An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church/Chapter 4

by William Ainger Wigram

 

CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT PERSECUTION OF SAPOR II

Papa died about 328; and Shimun bar Saba'i succeeded him peacefully, and ruled, at all events for some years, with the prosperity that came from the royal favour. He was a persona grata at Court, and the young King Sapor (whose coming of age had approximately coincided with the accession of Shimun) apparently had a real personal liking for the bishop.^[1]

The great ecclesiastical events that were passing in the West no doubt excited interest in the Church of the East, as far as they were known; but though destined to affect its history most profoundly in time, they had little effect at the moment. The news of the conversion of the Roman Emperor, and of the Edict at Milan, would reach the East, probably, about the time of the council held against Papa. During his later years, and the earlier portion of his successor's episcopate, rumours of the gradual establishment of Christianity as the State religion, of the rise of the Arian heresy, and the assembly of the Great Council of Nicæa, must gradually have filtered through to the Christians of Persia.

That portion of the Church, however, had this piece of exceptional good fortune allowed it—that it (and it only, of all portions of the Church Catholic of the day) was absolutely untroubled by the Arian controversy. None of its bishops were present at Nicæa; and the doctrine of Arius was known to it only as an accursed thing to be repudiated.

This fact, the ignorance of a not unimportant Church of the greatest of all Church controversies, will bear some examination. First, the fact must be admitted, explain it as we may, that the "Assyrian" Church did know nothing officially of the Nicene Council at the time of its assembling. Not only is there no reference to it in any of the nearly contemporary documents that remain to us (for they, with one important exception, are acta martyrum where such reference might naturally not be found); but the one work of theology (properly so called) that remains to us from the period, is obviously the work of a man who had no knowledge of the council, or what was debated therein. The author in question, of course, is Afraat, the "Sage of Persia." Writing about fifteen years after the council (337–346) he uses expressions, and formulates a creed^[2] in a fashion that one may fairly say would have been impossible to a man who had heard of the rights and wrongs of the great controversy that was then agitating "the West," no matter which side he took in it.

The Church of "the East" was not asked to accept Nicæa, or its doctrines, until eighty-five years later, when it frankly and fully accepted both the council and its creed. Individual bishops may have (must have)^[3] known of the fact, but not the auto-cephalous Church as such.

The most probable explanation of the phenomenon is as follows. Constantine regarded the council as an "imperial affair." In the whole controversy, it was the peace of the Empire that he saw endangered, not the vital truth of Christianity; and the council was summoned to guard the first, by determining the second. Under these circumstances, it was natural that he should not summon bishops from outside the empire to settle a domestic matter. The Emperor was, of course, aware of the existence of the Church in Persia, and took an interest (too much interest, perhaps) in its fortunes; but in the matter of the council he seems to have regarded it as outside his purview. So the synod met, and the "Easterns" were not represented in it.

A few years elapsed, and the rise of the great persecution protected them (at a frightful cost) from the weary controversy that followed.

It is a fact, however, that one of the greatest of "Assyrian" saints, and the holder of one of the most important metropolitical sees of later "Assyrian" history, was undoubtedly present at Nicæa. James of Nisibis certainly, and Ephraim Syrus his deacon probably, were at the council; but they were there as representatives, not of a see in the Persian Empire, but of one in the Roman. It was not until 363 that Nisibis, hitherto the bulwark of the Roman frontier, was abandoned by Jovian to Persia, and a throne that had hitherto been (if in any patriarchate) in that of Antioch, fell naturally under that of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.^[4]

Incidentally we may note that it is a matter for profound thankfulness that so obstinate a heresy as Arianism should not have been allowed to find a national point d'appui in such a Church as that of the Persian Empire. Had it done so, the struggle in the eastern half of the Empire might have been prolonged indefinitely, and Teutonic Arianism have found that support for lack of which it sank and passed away.

In Persia, Sapor II, who had begun his life and reign together in 309, had come to his kingdom and won his spurs in his earlier wars against the Arabs, where he had shown both the vigour and the cruelty that marked his whole career. Now, he was preparing to renew the long quarrel with Rome, and to demand, if not the whole Achæmenid Empire, at least the retrocession of the five lost frontier provinces ceded by Narses to Diocletian. Probably, however, the Persian hesitated at the thought of challenging Constantine "the Victorious," old though he now was. He certainly waited until the great Emperor had passed away (though had his life been prolonged a few months Constantine might not have stayed to be attacked) and left a divided empire to sons weaker than himself. Then Sapor straightway attacked the weakest and nearest of the three.

During the twenty years previous to the war the fact of the definite Christianization of Rome had sunk into Persian consciousness; and this had a natural, but disastrous, "repercussion" on the position of the Church in Persia. While the Empire was pagan and persecuting, Christianity was regarded with no suspicion by the Government of the Shah-in-Shah. It was not the true faith, of course; and its adherents were regarded probably with some contempt; such contempt as was the lot, for instance, of a Jew in Moorish Spain. Persecution existed, no doubt, but was sporadic at worst; being stirred up usually by some enthusiastic Mobed, and started by some act of "apostasy." But with the conversion of the Roman Emperor, all this was changed. Christians were thereafter politically suspect, and from the Persian point of view naturally and properly suspect, as co-religionists and presumably sympathizers with Persia's enemy. It was inevitable that this should be so. The State establishment of Christianity was a good, if not an unmixed good, for the Church in the empire; but the Church outside it had to pay the bill. In lands where religion and politics were, and still are, inextricably mingled, it was simply impossible that the Government official (whether Sassanid Persian or modern Ottoman) should not suspect those whose faith cut them off from the body politic, and linked them with its enemies. Whether the suspicion was just or not, is beside the point; to ask that it should not be entertained, was to ask too much of oriental human nature. In the collision of these two activities, political and religious—a disaster as inevitable and as hopeless as that brought on by "Nemesis" in a Greek tragedy—we nave the key to much (perhaps one half) of the sadness of the history of Christianity in what we now call "the middle East." The natural suspicion of the governing class produces what one side calls "precautions"; and what the other calls "persecutions," if the date be 340, and "massacres" if the year be 1896. It produces, too, on the side of the Christians, constant efforts to hold fast their faith, and yet avoid persecution. The efforts may take the shape of the corporate adoption of a form of Christianity different from that in favour over the border^[5] (an act which people in safety over that border complacently call "falling into heresy"); or the means of defence may be deceitfulness and slipperiness, which again those who have never been similarly tried loathe and despise. The problem has changed its form a little during the centuries, but it still remains essentially the same. Given a State professing a certain form of militant religion (it matters nothing whether its prophet be Zoroaster or Mahommed) how can loyalty to that State be reconciled with the profession of the religion of its rivals? How will those prosper, who are now making the latest, and not the least noble effort, at the solution of this secular problem?

Suspicion of the Christians who were Persian subjects was thus inevitable; and the Mobeds, at least, if no one else was available, were always ready to fan that suspicion into persecution, even if Christians on both sides of the frontier were careful to avoid giving cause for offence. Unhappily, this was not the case. Those in Persia undoubtedly gave cause for suspicion; they were restless under Magian rule when they saw Christianity triumphant in the West; and looked to the Roman Emperor as their deliverer, as naturally as, for instance, the Armenians under Turkish rule looked, at one time, to Russia.^[6] Constantine, too, was no more averse to the post of general protector of all Christians than were some Czars. Theodoret quotes his letter to Sapor, and applauds him for his care for those of the true faith in Persia.^[7] The good bishop, safe in Cyrrhus, saw in the proceeding only a proof of the wonderful virtue of the Emperor. Perhaps it was so, but how did it look to Sapor? The interest of their would-be friends has not always been an unmixed blessing for the Christians of the "Oriental Empire," either in politics or in religion.

Mons. Labourt, noting these facts in his book,^[8] observes that "precautions" would have been justifiable enough, but "only the barbarity of the time can explain, not excuse, the pitiless repression that the King ordered." "Repressions" of the kind Sapor adopted are not of one age only; but are the "precautions" adopted by most oriental rulers under such circumstances, from Sapor's time to our own. Which side is most to blame? The writer has seen the problem from close at hand, and dare not judge the excesses of either side too harshly. Thus, when once Sapor had started a war with Rome, it would have been almost a miracle if he had not also started a persecution of Christians; and when he returned to his palace after the first campaign, sore and angry at a humiliating repulse from Nisibis,^[9] it was natural to turn furiously upon them and declare, "at least we will make these Roman sympathizers pay!" That Jews, Manichæans, and Mobeds should have urged him to this course (as the biographer of Mar Shimun believed) is probable enough; but their influence was hardly necessary.^[10]

Thus the first "Firman" of persecution was issued, ordering all Christians to pay double taxes, expressly as a contribution to the cost of a war in which they were taking no share, the Catholicos being ordered to collect the same. The special order may have been a kind of test for Mar Shimun, but there was nothing unusual in the Government thus dealing with the melet through its recognized head. In any case Shimun refused to obey the order, on the double ground that his people were too poor, and that tax-collecting was no part of a bishop's business. On this it was easy to raise the cry, "he is a traitor and wishes to rebel"; and a second Firman was issued, ordering his arrest and the general destruction of all' the Christian churches. Shimun was arrested at Seleucia, the Court being then at Karka d'Lidan (i. e. Susa), and in the leisurely fashion characteristic of Eastern justice, was allowed to collect his flock and to take a last farewell of them, before being conducted, with several colleagues, to what all foresaw would be his death. All gathered to receive the solemn blessing which a contemporary writer has preserved for us: "May the Cross of our Lord be the protection of the people of Jesus; the peace of God be with the servants of God, and stablish your hearts in the faith of Christ, in tribulation and in ease, in life and in death, now and for evermore."^[11]

The story of his martyrdom has been told by abler writers,^[12] to whom we may refer for the moving tale of Shimun's interviews with the King; of the fall, penitence and triumph of Gusht-azad the eunuch; of the offer of freedom, both for himself and his melet, made to the Catholicos, if he would consent to adore the sun but once; and of the personal appeal of the King to him to yield, by the memory of their personal friendship. The last scene took place outside Susa, on the morning of Good Friday, 339; when the Catholicos, five bishops, and about one hundred clergy sealed their testimony together, Shimun being the last to die. To him it was given to die for both of the two noblest causes for which a man may lay down his life—for his faith in God, and for his duty to his people.

It is impossible to give any general account of the persecution which, thus inaugurated, raged over all Persia for fully forty years. The "Acts of Martyrs" indeed are abundant, and many of them are of the highest historic value, but they give on the whole a very confused impression.

Nothing, in the East, goes in orderly legal fashion, according to Western ideas; and persecutions were not carried out in the regular Roman fashion. Further, a Firman is not so much a decree as a permission (the standing order being, "thou shalt do nothing at all"); and the result of the Firmans of persecution issued by Sapor was not the setting of the machinery of law in motion against a religio illicita, in Roman wise, but something that resembled much more closely the Armenian massacres of our own day, viz. the releasing of a race hatred and fanaticism normally held in check, to do its will upon its objects. The slaughter that followed was assisted frequently rather than regularly by the Government officials.

The grounds of this feeling are stated, and probably with fair correctness, in one of the series of Acta, as follows: "The Christians destroy our holy teaching, and teach men to serve one God, and not to honour the sun or fire. They teach them, too, to defile water by their ablutions; to refrain from marriage and the procreation of children; and to refuse to go out to war with the Shah-in-Shah. They have no scruple about the slaughter and eating of animals; they bury the corpses of men in the earth; and attribute the origin of snakes and creeping things to a good God. They despise many servants of the King, and teach witchcraft."^[13]

Summed up, these causes of offence amount to this. The Christians were men of different habit to the Zoroastrian, and therefore were hateful and despicable as the foreigner is to the Chinese to-day. Some of their customs (particularly the burial of the dead, and the growing habit of thinking celibacy the higher life) were specially abhorrent to Magians, to whose thinking it was man's primary duty to produce fresh servants for Hormizd, and to refrain from profaning Hormizd's earth. As usual, it was the accidents of the presentation of the Faith that made it hateful to men whose religious philosophy was by no means low; and "whose views of God, of the world, and of man, approach more nearly to the fulness of truth than anything else that heathen literature can show."^[14]

The correct Christian conception of celibacy, as a thing higher per se than marriage, needed correction; and Pauline theology might have taught its disciples that no one way of disposing of the bodies of the departed was in itself more reverent than another, or to be insisted on if it "made a brother to stumble."^[15] Thus prejudice born of outraged habit, and prejudice born of offended religion, joined with the bitterer prejudice bred of patriotism to produce a race-hatred between the holders of the two faiths. The Christians were Roman sympathizers, and friends of the enemies of the land. As a matter of fact the last charge was only half true. Christian unwillingness to serve in the royal armies was not nearly so marked as the distrust of them which made the King unwilling to accept their service as a rule.^[16] Still a consideration of that kind was not likely to do much towards abating a popular antipathy.

Thus that race-hatred, so unintelligible to us Europeans, grew up between Christians and Zoroastrians; and according to the law of the East, that religion is the determinant of nationality, they rapidly became separate nations, for all that they dwelt in the same land. Such race-hatred can, as we see in India, be kept under control for generations by a Government resolved to keep the peace; but it blazes up like the fires from a long dormant volcano if it be given opportunity or permission for its indulgence. In Europe, Highland may despise Lowland, or one nation another. But put them to live together in one country (in Canada, for instance), and in a generation or so the hatreds die out, the races mingle, and a new, possibly a finer type of humanity is produced. It is only in the East that races (Kurd and Armenian, or Kurd and Assyrian) will live side by side for generations, each in villages of their own; doing life's business together fairly amicably, and obeying the orders of the Government (if any) to keep the peace—but mixing no more than oil and water, and abating no jot of mutual and bitter hatred.

The persecution in this case began with an indiscriminate massacre of Christians round Susa,^[17] continuing for about a fortnight, and reproduced, in all probability, in most of the Christian centres of the kingdom. Later, indeed, some method was introduced into the proceeding; for Sapor discovered that a favourite of his had met with a voluntary martyrdom,^[18] donning the "dress of a Rabban " (monk or rather celibate) and mixing with the crowd of confessors. Then a decree was issued, to the effect that all arrested for Christianity were to be examined by some one in authority, and a register of executions kept; further, that before any person was ordered for execution, he or she was first to be put to the torture^[19] (and Sassanid executioners were adepts at that art) and only executed on proving obstinate. It will be understood that this order was genuinely meant to be on the side of mercy, but how far it was carried out is doubtful. Any man of position^[20] apparently—certainly any provincial governor or Mobed—could examine a Christian, and sentence him to death; or might put him to death without examination—for who was going to inquire with any strictness as to what was done by way of executing the King's decree in remoter districts? The death of a Christian rayat was not a more important thing in the fourth century than in the twentieth.

This looseness of organization, however, had its advantages. If any governor could persecute, any could protect. For instance, the Marquis (Marzban) of Adiabene, Pigrasp, simply refrained from persecuting,^[21] during the four years for which he held office after the decree was published—"except just during vintage time," when for some obscure reason, fanaticism could not, apparently, be held in check. What one merciful man could do on a large scale, others no doubt could do on a smaller; just as in a later age, a generous Kurdish Agha could protect and shelter occasional Armenian villages. In fact, though the persecution lasted its full forty years (and indeed there were numerous isolated cases of persecution, both before and after that period), yet it was unsystematic in character, and did not and could not press on all equally for that time. Often, no doubt, when a merciful marquis or "Rad" died, the Mobeds of the district could procure the appointment of a zealot in his place. We know, for instance, that this took place on the death of Pigrasp in Adiabene.^[22]

It was only to be expected that the clergy, and more specially the bishops, and also the converts from Magianism, should be specially aimed at by the persecutors. Two successors of Mar Shimun, Shah-dost and Bar-b'ashmin, followed their former chief within six years; the former of them being warned of his fate by a vision of his predecessor in glory,^[23] calling on his follower (and nephew) to come up to him without fear. After the death of Bar-b'ashmin the throne remained vacant for more than twenty years, as to fill it was to secure the death of a devoted man. Other bishops, however, must have been consecrated, and the succession was secured.

Among other bishops, Miles of Kafka d'Lidan, who was still alive and vigorous when the persecution began, was far too conspicuous a man to be out of danger, and was too fearless to shun it. Hence, he was soon arrested. On examination, the violence of temper that had marred a fine character blazed out once more. He taunted the Agha who was judging him, till the official cut him down with his own sabre, and this somewhat pugnacious martyr died proclaiming vengeance on his murderers, "whose bodies the fowls of the air shall eat." The doom could hardly have sounded very terrible to a Zoroastrian; but as a matter of fact, the man was soon after killed in a hunting accident.^[24]

Aqib-shima, the venerable Bishop of Khanitha near Arbela—an ascetic known and revered by all for his labours in converting the heathen^[25] of the hill country round the modern Rowanduz (where the Christian villages that are his monument still remain)—was one of the later victims of the time of trial. Like many of the more notable prisoners, he was finally sent for execution to the "door of the King," but an incident that occurred at one of his many examinations is worth recording.

The martyr was before his judges, when a Manichæan was brought in, and ordered to abjure his peculiar version of Christianity.^[26] This he readily agreed to do (as indeed was the practice of this sect, when they were not asked to abjure the secret doctrine known to initiates alone), and he killed an ant, which either was, or was thought to be, the sacred symbol of life according to his creed. One notes, with some regret, that the confessor had no feeling but joy and triumph at the fall of the heretic.^[27]

Aqib-shima was finally executed by the personal order of Sapor; while Joseph the Qasha, who had been his companion in suffering, was stoned by renegade Christians as the price of their lives. This, it may be mentioned, was a common practice throughout the persecution; any one who fell away from the faith being compelled to earn his pardon by acting as executioner to his more staunch companions.

Monks and nuns were naturally as much the object of persecution as were the clergy—partly as Christian leaders, partly on account of the horror with which all Zoroastrians regarded the profession of the celibate life. Nuns were commonly offered their lives if they would consent to marry;^[28] renunciation of Christianity not being always insisted on in that case. The frequency with which martyrdoms of these ascetics occur in the Acta, is evidence of the firm hold which the ascetic and monastic principle was taking (naturally) on the oriental mind. But less than a generation had elapsed since its first introduction; and the institution was as yet in a somewhat primitive and unorganized condition, a "Daira" being simply the gathering of a group of devotees, male or female, round some one leader.

Syriac historians, as a rule, have not much of an eye for the artistic in narrative; and are so busy in proving to us (by the recounting of miracles generally) the surpassing sanctity of their hero, that they leave little room for the personal touches which, to us, are much more illuminating. The author of the earlier Acta of the martyrs of the persecution, is a gratifying exception to the rule; and has recorded for us, not only the moving story of the martyrdom of Mar Shimun and his companions, but several other picturesque and pathetic incidents of the time. Thus it is to him that we owe the story of Yazdun-docht,^[29] the noble lady who cared for the 120 confessors of Seleucia, during their imprisonment; and only revealed to them the fact that the day of their "release" had come, by the final gift of white raiment that she made to each of them, and the prayer that they would intercede for her before the Throne. The bodies of martyrs were as a rule surrendered to their friends (though in some cases attempts were made to prevent this^[30]), and the lady was allowed to complete her pious task by the burial of these bodies in one great martyrium.

On another occasion, when the right of burial was refused and the bodies left by the roadside, panic was spread among the Magi, and triumph among the Christians, by a mysterious light that hovered above the corpses.^[31] It was, of course, some kind of phosphorescence, but was universally regarded as a proof that these were indeed holy men that had been done to death; and the bodies were interred with all honour. It is an indication of the absolute changelessness of the East, that the phenomenon and the effect should have been exactly repeated during the Armenian massacres of 1896.

Persecution must have flagged at times, for the blood-thirst, even of an oriental fanatic, is not insatiable. It is probable, too, that the great Roman invasion of Julian gave some respite to Christians (a fact that would hardly have pleased the author of it), by giving King and nobles something else to do. This is not, however, directly referred to in the Acta. Certainly after its conclusion the storm burst out again with fresh violence, for there was fresh material to work on. Sapor, it will be remembered, insisted on a "rectification of frontier" as the price of peace; and five provinces, with six bishoprics and a population largely Christian, found themselves handed over by a Christian Emperor to Sapor. Jovian has a good name in ecclesiastical history, owing mainly to his Nicene Orthodoxy, and to the high opinion St. Athanasius entertained of him. Something, however, must be entered on the other side when we remember that, in making peace, he not only incurred the military shame of handing over to Persia the maiden fortress that his enemy had never been able to win in fight; but also made absolutely no effort, as far as we know, to secure decent treatment for the inhabitants of those provinces which he was handing over to a notorious persecutor. As a result, not only were those inhabitants deported into distant provinces of Persia (that was perhaps a necessary measure of precaution), but instructions were given to mark their leaders, and to arrest and "deal with" all who would not abandon "the religion of Cæsar."^[32] There was unintentional irony in the order, when the only Cæsar they had known of late had been Julian; but that fact did not save the victims. The historians tell us of one of the detachments of captives (the men of B. Zabdai), among whom were found the Bishop Heliodorus, and several of the clergy. These were given the choice between apostasy and death, and were massacred to the number of nearly 300; only twenty-five of the band accepting their lives at the price offered. Other detachments suffered in the same way.

The cession of territory was important ecclesiastically, as by taking Nisibis and "the five provinces" out of the Roman into the Persian Empire, it also took them, as stated above, out of the Antiochene Patriarchate, and into that of Seleucia. When peace was restored to the Church this position was accepted without a murmur. It may seem strange to a purist, that ecclesiastical boundaries should thus, as a matter of course, follow civil; but convenience in such a matter is apt to be stronger than correctitude. No King of Persia could tolerate such an anomaly as the subjection of some of his subjects, even quoad ecclesiastica, to an Archbishop outside his boundary; nor would any Persian Christian, when the persecution was over, go out of his way to invite its renewal by starting such an idea.

It must be remembered, too, that in the fourth century the idea that ecclesiastical divisions followed civil was already familiar—as we see in the life of St. Basil; and that patriarchates were still inchoate. The greater sees, like Antioch, Rome and Alexandria, were gathering round them the bishoprics that lay within their sphere of attraction, just as Seleucia was doing in the Persian sphere. We shall see that (owing probably to the conditions of the life of a subject melet) the dependence of the metropolitan and diocesan bishops on the Catholicos was even more defined in Persia than inside the Roman Empire. Still, patriarchal boundaries were so far from being defined, that a new Patriarchate was actually in process of formation round Constantinople; and we can trace its first beginnings under Chrysostom in the next generation.

Up to the very end of his life Sapor continued to persecute relentlessly; and it is only natural that, as the persecution goes on, a bitter and resentful tone should creep into the minds of the sufferers, and should find expression in the Acta. Sayings like "Your accursed King,"^[33] or "I will not worship fire, but you will be burning for ever in it some day," are to be regretted; though one cannot wonder that a generation of suffering should have produced them. Still it is saddening to note the contrast between them, and the stately dignity of Mar Shimun, the unswerving loyalty of Gushtazad, and the genuine cheerfulness and even "chaff" of Martha the nun.^[34]

Even during the persecution, the Church did not lose her power of drawing men to her. More than one chronicler tells with pride of the conversion, when persecution was hottest, of men like Ait-Alaha of Arbela,^[35] the priest of the goddess Sharbil. He was subject to some complaint resembling dysentery; and was told by a Christian, who succoured him in one of his paroxysms, to go to the Bishop of Arbela, who would cure him. The Magian, being cured as promised, professed himself a Christian; and the bishop, after some natural hesitation, admitted him to baptism, and subsequently to ordination.

Naturally, a price was put upon the head of the "renegade," and also on that of the Bishop Maran-zca. Ait-Alaha, though preserved for some time, was arrested at last; and as he remained steadfast under torture, was sent with a fellow-prisoner to the King at Bait Lapat, or Gondi-Sapor. On the journey, the two were apparently on parole, being allowed personal freedom by their guards, and even permitted to go in and out of a city (Shehrgard in B. Garmai) where they were delayed for some days. One is glad to see that the trust was not abused, and that both Christians loyally delivered themselves up to execution rather than break their plighted word.

Maran-zca—the name means "our Lord conquers" or "has conquered," and is one of many that have a curiously Puritanic ring to the English reader—always evaded arrest; being able to retire into the mountains to the north of his diocese, where the "King's writ" does not run to this day. Though both of his predecessors, John and Abraham, were martyred, he died in peace after an episcopate of twenty-nine years.

Sapor, "the long-lived," also died, at last, in 379; and the persecution practically died with him. Not that there was safety from local outbreaks of zeal, or Mobed fanaticism; that could not be secured, till a royal Firman of toleration had been issued, and neither of Sapor's three feeble successors could take so decisive a step. The worst of the storm, however, was past; and the Church which had endured as severe a trial as ever national Church was called upon to face—and which had endured it so nobly—could rest a while, recoup her energies, and repair her organization; and count up the total of those 16,000 martyrs whose names were known and recorded,^[36] who had "enriched the Church with their deaths" during those terrible forty years.

 

1. M.-Z., Life of Shri'a; Bedj., ii. 180.
2. Afraat, Mimra I. Labourt, p. 32 et seq.
3. e. g. those of Nisibis. B. Zabdai, etc.
4. A John "of Persia" occurs in some lists of Nicene signatories, but this is probably a mis-reading for Perrha. Persia was never the name of a see in the Assyrian Church, though the province of "Fars" formed the jurisdiction of a metropolitan in later days. The legend referred to by Bar-Hebræus (Primates Orientis, Vita Papæ), that either Papa or Shimun attended Nicæa, we reject without hesitation as the figment of a latter day, when Assyrians had come to believe that "so great a throne as ours must have had a representative at so great a council." See Labourt, p. 32, note.
5. It must not be forgotten that, as we hope to show later, there is a second and important motive, for these schisms in the Church; viz. the desire to find expression in the religious sphere, for nationality.
6. Labourt, p. 48. Afraat, Mimra, xii.
7. Theodoret, Eccl. Hist., i. 25.
8. Labourt, p. 50.
9. It was on this occasion that the besieged city was preserved by the moral influence of St. James, its bishop, and also by the "miraculous" swarms of flies that his prayers sent against the besiegers (Theodoret, ii. 30). The influence of the great bishop did much towards keeping up the courage of the defenders, we may well believe. As to the flies, still less need we question the reality of the swarms. Sapor tried to flood the city; therefore his huge force was camping in a swamp, during a Mesopotamian summer!
10. Bedj., ii. 134.
11. Bedj., ii. 154.
12. Specially Bright, Age of Fathers, I. xi.
13. Acts of Aqib-shima, Bedj., ii. 351. The list of accusations is said to be taken from a royal Firman. Whether that is so or not, they give at least the popular feeling.
14. Westcott, Gospel of Life, ch. v. § 3.
15. It is worth noting that in the matter of food (the one point on which there is clear scriptural direction to the contrary!) the Christians do seem to have given way. Their modern descendants regard certain animals, e. g. the hare and the pig, as unfit for human consumption.
16. Sometimes they were employed, but there were probably few Christians among the "Azadan," the free tenants in chief who furnished the cavalry of the Sassanid feudal army—the "infantry" were undisciplined peasants.
17. Bedj., ii. 241.
18. Bedj., ii. 245. Obviously "Rabbans" and "Rabbanyati" also wore some sort of distinctive dress. See Bedj., ii. 233.
19. ii. 246.
20. The organization of society under the Sassanids was broadly feudal; so that there was nothing strange in the Agha, or Seigneur, executing justice, high, middle and low.
21. M.-Z., Life of John.
22. Ibid.
23. B.-H., Primates Orientis, Shah-dost.
24. The Agha was Hormizd of Raziqai. Miles had wandered far, but the homing instinct of his people brought him home to die (Bedj., ii. 271).
25. To convert pagans proper to Christianity was blameless, and even laudable; though proselytizing from Zoroastrians was punishable with death, even in a time of peace. At the present day, Christian teachers are free to convert, e. g. Yezidis, if they can; and fanatical Mussulmans have been known to offer to spare disciples of that strange faith, even in time of massacre, if they will consent to turn "Mussulman or Christian."
26. This is mentioned as quite an unusual thing. Apparently the Manichees, if (as stated) they helped to rouse Sapor to persecution, drew down vengeance also on themselves, Sassanian officials had not the experience which enables the Ottoman to distinguish between different kinds of Christian, one of whom you may kill when you must not touch another!
27. This act of the Manichees forms an interesting comment on a recent Hulsean lecture. "Take from the Christian Church," says Dr. Figgis, "the mysterious birth and the availing death, the empty tomb, and the sacramental presence, and see what you have left. Would it be very much to live by? Would it be anything at all to die for?" It was precisely those four points that the Manichees (no doubt in the name of a so-called deeper mystery) cut out of their Christianity.
28. They would probably be forced to marry Zoroastrians; and a wife whose faith was not that of her husband was unthinkable. The same offer was hardly ever made to monks; probably because the Zoroastrian, like many orientals to-day, simply did not believe in the existence of male celibacy (Bedj., h. 233, 308).
29. Bedj., ii. 291.
30. The idea was, that the bodies would be used for magic, and the fear had this much of justification, that dust soaked with a martyr's blood, or from his grave, was (and is) regarded as a remedy for most diseases. The substance is called "Khenana," "Grace" or "Mercy."
31. Bedj., iv. 137.
32. Bedj., ii. 316.
33. Acts of Aqib-shima.
34. Bedj., ii. 233. Martha, as usual, was offered life and freedom, by the Mobed who tried her, if she would consent to marry. She explained that she was sorry, but that she was betrothed to "Ishu" (i. e. Jesus,—the name is still a very common one), and enjoyed the confusion of the Mobed, who asked after the family and village of the supposed Bridegroom, and declared that he would send for Him. Later, the fearless girl indulged in some similar sparring with the executioner!
35. This must have been the convert's baptismal name. Bedj., iv. 133. M.-Z., Life of Maran-zca.
36. There were also an immense number of unrecorded sufferers.