Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/332

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MAN
302
MAN

about 270. He gave out that he was the Paraclete whom Christ promised—an enlightened teacher destined to bring forth more distinctly and fully the religion He revealed; to purify it from the corruptions of Judaism, and lead the faithful to the consciousness of truths not understood before. He was to communicate the perfect knowledge of which Paul had spoken, 1 Cor. xiii. 10. At first he gained the favour of Sapor; but after his heretical doctrines were known he was obliged to fly. Having made journeys to India and China, and lived some time in Turkestan, where he became acquainted with Buddhism, he issued forth from one of Buddha's consecrated grottoes with symbolic pictures representing the doctrines revealed to him in his retirement. On the death of Sapor he returned to Persia, and was well received by Hormisdas the monarch, who assigned him a safe abode; but in a short time Bahram succeeded Hormisdas, and caused a disputation to be held between him and the Magians, at which he was pronounced a heretic As he refused to recant, he was flayed alive. It is also said that his skin was stuffed and hung before the gate of the city Djondishapur, to terrify his followers, about 275. Such is the substance of the Oriental accounts respecting Mani. We follow them in preference to the Western which are very different, but not so reliable. Manicheism was a compound of Parsism, Buddhism, and Gnostic Christianity. Its fundamental principle was the doctrine of an absolute dualism, which was held by the Magusæan sect to which Mani at first belonged. With the Persian dualism he united the opposition of spirit and matter belonging to Buddhism. God in his kingdom of light, and the demon with his kingdom of darkness, are directly opposed to one another. After long internal conflicts, the different powers of the latter kingdom united in opposition to the kingdom of light. The ruler of the kingdom of light caused to emanate from himself the Æon—Mother of life; and this principle generates the primitive man, who in conjunction with the four pure elements enters into conflict with the powers of darkness, but is worsted. The living spirit, however, sent by the ruler of the light-kingdom raises him up to the kingdom of light; not until a portion of his light had been wrested from him and borne down to the abodes of darkness. God then brought into existence, through the agency of the Mother of life, the present universe to be a new receptacle of this lost light. The vital power of this universe is the light retained in the bonds of darkness; and to redeem it from its imprisonment two new heavenly powers—Christ and the Holy Ghost—then proceeded from God. The first is the sun and moon; the other is the air. The demon then formed man after the image of the primitive man, from whom descended the race of mankind who fell under the illusions of matter and of the demon, though endued with light in their souls. Christ then appeared on earth, endured the semblance of suffering, and commenced the process of liberating the light from its bondage by his doctrines and power. Complete truth is to be found only in the writings of Manes; for the scriptures have been partially corrupted by the demon. Some fragments alone are extant of Manes' writings—(See Trechsel, üeber Kanon, Kritik, und Exegese d. Manich. Bern, 1832.)—S. D.

MANICHÆUS. See Mani.

MANILIUS, Marcus or Caius, the author of a Latin hexameter poem in five books entitled "Astronomica," is a writer of whom we have no account from external evidence. It appears, however, from some incidental allusions in the poem that he wrote at Rome under the Emperor Tiberius. His work exhibits great learning and unusual astronomical knowledge for the period in which he lived. Thus he correctly explains the appearance of the galaxy, as arising from the blended rays of a multitude of minute stars. He affirms also that the fixed stars are of the same nature as the sun, and that each belongs to a separate system. The style of Manilius is harsh, obscure, and awkward; nor does he anywhere display much evidence of the poetic faculty. It seems evident from his poem that he imitated Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid. An excellent edition of Manilius was published by Bentley in 1739.—G.

MANIN, Daniel, president of the short-lived Venetian republic of 1848-49, and a patriot of sterling force and elevation of character, was born at Venice on the 13th of May, 1804, the son of Peter Manin, an advocate in that city. His grandfather was a converted Jew named Samuel Medina, who assumed the name of Manin in 1759. Daniel was educated for his father's profession, and in the principles of pure republicanism. At seventeen he took the degree of LL.D. at Padua, married at twenty-one, and in 1830 settled as an advocate in Mestre, a suburb of Venice. His sympathy with the party of liberty and unity in Italy was expressed by speech and in writing on various occasions fearlessly, but with a wise prudence that kept him always within the law of the land. In 1838 when there was great excitement on the subject of a railway from Venice to Milan, Manin took the popular side, and declared that in the path of legal opposition to any unpopular measure there was to be gained experience, a habit of acting together, and a preparation for greater things afterwards to be achieved for Italy. This line of conduct he followed on every question that gave an opening for discussion. In 1847 during the ferment that followed the accession of Pope Pius IX., Manin petitioned the authorities of Milan to grant those reforms which had long been the demand of liberal men in Italy. The Austrian government, conscious of insecurity, arrested the writer as a promoter of sedition, and were about to send him and Tommaseo prisoners to Laybach when the revolution broke out—and on the 17th March, 1848, Manin was liberated by the people and carried in triumph round St. Mark's Place. Six days afterwards the arsenal was taken, the republic proclaimed, and Manin appointed president. His fitness for the responsible office was soon manifested in his conduct of business, his laconic pregnant proclamations, his repression of every attempt at disorder, and his complete confidence in the people, from whom he demanded many great sacrifices. He retained to the last among them the affectionate title of our Manin. "I am grieved," he wrote to Antoni, "that you said at the club that I demand they should place confidence in me. Confidence does not come by demands, but by acting in a manner to deserve it." With other Italian patriots, he was bitterly disappointed at the neutrality observed by France and Italy. Against his wish annexation to Piedmont under Charles Albert was voted in the assembly, and he resigned his office. After the victories of the Austrians in Lombardy he was recalled to his post, with the powers of a dictator. Dark days for him and for Venice were approaching, but he did not flinch; while the people were true to him, he was faithful to them. On the 2nd of April, 1849, Manin explained to the assembly the perilous situation of the republic, and a unanimous vote was given for a persevering resistance to Austria. At the head of the Bandiera-Moro volunteers, troops composed of the best men in Venice, the brave and able president withstood the besieging and blockading forces of the Austrian empire from April to August. Famine came to aggravate the sufferings caused by the bombardment, and at the beginning of August cholera showed itself. Manin's own supporters began to murmur at his stoical firmness. On the 5th of August he announced to the assembly that the supply of bread was about to fail, and he would not consent to conceal this fact from the people, to whose confidence he appealed for a loan at a time when the inhabitants of Venice were hardly numerous enough to bury the dead, about fifteen hundred men a week. On the 13th of August while haranguing the city guard, he was seized with a paroxysm of the heart disease to which he was subject. The soldiers began to be turbulent, and capitulation became inevitable. On the 24th Venice surrendered on terms which allowed Manin and his family a safe conduct out of the Austrian dominions. On the 27th, with his wife and daughter, he quitted for ever the country so dear to him. His wife carried with her the seeds of cholera, from which she died shortly after. His daughter, a sufferer from nervous epilepsy, lingered an object of his tenderest care for five years longer. As a means of subsistence, in addition to a grant bestowed ere his departure by the municipality of Venice, he laboured in Paris as a teacher of the Italian language. Occasionally he wrote in the public press in favour of the Italian cause. He never obtruded himself on public notice, and declined even well-meant demonstrations of popular esteem. Widowed and childless, defeated but not despairing for his country, he succumbed to his long-standing disease on the 22nd of September, 1857, at Paris. Before his death he had agreed to accept the house of Savoy as the leaders of Italian unity. His last political act was to sanction the formation of the National Italian Society founded in 1857 for the propagation of his principles.—R. H.

MANLEY, Mrs. De la Riviere, a writer of plays and novels in Queen Anne's reign, was born about 1672 in Guernsey, being the daughter of Sir Roger, a decayed royalist who had been