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 Medieval Manichee were world haters whose ideology ultimately meant race suicide-not a recipe for long term success. ( )