Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/700

 book mentioned above, de Statu Animae, and (2) some poems of doubtful authorship. Sidonius (u.s.) mentions with special praise a hymn by Claudian, but does not give its name. One scholiast says that it was the well-known "Pange lingua gloriosi," and one MS. of Gennadius (u.s.) states that that hymn was written by Claudian. It is, however, ordinarily found ascribed to Fortunatus (v. Daniel, Thes. Hymnol. iii. p. 285, iv. p. 68).

Fabricius has also attributed to him an hexameter poem of 165 lines, "contra vanos poetas ad collegam," found in a Paris MS. without any author's name.

Possibly there should be assigned to him also a few smaller poems found among the works of the heathen poet Claudian, viz. two short hexameter poems entitled "Laus Christi" and "Carmen Paschale," some short epigrammatic praises of the paradox of the Incarnation, an elegiac account of Christ's miracles, an elegiac appeal to a friend not to criticize his verses too severely, and two short Greek hexameter addresses to Christ, Εἰς τὸν σωτῆρα and Εἰς τὸν δεσπότην Χριστόν.

The works are in Migne, vol. liii.; ''Bibl. Vet. Patr.'' Lugd. 1677, vi. p. 1050; ed. Galland. x. p. 417, and in the ''Corpus Script. Eccl. Lat.'' vol. xi. (1885); the poems in Fabricius, ''Poet. Christ.'' p. 777. The de Statu Animae has been separately edited, notably by Peter Mosellanus (Basil, 1504), Barth (Cycneae, 1655), Schulze (Dresden, 1883).

[W.L.]

Mammaea or Mamaea, Julia, the daughter of Julia Moesa, and niece of Julia Domna, the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. She played for a short time a conspicuous part in Roman history, not without some interesting points of contact with the Christian church. By her marriage with the Syrian Gessius Marcianus she became the mother of Alexander Severus, and soon afterwards was a widow. With her mother and her sister Soaemias, the mother of, she went, at the command of Macrinus after the death of Caracalla, to reside at Emesa. On the election of her nephew Elagabalus as emperor, she went with him and her son Alexander, then 13 years old, to Rome, and it speaks well for her prudence and goodness that she continued to secure the life of her son from the jealous suspicions of the tyrant and to preserve him from the fathomless impurity which ran riot in the imperial court. There are sufficient reasons for assigning this watchfulness to at least the indirect influence of Christian life and teaching. Possibly, as in the time of Nero, there may have been disciples of the new faith among the slaves of Caesar's household, whom she learnt to respect and imitate. On the death of Elagabalus, 222, and the election of her son by the Praetorian Guard, she attained great influence. Her leanings to the Christian society were shewn more distinctly when she was with the emperor at Antioch, and hearing that Origen, already famous as a preacher, was at Caesarea, invited him to visit them with the honour of a military escort, welcomed him with all honour, and listened attentively as he unfolded the excellence of the faith of Christ (Eus. H. E. vi. 21). It does not appear that she ever made a definite profession of belief, and her religion, though it won from Eusebius (l.c.) the epithets of θεοσεβεστάτη and εὐλαβής, and from Jerome (de Script. Eccles. c. 54) that of religiosa, was probably of the syncretistic type then prevalent, which shewed itself, in its better form, in Alexander's adoption of Christian rules of action, and in his placing busts of Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana in his private oratory (Lamprid Vit. Sev. c. 29, 43), and in its worst when Elagabalus wished to build a temple on the Capitol in which Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Romans were to unite in worshipping the Deity whose name he had adopted. Both mother and son, in consequence of these tendencies, came under the lash of Julian, who sneers at the childish unwisdom of the latter in submitting his own will to Mammaea's and gratifying her greed of gain (de Caesarr. p. 315), and represents him as weakly bemoaning his disaster. Mammaea shared her son's fate when the troops rose and murdered him in Gaul, and her last moments were embittered by her son's reproaches for the pride and avarice which had wrought their common ruin (Gibbon, cc. vi. and vii. and authorities cited above).

[E.H.P.]

Manes (called also Mani among Oriental writers, Μανιχαῖος and Manichaeus among Greeks and Latins). The lives of all ancient heretics have suffered much from the misrepresentations of their opponents. In the case of Manes there is the additional difficulty that we have two contradictory accounts in the Western and Eastern traditions. The Western story is derived from the Acts of Archelaus, bp. of Caschar; the Eastern from Persian and Arabian historians. Our earliest authentic notice of him is in Eusebius (H. E. vii. 31), where he is described "as a barbarian in life, both in speech and conduct, who attempted to form himself into a Christ, and then also proclaimed himself to be the very Paraclete and the Holy Spirit. Then, as if he were Christ, he selected twelve disciples. the partners of his new religion, and after patching together false and ungodly doctrines, collected from a thousand heresies long since extinct, he swept them off like a deadly poison, from Persia, upon this part of the world." The Acta Archelai were forged by some romancing Greek between 330 and 340, as we first find them quoted by Cyrill. Hieros. (Catech. vi., written 348–350), and Eusebius in his history, pub. 326–330, knows nothing of them. If genuine, it is scarcely possible that Eusebius, living but a few miles from Jerusalem and with all the imperial resources at his back, could have been ignorant of a dispute which must have made such a noise all over Syria and Mesopotamia. [.]

Upon the story told by the Syrian, Persian, and Arab historians and chroniclers known to Beausobre he places much more reliance than upon the Western tradition (pt. i. liv. ii. cc. i.–iv.). It runs thus: Manes was born c. 240, and descended from a Magian family. He was well educated in Greek, music, mathematics, geography, astronomy, painting, medicine, and the Scriptures. Being very zealous for the faith, he was ordained priest while yet young, but becoming a heretic he went to the court of Sapor, whom he proselytized to his views, c. 267, but as soon as he