Unlike many other forms of ‘heresy’, Manichaeism is not a polemical construct but an independent and organised church within the Christian tradition originating in Mesopotamia and Iran in the third century CE. It had its own heresiology against other communities such as the western Catholic-Orthodox church, identifying key points of difference and deviance from the ‘faithful and true Christianity’ of Manichaean doctrine and practice.

The ascendancy of the Mazdayasnian priesthood at the court of the Persian king of kings led ultimately to Mani’s trial, imprisonment and death at Gondeshapur under King Bahram I. This was commemorated by the community as his crucifixion and compared to the sufferings of all previous righteous messengers of God. The inter-religious conflict and the dramatic events of Mani’s last days and martyrdom were uniquely significant for the development of religion in Sasanian Iran. This chapter examines the various available sources, and questions the factual and counter-factual memory of the Apostle preserved into the medieval and modern world.

The Foreword by Professor Jason BeDuhn (Professor of Religious Studies, Northern Arizona University) offers an overview of this book’s critical historiography of the life of Mani, based in part on scepticism regarding the previously known sources, and in part on newly available sources. In introducing this book’s approach, BeDuhn follows various depictions of Mani the 'Apostle of Jesus Christ', the 'Doctor from Babylon', the 'Illuminator' and the 'Great Interpreter' within both the Manichaean tradition and in polemical accounts.

The complexity of its themes and concerns suggests that Augustine anticipated multiple audiences for the “Confessions,” including his critics within the Catholic and Donatist churches of North Africa and his former compatriots among the Manichaean community. For the former, it served as an apology, demonstrating the authenticity of his spiritual development away from his Manichaean past. For the latter, it served both as a polemic, cleverly criticizing Manichaeism in the guise of self-condemnation, and as a protreptic, offering himself as an exemplar of a path to conversion commensurable with those spiritual values he could appreciate in the Manichaeans, despite their heresy.

This chapter introduces the life of Mani as mediated through the history of Manichaean Studies. It follows the field’s genesis in the confessional polemics of the Reformation to the twentieth century where repeated new and unexpected manuscript discoveries have allowed for an advancement of the field through textual studies and philology. Texts that survive in a wide variety of languages, ranging from Latin and Greek through Coptic, Arabic, various Middle Iranian languages including Parthian and Sogdian, even Uighur and Chinese. This chapter reconsiders the many variations of the life of Mani as depicted in Manichaean, apocryphal, pseudepigraphical and polemical texts in the light of these new discoveries and the scholarship that preceded it.

The Christian tradition has regarded Mani as the arch-heretic and seducer of the faithful. His memory has been profoundly shaped by a fascinating counter-biography known as The Acts of Archelaus. This circulated from circa 340 CE and dominated Western knowledge until the reading of new sources from the Islamicate world in the nineteenth century and then the recovery of texts written by the Manichaean community in the twentieth century. The most remarkable of these has been the miniature Mani-Codex written in Greek that preserves an entirely different narrative of Mani’s youth and upbringing in a sectarian Jewish–Christian community of southern Mesopotamia. This chapter discusses and compares various pictures of Mani, including topics such as his origins, name and the religious experiences that he claimed.

It appears clear that Mani embarked on a public career as a preacher, healer and wise man, debating with leading sages of the time and gaining adherents from varied religious communities. He travelled widely within Iran and Mesopotamia and even beyond to India, and he sought to convert kings and members of the aristocracy at the courts of the Sasanian empire. This chapter examines Mani’s missions and the community he founded within the context of the intellectual, spiritual and doctrinal traditions with which he interacted, including Mazdayasnianism and Buddhism, and the scientific lore of the time. Consideration of devotional imperatives (hagiography) and the tropes of ancient narrative and romance strip away much literary artifice for the processes of historical reconstruction.