Abstract

The article deals with the contra Secundinum in order to present some of the Christological elements that Augustine brings to the front as a way of contrasting Catholic Christology with Manichaean Christology, and to show the falsity of the sect of Mani by highlighting the incoherence of some of the ideas of the Manichaeans. The article focuses particularly on two Christological titles present in contra Secundinum, namely those of Primogenitus and Unigenitus. These are two Christological titles which appear only rarely in the anti-Manichaean works, but which in the contra Secundinum acquire a particular value. For this purpose, the article, after a brief introduction, reviews the Augustinian anti-Manichaean works, in order to see how these titles are only found very scarcely and generally in the mouth of St. Augustine in contra Fortunatum, contra Adimantum, contra epistulam Fundamenti and contra Faustum. The article presents the nuances and elements that these titles have in the aforementioned works, and then focuses on the contra Secundinum, to see which are the Manichaean and Catholic Christological implications of the titles of Primogenitus and Unigenitus. Throughout the article, some texts from the Manichaean Works are quoted to confirm the assertions of the article.