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If Augustine was ever embarassed by his nine years’ devotion to Manicheaism, the Confessions prove that he long ago had gotten over his public association with this weird, pseudo-Christian sect. These middle chapters of book three provide the natural conclusion to his intellectual quest for personal satisfaction, the Sacrilega curiositas that threatened ut deserentem te deduceret me ad ima infida et circumventoria obsequia daemoniorum (III.3.5) The empty emotion he felt while watching stage plays, the studied deception of his chosen profession, even the inspiration of Cicero’s Hortensius (a work he admired his entire life, but recall at this time he rejected scripture because it seemed indigna quam tullianae dignitati compararem)–all of this fits the pattern of a college sophomore’s crude, overly-intellectual search for personal meaning in the world.

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So Augustine was ripe for the Manicheans. Their complex plan of the work–the result of a war that mixed good/light and bad/dark in the very matter of the world–was deployed to explain not just spiritual matters but even plain natural phenomena in terms of a basic dualism of light vs. dark: Falsa loquebantur…etiam de istis elementis huius mundi. It’s hard to believe Augustine ever really committed himself to the more fantastic elements of Manichaeism, but a religion that had precise answers (for a change) was likely a great comfort as he drifted thru Carthage.

Augustine’s prose in these sections drips with the sort of withering ridicule only a true heretic can muster:

Paulatim perductus (sum) ad eas nugas ut crederem ficum plorare cum decerpitur, et matrem eius arborem lacrimis lacteis. Quam tamen ficum si comedisset aliquis sanctus (alieno sane non suo scelere decerptam), misceret visceribus et anhelaret de illa angelos, immo vero particulas dei gemendo in oratione atque ructando. (III.10.18)

Sanctus here is ironic, referring to an “elect” member of the Manichean inner circle who alone had the power to release the pure light trapped in food via digestion. And notice the hypocritical detail alieno sane non suo scelere decerptam–the elect, it seems, were too pure to be bothered with manual labor. The logical extension of this belief is that digestion of food by an unworthy non-Manichee just bound the light spirit deeper into the corrupt matter of this world: Si quis enim esuriens peteret qui manichaeus non esset, quasi capitali supplicio damnanda buccella videretur… (ibid.) That over-the-top capitali supplicio made me smile when I read it.