Doing research on the relations between Judaists and Samaritans, I came across this strange article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_revolts

During the reign of Emperor Zeno (r. 474–475 and 476–491), tensions between the Christian community and the Samaritans in Colonia Flavia Neapolis (Shechem) grew dramatically. According to Samaritan sources, Zeno, whom the sources refer to as “Zait the King of Edom”, persecuted the Samaritans mercilessly. The Emperor went to Neapolis, gathered the Samaritan elders, and asked them to convert to Christianity; when they refused, Zeno had many Samaritans killed and rebuilt their synagogue into a church. Zeno then took possession of Mount Gerizim and built several edifices, among them a tomb for his recently deceased son, on which he placed a Christian cross so the Samaritans would be forced to prostrate themselves in front of the tomb.

Truly baffling. You would think that a Christian would be gentle with an actual Samaritan, of all people, but perhaps the preachers awkwardly skipped over that part.

Now, I don’t want to blandly exonerate these conquerors by questioning their faithfulness. It’s unproductive (and uninteresting) to try explaining away Christian atrocities by saying that the oppressors weren’t ‘true’ Christians. On the other hand, it would be hard for anybody to argue with a straight face that these oppressors were merely following J.C.’s advice either. What interests me, above all, is tracing where these adventurer-conquerors inherited their practices… and given the history of Roman proto-imperialism, I think that I might know the answer.

Time to do some sleuthing.