Paper abstract:

This paper will explore two Christian martyrs acts that center around queens who are martyred by the orders of their Zoroastrian husbands. The Martyrdom of Candida (c. 4th or 5th cen. CE) takes place in the Sasanian Persian Empire, and discusses the death of a Roman woman who was married to the Persian king, and martyred for maintaining Christian beliefs and denying her husband’s Zoroastrian faith. The Vita of Shushanik (c. 5th cen. CE) follows a similar path, and details the life of Shushanik, an Armenian woman married to the leader of a powerful family in Kartli (modern east Georgia), who was tortured and killed by her husband for professing Christianity. These two martyr acts stand out against the myriad of Christian martyr acts of the Sasanian Era* since other female martyr acts of this time and geographical area generally focus on unmarried virginal martyrs. While the virginal martyr acts are generally considered a specific trope in martyr literature, martyrdom acts revolving around married women have not been giving this level of analysis thus far. This paper will argue that in addition to the virginal martyr genre, there must have been a budding trope of the “queen martyr” in this period. Furthermore, I will argue that the trope of queen martyr, as shown through Candida and Shushanik, accomplishes three things for their authors: 1) they attempt to show that the Zoroastrian leaders are unfit for leadership, 2) they attempt to convince their readers of the immorality, especially in marriage, of Zoroastrian men, and 3) they attempt to invert gender norms by showing the strength (male power) of these Christian women in opposition to the weakness (femininity) of their Zoroastrian husbands. Thus, these authors use the trope of queen martyrs as an inversion of gender and religious norms in order to explicate the Sasanian persecution of Christians as indicative of Zoroastrian weakness.

*We can include the Vita of Shushanik as part of the history of Christianity of the Sasanian Era since her husband was from a Persian family, and converted to Zoroastrianism to obtain support from the Sasanian kings. See Margit Biro, “Shushanik’s Georgian Vita,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 38, no. 1/2 (1984): 187–200