Summary Of Richard Payne's 'A State Of Mixture'

A State of Mixture by Richard Payne investigates the entwining of Zoroastrian and Christian groups in late antique Iran. Payne claims that “Zoroastrian and Christian elites, institutions, and symbols came to commingle in a political culture that the present book calls ‘a state of mixture,’ employing a metaphor current in contemporaneous Iranian political thought.” This quote summarizes and lays out the foundation for the rest of the arguments that he covers in his book, arguably making it his thesis.
Payne presents many arguments to support his claim about the collaboration between Zoroastrians and Christians. One point that he brings up to support his claim is that of the close relationship that Sabrisho, a monk, and King Husraw II had. Payne claims that this is significant to his argument because Husraw was an avowed Zoroastrian and Sabrisho was an East Syrian monk, making them an unlikely pair. He argues that this example illustrates the integration of Christians into Zoroastrian political practice and how they continued to work together for years to come. Payne uses this example to put forth the idea that even though this was a large Zoroastrian empire, it was still possible for Christians to attain high status in government and political roles.
In the first chapter, Payne draws on the difference between the times of the rule of Shapur II and
In fact, one of the chapter titles is literally, “The Myth of Zoroastrian Intolerance”. He draws on the fact that much of the information about the persecutions comes from East Syrian hagiographies, meaning that there is a great amount of bias in the perspectives on it. Payne’s very ideas challenge the premises for many other works, including those from academic journal articles such as The Chronicles of Seert, as well as many others that make contradicting