Mani’s teachings equalled the spread of Eastern Christianity in time and geography, taking Manichaean faith as far as the shores of China as well as into the Roman Empire.36 Christians in the eastern Mediterranean in particular found his teachings as fascinating as previously they had the ideas of gnostic teachers, while the traditionalist Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284–305) loathed Manichees as much as he did the Christians, initiating a policy of burning them alive, even before he and his colleagues had yielded to the impulse to begin brutal persecution of Christianity.
