Blurb:

Panel D circulates around issues of social canons as the infrastructure of social networks. These studies therefore connect back to the concepts of canonicity (in a broad, social sense), developed in Panel B. In the first study, Håkon Teigen takes the Manichaean congregation in the Dakhlah Oasis, western part of Roman Egypt (fourth to fifth century CE) as a point of departure for a study on the production of canonical authority and social doxa. Focusing on the canonical habit of itinerancy and its impact on the relationship between the Elect—Manichaeism’s ascetical elite—and the Auditors, its laity, in the Levant and Egypt, Teigen argues that such itinerancy was practiced in a distinct way and took on a certain role in the Manichaean canonical ecology. This allowed a trans-regional Manichaean network to emerge, spread, and persist.