the opportunity of studying an early version of Christian Socialism is denied us, interesting and profitable though it might be.[1]
In the nation at large, as might perhaps have been expected, Mazdak's teaching was most warmly received and widely propagated. It is true that it was ultimately trampled out; but obviously there was much resentment current at the "caste-system" of Magianism: and the welcome given to this reformer may help us to understand the rapid downfall of Zoroastrianism before the political and religious teaching of Islam, when that wonderful system made its appearance in Persia 150 years later. Nor was the discontent confined to the commonalty. Some of the nobles and princes became converts to a system which robbed them of their rank and wealth, and this fact makes one suspect the existence of some such wave of republican enthusiasm as that which swept over the French noblesse in the early days of the revolution. Most marvellous of all, the King of kings himself became a convert, and an adherent of the new teaching! The spectacle of an autocrat suddenly turning Communist is suggestive of the realms of Gilbert and Sullivan, rather than of sober history; but the explanation would seem to be that Kobad was moved, not solely by religious zeal, but partly by the hope that he would be able to break down by this means the dominion of the great clans, the Zoroastrian noblesse, and specially that of the Magian body. One historian has it that a sham miracle (the familiar voice from the sacred fire) converted the doubting monarch. One would have thought that this particular fraud was too
- ↑ Possibly the lost letters of Bar-soma may be re-discovered, as those of a later prelate have recently been. His comments on such a movement would provide most interesting reading.
