[1206]. W. Radloff, Chuastuanift, das Bussgebet der Manichäer, St Petersburg, 1909, pt I. pp. 19, 20. Von Le Coq, J.R.A.S. 1911, p. 294: “when the Gods Kroshtag and Padwakhtag, the Appellant and Respondent, should have brought to us that part of the light of the Fivefold God that, going to God, is there to be purified.” One is inclined to compare this with Jeû and Melchizidek receiving and purifying the light won from this world, or with Gabriel and Michael in the Pistis Sophia bearing the heroine upward out of Chaos; but the parallel may be accidental and is easily pushed too far.
[1207]. Like the “Twin Saviours” of the Pistis Sophia, whose functions are never even alluded to in that document.
[1208]. See notes 2 and 3, p. [327] supra.
[1209]. M. de Stoop’s Essai sur la Diffusion du Manichéisme is most informing on this head. See also A. Dufourcq’s Thesis quoted in n. 2, p. [351] supra. A very brief summary of the history of the sect was given by the present writer in J.R.A.S. 1913, pp. 69-94.
[1210]. For the enquiry by Strategius, afterwards called Musonianus, and Prefect of the East under Constantius, see Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk XV. c. 13. Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. IV. 488 sqq. That the persecution instituted against them by Diocletian slackened under Constantine and Constantius, see de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 40, 41.
[1211]. See the Laws of Theodosius and Valentinian II, quoted by de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 41, 42.
[1212]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, III. p. 153. Justinian put to death not only convicted Manichaeans, but those who being acquainted with members of the sect, did not denounce them. See de Stoop, op. cit. p. 43.
[1213]. The Manichaeans seem always to have been favoured by the better classes and high officials of the Empire who maintained for some time a secret leaning towards Paganism. See de Stoop, op. cit. p. 84. The case of Barsymès, the banker or money-changer whom Theodora made Praetorian Prefect, and who was allowed according to Procopius (Anecdota, c. XXII. 7) to profess Manichaeism openly, was doubtless only one of many. It is apparently this Barsymès who is invoked in the Turfan texts as “the Lord Bar Simus,” see Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 45, 59.
[1214]. That this was the professed policy of the sect seems plain from the words they attributed to Manes himself: “I am not inhuman like Christ who said: Whoso denieth me, him will I deny. I say unto you: Whoso denieth me before man and saves himself by this falsehood, him will I receive with joy, as if he had not denied me.” Cf. de Stoop, op. cit. p. 46, quoting Cedrenus; Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 191.
[1215]. Von Le Coq, Exploration Archéologique à Tourfan, Confces au Musée Guimet (Bibl. de Vulg. t. XXXV.), 1910, p. 278.