Mabillon, Jean

MABILLON, ma"bi"lyen, JEAN: French Roman Catholic; b. at St. Pierremont in Champagne Nov. 23, 1632; d. in Paris Dec. 27, 1707. He entered the Congregation of St. Maur in 1853, and was professed in the following year. After some years spent in different houses of the order, he was at Saint-Denis in 1663, and the neat year at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris, the literary headquarters of the congregation, where he assisted D'Achery (see ACHERY, JEAN LUC D') in the compilation of the last six volumes of the Spicilegium. In 1667 appeared two folio volumes of the works of St. Bernard, edited from the oldest and best manuscripts, the beginning and the model of the editions of the Fathers which the congregation was to issue thenceforth in rapid succession. Mabillon's most important life-work, however, was the history of the Benedictine order, for which D'Achery had collected a mass of materials. In 1668 appeared the first volume of the Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti, relating to the sixth century. After thirty-four years of work, nine folio volumes had appeared, bringing the work down to 1100, and the material for a tenth was in shape. On this foundation Mabillon began to work at his most mature production, the Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti, (6 vols., Paris, 1703-39), of which four volumes had been published before his death; the fifth was published by R. Massuet (1713), and the sixth, to the year 1137, by E. Martene (1739). He won perhaps even greater fame in another department of scholarship, owing to a controversy with the Jesuits, brought on by a dissertation of the Bollandist Papebroch in the second volume of the Acta sanctorum for April (1675). Papebroch set down most of the early documents conveying monastic privileges, and especially the Merovingian archives of Saint-Denis, as forgeries. The Benedictines, in whose possession most of these were, regarded this as an attack on themselves, and Mabillon answered it in

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161 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Mandeeans Mande who also employed " Egyptians " and " Red Sea " in just such a metaphorical sense as did the Man doeans. Indeed, the question of the sources of Mandaeism is just that of the sources of Ophitism and Gnosticism in general. These, systems are not traceable to the teachings of the Persian Zarathus tra, nor to Phenician heathenism, nor to the Greek mysteries, but simply to the Babylonian-Chaldean national religion, which was domiciled in the region where Ophites, Perat2e, and Mandamus lived, and where they were distinguished from Christians (cf. W. Anz, Zur Frage mach der Uraprung des Grlosti zi8mus, pp. 59 sqq., Leipsic, 1897). While some fundamental conceptions are changed, as when the names of Babylonian deities become the names of the planets and are regarded as evil spirits, yet the derivation is so clear upon investigation that no doubt can be entertained upon this point. The Mandwan baptism can not be derived from the Jewish baptism of proselytes, nor is it Christian baptism taken over and exaggerated; the Man daean practise is diametrically opposed to both. Christian baptism implies metanoia, rz. Baby- ethical rebirth, and it marks the in= lonian and auguration of an ethical renewing of Manichean the heart after the pattern of the Sa Ideas vior; the MandIean rite, so frequently Borrowed. repeated, is a theurgio-magical opera tion and aims at an ever-increasing insight into the secrets of the kingdom of light through the mediation of water, the element of the king of light. The Mandsean light-god Maria Rabba is to be identified with the Babylonian Ea (see BABYLONIA, VIL, 2, � 3), and his emanation Manda de hayye or his son Hibil Ziwa with Ea's son Mar duk (see BABYLONIA, VIL, 2, � 10). Ea, the god of profound knowledge, father of the mediator Marduk, enthroned in the world-sea, whose holy element is water, is the Ea of the brilliant ocean of heaven, as comes out in the Ayar-yora and the heavenly Jordan of the Mandwans. Similarly, as Marduk, the conqueror of Tiamat, appears in vari ous incarnations like that of Gilgamesh, so do Hibil Ziwa and his successors. The parallels of Ishtar's descent into hell and that of Hibil Ziwa, the divi sion of the planetary worlds into a system of seven, and the seat of Es, in the -North with the Mandaean direction of worship to that quarter are sufficiently obvious. Similar relationship can be established with Manicheanism. Mani was in his youth an ad herent of the Babylonian Mu'tasilah (" baptizers "), an early Babylonian sect. Palestinian Hemero baptists, Elkesaites (q.v.), Nazarenes, and Ebion ites (q.v.) were sects which propagated in the West under Jewish influence Babylonian ideas, especially those of a mediator and the closely connected rite of baptism; these sects took form in pre-Christian times and later were hostile to Christianity. John the Baptist gave to the rite of baptism, thus de rived, a new ethical content by connecting with it the Old-Testament expectation of a Messiah. Sim ilarly the second sacrament of the Mandmans, the Eucharist, must be explained upon usage grounded in nature-religions, in honor paid to the pure ele ments of nature and its gifts, and not as a perver sion of the Christian mystery. The original teach- declared in the fourth century the State religion, its doctrines had been in conflict with many op posing forms of belief. But its doughtiest oppo nent was not the decrepit faith in the gods of Greece and Rome. A more dangerous foe was found in ancient philosophy, especially in its latest form of Neoplatonism, which strove for spiritual control of the world and combined the theoretical with the practical. The one lack of Neoplatonism was a per- ing of Mani could not have been very different in this matter from the common Mandaean-Gnostic doctrine (see MANI, MANIcHEANs). The conception of eons and of the ruh al-hayat, " spirit of life," are alike in the two systems (cf. the Valentinian Zoe). Similarly the work of the original man in combating the original devil is practically the same in Man daeism and Manicheanism, though the former has made the development more complex by introdu cing a stratum of Aramaic thought in the names of angels and devils. While, then, the religious sys tem of the Mandaxans has especial interest rather in connection with the universal history of religion than with the theology of Christianity, yet there is much in it which can shed light upon the history of doctrine. In particular, the form of the Mandaean sacraments affords ground for thought to the in vestigator of the history of the Christian sapra ment of baptism. (K. KESSLER.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Ginza, called also the Sidra rabba, is best consulted in the ed. of H. Petermann, Thesaurus give liber magnua, vulgo " Liber Adami," vol. i., Berlin, 1867, vol. ii., Leipsie, 1867 (based on a comparison of four MSS. of 16th and 17th centuries). A prior ed. was by M. Norberg, Codex Nasaraua, liber Adami appellatua, vols. i.-iv., Copenhagen, vol. v (onomasticon), Lund, 1817 (misleading, being a Syriac transcription, but has Latin tranal.). A Germ. transl., with notes, has been issued by W. Brandt, G6ttingen, 1893, and the same scholar gives the titles of the tracts or books of which the Ginza is composed in his very scholarly Manddiache Religion, pp. .207-209, Leipsic, 1889. Other Manderan writings published are: Qolaeta, by J. Euting, Stuttgart, 1867 (a liturgical work); parts of the Sidra de Yahya ("Book of John"), in Germ. transl. by G. W. Lorsbaeh, in Beitragen zur Philosophic and Geachichte, v (1799), 1-44. Mandman inscriptions have been published: H. Pognon, Inscriptions mandaitea lea coupes de Khouabir, 2 vols., Paris, 1898-99 (cf. the review by M. Lidzbarski in TLZ, 1899); idem, Une incantation contre lea genies malfaiaanta en Mandaite, Paris, 1892; M. Lidzbarski, in Ephemeris fur aemitiache Eloigraphik, i. 1 (1900), 89-106; cf. J. H. Mordtmann and D. H. Moller, Sabdische Denkmaler, Vienna, 1883.

For early reports concerning the Mandeeans consult: F. Ignatius a Jesu, Narratio originia, rituum et erromm Christianorum S. Joannia, Rome, 1652; Abraham Ecchellensis, Eutychiua patriarchs Alexandrinua vindicatua, pp. 310-336, Rome, 1660; Jean Thdvenot, Voyage au Levant, Paris, 1664; J. Chardin, Journal du voyage . . . en Peres, London, 1686; C. Niebuhr, Reisebeachreibung nach Arabien and andern . . . Ldndern, 3 vols., Hamburg, 1774-1837, Eng. transl., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1792. The two important modern works besides that of W. Brandt, ut sup., are by H. J. Petermann, Reisen im Orient, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1861; and M. N. Siouffi, -0tudea our la religion lea Soubbae ou SaWene, laura dogma, leurs maura, Paris, 1880. Not to be overlooked is W. Brandt, in JPT,:viii (1892), 405-438, 575-603. Consult further: J. Matter, Hist. du gnoaticiarm, ii. 394-422, Paris, 1828; L. E. Burckhardt, Les Nazoriene ou Mandai-Jahja (disciples de Jean), Stras. burg, 1840 (based on Norberg); D. Chwolsohn, Die Saabier, i. 100-138, St. Petersburg, 1856; J. M. Chevalier Lyeklama, Voyages . . dana la Mlaopotamie, vol. iii., book 3, chap. iv., Paris, 1868; Babelon, in Annales de philoaophie chr4tienne, 1881; E. Bischoff, Im Reiche der Gnosis. Die myatiachen Lehren lea judiachen und chriatlichen Gnoaticiamua, Manddiamua and Manichdiamue and ihr babyloniach-mtraler Uraprunp, Leipsic, 1906; an important body of magazine literature is indicated in Richardson. Encyclopaedia, pp . 674-675; Encyclop'todia Brfr tannica, xv. 467. For the language: T. N51deke, Manddi8che Grammatik, Halle, 1875; idem, in Abhandlungen der Gottinger Geaellachaft, 1862; H. Pognon, Inscriptions, ut. sup., pp. 257-308.