Shah using his influence on the side of moderation was removed by the sudden death of Yezdegerd from the kick of a horse. Both religions saw a divine judgment on a persecutor in the accident; the Magians holding it a punishment for his early acts, and the Christians (with somewhat less than justice to the memory of one who had been on the whole their benefactor) for the final episodes of his reign.
Bahram V, who succeeded his father Yezdegerd, was practically the Magian nominee. There was another candidate for the throne, and the prince, to secure the support of the hierarchy,[1] was obliged to give pledges of some sort to the Mobeds—an act which of course implied that his full support should be given to the persecution of the Christians. Thus the religious war continued with peculiar ferocity, the hideous tortures which Theodoret details[2] being fully supported by the evidence of Syriac writers. It is not necessary to dwell on these horrors. Churches, of course, were destroyed, the tent-church of the Catholicos being made into a hunting-tent for the King; and all freemen (azatan) who were known to be Christians were deprived of their fiefs. Theodoret records the case of one of these last in particular: a Christian named Hormizdas, "who was of the ancient house of the Achæmenids, and the son of a Marzban." He was degraded from his rank, and set to do the work of the lowest slaves (grooming camels) without his staunchness being affected; and he died a martyr at the last. Probably this persecution, for the four years of its duration, was as savage as any that this much-tried Church was ever called upon to face.
As was the case previously, Christian persecution
