The eastern part of the Roman Empire and, then, the Byzantine Empire, was the richest part of the Mediterranean basin. Not only from the economic point of view, but above all cultural. The heart of Christianity was in the early centuries, in fact, the Middle East, Syria, Egypt... Manichaeism spread rapidly in these areas, especially among the ascetic monasticism in Egypt, which had much in common with it.
Greatly simplifying the issue, for Christianity the danger of the doctrine derived from:
1. the thought of Mani was the concept that in the Reality there was a perennial conflict between
Lux (Light) and
Tenebrae (Darkness), the two constituent principles of the universe; they occupied the space, creating two "realms": that of
Lux stretched upward, that of
Tenebrae downward.
In this way, it was suggest that the Earth was the work of the Devil, while from the Bible the Christians knew that was God's work.
2. similarly, the Homo was divided in two, Materia and Anima. The Materia, created by Tenebrae, imprisoned the Anima, which was a part of the Lux, with the distinction of the sexes and the mechanism of procreation: also here, the Christian knew that Homo was created by God in His image and likeness. Moreover, the Body was considered as something negative, from which the Anima was to be free, whereas Christianity had recovered the "goodness" of the Body, much that the dead were not longer burned, but placed in tombs in the caves (catacombs: "κατά κυμβής", "near the caves") because the Last Day the Homo will rise again in Anima and Body (Materia) (eschatological doctrine of the resurrection of the body).
3. for the Christian, it was easy to match God with the Lux and the Devil/Evil with the Tenebrae, the serious danger seen by Christianity, however, was that, in the end, bringing at the extreme the Manichean thought, the Jewish and Christian God could be identified with the Devil/Evil (for Mani creator of the Earth and of the Homo: Mani in fact rejects the Jewish God), that God and Devil/Evil coincide.
4. in addition, still simplifying, the Manichean ethics, strongly linked to harsh asceticism to free the prisoner
Lux from the
Materia (complete abstention from sexual intercourse to avoid creating other
Materia that captures the
Lux; frequent fastings; special diet based on vegetables), had found correlation with Christian monasticism in Egypt.
5. finally, in Manichaeism the
Salvation was not for everyone: only the "
electus" were "saved": only the
Anima of the "
electus" was destined to rejoin the world of the
Lux; the "
auditores", instead, lived to serving the "
electus", but can not be saved and will have to undergo various reincarnations. For the Christian, although
Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, the
Homo can not know the will/wishes of God, and therefore accepts t
he doctrine of the many special ways and hidden towards the Salvation.
This is the situation toward the Christian world; others persons speak of "why" the Manichaeism was persecuted in the Far East, Asia, etc ...