William Ainger Wigram

“ It was not only as an empire that Persia thus rose from the dead in the third century; it rose also as a religion, of a definite and militant type. The Persia of Achæmenid days had accepted Zoroaster's reforms of the ancient fire-worship as a national faith; and that religion had been preserved by the nation as its heritage, and treasured as only a subject nation can treasure its national faith (if, indeed, it had not been, as is possible, the force that had kept the nation alive) during the 500 years of dependence. Now, when Persia rose to power once more, their religion rose with them ”

“ The connection between the highest problems of theology and the practice of daily life is as real and as strong as the force of gravitation which links the sun to every stone on earth's surface, and binds the universe in one. Neither is less real for being unperceived by the ordinary man.
Still, it was not because the supreme importance of the truth at stake was perceived and understood that men waxed so fierce in the controversy about them. ”

“ Indeed, this ancient habit of the Sassanids was one of the causes of the spread of the Church in "the East"; and in the times of their later kings, a cause of the extension of Monophysitism within its bounds. We have no means of telling which of the numerous captivities are referred to here; but there is no impossibility in the supposition that they date back to Sapor I, one hundred and eighty years previously. A captivity—even when settled in its new home—will retain its identity for centuries, particularly if its religion be also of a distinctive character. ”

“ Apostasy, indeed, except under actual stress of persecution, was and is a great rarity. Hereditary attachment to the faith of his fathers is an instinct rather than a habit with the oriental. And it is no mean testimony to her power that the Christian Church should, on the whole, be able to hold her own children under this constant temptation to leave her. All the same, through the ages the tendency of the dominant faith has been to draw away from Christianity, or from service to their own Church, those best worth perfecting. ”

“ The Church of Armenia, however, was to have her full share of persecution, properly so called, during future centuries.
In Persia, as the long persecution gradually flickered out (and there is evidence that it was not fully over till thirty years after the death of Sapor) , it is not wonderful that the Church should be left in a most shattered and disorganized condition. The marvel is, indeed, that life remained in the body at all; and it is doubtful whether a Western Church would have survived such an ordeal. ”

“ The facts of history show him to have been ambitious, if not personally, at least for his see; probably overbearing and oppressive as a ruler, and certainly of a passionate and hot-tempered disposition.
All the circumstances in his day, in the West as well as in the East, were promoting the growth of metropolitical and patriarchal jurisdictions. Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, were each of them drawing the provinces round them under their sway ”

“ The Shah-in-Shah nominated the Catholicos, why should not the Agha name the bishop? Supposing the man named to be not absolutely impossible, would the villagers neglect the seigneur's hint, and face the probability that double dues would be exacted next harvest? Similarly, discipline ought, of course, to be moved solely by the consideration of the law of the Church, and the guilt of the sinner. ”

“ For about one hundred and fifty years now they had been always under the shadow, and frequently under the edge of the sword of persecution; and this persecution had been never separate from the feeling "Rome is Christian, therefore no Christian can be loyal." ”

“ 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." ”

“ We do not tear one another to pieces in the twentieth century over the matter of an iota in the creed; but we have seen quarrels over points of geology or archæology, or the question whether A, or B, was the first to reach a wholly conventional point of the world's surface; and these problems are surely at least as remote from practical importance as the question whether the central figure of a man's religion is or is not a proper object of worship. Man was then, and is still, a highly combative animal. ”

“ Given the choice between using the chance of ruining an opponent and running the risk of ruin himself, it was not likely that Bar-soma should hesitate. He sent the letter to Piroz. It was not generous, but few orientals would have acted otherwise. He may or may not have sent accusations with it, nor does it greatly matter; a man does not reach high office under an oriental despotism without knowing what the writing of such a letter means to its writer if it be discovered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Next, the theological strife of the period was the expression, not only of politics, but of nationality, and of a national feeling consciously opposed to the Government policy. In the empire religion and the Church tended rapidly, during the fifth and sixth centuries, to become instruments of government in a despotism that tended more and more toward what is suggested to us by the name Byzantine. Orthodoxy was loyalty to the Emperor, not to Christ ”

“ To assert that it was so is probably no nearer to the truth than the gibe that the heat excited by theological controversy stands in inverse ratio to the importance of the questions discussed. No doubt men on each side felt, dimly or clearly, that it was Truth for which they struggled, and hence came their fierceness; but, speaking generally, nobody would dream of saying that the very ordinary men of the fifth and sixth centuries, who shouted themselves hoarse over these highest questions, understood their real, if unseen, practical bearing. ”

“ Finally, some bishops who had fled from Bar-soma consecrated Acacius as patriarch; but the terrible "Bar-sola" [21] was able to force him into Nestorianism also, and the schism was complete between the Assyrian Church and the rest of the Church Catholic.
This statement is of course the work of a partisan, not of an historian—and of an oriental partisan. To such an one the throwing of mud is "common form," and truth is not so much an object as adhesiveness. Ages of controversy have made him an adept in judging what mud will stick, and he has a full appreciation of the power of a half-truth! ”

“ Still, it may be doubted whether the power of the Christian counsellor was as great as other Christians thought, particularly as they always tend to believe that a man in any post of authority is practically omnipotent. If the power of Bar-soma was anything like as great as Christians believed, Magians must have judged the precedent a very bad one, for no king of the Sassanid house was so consistently unlucky as was Piroz. ”

“ Orientals like to have proof that the "Hukumet" is behind the man they are willing to obey. They revere power; and its concrete embodiment in a few soldiers does not strike them as at all unepiscopal. Of course his opponents would exclaim at the sacrilege—and would imitate it, if they got the chance!
Though there is no doubt that the great majority of the Christians of Persia were willing enough to follow the lead given by Bar-soma, there was a minority opposed to him. Papa, Bishop of B. Lapat, was one of them, and there were other bishops with him. ”

“ Christianity could certainly be so proclaimed as to suit the oriental, when taught by easterns to their brethren; and when a religion, intrinsically eastern, was presented without the western externals which a western is apt to identify with its essence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the empire, if there was no provincial self-government, there was considerable municipal independence; and the tendency of the oriental to submit to authority—and of the greater sees to exalt themselves over the lesser—was counterbalanced, in a measure, by the fact that the bishop was a principal citizen of his own town as well as a subject of the Emperor, and a suffragan of Antioch or Constantinople.
One other tendency we see in the fathers of Seleucia which might well have spelt disaster for the Church had their circumstances allowed them to give way to it. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In 399 Yezdegerd I became King of Persia. Magian historians are hard put to it to find epithets adequate to express their detestation of this prince—"the apostate," "the wicked," the friend of Rome and of Christians, and the persecutor of Magi. As a matter of fact, this much-abused man appears from his acts to have been a strong and able king of peaceful disposition; who refrained from making war on the Roman Empire when it was hardly in a state to resist him, and who was uniformly friendly to the two emperors of his day. ”

“ It is not surprising that the holder of it should soon have begun to use the term "patriarch" (though not dropping the title Catholicos) , before the Christological controversy had separated him from the West, and long before it was the habitual and peculiar title of five special sees in the empire. This centralizing tendency is the fruit, as we have seen, of melet life, and is fostered, no doubt, by the natural Eastern attraction towards an autocracy; but it should also be noted that a force which retarded similar development in Asia Minor was absent in Persia. ”