The Martyrs of Persia (4th-5th c.)

When Constantine made the Roman empire Christian, the Christians of the Persian empire, many of them in Mesopotamia along the old frontier, became suspect to their own king as friends of Rome, and Constantine’s own letter to Shapur II commending them to his care did them no good. From about 340 until his death in 379 Shapur waged the longest persecution of the early Church. Symeon bar Sabbae, bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, was put to death with a hundred of his clergy, and Sozomen, writing a century later, knew the names of sixteen thousand martyrs and knew there were more. Persecution returned under Yazdegerd I and Bahram V in the 420s, when James, a courtier who had denied Christ and repented, was cut apart limb by limb. The Orthodox Church keeps these martyrs through the year, beside those of Rome.