03-13-2010, 06:47 AM
Rafa,
Neither Paul nor Nimrod can refute this claim. Please refer to A.D. Lee's Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity
I am going to transcribe a quote from Samuel N. C. Lieu's review of the book:
The events surrounding the martyrdom of the Catholicos Babowai in 484 charged with treachery, and the role played by his rival Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis, who was later accused of being a paid agent of the King of Kings, are clearly relevant here and deserve to be mentioned in connection with the complex role of the Church in the frontier regions. Babowai was elected Catholicos of the Persian Church in Iraq (which then had not yet fully embraced Nestorianism) under the tolerant Hormizd III in 457, but as a convert from Zoroastrianism he was not favoured by Peroz (459-84) and when persecution broke out he wrote to the Roman emperor Zeno requesting intercession. The letter, hidden in the cane of a monk, was intercepted at Nisibis which indicates that the Church probably exercised more effective border-control than the Persian marzban, whose vigilance the Catholicos had every hope of evading. The disclosure of the letter led to the arrest of Babowai and his eventual execution when he refused to re-apostasize to Zoroastrianism. Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis who hankered after the Catholicate, was generally alleged to have brought the exposure to the notice of Peroz and gained a reputation as a majot informer for the King of Kings. As a high- ranking official he kept a close eye on cross- border movements, especially those of the Arabs, and he was sufficiently trusted by the Persian authorities to conduct missions to the Byzantine capital. Although our sources do not explicitly accuse him of undertaking intelligence gathering for the Shahanshah, it would have been extremely likely that he would have transmitted some information of importance ta his master Peroz to bolster his claims of loyalty vis a vis the treachery of Babowai. The cross- frontier travels of another famous graduate of the School of Nisibis, the Catholicos Mar Aba cannot simply be noted as yet another instance of the ease with which clerics could cross frontiers in pursuit of higher theological ot medical training (cf. Lee, 58-9). The Persian authorities knew their loyalty could be trusted and, in the case of Mar Aba, he was unlikely to have gained much sympathy for the cause of Nestorian Christians from an orthodox Justinian whose wife Theodora was a known Monophysite sympathizer. The entire Babowai episode which is so germane to the subject of Lee's book and illustrates so well the complex and conflicting loyalties of the frontier Christian communities inexplicably receives no coverage in the relevant section.
Neither Paul nor Nimrod can refute this claim. Please refer to A.D. Lee's Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity
I am going to transcribe a quote from Samuel N. C. Lieu's review of the book:
The events surrounding the martyrdom of the Catholicos Babowai in 484 charged with treachery, and the role played by his rival Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis, who was later accused of being a paid agent of the King of Kings, are clearly relevant here and deserve to be mentioned in connection with the complex role of the Church in the frontier regions. Babowai was elected Catholicos of the Persian Church in Iraq (which then had not yet fully embraced Nestorianism) under the tolerant Hormizd III in 457, but as a convert from Zoroastrianism he was not favoured by Peroz (459-84) and when persecution broke out he wrote to the Roman emperor Zeno requesting intercession. The letter, hidden in the cane of a monk, was intercepted at Nisibis which indicates that the Church probably exercised more effective border-control than the Persian marzban, whose vigilance the Catholicos had every hope of evading. The disclosure of the letter led to the arrest of Babowai and his eventual execution when he refused to re-apostasize to Zoroastrianism. Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis who hankered after the Catholicate, was generally alleged to have brought the exposure to the notice of Peroz and gained a reputation as a majot informer for the King of Kings. As a high- ranking official he kept a close eye on cross- border movements, especially those of the Arabs, and he was sufficiently trusted by the Persian authorities to conduct missions to the Byzantine capital. Although our sources do not explicitly accuse him of undertaking intelligence gathering for the Shahanshah, it would have been extremely likely that he would have transmitted some information of importance ta his master Peroz to bolster his claims of loyalty vis a vis the treachery of Babowai. The cross- frontier travels of another famous graduate of the School of Nisibis, the Catholicos Mar Aba cannot simply be noted as yet another instance of the ease with which clerics could cross frontiers in pursuit of higher theological ot medical training (cf. Lee, 58-9). The Persian authorities knew their loyalty could be trusted and, in the case of Mar Aba, he was unlikely to have gained much sympathy for the cause of Nestorian Christians from an orthodox Justinian whose wife Theodora was a known Monophysite sympathizer. The entire Babowai episode which is so germane to the subject of Lee's book and illustrates so well the complex and conflicting loyalties of the frontier Christian communities inexplicably receives no coverage in the relevant section.