The Persecution in Persia and Its Martyrs

At this time Yazdegerd, king of the Persians, began to make war on the churches, and this is what led him to do it. A certain bishop named Abdas, adorned with many virtues, was carried away by excessive zeal and destroyed a Pyreum. Pyreum is the name the Persians give to the temples of fire, which they regarded as their god. [a] When the Magi told Yazdegerd of this, he sent for Abdas. At first he complained in mild language about what had happened, and he ordered him to rebuild the Pyreum. The bishop flatly refused. The king then threatened to destroy all the churches, and in the end he carried out every one of his threats: first he ordered that holy man to be put to death, and then he commanded the churches to be destroyed. Now I am of the opinion that destroying the Pyreum was wrong and unwise. For not even the divine apostle, when he came to Athens and saw the city wholly given over to idolatry, destroyed any of the altars the Athenians honored. Instead he exposed their ignorance by his arguments and made the truth plain. But the refusal to rebuild the fallen temple, and the resolve to choose death rather than do it, I greatly praise and honor, and I count it a deed worthy of the martyr’s crown. For building a shrine in honor of fire seems to me the same as worshiping it. [d]

From this beginning arose a storm that stirred up fierce and cruel waves against those nurtured in the true faith. When thirty years had gone by, the turmoil was still being kept up by the Magi, as the sea is kept churning by the blasts of raging winds. Magi is the name the Persians give to those who worship the sun and moon. But I have exposed their fabulous system in another treatise and given answers to their questions. [e] When Yazdegerd died, his son Bahram inherited both the kingdom and the war against the faith, and at his own death he left them both together to his son. It is no easy task to describe the various kinds of tortures and cruelties inflicted on the saints. Some had their hands flayed, others their backs. Others had the skin of their heads stripped off from brow to beard. Others were wrapped in split reeds with the cut edges turned inward and bound tightly with bandages from head to foot. Then each reed was pulled out by force, tearing away the skin next to it and causing terrible agony. Pits were dug and carefully greased, and many mice were put into them. Then they lowered the martyrs into them, bound hand and foot so that they could not defend themselves from the animals, to be food for the mice. Driven by hunger, the mice ate the victims’ flesh little by little, causing them long and terrible suffering. Others endured sufferings even more terrible than these, devised by the enemy of humanity and the opponent of the truth. But the courage of the martyrs was unbroken. Unbidden, they hurried eagerly to win the death that brings people into the life that cannot be destroyed. [f]

I will cite one or two of them as examples of the courage of the rest. Among the noblest of the Persians was a man called Hormisdas, an Achaemenid by descent and the son of a prefect. When the king was told that he was a Christian, he summoned him and ordered him to deny God his Savior. Hormisdas answered that the king’s orders were neither right nor reasonable, and he went on: “For whoever is taught to think nothing of scorning and denying the God of all will perhaps find it even easier to despise a king, who is a man of mortal nature. And if, sir, the one who denies your sovereignty deserves the severest punishment, how much more terrible a punishment is due to the one who denies the Creator of the world?” The king ought to have admired the wisdom of this answer. Instead he stripped the noble athlete of his wealth and rank, and ordered him to go about wearing nothing but a loincloth and to drive the army’s camels. Some days later, looking out of his room, the king saw the excellent man scorched by the sun and covered with dust. He remembered the illustrious rank of his father, sent for him, and told him to put on a linen tunic. Then, thinking that the hardship he had suffered and the kindness shown him had softened his heart, he said: “Now at least give up your opposition, and deny the carpenter’s son.” Full of holy zeal, Hormisdas tore the tunic and flung it away, saying: “If you think this will make a man give up the true faith, keep your present along with your false belief.” When the king saw how bold he was, he drove him naked from the palace. [g] A man named Suenes, who owned a thousand slaves, resisted the king and refused to deny his Master. So the king asked him which of his slaves was the lowest, handed over to that slave the ownership of all the rest, and gave him Suenes himself to be his slave. He also gave him Suenes’s wife in marriage, thinking that in this way he could bend the will of the champion of the truth. But he was disappointed, for Suenes had built his house on the rock. [h]

The king also arrested and imprisoned a deacon named Benjamin. After two years an envoy came from Rome to deal with other matters. When he was told of this imprisonment, he asked the king to release the deacon. The king ordered Benjamin to promise that he would not try to teach the Christian religion to any of the Magi, and the envoy urged Benjamin to obey. But after Benjamin had heard what the envoy had to say, he replied: “It is impossible for me not to share the light I have received. For how great a penalty is due for hiding our talent, the story in the holy Gospels teaches.” The king had not yet been told of this refusal, and he ordered him set free. Benjamin went on as before, seeking to catch those held down by the darkness of ignorance and to bring them to the light of knowledge. After a year his conduct was reported to the king. He was summoned and ordered to deny the one he worshiped. Then he asked the king: “What punishment should be given to someone who deserts his allegiance and prefers another?” The king said: “Death and torture.” The wise deacon went on: “Then how should he be treated who abandons his Maker and Creator, makes a god of one of his fellow slaves, and gives him the honor due to his Lord?” Then the king was moved to anger. He had twenty reeds sharpened and driven into the nails of Benjamin’s hands and feet. When he saw that Benjamin took this torture for child’s play, he sharpened another reed and drove it into his private parts, and by working it up and down he caused unspeakable agony. After this torture the impious and savage tyrant ordered him to be impaled on a thick, knotted stake, and so the noble sufferer gave up his spirit. [i]

These impious men committed countless other acts of violence like these. But we must not be astonished that the Lord of all puts up with their savagery and impiety. For before the reign of Constantine the Great all the Roman emperors poured out their wrath on the friends of the truth. Diocletian, on the day of the Savior’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 wickedness perished. [j] The Lord foretold these wars and the victory of the church, and what has happened teaches us that war brings us more blessing than peace. Peace makes us soft, easygoing and cowardly. War sharpens our courage and makes us despise this present world as something passing away. But these are observations we have often made in other writings.