Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

154
HISTORY OF PERSIA.
former subject to the latter, the war was centralized
in Mesopotamia or extended into Asia Minor, the
northern frontiers cf Persia being then secure. In
every instance we find the Persians endeavouring to
make sure of Armenia, and unwilling to join in wars
distant from their own centre till they had complete
control over the frontier mountains.
Again in iheir dealings with Christianity the Persian
and if fair and
rulers were characteristically perfidious ;
open enmity did not succeed, rarely scrupled to adopt
any other means to sap
known, the Greek Church from the fourth to the end
of the sixth century, was rent by every form of con-
its foundations. As is well
troversy and religious fanaticism, followed as these
are invariably by the bitter religious animosities; the
emperors themselves had their share, too, in many
of these quarrels, while oecumenical councils failed to
reduce the factions to unity, often, perhaps, because
the distances were so great and intercommunication
so difficult. All these were sources of division among
the Christians, and sources, too, of weakness; and
the Persian rulers fostered both and profited by
both; their object being to give their utmost
support to any sect in arms against the orthodoxy of
Constantinople. Thus, when the Nestorians were
ejected from the schools of Edessa, they
found a
hearty welcome among the Sassanians of Persia;
Firiiz, the then monarch, seizing, in their behalf, the
episcopal chair of Ctesiphon, the seat of the Patriarch
of Assyria and Persia ; while many other bishoprics
shortly after fell into his hands, till all nearly Persia was
Nesiorianized.