The various Gnostic sects played an important part in early Christianity. Their influence and tradition was suppressed when faith became fused with the ruling power. Not only took the Roman Empire the life of one of the Jewish messiahs, also his faith became the basis of a state religion to add to the glory of emperor Constantine in the 4th century. Gnosticism remained a source of inspiration, however, for the few who knew of its ideas, which were kept secret. At the centre was the belief that the seen and unseen world is the manifestation of the One Divine Being.
Gnostic texts concern the fall of man from the divine to the material world.
The spark of divine light imprisoned in man is to be set free so that it may return to the Kingdom of God. Gnosticism reached the Western world through Egypt. Baghdad had become the great intellectual centre by then. Scientific and philosophical studies were disseminated through the Moorish emirate of Cordoba, Spain. The universities of Granada and Saragossa made translations available of the great Greek classical works from Arabic into Latin.