This is part of a 2024 Association for Jewish Studies panel celebrating the publication of Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge Press, 2024). Read the full forum here.
Let me first begin with a word of thanks to the organizers and for the opportunity to think with Simcha’s book. As someone whose focus lies in adjacent fields, the value of this book for me lies in its exportability and adaptability as a model for thinking about the political and cultural location of other “religious” communities in the Sasanian Empire.
The larger question that I will try to answer in this presentation is where, if at all, the early Manichaeans fit within the immanent model of imperial power that Simcha has so carefully excavated in his book. As Simcha argues, and I hope we can agree, the “tolerant/intolerant” binary is far too cumbersome a framework for explaining the long-durée experience of communities in the Sasanian Empire. He posits instead multiple actors making strategic choices, choices that express their own commitments and priorities. Thus, we should see moments of imperial violence and moments of support not as contradictory impulses expressing heightened moments of “tolerance” or “intolerance,” but as the “carrot-and-stick” method for bringing recalcitrant communities back within the acceptable norms of a Zoroastrian empire.
My presentation will not comment directly on Simcha’s book but aim to use its immanent model of Sasanian power to think through the imperial “persecution” of Manichaeans in the latter half of the 3rd century following Mani’s execution in 276 or 277 CE. This period largely overlaps with the reign of the Sasanian emperor, Bahram II, and that of the powerful Zoroastrian priest Kartir. My primary dataset is from the Manichaean Homilies, more specifically, the text known as the Section on the Narrative about the Crucifixion.[1] This early fourth century text narrates the last days of Mani, his execution, as well as the fate of his two successors: Sisinnios, who succeeded Mani, and Innaios, who succeeded Sisinnios.
If the Sasanians had a playbook on how to deal with non-Zoroastrian communities in their midst, its first chapter would surely be dedicated to the Manichaeans. Neither the Sasanians nor the Manichaeans had a game plan on how they “ought to” engage with one another. This sense of uneasy rapprochement emerges, I suggest, from some of the early Manichaean texts, especially the Section on the Narrative. At times, our Manichaean texts seem to present a more granular account of “persecution” than something like the heavily stylized Persian Martyr Acts, which in any case emerged as a literary form in Sasanian Persia a century or so after the Section on the Narrative.
The early Sasanian Manichaeans experienced both “persecution” and peace. In fact, the Section on the Narrative holds Bahram II directly responsible for the death of Sisinnios. At the same time, it also credits him for the elevation of Innaios among Sasanian elites. Simcha’s book challenges us to see such moments of whiplash not as contradictions, but as expressions of an imperial strategy. At the same time, the Section on the Narrative suggests that the early Sasanian emperors were not only strategists, but keen opportunists. Sasanians engaged with the communities in their midst not only through the prism of their own priorities or commitments, but in view of other contingent factors.
To demonstrate this, let us look closely at the years following Mani’s death. In 276 or 277 CE under Bahram I, and possibly at the instigation of Kartir, Mani was executed. After Mani, came Sisinnios. After Bahram I, came Bahram II. And after Mani’s execution, at the beginning of Bahram II’s reign, peace reigned. In fact, the Section on the Narrative alludes to a three- or four-year period of peace. It says,
This year in which they… Three other years passed… and no one sinned against his people… we did not tremble. They calmed down their wrath just as Mani said while he was still here. However, then… after the crucifixion of my lord (i.e., the martyrdom of Mani)… [Persecutions] began to creep. It gathered… his wrath… in its place below… began little by little, namely… in every land. The … his wrath until the fifteenth year.[2]
I think this three-to-four-year period of peace actually happened. The author is trying to explain why there were no persecutions following Mani’s execution. This means that the author expected persecution, which is why this “inconvenient” period of peace had to be explained away. The author claims that this was all part of God’s plan and Mani had prophesied as much while he was still alive.
In fact, even the idea of imperial persecution does not really make sense until perhaps at the end of the “three other years” mentioned in the excerpt above (that is, in the years 280/281 CE). Why? Because there is little evidence that the Sasanian Empire targeted followers of Mani during his lifetime. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that many Manichaean texts depict Mani in relatively close quarters with his followers even during his last days. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no Manichaean text claims that Bahram I or Kartir persecuted Manichaeans alongside Mani, though later medieval historians do make this claim.
This does not mean that Manichaeans did not face hardships. In fact, Mani frequently mentions moments of hardship, oppression, and even betrayal in his letters. For example, he writes,
One who eats salt with me at the evening table, my garments on his body, set his foot upon me, just as an enemy would do to his enemy. All these things I have endured from my children and my disciples.[3]
Yet nowhere does Mani hint that the Sasanian Empire was directly responsible for such hardships. Rather, it seems much more likely that other local communities – which may or may not have included Zoroastrians – were oppressing Mani-followers. Given that these letters were written by Manichaean clergy across the empire, we should probably understand such incidences as uncoordinated, local, and circumscribed moments of oppression. Moreover, we should remember that the reason why so many of Mani’s letters mention oppression at all is because the clergy in these places chose to write to Mani on precisely this topic. It is rather self-selecting.
Returning to our topic, why then was there a three- to four-year period of peace following Mani’s death in 277 CE? Because that’s what was already there before Mani’s death. The persecution that began in 280/281 CE was then neither a direct nor a necessary result of Mani’s death. When seen from this perspective, it is Mani’s death that is anomalous. This is also supported by how the Section on the Narrative recounts the beginning of the persecution.
[Persecutions] began to creep. It gathered… his wrath… in its place below… began little by little, namely… in every land. The … his wrath until the fifteenth year.[4]
That is, persecutions began as uncoordinated local affairs, hardly at the behest of a ready-made imperial program. I suspect that these were continuations of the sorts of hardships that Mani had mentioned years earlier in his letters. But now, during the early reign of Bahram II, these local affairs were beginning to catch imperial attention.
And imperial persecution of Manichaeans did indeed follow. If my reading of the line “his wrath until the fifteenth year” above is correct, these persecutions lasted until the fifteenth year of Bahram II’s reign, from roughly 281 CE until 291 CE. The Section on the Narrative’s depiction of persecution overlaps well with the scenes of torture found in the later Persian Martyr Acts, even if, as I suspect, Manichaeans did not have access to “martyrdom” as a literary form in late-third century Mesopotamia.
The Section on the Narrative goes on to depict Bahram II as directly responsible for the death of Sisinnios. It says,
He untied his shoes and stripped him naked, his own hair, and he.. the king raised his hand and struck him with the sword… his blood flowed like a…[5]
Of course, this is pure fantasy. The level of fantasy skyrockets when we hear about what happens next. With Sisinnios dead, Innaios ascends to the head of the church. How convenient it is that Bahram II suddenly catches a deathly illness that none of his physicians can cure. Who then comes to the rescue, but Innaios, the newly ascended leader of the church? The awkward problem that the Manichaeans now need to address is why Bahram II had personally executed Sisinnios (with his own hand no less) and why he had allowed a decade-long persecution to occur. Bahram II pleads rather unconvincingly,
Do not think that I have killed your children and fear me so that you do not heal me! I never wanted [to do] it, but these evil men who accused them.. and that which is in you. Proclaim it (Mani’s revelation) today and do not fear! All these things (persecutions) have passed away (starting) from today.[6]
Again, this speech is a fantasy that flips the polarity of power on its head. It is now the Manichaeans who control the fate of the Sasanian Empire. Innaios acquiesces and heals Bahram II, upon which Bahram II writes letters of protection for the Manichaeans. The rest of the narrative depicts the elevation of Manichaeans among Sasanian elite.[7]
How might we see this sudden change of events? Given the limited space here, we can think through these moments within the framework that Simcha had outlined in his book, namely of Sasanian elites and Manichaeans negotiating a shared but imbalanced world in wily ways.
A final comparison might make matters more concrete. Both Kartir’s inscriptions and the Manichaean Section on the Narrative are roughly contemporary texts that look back to the late third century. Whereas Kartir boasted that he had struck down Jews, Christians, and Manichaeans as an expression of his Zoroastrian zeal, the Section on the Narrative suggests a messier picture. Kartir might indeed have contributed to the persecution of Manichaeans, but the Section on the Narrative suggests that the driving impetus for imperial persecution happened off-camera, away from the imperial gaze. Perhaps the many little skirmishes that Mani recounted in his letters began to create smoke, and after Mani’s death (or perhaps because of it), this smoke began to catch the attention of the shahan shah. Bahram I had bought four years of peace by killing Mani; perhaps Bahram II sought to do the same by killing Mani’s successor, Sisinnios.
Whatever the case, both Kartir and the Homilies converge on this one point, that is, that persecution now has an imperial scope. They agree that matters of religion are now imperial matters of concern, not just local. And it is perhaps this imperial vision of persecution that the early Sasanian experience with the Manichaeans bequeathed to later Sasanian Empire, especially following Constantine’s conversion and the later Christianization of the Roman Empire.
Jae Han is Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Brown University.
[1] Hom. 42-85.
[2] Hom. 76.1-12.
[3] Iain Gardner, Kellis Literary Texts, Volume 2 (Dakhleh Oasis Project 15; Oxford: Oxbox Book, 2007). See section 41.5-8.
[4] Hom. 76.7-12.
[5] Hom. 83.2-6.
[6] Hom. 84.10-15.
[7] See also, Nils Arne Pedersen, “A Manichaean Historical Text,” ZPE 119 (1997): 193–201.