from every kind of food and drink between sunrise and sunset,[1] whereas the seven days' fast is expressly said to have consisted in abstinence from fat and wine.[2] In Manichaeism—which is essentially based upon the ancient nature religion of Babylonia, though modified by Christian and Persian elements and elevated into a gnosis[3]—we meet with a great number of fasts. There is a continuous fast for two days when the sun is in Sagittarius (which it enters about the 22nd November) and the moon has its full light; another fast when the sun has entered Capricornus (which it does about the 21st December) and the moon first becomes visible; and a thirty days' fast between sunrise and sunset commencing on the day "when the new moon begins to shine, the sun is in Aquarius (where it is from about the 20th January), and eight days of the month have passed," which seems to imply that the fast cannot begin until eight days after the sun has entered Aquarius and that consequently, if the new moon appears during that period, the commencement of the fast has to be postponed till the following new moon. The Manichaeans also fasted for two days at every new moon; and our chief authority on the subject, En-Nedîm, states that they had seven fast-days in each month. They fasted on Sundays, and some of them, the electi or "perfect ones," on Mondays also.[4] We are told by Leo the Great that they observed these weekly fasts in honour of the sun and the moon;[5] but according to the
- ↑ Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 71 sq. Cf. Abûlfedâ, 6 (ibid. ii. 500).
- ↑ En-Nedîm, op. cit. v. 11 (Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 36).
- ↑ Kessler, 'Mani, Manichäer,' in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopädie f. proteslantische Theologie, xii. 198 sq. Harnack, History of Dogma, iii. 330. Idem, 'Manichæism,' in Encyclopœdia Britannica, xv. 485.
- ↑ En-Nedîm, Fihrist, in Flügel, Mani, pp. 95, 97. Flügel, p. 311 sqq. Kessler, loc. cit. p, 212 sq.
- ↑ Leo the Great, Sermo XLII. (al. XLI.) 5 (Migne, op. cit. liv. 279).
