Minority Religions in the Sasanian Empire: Suppression, Integration and Relations with Rome

Gauging the importance of religion to the exercise of political will in

the Sasanian world requires enormous care. It is all too easy to take

the Great Kings at their word as they championed the doctrines of

Zoroastrianism in their political pronouncements, especially as some

of them also persecuted Christianity. Whether or not such sentiments

were genuine, a closer analysis of the evidence suggests a more pragmatic

royal use of religion. The political realities on the ground

were more often the deciding factor in how the kings related to the

religious sectors of Sasanian society. This state of affairs sometimes

set the kings against the Zoroastrian clerics, whose agendas were

not always in alignment, and it explains why Christian persecutions

were usually motivated more by politics than doctrine. Moreover,

this dynamic also explains the prominence of the Christian church in

the later Sasanian period as kings employed it as a base of support,

much as they had the Zoroastrian hierarchy.