Iain Gardner – författare

Mani or Manichaios was a major religious figure in early Sasanian Mesopotamia (third century CE) renowned as a healer, a visionary, an artist, and a public sage. The community that he founded, the religion of Manichaeism, spread across Eurasia from the late Roman world of the Mediterranean to south China, where it lasted into the early modern period. Due to its prominent success in Central Asia through the latter part of the first millennium, it played a major role as a conduit for ideas, literatures, and practices between east and west. Mani authored many letters in Aramaic during the years of his public mission (ca. 240–270s CE). These letters were collected together to become one 'book' in his new scriptures and the letters were regarded as canonical by followers of Manichaeism. They were translated into numerous languages and read for centuries as guides to life and faith, as well as being utilized in liturgical contexts.No complete version of The Letters survives from antiquity, but there are many remnants and quotations scattered across a diverse set of sources and languages: lengthy citations from individual letters in Latin preserved by Augustine of Hippo and his circle; codex pages preserved in Coptic and Middle Persian recovered during the twentieth century from Egypt and Xinjiang; references throughout other Manichaean literature in Coptic, Sogdian, Uighur, Chinese etc.; a list of titles preserved in Arabic by Ibn al-Nadīm; and forgeries used in polemical texts that circulated in the ancient world. This major new study, the first ever dedicated to the topic, contains both a detailed study of the available evidence and a new English translation of all the relevant texts, citations, and allusions. A considerable amount of the material included is either entirely new to scholarship or only known to a small circle of specialists working on original manuscripts in diverse languages.

Founded by Mani (c. AD 216-276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.

Founded by Mani (c. AD 216-276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.

Mani, a third-century preacher, healer and public sage from Sasanian Mesopotamia, lived at a pivotal time and place in the development of the major religions. He frequented the courts of the Persian Empire, debating with rivals from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, philosophers and gnostics, Zoroastrians from Iran and Buddhists from India. The community he founded spread from north Africa to south China and lasted for over a thousand years. Yet the genuine biography of its founder, his life and thought, was in good part lost until a series of spectacular discoveries have begun to transform our knowledge of Mani's crucial role in the spread of religious ideas and practices along the trade-routes of Eurasia. This book utilises the latest historical and textual research to examine how Mani was remembered by his followers, caricatured by his opponents, and has been invented and re-invented according to the vagaries of scholarly fashion.

A pioneering interdisciplinary study of the art, production and social functions of Late Antique ritual artefacts. Utilising case studies from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri and the Heidelberg archive it establishes new approaches, provides a holistic understanding of the multi-sensory aspects of ritual practice, and explores the transmission of knowledge traditions across faiths.

In Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings the authors explore evidence arising from their project to edit the Chester Beatty Kephalaia codex. This new text presents Mani at the heart of Sasanian Iran in dialogue with its sages and nobles, acting as a cultural mediator between East and West and interpreter of Christian, Iranian, and Indian traditions. Nine chapters study Mani’s appropriation of the ‘law of Zarades’ and of Iranian epic; suggest a new understanding of his last days; and analyse his formative role in the history of late antique religions. These interdisciplinary studies advance research in several fields and will be of interest to scholars of Manichaeism, Sasanian Iran, and the development of religions in Late Antiquity.