Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

222 7 Religion: Christianity and Zoroastrianism
the Roman emperor. (4) The Persian king found the man very pious and treated
him with honour, just as it befitted a man loved by god. (5) This irritated the
Magians who had much power over the Persian king; for they feared that he might
persuade the king to become a Christian. 68 (6) For with his prayers Mārūtā cured
his chronic headache, which the Magians had not been able to treat successfully.
(7) The Magians therefore devised a trick; as the Persians worship the fire but the
king was used to worshipping the eternal fire in a particular house, 69 they hid a
man under the floor at the time when the king used to pray and instructed him to
utter that the king had to be expelled because he had committed an impious deed
because he thought a Christian priest could be ‘god beloved’. (8) When Yazdgard
(I) (this was the name of the Persian king) heard this, he wanted to send him
away although he much respected him, (9) Mārūtā however, who was indeed a
god-beloved man, focused on his prayers, through which he found out about the
deceit devised by the Magians. (10) He said to the king, ‘Don’t be deceived, king.
But when you go in and hear the voice you will dig up and find the deceit; for it is
not the fire that is speaking but a human device causes this.’ (11) The Persian king
followed Mārūtā’s instructions and went back into the house where the eternal
fire was. (12) When he heard the same voice again he gave the order to dig up the
ground; and the one who had produced the supposedly divine voice was caught.
(13) The king was extremely angry and made the Magians pay for their deed; then
he promised Mārūtā that he could build churches where he wanted; this is why
Christianity spread among the Persians. (14) At that time Mārūtā left Persia and
returned to Constantinople; but soon after he was sent back again in the context of
an embassy. (15) Again the Magians thought of tricks in order that the king would
not receive the man; they produced some bad odour wherever the king tended to
appear. They slandered the followers of Christianity by saying that they caused this.
(16) As already before the king had been suspicious of the Magians, he was very
keen to find the culprits and again the ones who had caused the bad odour were
found among them. (17) This is why again many of them were punished; the king,
however, held Mārūtā in even higher esteem. (18) And he loved the Romans and
welcomed their friendship; and he nearly converted to Christianity after Mārūtā
had passed a further test, together with Ablaas, the bishop of Persia. (19) For by
spending their time with fasting and praying, these two drove out a demon that
was torturing the king’s son. (20) But Yazdgard died before he fully converted to
the Christian faith; the throne fell to his son Bahrām (V), during whose reign the
peace between Romans and Persians was broken, as I shall report a little later.
The account of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates (c. 380–440) reveals
how important the reign of Yazdgard I (399–420) was for the evolution of
68 At this point and later on in the text (cf. esp. 18–20) Socrates tries to point out the superiority of the
Christian faith; it would have been impossible for a Sasanian king to convert to Christianity as the
Sasanian ruler was a ‘Zoroastrian ruler’ qua office.
69 In the Sasanian period there were various types of fires, also one that symbolised the royal rule;
on the terms used for individual fires and a possible hierarchy among them see the references in
Schippmann 1990: 102; on the ‘fire of the king’ see Wiesehöfer 2001: 166–7.