agreed to do (as indeed was the practice of this sect, when they were not asked to abjure the secret doctrine known to initiates alone), and he killed an ant, which either was, or was thought to be, the sacred symbol of life according to his creed. One notes, with some regret, that the confessor had no feeling but joy and triumph at the fall of the heretic.[1]
Aqib-shima was finally executed by the personal order of Sapor; while Joseph the Qasha, who had been his companion in suffering, was stoned by renegade Christians as the price of their lives. This, it may be mentioned, was a common practice throughout the persecution; any one who fell away from the faith being compelled to earn his pardon by acting as executioner to his more staunch companions.
Monks and nuns were naturally as much the object of persecution as were the clergy—partly as Christian leaders, partly on account of the horror with which all Zoroastrians regarded the profession of the celibate life. Nuns were commonly offered their lives if they would consent to marry;[2] renun-
- ↑ This act of the Manichees forms an interesting comment on a recent Hulsean lecture. "Take from the Christian Church," says Dr. Figgis, "the mysterious birth and the availing death, the empty tomb, and the sacramental presence, and see what you have left. Would it be very much to live by? Would it be anything at all to die for?" It was precisely those four points that the Manichees (no doubt in the name of a so-called deeper mystery) cut out of their Christianity.
- ↑ They would probably be forced to marry Zoroastrians; and a wife whose faith was not that of her husband was unthinkable. The same offer was hardly ever made to monks; probably because the Zoroastrian, like many orientals to-day, simply did not believe in the existence of male celibacy (Bedj., h. 233, 308).
enables the Ottoman to distinguish between different kinds of Christian, one of whom you may kill when you must not touch another!
