Phd in PHILOLOGY AND HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD

Thesis title: Sulla nascita del suo corpo: le matrici culturali e storico-religiose della biografia di Mani nel Codice Manicheo di Colonia

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the text entitled "On the Birth of His Body," contained in the Cologne Mani Codex, from the perspective of the biographical literary genre. This will examine whether this text can truly be ascribed to the literary tradition of the late antique Greek bios, or whether its formal characteristics and content are eccentric with respect to that tradition. In particular, the formal and content characteristics of the work will be analyzed both in their meaning as a text with Manichaean content and in the broader context of the late antique bios (of which the CMC would constitute the only Manichaean attestation). Through a comparison with various texts belonging to this literary genre, the CMC's peculiarities will be highlighted, as well as its numerous affinities with these texts. This will demonstrate that it was not unique in ancient literary production (as sometimes has been claimed), and that its constituent elements were not foreign to the biographical categories of the greco-roman ancient world.