Manichaeism In The Later Roman Empire

'A unique and thrilling insight into the brilliant mind of Anne Lister' Sally Wainwright, creator of Gentleman JackFemale Fortune is the book which inspired Sally Wainwright to write Gentleman Jack, now a major drama series for the BBC and HBO.Lesbian landowner Anne Lister inherited Shibden Hall in 1826. She was an impressive scholar, fearless traveller and successful businesswoman, even developing her own coalmines. Her extraordinary diaries, running to 4-5 million words, were partly written in her own secret code and recorded her love affairs with startling candour. The diaries were included on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2011.Jill Liddington's classic edition of the diaries tells the story of how Anne Lister wooed and seduced neighbouring heiress Ann Walker, who moved in to live with Anne and her family in 1834. Politically active, Anne Lister door-stepped her tenants at the 1835 Election to vote Tory. And socially very ambitious, she employed architects to redesign both the Hall and the estate.Yet Ann Walker had an inconvenient number of local relatives, suspicious of exactly how Anne Lister could pay for all her grand improvements. Tensions grew to a melodramatic crescendo when news reached Shibden of the pair being burnt in effigy.This 2022 edition includes a fascinating Afterword on the recent discovery of Ann Walker's own diary. Female Fortune is essential reading for those who watched Gentleman Jack and want to know more about the extraordinary woman that was Anne Lister.

The book is the first monograph-length study of Augustine's Contra Adimantum and demonstrates that, despite previous neglect of the work by Patristic scholars, a full appreciation of Augustine's reaction to the Manichaesan exegesis of the Bible is essential in understanding the development of Augustine's early theology.

This volume reproduces nineteen chapters and articles published between 1991 through 2008, on Manichaeism, and its contacts with Augustine of Hippo, its most famous convert and also best-known adversary. The contents are divided into four parts: perceptions of Mani within the Roman Empire, select aspects of Manichaean thought, women in Manichaeism, and Manichaeism and Augustine. Though these chapters and articles reproduce their originals, adjustments have been made to include cross-referencing, newer editions, and the like, all with the aim of rendering them more accessible to a new readership among those who follow the fortunes of Mani s religion in the Roman Empire and/or the Manichaean aspects of Augustine of Hippo.

This is the first general comprehensive introduction to Manichaeism aimed at a non-specialist and undergraduate readership. This study will be a historical and theological introduction to Manichaeism. It will comprise a biographical treatment of the founder Mani, situating his personality, his writings and his ideas within the Aramaic Christian tradition of third century (CE) Mesopotamia. It will provide a historical treatment of the Manichaean church in late antiquity (250-700 CE), detailing the emergence of Manichaeism in the late Roman and Byzantine empires, in addition to examining the continuation of Manichaean traditions in the eastern world (China) up to the thirteenth century and beyond. The book will consider the theology of Mani's system, with the aim of providing a clear-eyed treatment of the cosmogonic, scriptural and ecclesiological ideas forming its foundations. The study will base its analysis on original Manichaean literary sources, together with rehabilitating the representation of Manichaeism in those writings that polemicised against the religion. The study will aim to demonstrate the highly syncretic nature of Manichaeism, and will look to move forward 'traditional' perceptions of the religion as being simply a form of Christian Gnostic Dualism.

In the third century A.D. the Syro-Persian Mani founded a highly evangelistic Gnostic religion in Mesopotamia which was to claim among its converts in the Roman Empire the young Augustine, and which was later to be seen as the inspiration for Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathars in the Medieval West. It became a world religion with followers spread across Central Asia and even parts of China. Persecuted in the West as a major heresy, in medieval China it was suppressed as a rebel ideology. Its origins and history have rarely been told, and this study presents them to the English reader making full use of the many Manichaean documents discovered in Egypt, North Africa, Central Asia and China. Many of the texts cited are translated for the first time into English from Greek, Latin, Syriac and Chinese - thus making the book accessible to a wider readership. The history of its persecution in the Roman and Chinese Empires and of its extraordinary survival and diffusion are presented in detail. This is a book which will appeal both to the specialist and to the more general reader in the history of Rome, China and Iran, in theology and comparative religion, but will also be found both readable and instructive by anyone with interest in the history of contacts between ancient civilisations. First published in 1985 (by Manchester University Press), the book received world-wide academic acclaim from historians, theologians and orientalists. This substantially expanded and revised second edition brings up to date a work which is generally regarded as standard in its field.

This sourcebook gathers into a single collection the writings that illuminate one of the most fundamental periods in the history of Christian Europe. Beginning from the Great Persecution of Diocletian and the conversion of Constantine the first Christian Roman emperor, the volume explores Christianity's rise as the dominant religion of the Later Roman empire and how the Church survived the decline and fall of Roman power in the west and converted the Germanic tribes who swept into the western empire. These years of crisis and transformation inspired generations of great writers, among them Eusebius of Caesarea, Ammianus Marcellinus, Julian 'the Apostate', Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo. They were also years which saw Christianity face huge challenges on many crucial questions, from the evolution of Christian doctrine and the rise of asceticism to the place of women in the early Church and the emerging relationship between Church and state. All these themes will be made accessible to specialists and general readers alike, and the sourcebook will be invaluable for students and teachers of courses in history and church history, the world of late antiquity, and religious studies.

This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for Manichaeism, a world religion founded by Mani, the Syrian visionary.