Varanes the first of that name, who, the third year of his rule scarcely completed, departed from this light, leaving Varanes II, the successor and heir of that king. But from what year of Christ the beginning of the reign of Varanes II is to be reckoned, Petavius, Pagi, and others do not agree among themselves with Beausobre.
But those men contend that it must be taken from the year 276. On the contrary, Beausobre, relying on various conjectures, fancifully maintains that it is to be assigned to the following year 277. Therefore he flatters himself that the punishment of Manes occurred not under Varanes II, but under his predecessor Varanes I. But we must attend to the aim of his writing and reasoning. As certain, therefore, he first supposes, with Pagi, that Sapor took up the reins of the Persian kingdom from the year two hundred and forty-one, and held the same up to the year two hundred and seventy-two. But to Hormisdas, this son and successor of his in the kingdom, he adjudged not two whole years, but one year and ten days, or ten months, of empire.
And he believed that under this king Manes, first compelled to go into exile from Persia by Sapor, betook himself again into Persia, and exhibited to the new king a certain book of Revelations, adorned with various and most perfect pictures. And that this book was not different from the Gospel of the Manichaean, in which the false history of Jesus Christ was contained, Beausobre persuades himself from a certain testimony of Photius. Who, moreover, confesses that it is to be lamented that the copies of this work, through the envy of the times and the hatred of men, have utterly perished, since they contained within themselves the offspring of a wiser man, who in that age expended his labor on the philosophical studies of the Orientals.
Finally, he calls that religious economy of prelates and secular princes an intolerable abuse, by which such pernicious books—fit and ordained to deprave the faith, piety, and morals of the peoples—were ordered to be destroyed and burned in the flames; and he confessed that he did not know whether any relics at least or fragments of this work survive among the ancient Oriental, Arab, and Persian writers. But that Beausobre here and in many other places wished to attack and calumniate the ancient practice of the Church, preserved even to this day, who does not see? We reserve to ourselves the refuting of such gibes and false calumnies when we shall come to treat of the decrees of the great Leo and of the other Fathers published against the Manichaean books.
Nor need we linger over what he adds in the same place, when he speaks of the Persian rites and ceremonies pertaining to a certain use of the girdle. He asserts, on the authority of Hyde, that this is reckoned among the moral precepts of Zoroaster. Whence he concludes that the Persians attribute to the girdle the very same power which Roman Catholics imagine to reside in the sign of the cross and in holy water — namely, for driving out demons and freeing men from their violence. He therefore concludes that both those rites — that of the Persians, and those of the Mohammedans and of the Christians — reek entirely of superstition.
He then observes how at length Hormisdas, king of the Persians, graciously received the vaunted Gospel of Manes, and made himself a Manichaean. Since many soon followed the example of this king, Manes easily won for himself both name and authority among the Persians. But, he adds, the king's protection could not much avail Manes to live more safely and securely. For the Christians and the Magi, perceiving that he opposed their religions, at once became hostile to him; and that he might escape their fury, King Hormisdas furnished him with both refuge and defense in a certain impregnable fortress, so that there, namely, he might guard against that violent death which, beyond all doubt, the rage and onset of so many and so great enemies would have brought upon him.
Hormisdas at length closed his final day, having scarcely spent two years in his reign, as the common opinion of writers holds, which even Beausobre has not dared to gainsay. Those who assign his death to the year 273 or 274 affirm that he had as his successor Varanes I, his son. He, following his father's example, in the beginnings of his reign extended defense and protection to Manes. But afterwards, when the persecution of the pagan Magi and of the Jews against him grew fierce again, and he was overcome by them in a certain public disputation, he was at last put to death as an author of heresies. But what kind of punishment he underwent by the king's decree, Beausobre does not there determine with certainty.
He asserts merely that, as though a Sadducee, Manes was slain by capital punishment, citing the opinions of various authorities — namely of Hyde, who affirms that he was nailed to a cross at the city gate; or of Abbé Renaudot, who asserts that his skin was flayed from him while alive and, stuffed with hay, was hung up to strike terror into others. To this testimony he subjoins the book of a certain uncertain author who describes the history of the Persians, or that of Abulpharagius, who says that the skin of Manes was flayed off after his death. This he indicated as more probable, led by the example of Valerian, who died a natural death, from whom Sapor ordered the skin to be flayed, that he might expose it to the Romans to curb the arrogance of that proud nation.
To these opinions he added a third, by which it was asserted that Manes was slain by hanging and divided into two parts, one part being fixed to one gate of the city and the other part to the other. Whence it came about that those places were called the Upper Manes and the Lower Manes. But that all these things could have happened under Varanes I — who will be persuaded of this? For it is established, upon consideration of the testimonies of the most careful writers, that he had already ceased to live in the year 276. Therefore, in the consulship of Aurelius Probus Augustus and Aruntius Paulinus,
the condemnation of that heresy could not have become known through him, nor could he have disputed with Archelaus the bishop and Diorides the presbyter — or, as Beausobre prefers, with the Magi, the pagans, and the Jews — since he was no longer among the living, on account of the death which in the preceding year he had had to undergo by the king's decree. We therefore, to guard against such ambiguities and pitfalls, and relying on the testimonies of the Greek and Latin Fathers, defer the death of Manes himself to the year 277, at which time Varanes II ruled over the Persians. We judge that Beausobre's assertions are scarcely, indeed hardly at all, to be subscribed to — he who set before himself no other aim than to heap together a vain and useless apparatus of doubtful, jesting, and undigested erudition;
that is, in order to deceive incautious readers by his allurements, by leading the sincere and constant tradition of the Catholic Church to its ruin through certain fabulous traditions derived from unknown and impure sources — as we undertake to prove more expressly in the following chapter. 1. I should seem to myself to be most gravely wanting if, having explained with a fuller pen all those things which pertain to the origin, heresy, errors, crimes, and punishment of Manes, I did not more seriously turn my mind to that disputation and to the Acts which are circulated under the name of Archelaus, bishop of Caschara.
For this work was whole and perfect when it was entrusted to the public presses at Rome of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in the year of Christ 1698; and the most illustrious and eminent man Lorenzo Alessandro Zaccagni, prefect of the Vatican Library, adorned it learnedly with the greatest zeal and labor in his collection of the ancient monuments of the Greek and Latin Church. That this work was received with the approval of all the learned, until Beausobre's History of the Manichaeans came to light, no one is ignorant. But since in the year 1734 the same Beausobre committed his work to the presses at Amsterdam, even then the truth of the History of Archelaus and the authenticity of the aforesaid Acts began to be doubted, even by learned Catholics;
for such men, on the one hand pondering with themselves the traditions of the ancients, and on the other weighing the arguments by which Beausobre strives to diminish and overthrow the credit and authority of these, could already easily be brought to this persuasion: either that such a History is altogether fabulous, or that it at least contains many things which are repugnant to the truth of facts and to the character of those times, to the governance of civil affairs, and to the affairs of the Church.