470 Manichaeism and Mani
southern FRANCEand married him to Beatrice of SAVOY.
Manfred inherited from Frederick an interest in culture.
Active in Frederick’s courtly culture, he sponsored trans-
lators of Greek and Arabic and supposedly knew LATIN,
Arabic, and Hebrew.
POLITICAL VICISSITUDESIn his father’s will of 1250, he received the government of
the kingdom of SICILY as temporary regent until the
arrival of his older brother, the king of GERMANYand
emperor, Conrad IV (r. 1250–54). He also received the
principality of Taranto, and the honor of Monte Sant’
Angelo on the Gargano peninsula in APULIA. He crushed
a rebellion of several Italian cities with the help of his
mother’s relatives. Conrad arrived in 1252, but his death
in 1254 led to a general conflict over who would rule.
Pope INNOCENTIV excommunicated Manfred and pro-
claimed the church’s control over the kingdom. Manfred
acted quickly and managed to seize the imperial treasure,
and to remove a regent, who had taken power in the
name of Conradin or Conrad V (r. 1254–68), the duke of
SWABIAand the young son of Conrad IV. Manfred outma-
neuvered the papal legate and took Messina and
PALERMO. Recognized as regent in 1256 by a parliament
at Barletta, he spread a rumor of Conradin’s death and
had himself crowned king of Sicily at Palermo in 1258.
Tr ying to win over the GUELFparty, he vainly sought an
agreement with the PAPACY; he was refused and was
forced to depend on a network of Ghibelline alliances.
He subsequently neglected his Italian power base and
allies for a failed eastern adventure in ALBANIA and
CONSTANTINOPLE. Instead of exploiting the Ghibelline
victory at Montaperti in 1260 near SIENA, he failed to
block the routes through Piedmont and LOMBARDY,so
when Pope Urban IV (r. 1261–64) invested CHARLESI OF
ANJOUwith the kingdom of SICILY, Charles easily entered
Italy. Manfred failed to exploit his alliances with the Lom-
bard barons related to him and could not maintain his
fragile family-based political network in central and
southern Italy. Manfred was defeated and killed at Ben-
evento, on February 22, 1266, by the Guelf and papal
forces of Charles of Anjou. He was survived by his
daughter, Constance, who married King Peter III of
ARAGON(r. 1276–85).
Further reading: Henri Bresc, “Manfred (1232–
1266),” EMA,2.900; John Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante
and Petrarch, 1216–1380 (London: Longman, 1980);
Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the
Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
Manichaeism and Mani Manichaeism was based on
the vision of the founder of the sect, Mani or Manes (216–
276 C.E.), and was brought to the west by his evangelistic
disciples. Mani was a member of a Jewish-Christian
baptizing sect in southern Babylonia. Sponsored by the
emperor Shapur I (r. 241–273), his teachings spread both
in the Sassanian Empire, the frontier regions of the Roman
Empire, and central Asia. Nonetheless, Mani was killed
for his beliefs in 276. By the end of the third century, the
sect had spread around the Mediterranean, assisted by
TRADE connections between ROME and Sassanian IRAN
and by the conversion of the empire to Christianity, which
helped missionary possibilities for a sect copying Chris-
tianity’s organization and claiming to be a better form of
Christianity. Mani proclaimed himself an apostle of Jesus
Christ and the promised paraclete or holy spirit. He
wrote mostly lost doctrinal, liturgical, and homiletic texts
supposedly beautifully written in decorated manuscripts.THEOLOGY AND PERSECUTION
From fragmentary documentation, Manichaeism seemed
to be based on a radical DUALISMrooted in an extreme
dichotomy between the material and the spiritual. There
were two principles, one light and one darkness, origi-
nally separate and distinct. A penetration of a Kingdom of
Light by the forces of the Prince of Darkness in a middle
epoch caused the necessary sending of a redeeming primal
individual, who was to repel this malignant invasion. A
complicated battle ensued that involved drugging, a
divine reviving, cannibalism, and INCEST. Eventually the
human SOUL, r egarded as an element of divine nature, was
left captive in the flesh. They would become separate
again after a purifying conflagration. The elect in this sys-
tem were forbidden to have sex, marry, eat meat, or pre-
pare food. The daily needs of the elect had to be tended to
by “hearers,” who were permitted to live a normal life
with the promise of reincarnation as one of the elect. All
of this held a certain attraction to people in the late
Roman Empire. One temporary adherent was AUGUSTINE,
who eventually found it a collection of myths unable to
help with any intellectual understanding of the world.
The Manichaean religion, viewed as a threat from
Persia, was heavily persecuted by the Christian Roman
state from the emperor Theodosios I (r. 379–395)
onward and was the target of vehement polemics by
orthodox churchmen. Their polemical writings were our
main source for the history and beliefs of the sect until
the beginning of the 20th century. The writings were
also used regularly by the Eastern and Western
Churches in the Middle Ages as weapons against “Neo-
Manichaean” sects, such as the Paulicians, BOGOMILS,
and CATHARS. The Manichaeans were also persecuted by
Muslims as nonbelievers considered evil and immoral,
but not necessarily pagan.
See alsoGNOSTICISM.
Further reading:Francis C. Burkitt, The Religion of
the Manichees (New York: AMS Press, 1978); Hans-
Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road (New York:
HarperCollins, 1993); Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in
the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: A Historical