MAGIANSaristocrats, including members of the house of Suren, were taking
positions of leadership in the church and in monasteries.^107 The pa-
ternal grandfather of Mihramghusnasp and Hazaroi:' had been a mem-
ber of the highest aristocracy (a descendent of "kings") and had been
governor of New Antioch. Their father was governor of Nasibin and
their maternal grandfather was a mohpat.108 Several high-born Persian
women abandoned Magianism for Christianity in the sixth century:
St. Shirin (d. 559), the daughter of a dihqan at Kirkuk who converted
at the age of eighteen; St. Golindouch (d. 591), who converted in the
reign of Khusraw Anushirvan; and Yazdoe (Christine), a native of
Kirkuk who was the daughter of the marzban of Nasibin and was
married to one of the notables of Nasibin.^109
Most converts whose personal histories are known appear to have
been fairly young members of wealthy, upper-class families who re-
jected Magian material values in favor of asceticism. For many such
converts this meant a complete break with their families, and they
often ran away to start a new life elsewhere, usually in a monastery.
Sometimes they announced their conversion by a ritual profanation
of the Magian cult that may have been deliberately intended to provoke
retaliation (and martyrdom). Converts refused to recite the Yashts at
Fravardigan or removed the mouth mask in the presence of the fire,
thereby defiling it with their breath. Mihramgushnasp announced his
conversion by breaking the rods of the barsom and throwing them
into the fire. His sister not only profaned the fire by approaching it
in a state of ritual impurity, but joyfully took the fire in her hand, cast
it on the ground, and trampled it underfoot.^110
Magians recognized the sociopolitical implications of such behavior.
They regarded denying Ohrmazd and refusing to observe rituals as
bad religion (M.P. ahramoklh) and associated it with excesses, dissim-
ulation, and antinomianism.^111 Unrepenting apostates were disinher-
ited to avoid the alienation of property and executed. The Miitikiin
discusses a hypothetical case of a man married to a non-Persian whose
only child converted to another religion during its minority; it allows
neither the wife nor the child to be his heirs.l12
107 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 109, 336.
108 Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 94.- Devos, "Sainte Sirin," pp. 89-90; Peeters, "Sainte Golindouch," p. 74.
110 Devos, "Sainte Sirin," p. 96; Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer," pp. 99, 111.
111 De Menasce, Denkart, 309-10, 206; Frye, Golden Age, p. 134.
112 De Menasce, "Problems," p. 221.