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Baker‐Brian, Nicholas J.
2018.
A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity.
p.
319.
Article contents
“Putrid Boils and Sores, and Burning Wounds in the Body”*: The Valorization of Health and Illness in Late Antique Manichaeism**
Introduction: Health and the Manichaean Body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2016
Extract
Recent publications concerned with attitudes to the human body in the religion of Mani have revealed a complex spectrum of ideas. A reading of the “Manichaean body” informed by a gnostic polarity of flesh versus spirit has been largely rejected, and a more complex, ambivalent portrayal of the body, shaped by specific cosmological and theological readings of its origin and purpose, has come to light. New interpretive tools and approaches have changed perceptions of classical texts and revealed how the “subjugated, perfected [Manichaean body was] put into use in the process of salvation.” For example, rereading chapter 70 of the Coptic work the Kephalaia of the Teacher, we encounter a complex lesson that betrays the Manichaeans’ understanding of the dual heritage of the human body. Here the Mani of the Kephalaia instructs his disciples about the correspondences that exist between the fleshly body and the universe and formulates them in a manner that suggests a simultaneous patterning of the two forms: “Mani says to his disciples: ‘This whole universe, above and below, reflects the pattern of the human body; as the formation of this body of flesh accords to the pattern of the universe’” (70.169.28–170.1). The organs and limbs of the body resemble specific astral structures and elements in the universe, and both body and universe are afflicted by a range of competing powers. Chapter 70 offers a melothesiac reading of these archontic powers as zodiacal signs fused with the organs, bones, and sinews of the body (cf. chapter 69). As archons they exercise a malevolent influence over the flesh. However, they are also constantly in conflict with each other, and the cause of bodily sickness lies in their “creeping, and moving within the body. . . [where] they shall beset and destroy one another. . . they shall erupt from the body of the person who will die; and make putrid boils and sores and burning wounds in the body” (70.175.12–14, 16–18). Leaving such colorful descriptions of lesions aside, chapter 70 also indicates that human beings, specifically the Manichaean elect, possess enormous potential as the ones who are able to facilitate the release of the “light” by subduing the activities of the “five camps” (i.e., the face, heart, genitalia, stomach, and ground).
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Footnotes
*
Kephalaia of the Teacher 70.175.17–18.
**
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the International Association of Manichaean Studies, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 9–13 September 2013. I would like to thank Paul Dilley, Jean-Daniel Dubois, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, and Erica Hunter, together with the anonymous reviewers for HTR, for all their comments and suggestions on the paper.
References
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22 Some of the key sources are discussed by Koenen, “How Dualistic is Mani's Dualism?,” 16.
23 Temkin, Hippocrates, 8–17.
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29 Kellis Literary Texts (ed. Iain Gardner and Wolf-Peter Funk; 17 vols.; Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 15; Oxford: Oxbow, 2001–2016) 2:74–75. Codicological considerations are addressed at 2:22–27.
30 Kellis Literary Texts (ed. Gardner and Funk), 2:11.
31 Al-Nadīm, Fihrist (trans. Bayard Dodge; 2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) 2:799. See also Reeves, John C., Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism (Comparative Islamic Studies; Sheffield: Equinox, 2011) 116 Google Scholar, with commentary at n. 210.
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34 Ibid., 23.
35 Baker-Brian, Manichaeism, 2–24.
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44 Kellis Literary Texts (ed. Gardner and Funk), 2:76.
45 A Manichaean Psalm-Book: Part 2 (ed. Charles R. C. Allberry; Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection 2; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938). A more recent English translation of this psalm can be found in Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (ed. Iain Gardner and Samuel N. C. Lieu; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 240–44. For commentary, see Villey, André, Psaumes des errants. Écrits manichéens du Fayyūm (Paris: Cerf, 1994) 211–35Google Scholar.
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47 On the influence of the early, troubled history of Manichaeism on its literature, see especially Pedersen, Nils A., Studies in the Sermon on the Great War: Investigations of a Manichaean-Coptic Text from the Fourth Century (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1996) 153–398 Google Scholar.
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49 See Baker-Brian, Nicholas J., “Between Testimony and Rumour: Strategies of Invective in Augustine's De moribus manichaeorum ,” in The Purpose of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity: From Performance to Exegesis (ed. Puertas, Alberto J. Quiroga; Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 31–53 Google Scholar.
50 Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (ed. Gardner, Alcock, and Funk). All translations are taken from this volume.
51 See BeDuhn, “Domestic Setting,” 260.
52 E.g., most prominently P. Kell. Copt. 19 (Makarios to Matheos), P. Kell. Copt. 25 (Matthaios to Maria), and P. Kell. Copt. 31; less prominently the “Petros” letters, i.e., P. Kell. Copt. 38–41. NB the comments by Gardner, Alcock, and Funk concerning the “Petros” group: “[These] letters . . . do not have any particularly overt Manichaean sentiments, so that their religious affiliations are uncertain, except by inference. In general we presume such to be Manichaean in the absence of any conflicting evidence” (Coptic Documentary Texts 1, 234).
53 On the broader issues involved in identifying the Manichaean provenance of the Kellis texts, see Gardner, Iain and Lieu, Samuel N. C., “From Narmouthis (Medinet Madi) to Kellis (Ismant el-Kharab): Manichaean Documents from Roman Egypt,” JRS 86 (1996) 146–69Google Scholar.
54 See Franzmann, “Augustine and Manichaean Almsgiving,” 37.
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58 Brown, Peter, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) 159 Google Scholar.
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63 See Cribiore, Raffaella, “Greek and Coptic Education in Late Antique Egypt,” in Ägypten und Nubien in spätantiker und christlicher Zeit (ed. Emmel, Stephen et al.; vol. 2 of Akten des 6. Internationalen Koptologenkongresses; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999) 279–86Google Scholar.
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65 Ibid., 162–63.
66 Rosenwein outlines the parameters for reading letters within the context of historical research into emotions (Emotional Communities, 28). For a focus on the epistolary evidence for fourth-century Egypt, see the remarks by Bagnall, Roger S., Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 184–86Google Scholar. Andrew Crislip has most recently offered an interpretation of the monastic archive from Hathor that eschews a conventional reading of such formulae as simply topoi in Thorns in the Flesh, 41–44, with provocative results. See also Wendy Mayer, review of Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity, by Andrew Crislip, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 3 May 2015, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013-05-03.html.
67 Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 184.
68 Ibid., 185. See also the detailed survey by Scheidel, Walter, Death on the Nile: Disease and the Demography of Roman Egypt (Mnemosyne Supplements 228; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 1–117 Google Scholar.
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70 van Dam, Raymond, Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) 133 Google Scholar.
71 Ibid., 135.
72 See especially BeDuhn, “Domestic Setting.”
73 Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (ed. Gardner, Alcock, and Funk), 56.
74 Ibid., 154–56.
75 An important (although oft-neglected) observation made by Steinke, Hubert, in “Krankheit im Kontext. Familien-Gelehrten und Patientenbriefe in 18. Jahrhundert,” in Krankheit in Briefen im deutschen und französischen Sprachraum. 17.–21. Jahrhundert (ed. Dinges, Martin and Barras, Vincent; Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007) 35–44 Google Scholar.
76 See the insightful analysis of Maria's role in Kellis by Moss, Jennifer Sheridan, “Women in Late Antique Egypt,” in A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (ed. James, Sharon L. and Dillon, Sheila; Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) 502–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 510–11. Prosopographical details for Maria are given in Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (Gardner, Alcock, and Funk), 32–33; see also the details for Makarios and his relationship to Maria in the same volume at 32: “[Makarios is] most probably the husband of Maria. However, we do note that he consistently refers to her as ‘sister’ (not in itself surprising).”
77 See Dickey, Eleanor, “Literal and Extended Use of Kinship Terms in Documentary Papyri,” Mnemosyne 57 (2004) 131–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 See the entry for “Makarios” in Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (ed. Gardner, Alcock, and Funk), 31–32.
79 For commentary see ibid., 163.
80 See the note on Drousiane (19.62) in ibid., 23–24. See also BeDuhn, “Domestic Setting,” 261.
81 See Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 185.
82 See the comments in Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (ed. Gardner, Alcock, and Funk), 53.
83 See the note on P. Kell. Copt. 25.52 in ibid., 193.
84 On the implied demonic etiology of illness, see Ferngren, Medicine and Health Care, 59.
85 Gardner, Iain, Nobbs, Alanna, and Choat, Malcolm, “P. Harr. 107: Is This Another Greek Manichaean Letter?,” ZPE 131 (2000) 118–24 (for comments on the trichotomy, see 122–23)Google Scholar. It is likely drawn from Mani's own epistolary “style,” about which see Sundermann, Werner, “A Manichaean Collection of Letters and a List of Mani's Letters in Middle Persian,” in New Light on Manichaeism (ed. BeDuhn, Jason D.; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 64; Leiden: Brill, 2009) 259–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 272.
86 Coyle, “Healing and the ‘Physician,’” 107–8.
87 Ibid., 109.
88 See the corresponding examples from the Melitian Hathor archive in Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 42.
89 See the note on the translation of vv. 48–49 in Coptic Documentary Texts 1 (ed. Gardner, Alcock, and Funk), 217.
90 See Coyle, “Healing and the ‘Physician,’” 107.
91 See Lim, Richard, “The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (ed. Iricinschi, Eduard and Zellentin, Holger M.; TSAJ 119; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 143–67Google Scholar, at 167.
92 See Gardner, Nobbs, and Choat, “P. Harr. 107: Is This Another Greek Manichaean Letter?” For comments on the use of the trichotomy, see 122–23.
93 See comments by Gardner, Alcock, and Funk in Coptic Documentary Texts 1, 271.
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