THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

The term ‘Manichaean’ is here used in its primary sense, with reference to the religion that was founded by Mani (or Manichaios, that is Mani ‘the living’ as the original Syriac was transmitted into Greek) in the early Sassanian empire during the third century of the common era. Mani was a visionary, for he was a mystic and a painter; he was an intellectual, with a passion for understanding all aspects of the natural world and integrating them into a coherent system; but he was also intensely practical in his approach to this divine revelation and this knowledge. We might say that Manichaeism is the first real ‘religion’ in the modern sense, because Mani established it directly and deliberately, with its scriptures and its rituals and its organisation all in place. A principal aspect of his purpose was that this teaching and this practice and this community would be universal, and would supersede all previous faiths (which indeed were understood to reach their true culmination here). Mani himself travelled widely to preach, heal, convert and establish communities; and he dispatched missionaries in all directions. This book is concerned with the religion's spread and success and ultimate demise to the west of its homeland, that is in the world of the later Roman Empire.