Editing Shapur II (section)

=== Towards Christians ===
{{see also|Martyrs of Persia under Shapur II}}
[[file:Taq-e Bostan - High-relief Shapur II and Shapur III.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|[[Taq Bostan|Taq-e Bostan]]: high-relief of Shapur II and [[Shapur III]]]]
Initially, Shapur II was not hostile to his [[Christians in Iran|Christian subjects]], who were led by [[Shemon Bar Sabbae]], the [[Patriarch]] of the [[Church of the East]]. However, the conversion of Constantine the Great to [[Christianity]] caused Shapur to start distrusting his Christian subjects. He started seeing them as agents of a foreign enemy. The wars between the Sasanian and Roman empires turned Shapur's mistrust into hostility. After the death of Constantine, Shapur II, who had been preparing for a war against the Romans for several years, imposed a double tax on his Christian subjects to finance the conflict. Shemon, however, refused to pay the double tax. Shapur started pressuring Shemon and his clergy to convert to Zoroastrianism, which they refused to do. It was during this period the 'cycle of the martyrs' began during which 'many thousands of Christians' were put to death. During the following years, Shemon's successors, [[Shahdost]] and [[Barba'shmin]], were also martyred.

[[Barbasceminus]], bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon from 342, was executed on 14 January 346 with sixteen of his clergy.<ref>{{citation |last=Butler|first=Alban|title=The Lives of the Primitive Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints... by the Rev. Alban Butler... |pages=181–182 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nsb1tEmV7Z8C&pg=PA181|year=1798|publisher=J. Moir}}</ref>
A near-contemporary fifth-century Christian work, the ''Ecclesiastical History'' of [[Sozomen]], contains considerable detail on the Persian Christians martyred under Shapur II. Sozomen estimates the total number of Christians killed as follows:

{{blockquote|The number of men and women whose names have been ascertained, and who were martyred at this period, has been computed to be upwards of sixteen thousand, while the multitude of martyrs whose names are unknown was so great that the Persians, the Syrians, and the inhabitants of Edessa, have failed in all their efforts to compute the number.|Sozomen, in his [http://www.arxpub.com/evolpub/CRE/CREseries.html#CRE12 ''Ecclesiastical History,'' Book II, Chapter XIV]{{sfn|Sozomen|2018}}|source=}}