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46 Cæsar to reveal." Long afterwards, under Piruz (459–484), Babwai of Seleucia is cruelly put to death because a letter from him to the Emperor Zeno had been intercepted, in which he had written (as the Persians translated): "God has delivered us up to an impious sovereign." Shapur first made Christians pay double taxes to subsidize the war; then begins the long list of executions and torture which lasts throughout his reign. Christianity is punished by death; all Persians must show their loyalty to the King of Kings by accepting his religion. Simon Bar Ṣabbâe, Papa's successor at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, is told to worship the sun. He answers: "The sun put on mourning when its Creator died, as a slave for its master." His companions are killed before him, five bishops and a hundred priests; he dies last on Good Friday, 339. Shahdost, his successor, was martyred in 342; the next bishop of the capital, Bar Ba‘shmīn, in 346. There was then a vacancy of twenty years.

It would be long to give even an outline of the martyrdoms under Shapur II. Till he died in 379, all over Persia, bishops, clergy, laymen and women were arrested, offered their choice between accepting Mazdæism or death, and were executed with all manner of horrible torture. The Roman martyrology on April 21 keeps the memory of St. Simon Bar Ṣabbâ‘e and his companions (Byzantine Calendar, April 17); and on August 4 we commemorate: "In Persia the holy martyrs Ia and her companions, who with nine thousand others, under Shapur, tortured by diverse pains, suffered martyrdom;" so also the Byzantine Calendar on the same day. The Nestorians and Chaldees keep on the sixth Friday of summer "the memory of Mâr Shim‘un Bar Ṣabbâ‘e, Katholikos and Patriarch, disciple of Mâr Papa Katholikos, and of the Fathers who were crowned with him." After Shapur's death Mâruthâ, Bishop of Maiferḳaṭ