Religion in the Parthian and Sasanian Empires

The role of religion, and the development of the Zoroastrian religion in particular, parallels that of other social and administrative institutions in the Arsacid and Sasanian empires and their tendencies towards flexibility or centralization.^[892] No evidence attests to an officially sanctioned or imposed version of Zoroastrianism, much less a Parthian Zoroastrian clerical hierarchy, though it is clear that the Arsacids engaged with the Good Religion in its post-Hellenistic stage of develop­ment.^[893] To judge by the situation at the start of the Sasanian Empire, the Upper Kingdoms hosted a spectrum of Iranian ritual and priestly traditions, with various provinces cultivating several independent practices that grew from Achaemenid Mazdaeism and, more generally, ancient Iranian religious practices.

The Sasanians inherited from the Parthians a non-hierarchical, dogmatically and ritually diverse priesthood.^[896] Armenian Zoroastrianism, for example, seems to have preserved Parthian traditions, including the use of cult statues. The Sasanians suppressed such traditions in a campaign of destruction against practices and cult sites across the empire that they deemed out of line with their new vision.^[897] Over the course of their history, they forged a Zoroastrian orthodoxy and organized priestly hierarchy, though this was slow going.

The Sasanians' periodic invention and imposition of Zoroastrian orthodoxies stemmed from their own centralizing processes and the religious specialists' own fights for courtly recognition and offices.^[899] Like the development of the empire's high offices, the importance and even existence of these offices depended on personal relationships with the king of kings early in the empire, only later becoming more bureaucratized and structured. The process would repeat over centuries as kings sought clerics whose teaching might be politically and theologically expedient to ei­ther artificially impose order for the sake of stability or empire-building (Ardaxsir I, Husraw I) or, conversely, experiment with new cosmological possibilities or break en­trenched powerbases (Säbuhr I, Kawäd I). Either as willing and savvy collaborators, opportunists or just useful idiots, these religious specialists supplied the intellectual armature and brute force often needed to neutralize internal and external opposi­tion. Our first primary-source evidence for this process emerges from the Sasanian royal inscriptions and the inscriptions of the cleric Kerdir, who started his career as a simple priest (herbed) unconnected with the court.^[900] Wahräm I granted him both noble status and high judicial office (dadwar). He achieved the office of mowbedan mowbed under Wahräm II, an office he likely invented. Kerdir appears in many of Wahräm II's rock reliefs among other important courtiers, and Kerdir boasted about how he in effect created an official, centralized Zoroastrian clerical hierarchy where one had not existed and established seminaries (herbedestan) for the training of priests.

By the late empire, Zoroastrianism could be said to have a more defined hierarchy and institutionalized role, and the Sasanian Empire systemically recruited priests (sing. mow, pl. mowan) to fill a variety of administrative and judicial positions and act as a counterbalance to military or bureaucratic authorities.^[901] The mowan discharged judicial, archival, and notary functions. Chief priests (mowbed) could serve alongside or, in some cases, instead of a marzban or satrap in administering especially non-Iranian provinces. Mowbeds appear to have dominated the Sasanian judiciary, supervising judges, also largely drawn from the priesthood.

While Zoroastrianism increasingly became the dominant Iranian religion in the Iranian uplands, the subjects of the Sasanian Empire practiced a number of other religions. As a proselytizing religion with Iranian roots, Manichaeism presented Zoroastrianism’s greatest threat in the early empire.^[905] Founded by the prophet Mani (216-274/7 ce) who came from Sasanian Mesopotamia, the “Religion of Light” in­itially gained the support of Sabuhr I, to whom the prophet Mani dedicated one of his major works, the Sdbuhragdn. After Sabuhr I’s death, Kerdir engineered Mani’s arrest, imprisonment, and death, and persecuted Manichaeism out of existence in the land of its birth, though it survived in the Mediterranean and Central Asia for centuries. While the Sasanians extinguished several other religions or sects, like Buddhism and Mazdakism, others, like Christianity and Judaism, were demograph- ically powerful enough that the Sasanian court recognized or at least superficially co­opted their clerical hierarchies (or just those who presented themselves as such, like the Exilarch), despite the objections of the mowbeddn.^[906] In fact, persecution of non- Zoroastrian religions appears to have remained a concern of the mowbeddn rather than the kings of kings until Constantine the Great.

The reign of Yazdgerd I (399-421) marked a turning point in this regard, establis­hing norms and expectations for the Sasanian court’s interaction with the Jewish and Christian communities and their hierarchies.^[908] Just as the Christianization of Mesopotamia initially threatened an important Persian royal fiscal powerbase, the Christianization of Armenia threatened a source of cavalry for the Sasanian army and the strategic borderland moving Yazdgerd II (439-457) to another localized perse­cution. Despite these persecutions, after Yazdgerd I, the Sasanian court called on the Christian hierarchy to discharge local administrative functions in the Mesopotamian lowlands, and utilized it as an important resource, separate from the wuzurgan, to draw on for official administrative tasks. The Catholikos of the Church of the East resided in Ctesiphon, and Christian bishops served as envoys to the Roman court, physicians, and on occasion, inspected the activities of Sasanian officials on behalf of the Sasanian king of kings. In return, the Church of the East espoused doctrines distinct from the orthodoxy, proclaimed by Constantinople after the council of Chalcedon in 451, and practices that were favorable to the mores of Sasanian Iran, such as a married hier­archy. Furthermore, the king of kings gained greater control over the appointment of Christian bishops, whose election, when contested, was not infrequently decided by the king of kings. The archaeology of Persian Christianity, while not extensive, shows wide variety of monastic and urban churches, which drew from diverse western and eastern architectural, trends including in the case of the metropolitan church at Qasr Bint al-Qadi in Weh Ardaxsir, Sasanian prestige architecture.¹³⁰