MANIA MANICHEES. 



665 



public buildings large and handsome ; and it is one 

 of the finest towns in Germany. It contains Lutheran, 

 Reformed, and Catholic churches, a synagogue, and 

 three hospitals. The palace contains a gallery ol 

 paintings, cabinet of antiquities, and a library of 

 60,000 volumes. The observatory is a noble build- 

 ing, with a curious tower 108 feet high. The lyceum, 

 or gymnasium, for the education of the upper classes, 

 is superintended by able instructors. 



MANIA ; a Roman spectre, the mother of the 

 Manes, to whom, in the most ancient times, human 

 sacrifices, particularly of children, were offered. 

 This took place as late as the time of Tarquinius 

 Superbus. In subsequent times, onions and poppy- 

 heads were sacrificed instead of children. Little 

 figures, stuffed with wool, were hung outside the 

 house, to appease the Mania; also clews of yarn, 

 equal in number to the slaves, to protect them. 

 MANIA. See Mental Derangement. 

 MANICHEES, or MANICH^EANS. Of the 

 founder of this sect whom the Orientals called 

 Mani, the fathers of the church, Manes, terming 

 likewise his adherents Manichees history contains 

 two different accounts. The older account, contained 

 in the historians of the Christian church, seems far 

 more credible than the Arabic version of the tenth 

 century, which makes him an accomplished magician, 

 a skilful painter, and a Christian priest; but says 

 nothing particularly new respecting him. According 

 to the first account, he became, when a boy, a slave, 

 under the name of Cubricus, to a wealthy widow in 

 Persia, at whose house he met with the four books of 

 Scythianus, an Egyptian enthusiast, of whom nothing 

 more is known, which had been left her by his 

 scholar Terebinthus, or Buddas, entitled Mysteries, 

 Chapters, Gospel (Artzeng) and Treasury. By the 

 perusal of these books, he was led to his doctrine of 

 the world and of spirits, framed from the dualistic 

 ideas of the Chaldaeans, together with the systems of 

 the Gnostics. (See Gnostics.) Being left the heir 

 of his mistress at her death, he assumed the name of 

 Mani, and sought to rear, like Mohammed, on the 

 foundation of these books, a new religious philoso- 

 phy, for which he acquired disciples. The reputation 

 of his wisdom caused him to be invited to the court 

 of Sapor, king of Persia, where he was imprisoned, 

 because the sick son of this king had died under his 

 care. His scholars brought him information of the 

 obstacles which Christianity had thrown in the way 

 of his doctrines. The reading of the Holy Scriptures 

 of the Christians now suggested to him the idea that 

 he was called to the purification of Christianity from 

 Jewish and hierarchical deformities, and to the dif- 

 fusion of a mysterious doctrine, unrevealed by the 

 apostles nay, that he was the Comforter promised 

 in the New Testament. Having escaped from prison, 

 and collected new disciples at Arabion, a fortress on 

 the frontiers of Mesopotamia, he sought, under the 

 name of an apostle of Christ, and, according to the 

 Arabic narrative, favoured by Sapor's successor, 

 Hormizdas (Hormuz), A. D. 272, to convert the 

 Christians in those regions to his doctrines. While 

 engaged in these endeavours, he is said to have been 

 twice overcome by Archelaus, a Christian bishop at 

 Kaskar (Charrse) in Mesopotamia, in two disputa- 

 tions ; to have incurred again the suspicion of the 

 Persian court, and, in the year 277, to have been 

 executed (according to the Christian account, flayed 

 alive), at the command of king Varacces (Vaharem). 

 Proceeding on the ground of an eternal opposition of 

 good and evil, mingling the philosophy of Zerdusht 

 (Zoroaster) with his arbitrary versions of biblical 

 doctrines, his system possesses but little in common 

 with Christianity, except the language. He assumes 

 two principles, independent of each other ; one of 



good the God, without form, in the kingdom of 

 light ; and one of evil the hyle, or devil, of colossal 

 stature and human shape, in the darkness of matter ; 

 the former strengthened by two emanations, created 

 in the beginning, the Son and the Spirit, and superior 

 to the latter, both surrounded by innumerable similar 

 aeons, or elementary natures, proceeding from them, 

 which dwell in the five elements, or spheres, that 

 rise one over the other in the kingdom of good, viz. 

 light, clear water, clear air, genial fire, and pure 

 ether ; and, in the kingdom of evil, darkness, or 

 earth, troubled water, stormy air, consuming fire 

 and smoke, from each of which proceed congenial 

 creatures. During an internal war of the always 

 discordant powers of darkness, the defeated party 

 discovered, from the high mountains on the frontiers, 

 the kingdom of light, hitherto unknown to the devil. 

 In order to conquer it, the devil made peace with 

 his species. The good God endeavoured to subdue 

 his enemies by means of artifice and love. The 

 prince of darkness, having eventually been defeated 

 in the contest, produced the first parents of the 

 human race. The beings engendered from this 

 original stock consist of a body formed out of the 

 corrupt matter of the kingdom of darkness, and of two 

 souls, one of which is sensual and lustful, and owes 

 its existence to the evil spirit ; the other, rational 

 and immortal, a particle of the divine light, which 

 had been carried away in the contest, by the army 

 of darkness, and immersed into the mass of malignant 

 matter. The earth was created by God out of this 

 corrupt mass of matter, in order to be a dwelling 

 for the human race, that their captive souls might, 

 by degrees, be delivered from their corporeal prisons, 

 and their celestial elements extracted from the gross 

 substance in which they were involved. With this 

 view, God produced two beings from his own sub- 

 stance, Christ and the Holy Ghost ; for the Mani- 

 chasans held a consubstantial Trinity. Christ, or 

 the glorious intelligence, called by the Persians 

 Mithras, subsisting in and by himself, and residing 

 in the sun, appeared in due time among the Jews 

 clothed with the shadowy form of a human body, to 

 disengage the rational soul from the corrupt body, 

 and to conquer the violence of malignant matter, 

 and he demonstrated his divine mission by stupen- 

 dous miracles. This Saviour was not man : all that 

 the New Testament relates respecting the humanity 

 of Jesus was merely appearance, even his death and 

 resurrection ; but his sufferings are emblems of the 

 purification by self-denial, death and new life, neces- 

 sary for corrupted men. His crucifixion, in particu- 

 lar, is an allegory of the torments of the soul, which 

 is fastened to matter as to a cross. When the pur- 

 poses of Christ were accomplished, he returned to 

 liis throne in the sun, appointing apostles to propa- 

 gate his religion, and leaving his followers the 

 promise of the Paraclete, or Comforter, who is Mani 

 the Persian. Those souls who believe Jesus Christ 

 to be the Son of God, renounce the worship of the 

 God of the Jews, who is the prince of darkness, and 

 obey the laws delivered by Christ, and illustrated by 

 Mani, the Comforter, are gradually purified from 

 the contagion of matter ; and, their purification be- 

 ing completed, after having passed through two 

 states of trial, by water and fire, first in the moon 

 and then in the sun, their bodies return to their or- 

 iginal mass (for the Manichaeans derided the doctrine 

 of the resurrection of bodies), and their souls ascend 

 to the regions of light. But the souls of those who 

 have neglected the salutary work of purification, 

 pass, after death, into the bodies of other animals, 

 or natures, where they remain till they have accom- 

 plished their probation. Some, however, more 

 perverse and obstinate, are consigned to a severer 



