I found The Medieval Manichee for a dollar a few months ago. I'd never hard of it, didn't connect this Runciman with the Runciman who wrote about the Crusades or the Sicilian Vespers, but couldn't go past such a fabulous title or subtitle.

There's not much to review: it's out of date in some particulars, but a solid overview of the Big Dualist Heresies, from the Paulicians to Cathars. Most importantly, Runciman writes more or less in the language of the (self-described) orthodox, but ironically so. I laughed often, which you could hardly expect from the subject matter. It's as if Gibbon was a little less snarky, and worth it for the style alone. But Runciman also makes good points that get ignored by the 'Gnostics were peace loving hippies who we should embrace instead of Christians' crowd, the 'Religion caused all the world's problems including that I didn't like my breakfast this morning' crowd, and the 'quite right to burn them' crowd (the latter of which I don't really come across, ever). In short: the success or failure of heresy, like everything else, relies more on politics and economics than it does on 'religion,' because without the support of the nobility, there is no church, heretical or otherwise. He's preaching to the choir with me, but he makes good points.

Two minor highlights: anyone who loves the sound of words will get a kick out of the appendices, in which he lists the names of heretical groups. You might have heard of the Bogomils but how about hte Phundaites, Kudugers, Babuni, Deonarii, Piphles, Bougres, Textores, Runcarii, Bonshommes or Garatenses? And the name alone is almost enough to convert me to Athinganism, which is sadly not the belief that there are no things.

And Runciman can be added to the long list of books written during the second world war, when scholars didn't have access to libraries and had to rely on their memory or the few things they had to hand. It's surely no coincidence that so many of those books are so good: rather than trying to respond to the latest article in 'The Welsh Journal of the Theologies of Slightly Odd Religious Groups,' they were actually trying to produce knowledge.

Finally, a completely subjective pleasure: reading my serendipitous find took me back to my teenage years. When I was younger, I couldn't shop for books online. I lived in Australia, which meant that even second-hand books cost ten dollars, and the selection was, to put it kindly, minimal. Thanks to my student budget, I basically read whatever I could afford and find. Sometimes the result was good, sometimes bad.
Thank God I'm not a teenager anymore. Once is worth it, but also enough. This book, on the other hand, is well worth it, and a great resource for the surely *enormous* public out there itching for some mid twentieth century scholarship on dualist heresies. ( )

THE MEDIEVAL MANICHEE

INTRODUCTION

TOLERANCE is a social rather than a religious virtue
A broad-minded view of the private belief of others un-
doubtedly makes for the happiness of society; but it is an
attitude impossible for those whose personal religion is strong. For
if we know that we have found the key and guiding principle of
Life, we cannot allow our friends to flounder blindly in the darkness
We may recognize that without the key they may yet lead virtuous
and admirable lives, but their task is made unnecessarily hard; it is
our duty to help them on to the true Path, to show them the light
that will illuminate it all. Opinions may vary as to the nature of the
help that should be given, whether peaceful persuasion and a shining
example, or the sword and the auto da fe. But no really religious
man can pass the unbeliever by and do nothing.

Still more than the unbeliever it is the wrong believer, the heretic
rather than the infidel, whose conversion is the concern of the faithful.
For the infidel is often impossible to win. No one can prove that
Christianity is better than Buddhism or Islam. Those who believe it
to be so, do so not from logical argument but from an instinctive
conviction that its fundamental me.sage is the true revelation,
whereas those of other creeds are false or unimportant. But the
heretic Christian is in a different position. He believes, like the
orthodox, in the basic article of the Christian faith, that Jesus of
Nazareth died to redeem us. But he gives his faith another
interpretation, an interpretation that leads him, in orthodox eyes, into
dangerous and avoidable error.

His crime is therefore the more serious. The infidel in his unbelief
leaves Christianity alone. The heretic accepts its principles but by...

Idols change with the times. One can assess a society by what long-dead group is held up as a precursor of contemporary mores: Marx and Engels and other communists looked to the Taborites and Anabaptists and early for precursors, Segregationists looked to the Confederates, and Renaissance Humanists looked to the Greeks and Romans. From the 1980 on, and especially since the publication of Dan Brown‘s DaVinci Code, there has been a major upswing in interest in Christian Dualist heretics from the Middle Ages, from Gnostics to Cathars. On the surface, they connect with main points of progressive modern culture; equality of women and men, dislike of private property, support for contraception, suicide and euthanasia, vegetarianism, and a dislike of the Catholic Church. Their subsequent suppression by the Roman government, Dominican inquisitors or Simon de Montfort’s knights gives them a martyr-victim halo. Their present-day resurgence in popularity is not surprising, then. Sir Steven Runicman’s classic work, The Medieval Manichee, places them in context.

What Runciman (and most medieval observers) called Manichaeism is probably better described as Christian Dualism. Generally, all the sects described believed the following things. To explain why a good god would allow evil they took “God” out of the equation. Firstly, rather than an single all powerful God, there are two roughly equal ones, a good god who exists on a higher spiritual plane, and an evil one, in almost all of these sects identified with Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. This led them to reject the all of the Hebrew Scriptures and to regard matter and material things as evil. This led to interesting transpositions, as some sects took this to a logical end, whereby heroes of the Old Testament are villains and vice-versa. Man himself, when created, had a bit of the good god’s divine spark imprisoned within (never adequately explained), only able to escape when freed from the material world. Mankind itself is divided into three groups: the Elect (the elite, strictly adhering to rejection of the world through poverty and personal asceticism), the Ordinary (a lower level, who exist to support the Elect, and perhaps eventually join them), and infidels. In their religious practices, they seem to have preserved the religious practices of the early Church, as they never had much time to develop much past the “catacomb” state of power and influence. Dualism’s theology was rather sterile from the time of Paul of Samosata on, or even prior, and, if we are to believe St. Augustine, it was much thinner than that of orthodox Christianity. The complex cosmology (with Eons and Archons and such) and the tiered hierarchy of believers (a legacy of Gnosticism) was a contrast to its simple sacramental practices, and it s more sexually egalitarian nature.

The book explains this through a broadly historical narrative, although only sketching some of the more famous incidents (especially about the Cathars). Runciman starts with the Gnostics. Under Marcion in the early Second Century, this movement took definitive shape. Though undoubtedly influenced by straight dualist religions like Zoroastrianism, Marcion’s dualism was unusual, as its division was not between good & evil or darkness & light, but between justice & mercy and cruelty & love. Elements common to all later Christian Dualists emerged in Marcion’s church as well, most important being the three-fold division of Mankind. Frankly, as Runciman explains, Marcion is probably the most important figure in Christian Dualism, but as he lacked an opponent of St. Augustine’s stature vis-à-vis Mani, the later prophet gave his name to the movement.

Mani lived and preached in mid-Third Century Persia. Again fusing Christian, Gnostic, Zoroastrian and perhaps even Buddhist influences, Mani set out to start a new religion. His creed departed from prior Gnostics in both in his bizarre cosmology and creation myth (which seems to me almost Taoist in opposing forces giving birth to the world) and with his more pan-theistic view of Jesus. Manichaeism was even more ascetic than Marcion’s Gnosticism had been, with the Elect prohibited from working altogether, eating meat, any sexual contact and following secular laws. Despite these strict prohibitions, Manichaeism flourished, giving the appearance of becoming a dominant new world religion. It became the official religion of a few states in Central Asia until subsumed under Islam, but slowly died out in the West, due to its extreme anti-social nature in an era of barbarian invasions, though it could count among its numbers such great names as St. Augustine prior to his conversion.

Two minor sects that had a great influence on later Christian Dualism were the Adoptionists and Messalians. Adoptionism proposed that Jesus of Nazareth and the Word of St. John’s gospel were not always one in the same, with Jesus being born a mortal, then having divinity descend into Him only when baptized. This eventually led Adoptionism’s most prominent proponent Paul of Samosata to believe that this could happen to anyone. Messalianism took the rejection of the world to a logical conclusion; once an Elect had rejected the material world and united and became one with God, they could no longer sin, and were free to return to the world in any level of luxury or debauchery they chose. Elements of both these ideas would continue in all the later sects.

The main body of the book covers the four great dualist sects, the Paulicians, Bogomils, Patarenes, and Cathars. Runciman sees this as a western migration of dualism from Armenia, to Bulgaria, to Bosnia and finally to Languedoc. The Paulicians were an Armenian sect, with dualistic tendencies. Little is known about their exact beliefs, but they apparently took to Paul of Samosata’s Adoptionism. Unlike the prior Marcionites and Manicheans, they were fierce fighters renowned for the aggressiveness. Their influence was at a height during the Byzantine Iconoclast controversy, with even the Emperor Constantine V accused (probably falsely) of being a Paulician. A large community of Paulicians was moved by the emperor John Tzimisces to Philippopolis in Bulgaria, from whence they spread their ideas to the newly minted Bulgarian Christians. From among these came a priest named Bogomil, who gave his name to the entire sect. The Bulgarians at the time were wavering between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, an ideal situation for the growth of a sect of outsiders. Bogomilism waxed and waned in influence, but its geographic center in Bulgaria led to this being considered a homeland for later Christian Dualists. The situation was similar in Bosnia among the Patarenes. The Cathars are the most famous, and were the most powerful of these sects. Ironically, for the Church, the opening of communications with the east by the crusades allowed these ideas to drift to the south of France and northern Italy. Emerging new merchant classes of Languedoc took to the new creed, followed by their feudal lords. There, in close proximity to Rome, they could not be allowed to flourish. The Popes turned to the Dominicans and to the feudal lords of the north of France to ruthlessly suppress the sect.

In contrast to many more recent writers, Runciman sees the spread of Christian Dualism as not being due to the attractiveness of the faith itself, but because of three separate factors. The first is political. In all four areas, the region was in some way a border; in Armenia between Orthodoxy and Islam, in Bulgaria between eastern and western Christendom, in Bosnia between the Hungarians and Serbia, and in Languedoc between the greedy opportunistic feudal lords and the corrupt Catholic hierarchy. The second was proto-nationalism-Armenians and Bulgars against the Byzantines, Bosnians against Hungarians, and the native culture of Languedoc against the northern French. The third was corruption, rapacity or incompetence among the hierarchy of mainline churches in each region prior to the coming of the heresy. Given its age, Runicman’s account lacks later discoveries; most importantly the contents of the Nag Hammadi library. But regardless, it is an excellent introduction. Runciman is not enthralled by his subject, the way so many later historians are, and can view them more objectively. In the end, the Manichee were world haters whose ideology ultimately meant race suicide-not a recipe for long term success. ( )