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AT this time Isdigirdes, King of the Persians, began to wage war
against the churches and the circumstances which caused him so to do
were as follows. A certain bishop, Abdas by name, adorned with many
virtues, was stirred with undue zeal and destroyed a Pyreum, Pyreum
being the name given by the Persians to the temples of the fire which
they regarded as their God.
On being informed of this by the Magi Isdigirdes sent for Abdas and
first in moderate language complained of what had taken place and
ordered him to rebuild the Pyreum.
This the bishop, in reply, positively refused to do, and thereupon
the king threatened to destroy all the churches, and in the end carried
out all his threats, for first be gave orders for the execution of that
holy man and then commanded the destruction of the churches. Now I am
of opinion that to destroy the Pyreum was wrong and inexpedient, for
not even the divine Apostle, when he came to Athens and saw the city
wholly given to idolatry, destroyed any one of the altars which the
Athenians honoured, but convicted them of their ignorance by his
arguments, and made manifest the truth. But the refusal to rebuild
the fallen temple, and the determination to choose death rather than so
do, I greatly praise and honour, and count to be a deed worthy of the
martyr's crown; for building a shrine in honour of the fire seems to
me to be equivalent to adoring it.
From this beginning arose a tempest which stirred fierce and cruel
waves against the nurslings of the true faith, and when thirty years
had gone by the agitation still remained kept up by the Magi, as the
sea is kept in commotion by the blasts of furious winds. Magi is the
name given by the Persians to the worshippers of the sun and moon but
I have exposed their fabulous system in another treatise and have
adduced solutions of their difficulties.
On the death of Isdigirdes, Vararanes, his son, inherited at once
the kingdom and the war against the faith, and dying in his turn left
them both together to his son. To relate the various kinds of tortures
and cruelties inflicted on the saints is no easy task. In some cases
the hands were flayed, in others the back; of others they stripped the
heads of skin from brow to beard; others were enveloped in split reeds
with the cut part turned inwards and were surrounded with tight bandages
from head to foot; then each of the reeds was dragged out by force,
and, tearing away the adjacent portions of the skin, caused severe
agony; pits were dug and carefully greased in which quantities of mice
were put; then they let down the martyrs, bound hand and foot, so as
not to be able to protect themselves from the animals, to be food for
the mice, and the the mice, under stress of hunger, little by little
devoured the flesh of the victims, causing them long and terrible
suffering. By others sufferings were endured even more terrible than
these, invented by the enemy of humanity and the opponent of the
truth, but the courage of the martyrs was unbroken, and they hastened
unbidden in their eagerness to win that death which ushers men into
indestructible life.
Of these I will cite one or two to serve as examples of the courage of
the rest. Among the noblest of the Persians was one called
Hormisdas, by race an Achaemenid and the son of a Prefect. On
receiving information that he was a Christian the king summoned him and
ordered him to abjure God his Saviour. He replied that the royal
orders were neither right nor reasonable, "for he," so he went on,
"who is taught to find no difficulty in spurning and denying the God
of all, will haply the more easily despise a king who is a man of
mortal nature; and if, sir, he who denies thy sovereignty is
deserving of the severest punishment, how much more terrible a
chastisement is not due to him who denies the Creator of the world?"
The king ought to have admired the wisdom of what was said, but,
instead of this, he stripped the noble athlete of his wealth and rank,
and ordered him to go clad in nothing save a loin cloth, and drive the
camels of the army. After some days had gone by, as he looked out of
his chamber, he saw the excellent man scorched by the rays of the sun,
and covered with dust, and he be thought him of his father's
illustrious rank, and sent for him, and told him to put on a tunic of
linen. Then thinking the toil he had suffered, and the kindness shewn
him, had softened his heart, "Now at least," said he "give over
your opposition, and deny the carpenter's son." Full of holy zeal
Hormisdas tore the tunic and flung it away saying, "If you think
that this will make one give up the true faith, keep your present with
your false belief." When the king saw how bold he was he drove him
naked from the palace.
One Suenes, who owned a thousand slaves, resisted the King, and
refused to deny his master. The King therefore asked him which of his
slaves was the vilest, and to this slave handed over the ownership of
all the rest, and gave him Suenes to be his slave. He also gave him
in marriage Suenes' wife, supposing that thus he could bend the will
of the champion of the truth. But he was disappointed, for he had
built his house upon the rock.
The king also seized and imprisoned a deacon of the name of Benjamin.
After two years there came an envoy from Rome, to treat of other
matters, who, when he was informed of this imprisonment, petitioned
the king to release the deacon. The king ordered Benjamin to promise
that he would not attempt to teach the Christian religion to any of the
Magi, and the envoy exhorted Benjamin to obey, but Benjamin, after
he heard what the envoy had to say, replied, "It is impossible for
me not to impart the light which I have received; for how great a
penalty is due for the hiding of our talent is taught in the history of
the holy gospels." Up to this time the King had not been informed of
this refusal and ordered him to be set free. Benjamin continued as he
was wont seeking to catch them that were held down by the darkness of
ignorance, and bringing them to the light of knowledge. After a year
information of his conduct was given to the king, and he was summoned
and ordered to deny Him whom he worshipped. He then asked the king
"What punishment should be assigned to one who should desert his
allegiance and prefer another?" "Death and torture," said the
king. "How then" continued the wise deacon "should he be treated
who abandons his Maker and Creator, makes a God of one of his fellow
slaves, and offers to him the honour due to his Lord?" Then the
king was moved with wrath, and had twenty reeds pointed, and driven
into the nails of his hands and feet. When he saw that Benjamin took
this torture for child's play, he pointed another reed and drove it
into his privy part and by working it up and down caused unspeakable
agony. After this torture the impious and savage tyrant ordered him to
be impaled upon a stout knotted staff, and so the noble sufferer gave
up the ghost.
Innumerable other similar deeds of violence were committed by these
impious men, but we must not be astonished that the Lord of all
endures their savagery and impiety, for indeed before the reign of
Constantine the Great all the Roman emperors wreaked their wrath on
the friends of the truth, and Diocletian, on the day of the
Saviour's passion, destroyed the churches throughout the Roman
Empire, but after nine years had gone by they rose again in bloom and
beauty many times larger and more splendid than before, and he and his
iniquity perished.
These wars and the victory of the church had been predicted by the
Lord, and the event teaches us that war brings us more blessing than
peace. Peace makes us delicate, easy and cowardly. War whets our
courage and makes us despise this present world as passing away. But
these are observations which we have often made in other writings.
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