This was achieved by fusing the contemporary physical and symbolic landscape with that of the past. Key sites in ancient Iran, such as Persepolis, a capital of the Achaemenid Empire, and the necropolis Naksh-i Rustām, associated with the great Persian kings like Darius and Cyrus, were appropriated for cultural propaganda; new inscriptions, monumental architecture and rock relief carvings were ADded which sought to elide the present regime with glorious memories of the past.23 The coinage was overhauled: the Greek script and busts styled on Alexander the Great that had been in use for centuries were replaced by a new and distinctive royal profile on one side – facing the opposite direction – and a fire altar on the other.24 The latter was deliberately provocative, a statement of intent about a new identity and a new attitude to religion. So far as the limited source material for the period allows us to understand, rulers of this region had for centuries shown tolerance on matters of faith, allowing a considerable degree of coexistence.25
The rise of a new dynasty soon brought about a stiffening of attitudes, and the teachings of Zardusht (or Zarathushtra) were unambiguously promoted at the expense of other ideas. Known to the ancient Greeks as Zoroaster – the great Persian prophet who lived around 1000 BC if not earlier still – he taught that the universe was divided according to two principles, Ahura Mazda (Illuminating Wisdom) and its antithesis, Angra Mainyu (Hostile Spirit), which were in a constant state of conflict. It was important, therefore, to worship the former, which was responsible for good order. The division of the world into beneficent and malevolent forces extended into every aspect of life and even affected areas such as the categorisation of animals.26 Ritual purification was a vital element of Zoroastrian worship, above all through fire. Ahura Mazda, as the creed set out, could bring ‘goodness from evil, light from darkness’ and salvation from demons.27
This cosmology allowed the Sasanian rulers the opportunity to link their power with that of the golden days of ancient Persia when the great kings professed their devotion to Ahura Mazda.28 But it also provided a powerful moral framework for a period of military and economic expansion: the emphasis on constant struggle strengthened minds for battle, while the focus on order and discipline underscored administrative reforms that became the signature of an increasingly strident, resurgent state. Zoroastrianism had a robust set of beliefs that were entirely in line with a militaristic culture of imperial renewal.29
The Sasanians expanded aggressively under Ardashīr I and his son Shāpūr I, bringing oasis towns, communication routes and whole regions under direct control, or forcing them into client status. Important towns such as Sistan, Merv and Balkh were taken in a series of campaigns that began in the 220s, while a significant part of the Kushan territories became vassal states, administered by Sasanian officials who took the title kushānshāh (ruler of the Kushans).30 A triumphant inscription at Naksh-i Rustām sets out the scale of the achievement, noting how Shāpūr’s realm had extended deep into the east, running as far as Peshawar and ‘up to the boundaries’ of Kashgar and Tashkent.31
Adherents of Zoroastrianism positioned themselves close to the centre of power when the Sasanians took the throne and did much to concentrate administrative control in their hands at the expense of all other religious minorities.32 This was now projected into the new regions controlled by the Persian rulers. Inscriptions commissioned by the chief priest, Kirdīr, in the middle of the third century AD celebrated the expansion of Zoroastrianism. The religion and its priests had come to be esteemed and honoured far and wide, while ‘many fires and priestly colleges’ had flourished in lands that had been conquered from the Romans. A great deal of hard work was required to spread the faith, the inscription pointedly remarks, but as Kirdīr modestly put it, ‘I underwent much toil and trouble for the good of the yazads [divine powers] and the rulers, and for the good of my own soul.’33
The promotion of Zoroastrianism was accompanied by the suppression of local cults and rival cosmologies, which were dismissed as evil doctrines. Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Manichaeans and others were persecuted; places of worship were ransacked, with ‘idols destroyed, the sanctuaries of demons demolished and transformed into temples for the gods’.34 The expansion of the Persian state was accompanied by a stern enforcement of values and beliefs that were presented as both traditional and essential for political and military success. Those who offered different explanations or competing values were hunted down and in many cases killed – such as Mani, a charismatic third-century prophet whose blend of ideas, drawing on a pot-pourri of sources from east and west, had once been championed by Shāpūr I; his teachings were now condemned as subversive, intoxicating and dangerous and his followers were mercilessly hunted down.35
Among those singled out for harsh treatment, and explicitly mentioned by Kirdīr in his list of those targeted, were nasraye and kristyone – that is to say ‘Nazarenes’ and ‘Christians’. While there has been much scholarly debate about which groups are meant by these two terms, it is now accepted that the former refers to the native population of the Sasanian Empire who had become Christian, while the latter refers to the Christians who were deported east in large numbers by Shāpūr I following the occupation of Roman Syria that took local and central authorities by surprise.36 One of the reasons why Zoroastrianism became so embedded in the consciousness and identity of third-century Persia was as a reaction to the inroads being made by Christianity, which had started to spread alarmingly along the trade routes – just as Buddhism had done in the east. The dramatic radicalisation of Zoroastrian philosophy precisely around this time was accelerated by a hostile reaction to the Christian thought and ideas brought by merchants and by prisoners resettled in Persian territory after being deported from Syria.37
Christianity has long been associated with the Mediterranean and western Europe. In part, this has been due to the location of the leadership of the church, with the senior figures of the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox churches based in Rome, Canterbury and Constantinople (modern Istanbul) respectively. But in fact every aspect of early Christianity was Asian. Its geographic focal point, of course, was Jerusalem, together with the other sites related to Jesus’ birth, life and crucifixion; its original language was Aramaic, a member of the Semitic group of tongues native to the Near East; its theological backdrop and spiritual canvas was Judaism, formed in Israel and during the exile in Egypt and Babylon; its stories were shaped by the deserts, floods, droughts and famines that were unfamiliar in Europe.38
Historical accounts of the expansion of Christianity across the Mediterranean region are well established, but its early progress was far more spectacular and more promising in the east than it was in the Mediterranean basin, where it spread along the sea lanes.39 To start with, the Roman authorities left Christians alone, bemused more than anything else by the passion of its early adherents. Pliny the Younger, for example, wrote to the Emperor Trajan in the second century to ask for advice about what to do with the Christians who were brought before him in Asia Minor. ‘I have never taken part in trials of Christians,’ he wrote. ‘I therefore do not know what type of punishment is appropriate, nor how far to look into their activities.’ He had some of them executed, ‘for I had no doubt that whatever it is that they believe, their stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy should certainly be punished’.40 The reply from the Emperor advised tolerance: do not search for Christians, he said, but if they are denounced, deal with them on a case-by-case basis, ‘for it is not possible to set out a set rule that would apply regardless of circumstance’. But on no account act on rumour or anonymous accusation; to do otherwise, he wrote loftily, would be ‘out of keeping with the spirit of our age’.41
Not long after this exchange, however, attitudes hardened, reflecting the deepening penetration of Christianity throughout Roman society. The imperial military in particular began to view the new religion, with its subversive attitudes to sin, sex, death and life in general, as a threat to traditional martial values.42 From the second century, rounds
of brutal persecution saw Christians murdered in their thousands, often as part of public entertainment. A rich corpus of texts commemorating the martyrs who lost their lives because of their faith grew up as a result.43 Early Christians had to battle against prejudice, bringing anguished cries from writers such as Tertullian (c. 160–225 AD), whose appeals have been compared by one distinguished scholar to Shakespeare’s Shylock: we Christians ‘live beside you, share your food, your dress, your customs, the same necessities of life as you do’, he implored.44 Just because we do not attend Roman religious ceremonies, he wrote, does not mean that we are not human beings. ‘Have we different teeth, or organs of incestuous lust?’45
Christianity first spread east via the Jewish communities who had lived in Mesopotamia since the Babylonian exile.46 They received reports of Jesus’ life and death not in Greek translations, as almost all converts did in the west, but in Aramaic, the language of the disciples and of Jesus himself. Just as in the Mediterranean, traders were instrumental in the evangelising process in the east – with the town of Edessa, modern Urfa in south-eastern Turkey, becoming particularly prominent because of its position as a crossroads for routes running north–south and east–west.47
Evangelists soon reached the Caucasus, where burial practices and inscriptions in Georgia reveal the existence of a substantial population of Jews who converted.48 Not long afterwards, there were Christian communities dotted around the Persian Gulf. Sixty tombs close to Bahrain cut into coral banks show how far the religion had reached by the start of the third century.49 A text known as The Book of the Laws of the Countries, written around the same time, reports that Christians were to be found all over Persia and as far east as territory controlled by the Kushans – in other words, into what is now Afghanistan.50
The dissemination of the religion was encouraged by the large-scale deportations of Christians from Persia during Shāpūr I’s reign in the third century. Among the exiles were high-profile figures such as Demetrius, the bishop of Antioch, who was transported to Beth Lapat, modern Gundeshāpūr in south-west Iran, where he assembled his fellow Christians around him and established a new bishopric.51 There were some Christians of high status in Persia, such as a Roman named Candida who was a favoured concubine at the court until her refusal to abandon her faith led to her martyrdom, according to a Christian account warning of the bloodthirstiness of the Shah and those around him.52
These stirring stories fall into a category of literature seeking to establish the superiority of Christian customs and beliefs over traditional practices. Sources are scant, but we can get a sense of the propaganda battles being fought at the time. Unlike the other inhabitants of Persia, wrote one author, the ‘disciples of Christ’ in Asia ‘do not practise the condemnable habits of these pagan peoples’. This was to be welcomed, noted another writer, as a sign of how Christians improved standards in Persia and elsewhere in the east; ‘Persians who have become His disciples no longer marry their mothers,’ while those on the steppes no longer ‘feed on human flesh, because of Christ’s word which has come to them’. Such developments ought to be warmly welcomed, he wrote.53
It was the growing penetration and visibility of Christians in Persia in the middle of the third century that caused the Zoroastrian priesthood to react with increasing violence, echoing the response in the Roman Empire.54 But as Kirdīr’s inscription testifies, attitudes in Persia were starting to harden not just to Christianity but to other faiths too. Stamping out alternative cosmologies went hand in hand with the fervent Zoroastrianism that characterised the resurgence of Persia. A state religion was starting to emerge, one that identified Zoroastrian values as synonymous with Persian and provided what has been called ‘a supporting pillar of Sasanian kingship’.55
A series of chain reactions had been set in motion, whereby competition for resources and military confrontation prompted the development of sophisticated belief systems that not only made sense of victories and success, but directly undermined those of neighbouring rivals. In the case of Persia, this meant an increasingly strident and self-confident priesthood whose role extended deep into the sphere of politics – as the inscriptions make clear.
This inevitably had consequences, especially when it was exported into border regions or newly conquered territories. Setting up the fire temples of which Kirdīr was so proud not only risked antagonising local populations but also enforced doctrine and faith by force. Zoroastrianism became synonymous with Persia. It did not take much for this religion to be seen as a tool of occupation rather than a form of spiritual liberation. It was no coincidence, then, that some began to look to Christianity precisely as an antidote to the heavy-handed promotion of beliefs from the Persian centre.
The precise circumstances of how and when rulers in the Caucasus adopted Christianity are not entirely clear. Accounts of the conversion of the Armenian King Tiridates III at the start of the fourth century were written some time later – and owe something to the desire to tell a good story as well as to the Christian bias of their authors.56 But, according to tradition, Tiridates converted after turning into a pig and roaming naked in fields before being healed by St Gregory, who had been thrown into a snake-infested pit for refusing to worship an Armenian goddess. Gregory healed Tiridates by causing his snout, tusks and skin to fall off before baptising the grateful monarch in the Euphrates.57
Tiridates was not the only important political figure to embrace Christianity in this period, for in the early fourth century Constantine, one of the most influential figures in Rome, also converted. The decisive moment came during a tempestuous civil war when Constantine took on his rival Maxentius at Milvian Bridge in central Italy in 312 AD. Shortly before the battle, the former supposedly gazed into the sky and saw ‘a cross-shaped light’ above the sun, together with Greek words declaring ‘by this sign, you will conquer’. The full meaning of this became clear to him after he had a dream in which an apparition of Jesus Christ explained to him that the sign of the cross would help him defeat all his rivals. This, at any rate, was how some liked to describe what had happened.58
Christian accounts leave little doubt about the limitless enthusiasm with which the Emperor personally oversaw the enforcement of Christianity at the expense of all other religions. We learn from one author, for example, that the new city of Constantinople was not ‘polluted by altars, Grecian temples or pagan sacrifices’, but enriched by ‘splendid houses of prayer in which God promised to bless the efforts of the Emperor’.59 Another writer states that famous centres for cults were shut down by the Emperor, while oracles and divination, staple features of Roman theology, were banned. The customary sacrifice made before official business could take place was likewise outlawed, while pagan statues were pulled down and legislated against.60 There was little room for equivocation in the story told by authors with vested interests to show Constantine as single-minded promoter of his new beliefs.
In fact, Constantine’s motivations for conversion were certainly more complex than the accounts written during his lifetime or shortly afterwards like to suggest. For one thing, taking on the Christian faith adopted by large numbers in the military was shrewd politics; for another, monuments, coins and inscriptions from around the empire which depict Constantine as a staunch supporter of the cult of the Undefeated Sun (or Sol Invictus) suggest that his epiphany was perhaps more tentative than the breathless eulogies make out. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, the empire did not change character overnight, for leading figures in Rome, Constantinople and elsewhere continued following their traditional beliefs long after the Emperor’s revelation and the enthusiastic way he set about supporting his new faith.61
Nevertheless, Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity clearly brought about a sea change in the Roman Empire. The persecutions that had peaked during the reign of Diocletian just a decade or so earlier came to an end. Gladiator fights, long the staple of Roman entertainment, were abolished as a result of Christian revulsion at displays that s
o devalued the sanctity of life. ‘Bloody spectacles displease us,’ reads an extract of a law passed in 325 and recorded in a later compilation of imperial legislation. ‘We [therefore] wholly forbid the existence of gladiators.’ Those who had previously been sent into the arena as punishment for crimes they had committed or beliefs they refused to abandon were henceforth to be sent to ‘serve in the mines, so that they will assume the penalty for their crimes without shedding their blood’.62
As resources were lavished on supporting Christianity across the empire, Jerusalem was singled out for massive building works, complete with extravagant endowments. If Rome and Constantinople were administrative centres of the empire, Jerusalem was to be its spiritual heart. Parts of the city were flattened and soil dug out from beneath pagan temples was dumped as far away as possible, ‘stained as it was by devil worship’. Excavations now revealed one holy place after another, including the cave where Jesus had been laid to rest, which was renovated and, ‘like our Saviour, restored to life’.63
Constantine took charge of these works himself, directing what materials should be used in the construction of a church on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. The Emperor had been willing to delegate the choice of fabrics and the adornment of the walls to an appointee, but he wanted to be involved in the type of marble to be used, and in the selection of columns. ‘I should like to know your opinion’, he wrote to Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, ‘whether the ceiling should be panelled or decorated in another style of some kind. If it is panelled, it might also be decorated with gold.’ Such choices, he went on, required his personal approval.64
Constantine’s celebrated conversion marked the start of a new chapter in the history of the Roman Empire. Although Christianity was not made a state religion, the easing of restrictions and punishments opened the floodgates for the new faith. This was good news for Christians and Christianity in the west, but it led to disaster for Christianity in the east. Although to start with Constantine was a tactful convert, issuing coins bearing distinctly pagan images and erecting a statue of himself as Helios-Apollo in his new city, he soon became more strident.65 Before long, he was portraying himself as the protector of Christians wherever they were – including outside the Roman Empire.
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