ppose that in his proceedings against the Mazdakites he intended to
punish their crimes rather than their tenets. Towards the Christians,
who abounded in his empire, he certainly showed himself, upon the whole,
mild and moderate. He married a Christian wife, and allowed her to
retain her religion. When one of his sons became a Christian, the only
punishment which he inflicted on him was to confine him to the palace.
He augumented the number of the Christians in his dominions by the
colonies which he brought in from abroad. He allowed to his Christian
subjects the free exercise of their religion, permitted them to build
churches, elect bishops, and conduct services at their pleasure, and
even suffered them to bury their dead, though such pollution of the
earth was accounted sacrilegious by the Zoroastrians. No unworthy
compliances with the established cult were required of them.
Proselytism, however, was not allowed; and all Christian sects were
perhaps not viewed with equal favor. Chosroes, at any rate, is accused
of persecuting the Catholics and the Monophysites, and compelling
them to join the Nestorians, who formed the predominant sect in his
dominions. Conformity, however, in things outward, is compatible with a
wide diversity of opinion; and Chosroes, while he disliked differences
of practice, seems certainly to have encouraged, at least in his earlier
years, a freedom of discussion in religious matters which must have
tended to shake the hereditary faith of his subjects. He also gave on
one occasion a very remarkable indication of liberal and tolerant views.
When he made his first peace with Rome, the article on which he insisted
the most was one whereby the free profession of their known opinions and
tenets in their own country was secured to the seven Grecian sages
who had found at his court, in their hour of need, a refuge from
persecution.

In his domestic relations Chosroes was unfortunate. With his chief wife,
indeed, the daughter of the great Khan of the Turks, he seems to have
lived always on excellent terms; and it was his love for her which
induced him to select the son whom she had borne him for his successor
on the throne. But the wife who stood next in his favor displeased him
by her persistent refusal to renounce the religion of Christ and adopt
that of her husband in its stead; and the quarrel between them must have
been aggravated by the conduct of their child, Nushizad, who, when he
came to years