Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/41

 Moreover, the historical Jesus, “the Jewish Messias, whom the Jews crucified,” was “a devil, who was justly punished for interfering in the work of the Æon Jesus,” who was neither born nor suffered death. As time went on, the elaborate cosmogony of Mani disappeared, but the idea that the Christ must be repudiated remained. And logically, then, worship is due to the enemy of Christ, and a sub-sect, the Messalians or Euchites, taught that divine honours must be paid to Satan, who is further to be propitiated by means of every possible outrage done to Christ. This, of course, is plain and simple Satanism openly avowed. Carpocrates even went so far as to aggravate the teaching of the Cainites, for he made the performance of every species of sin forbidden in the Old Testament a solemn duty, since this was the completest mode of showing defiance to the Evil Creator and Ruler of the World. This doctrine was wholly that of mediæval witches, and is flaunted by modern Satanists. Although the Manichees affected the greatest purity, it is quite certain that not unchastity but the act of generation alone was opposed to their views, secretly they practised the most hideous obscenities. The Messalians in particular, vaunted a treatise Asceticus, which was condemned by the Third General Council of Ephesus (431) as “that filthy book of this heresy,” and in Armenia, in the fifth century, special edicts were passed to restrain their immoralities, so that their very name became the equivalent for “lewdness.” The Messalians survived unto the Middle Ages as Bogomiles.

Attention has already been drawn to the striking fact that even Diocletian legislated with no small vigour against the Manichees, and when we find Valentinian I and his son Gratian, although tolerant of other bodies, passing laws of equal severity in this regard (372), we feel that such interdiction is especially significant. Theodosius I, by a statute of 381, declared Manichees to be without civil rights, and incapable of inheriting; in the following year he condemned them to death, and in 389 he sternly directed the rigorous enforcement to the letter of these penalties.

Valentinian II confiscated their goods, annulled their wills, and sent them into exile. Honorius in 399 renewed the draconian measures of his predecessors; in 405 he heavily fined all governors of provinces or civil magistrates who were