The 16,000 Martyrs of Persia during the Reign of Shapur II, 4th century AD

King Sapor II sentences Persian Christians to torture and death, ca. AD 340.

With Constantine's turn toward Christianity in AD 312, the systematic persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire came to an end. However, at the same time Christianity was enjoying increasing imperial favor in the Roman world, a great persecution erupted in the neighboring kingdom of Persia, starting about the year AD 339. Constantine himself had written a letter to the Persian king, Sapor II, lauding the Christian religion to his fellow ruler and asking him to protect the Christians among his subjects. But some within the Persian court—and eventually Sapor himself—came to view the dramatic rise of Christianity as a dire threat that needed to be extirpated from the realm.

Here are several passages which describe the origin and progress of the Persian persecution, taken from the near contemporary Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen written about a century after the events they describe.

When in course of time the Christians increased in number, assembled as churches, and appointed priests and deacons, the Magi, who had from time immemorial acted as priests of the Persian religion, became deeply incensed against them. The Jews who, through envy, are in some way naturally opposed to the Christian religion, were likewise offended. They therefore brought accusations before Sapor, the reigning sovereign, against Symeon who was then archbishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, royal cities of Persia, and charged him with being a friend of the Cæsar of the Romans and with communicating the affairs of the Persians to him. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 9]

This passage shows the impact of Constantine’s conversion on the politics of rival Persia. Whereas Christianity was once tolerated in Persia because Christians were considered fellow enemies of the Roman Empire, with the conversion of Constantine, Christians were now viewed as agents of the Roman state. It should be noted that these Magi were a far cry from the astrologers who hailed the new-born king of the Jews in the Gospel accounts. These were the high-priests of the ancient Zoroastrian religion in Persia.

In the Syriac Martyrologies, some additional details of the accusations against the Christians emerge: “If you, King of Kings…should send great and wise epistles of your empire and handsome gifts…to Caesar, they would not be honorable in his eyes. But if Symeon sent him one small, contemptible letter, he would rise and pay homage…and speedily carry out his command. And under these circumstances, there is no secret in your empire which he does not write and make known to Caesar.” [taken from Neusner: "Babylonian Jewry and Shapur II"]

Sozomen continues:

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Sapor believed these accusations and at first imposed intolerably oppressive taxes upon the Christians, although he knew that the generality of them had voluntarily embraced poverty. He appointed cruel men to exact these taxes, hoping that by the want of necessaries and the atrocity of the tax-gatherers, they might be compelled to abjure their religion, for this was his aim.
     Afterwards, however, he commanded that the priests and ministers of God should be slain with the sword. The churches were demolished, their vessels were deposited in the treasury, and Symeon was arrested as a traitor to the kingdom and the religion of the Persians. Thus the Magi, with the co-operation of the Jews, quickly destroyed the houses of prayer. Symeon, on his apprehension, was bound with chains and brought before the king. There he evinced the excellence and firmness of his character, for when Sapor commanded that he should be led away to the torture, he did not fear and would not prostrate himself. The king, greatly exasperated, demanded why he did not prostrate himself as he had done formerly. Symeon replied that formerly he was not led away bound, in order that he might abjure the truth of God, and therefore did not then object to pay the customary respect to royalty. But that on the present occasion it would not be proper for him to do so, for he stood there in defense of godliness and of the one true faith.
     When he ceased speaking, the king commanded him to worship the sun, promising as an inducement to bestow gifts upon him and to raise him to honor, but on the other hand threatening, in case of noncompliance, to visit him and the whole body of Christians with destruction. When the king found that promises and menaces were alike unavailing, and that Symeon firmly refused to worship the sun or to betray his religion, he remanded him to prison, probably imagining that if kept for a time in bonds, he would change his mind. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 9]

At this point, Sapor was shocked to discover that there were Christians in his own court—indeed, a member of his own household was a Christian:

When Symeon was being conducted to prison, Usthazanes, an aged eunuch, the foster-father of Sapor and superintendent of the palace who happened to be sitting at the gates of the palace, arose to do him reverence. Symeon reproachfully forbade him in a loud and haughty voice, averted his countenance, and passed by, for the eunuch had been formerly a Christian but had recently yielded to authority and worshiped the sun. This conduct so affected the eunuch, that he wept aloud, laid aside the white garment with which he was robed, and clothed himself as a mourner in black. He then seated himself in front of the palace, crying and groaning, and saying, “Woe is me! What must not await me? For I have denied God, and on this account Symeon, formerly my familiar friend, does not think me worthy of being spoken to, but turns away and hastens from me.”
     When Sapor heard of what had occurred, he called the eunuch to him and inquired into the cause of his grief and asked him whether any calamity had befallen his family. Usthazanes replied and said, “O king, nothing has occurred to my family but I would rather have suffered any other affliction whatsoever than that which has befallen me. Now I mourn because I am alive and ought to have been dead long ago. Yet I still see the sun which, not voluntarily but to please thee, I professed to worship. Therefore, on both accounts, it is just that I should die, for I have been a betrayer of Christ and a deceiver of thee.” He then swore by the Maker of heaven and earth that he would never swerve from his convictions.
     Sapor, astonished at the wonderful conversion of the eunuch, was still more enraged against the Christians as if they had effected it by enchantments. Still, he compassionated the old man and strove by alternate gentleness and severity to bring him over to his own sentiments. But finding that his efforts were useless and that Usthazanes persisted in declaring that he would never have the folly to worship the creature instead of the Creator, he became inflamed with passion and commanded that the eunuch’s head should be struck off with a sword. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 9]

Sapor hoped that by holding his own foster-father accountable for the crime of being a Christian, he would overawe the rest of his subjects and convince them to apostatize. Symeon the bishop, who was still in prison, offered prayers for the martyred eunuch and prepared for his own execution which happened on Good Friday:

The following day, which happened to be the sixth day of the week and likewise the day on which, as immediately preceding the festival of the resurrection, the annual memorial of the passion of the Savior is celebrated, the king issued orders for the decapitation of Symeon, for he had been again conducted to the palace from the prison, had reasoned most boldly with Sapor on points of doctrine, and had expressed a determination never to worship either the king or the sun.

Detail of Persian Christians awaiting their fate.

     On the same day a hundred other prisoners were ordered to be slain. Symeon beheld their execution, and last of all he was put to death. Amongst these victims were bishops, presbyters, and other clergy of different grades. As they were being led out to execution, the chief of the Magi approached them and asked them whether they would preserve their lives by conforming to the religion of the king and by worshiping the sun. As none of them would comply with this condition, they were conducted to the place of execution and the executioners applied themselves to the task of slaying these martyrs. Symeon exhorted them to constancy and reasoned concerning death, and the resurrection, and piety, and showed them from the Sacred Scriptures that a death like theirs is true life, whereas to live and through fear to deny God is as truly death....
     The martyrs gladly listened to this discourse of Symeon’s and went forward with alacrity to meet their death. After the execution of three hundred martyrs, Symeon himself was slain, and Abdechalaas and Ananias, two presbyters of his own church who had been his fellow-prisoners, suffered with him. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 10]

It seems that these executions were not fully successful in frightening Persian Christians into abandoning their faith. So on Easter day the next year, Sapor issued an edict that made it a capital crime for any of his subjects to profess Christianity. Acting as willing agents of the king, the Magi fanned out throughout Persia in an effort to discover every Christian and bring them to punishment. Sozomen reports that "an immense number" were executed by the sword. But it wasn't until another of Sapor's beloved eunuchs, Azadas by name, was found out and slain that the king decided to relent slightly, declaring that only "teachers of religion" should be slain.

During this time, the superstitious fears of a credulous queen (who may have been Sapor's wife or mother—the sources are unclear), resulted in the literal undoing of Saint Tarbula, the sister of Saint Symeon, and two other women:

About the same period, the queen was attacked with a disease and Tarbula, the sister of Symeon the bishop, a holy virgin, was arrested, as likewise her sister who was a widow and had abjured a second marriage and her servant who, like her, had devoted herself to a religious life. The cause of their arrest was the calumny of the Jews who reported that they had injured the queen by their enchantments in revenge for the death of Symeon. As invalids easily give credit to the most frightful representations, the queen believed the calumny and especially because it emanated from the Jews, for she had great confidence in their veracity and in their attachment for herself—she had embraced their sentiments, and lived in the observance of the Jewish rites. 

Antique woodcut of Saint Tarbula sawn in twain.

      The Magi having seized Tarbula and her companions, condemned them to death and after having sawn them asunder, fastened them up to posts, advising the queen to pass through the place of execution that the charm might be dissolved and the disease removed. It is said that Tarbula was extremely beautiful and that one of the Magi having become deeply enamored with her, sent some money secretly to her and promised to save her and her companions if she would accede to his desires. But instead of listening to his proposals, she rebuked his licentiousness and joyfully prepared for death, for she preferred to die rather than to lose her virginity. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 12]

See the abovementioned article by Jacob Neusner, "Babylonian Jewry and Shapur II", for a modern perspective, context and opinion on this incident.

The Magi continued to sweep the country in search of Christian clergy and were apparently very successful, gathering up a very large number of prisoners. In their zeal to compel these captured Christians to worship the sun, the Magi used various excruciating tortures, scourging some and breaking the limbs of others, Sozomen providing several additional examples not recorded here. Many of these victims were eventually put to death. Toward the end of his account, Sozomen attempted a partial reckoning of the victims:

Subsequently, a multitude of presbyters, deacons, monks, holy virgins, ministers of the church, and laborers in word and doctrine, terminated their lives by martyrdom. The following are the names of the bishops, so far as I have been able to ascertain: Barbasymes, Paul, Gadiabes, Sabinus, Mareas, Mocius, John, Hormisdas, Papas, James, Romas, Maares, Agas, Bochres, Abdas, Abdiesus, John, Abraham, Agdelas, Sapor, Isaac, and Dausas. The latter had been made prisoner by the Persians and brought from a place named Zabdæus. He died about this time in defense of the Christian doctrine and Mareabdes, a chorepiscopus and about two hundred and fifty of his clergy, who had also been captured by the Persians, suffered with him. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 14]

Sozomen wraps up his account of the Persian persecution with an attempt to reckon the numbers of the slain:

It would be difficult to relate in detail every circumstance respecting them, such as their names, their country, the mode of their martyrdom, and the species of torture to which they were subjected. I shall briefly state that the number of men and women whose names have been ascertained and who were martyred at this period, has been computed to be upwards of sixteen thousand, while the multitude of martyrs whose names are unknown was so great that the Persians, the Syrians, and the inhabitants of Edessa, have failed in all their efforts to compute the number. [Taken from the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book II, Chapter 14]

The number 16,000 seems like a reasonable baseline estimate. Sozomen, as a native of Roman Palestine with strong connections to the monastic communities in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, was well placed to have access to data as accurate as the time period could afford.

It is intriguing to compare the persecution experienced by the Persian Christians with that of the Roman Christians of a generation before. Based on Sozomen's account, the Persian persecution seems to have been more wide-ranging, brutal and thorough than the persecutions carried out in Roman domains by Diocletian and the other tetrarchs. The reason for this seems to be that the Zoroastrian religion and its primary priest-practitioners—the Magi—were more zealous in seeking out and destroying the Christian religion than Roman pagan priests had been. In general, the Persians seem to have retained a stronger belief in and attachment to their ancestral religion than the Romans, for whom the potency of the pagan pantheon seems to have already been on the wane even before the advent of Christ.

Furthermore, with their more advanced legal system and Republican traditions, the Romans seem to have at least paid lip-service to civil liberties and due process. By contrast, the Persian system was largely autocratic. The king's word was law and if he deigned to transmit his power over life and death to the magi, allowing them to act as his agents in enforcing the law against a despised minority group, then each of them could become a mini tyrant, destroying whoever they wished via the power of accusation. This was exactly the sort of outcome that Trajan sought to avoid in his famous letter to Pliny the Younger.