It is comparatively easy for the average doctor to diagnose a disease caused by microbes of such gigantic structure that their presence can be detected by the microscope of a provincial board-of-health.
But Heaven protect us against the little creatures who can maintain their incognito in the midst of an ultra-violet illumination, for they shall inherit the earth.
Manichaeism, from the point of view of the Church, was therefore the most dangerous expression of all social epidemics and it filled the higher authorities of that organization with a terror not felt before the more common varieties of spiritual afflictions.
It was rarely mentioned above a whisper, but some of the staunchest supporters of the early Christian faith had shown unmistakable symptoms of the disease. Yea, great Saint Augustine, that most brilliant and indefatigable warrior of the Cross, who had done more than any one else to destroy the last stronghold of heathenism, was said to have been at heart considerable of a Manichaean.
Priscillian, the Spanish bishop who was burned at the stake in the year 385 and who gained the distinction of being the first victim of the law against heretics, was accused of Manichaean tendencies.
Even the heads of the Church seemed gradually to have fallen under the spell of the abominable Persian doctrines.
They were beginning to discourage laymen from reading the Old Testament and finally, during the twelfth century, promulgated that famous order by which all clergymen were henceforth condemned to a state of celibacy. Not to forget the deep impression which these Persian ideals of abstinence were soon to make upon one of the greatest leaders of spiritual reform, causing that most lovable of men, good Francis of Assisi, to establish a new monastic order of such strict Manichaean purity that it rightly earned him the title of the Buddha of the West.
But when these high and noble ideals of voluntary poverty and humility of soul began to filter down to the common people, at the very moment when the world was filled with the din of yet another war between emperor and pope, when foreign mercenaries, bearing the banners of the cross and the eagle, were fighting each other for the most valuable bits of territory along the Mediterranean shores, when hordes of Crusaders were rushing home with the ill-gotten plunder they had taken from friend and enemy alike, when abbots lived in luxurious palaces and maintained a staff of courtiers, when priests galloped through the morning’s mass that they might hurry to the hunting breakfast, then indeed something very unpleasant was bound to happen, and it did.
Little wonder that the first symptoms of open discontent with the state of the Church made themselves felt in that part of France where the old Roman tradition of culture had survived longest and where civilization had never been quite absorbed by barbarism.