CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

IN SPAIN

A.D. 756-1031

C.R. HAINES, M.A.

AUTHOR OF “ENGLAND AND THE OPIUM TRADE”;
“EDUCATION AND MISSIONS”;

 “VERSIONS IN VERSE.”

LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH &CO., PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1889

[Note: While there is only one Chapter IX in the Table of Contents,
there are two in text. I believe the first was meant to be part of
Chapter VIII.]

CHAPTER I.

Invasion of Spain by the barbarians—Its easy conquest—Quarrels
among the conquerors—Departure of the Vandals—Visigoths gain the
supremacy—Conflict with Eastern Empire—Reduction of the Suevi—All
Spain becomes Gothic—Approach of Saracens—Planting of
Christianity in Spain—St James—Gospel first preached at
Elvira—Irenaeus—Persecutions—Martyrs —Council of Elvira—Council
of Nice—Number of Christians—Paganism
proscribed—Julian—Arianism—Ulphilas—Conversion of
barbarians—Degeneracy of religion—Priscillian—His heresy
condemned—Priscillian burnt—Paganism, in Spain—The Gothic
Government—Church and State —Power of king—Election of
bishops—Arianism of Goths—Ermenegild—Bigotry in
Spain—Jews—Influence of clergy—Of the pope ……1-11

CHAPTER II.

Period of Gothic rule—Degeneracy of Goths—Causes of their
fall—Battle of Guadalete—Resistance of towns—Theodomir—Remnant in
the North—Mohammedanism—Its rise and progress—Reduction of
Africa—Siege of Constantinople—Attacks on Spain—Tarif—Arabs in
Gaul—Anarchy in Spain—Christians in the North—Clemency of the
Arabs—Treaties—Conquest easy—Rhapsodies of
Isidore—Slaves—Jews—Impartiality of Arab governors—Khalifate
established—Feuds of Arabs and Berbers—Revolt of Berbers—Syrian
Arabs—Settlement of Arabs—Effect of Berber wars ……11-25

CHAPTER III.

Landing of Abdurrahman—Khalifate of Cordova—Condition of
Christians —Proselytism—Apostates—Arabs and Spaniards—Evidence of
Christian writers—Condition of the people—Serfs—No revolts—No
solidarity with the Christians in the North—Relations wkh Arabs
at first friendly—The jehad in Spain—Martyrs in battle—Fabulous
martyr—Anambad, first martyr—Peter of Najuma—No other till
824—John and Adulphus —Causes of Martyrdoms—Amalgamation of the
two peoples—Intermarriage —Children of mixed parents—Nunilo and
Alodia—Mania for martyrdom—Voluntary martyrdoms—The Spanish
confessors—Threatened deterioration in the Church—Christianity
infected with Moslem customs —Religious fervour in
convents—Fanaticism, of monks—Fresh martyrs —Perfectus, John,
Isaac—Arab inability to understand the motives of these
martyrs—Causes of fanaticism—Sanctus—Peter—Walabonsus, etc
……25-40

CHAPTER IV.

Flora and Maria—Their adventures—Trial—Meet Eulogius in
prison—Their execution—Other martyrs—Hidden Christians—Aurelius,
Sabigotha, etc —Plan for procuring martyrdom—Miracle in
prison—Execution—Other martyrs—Death of Abdurrahman II.—Mohammed
I.—Martyrs—Prodigy upon their execution—Outrage in a
mosque—Punishment of offenders—Apprehension of king—Meditates a
persecution—Even a massacre—Series of martyrdoms—Cloister of
Tabanos suppressed—Columba, Pomposa—Abundius a true martyr—Others
martyred—Censor of Cordova—Persecution and death of
Ruderic—Eulogius—Parentage and antecedents—Opposes amalgamation
of Arabs and Christians—Encourages learning of
Latin—Imprisonment—Elected Bishop of Toledo—Again
imprisoned—Trial—Execution—His relics ……40-54

CHAPTER V.

Doubtful martyrs—No persecution raging—The Muzarabes—Churches in
Cordova—Arab description of a church—Monasteries outside the
city—Voluntary martyrs, chiefly from Cordova—No ferment at
Elvira—Enthusiasts not a large body—Their leaders—The moderate
party—Objections against the martyrs—Voluntary martyrdoms
forbidden by the Church—Answer of apologists—Evidence as to
persecution—Apologists inconsistent—Eulogius and Alvar—Reviling
of Mohammed—Martyrs worked no miracles—Defence of apologists
illogical—Martyrs put to death not by idolaters—Death without
torture—Their bodies corrupted—Moslem taunts—Effect of martyrdoms
on the Moslems—Prohibition of relics—Traffic in relics—They work
miracles—Relics taken from Spain to France —Expedition of monks
for that purpose—St Vincent’s body—Relics of George, Aurelius,
etc., carried off—Return to France—Measures of the moderate
party—Of the Moslems—Reccafredus—supported by the majority of
Christians—Fanatics coerced—Anathematized—Action of king—Suspects
political movement—Revolt at Toledo—Grand Council—Measures
against zealots—Meditated persecution—The extreme party broken
up—Apostasies—Reason of these—The exceptor Gomez—The decision of
the Council—Cessation of martyrdoms ……54-73

CHAPTER VI.

National party—Revolt of Spaniards against Arabs—Martyrs in
battle— Martyrdoms under Abdurrahman III.—Pelagius—Argentea—The
monks of Cardena—Eugenia—No real persecution under the Great
Khalif— General view of Christian Church in Spain under
Abdurrahman II.— Civil position of Christians—Councils—Neglect of
Latin—Arabic compulsory —Protests of Alvar, etc.—Latin
forgotten—Cultivation of Moslem learning—Moslem theology—Church
abuses—Simony—Breach of canons —Unworthy priests—Rival
pastors—Heresy in the Church—Depravity of clergy—Their
apostasy—Their deposition—Muzarabes—Free Christians in the
North—The Church in the North—Its dangerous position—Cut short by
Almanzor—Clergy oppress Christians—Count of Cordova—Ill-treats
the Christians—Councils—Held by Elipandus—By Reccafredus—By
Hostegesis—Jews and Moslems summoned—Council held by Basilius
…… 73-86

CHAPTER VII.

Khalifate saved by Abdurrahman III.—Commander of the Faithful—His
character—Embassy to the Emperor of the West—Return embassy—John
of Gorz—Detained in Cordova—Messengers from the king—Cause of
detention—John of Gorz and John of Cordova—The king’s
threats—Dead-lock —Fresh embassy to Otho—A second embassy from
Otho—First embassy received—Condescension of Sultan—Tolerance of
Moslems— Mohammed’s injunctions—Tolerant Mohammedan rulers
elsewhere— Alcuin—Arnold of Citeaux—Bernard, Archbishop of
Toledo—Christians tolerated, even encouraged—”Officer of
protection”—Christian courts— Censors—Sclavonian bodyguard—Arab
pride of race—Partial Amalgamation of races—Alliances between
Arabs and Christians—Intermarriages— Offspring of these—The
maiden tribute—Evidence in its favour—No
myth—Conversions—Mohammedan view of apostasy …… 86-98

CHAPTER VIII.

Arab factions—Berbers—Spaniards—Muwallads—Despised by
Arabs—Revolts at Cordova, &c.—Intrigues with the
Franks—Letter of Louis—Revolt of Toledo—Christians and Muwallads
make common cause—Omar —Begins life as a
bandit—Captured—Escapes—Heads the national party— Becomes a
Christian—Utterly defeated—Muwallads desert him—Death of
Omar—Stronghold of Bobastro captured—End of rebellion—Christians
under Abdurrahman III.—Almanzor—Anarchy—End of
Khalifate—Knowledge of Christianity and Mohammedanism slight
among those of the opposite creed—Christian writers on
Islam—Eulogius—Mohammed’s relation to Christianity—Alvar—Unfair
to Mohammed—His ignorance of the Koran —Prophecy of
Daniel.—Moslem knowledge of Christianity—Mistaken idea of the
Trinity—Ibn Hazm—St James of Compostella …… 98-114

CHAPTER IX.

Traces of amalgamation of religions—Instances elsewhere—Essential
differences of Islam and Christianity—Compromise
attempted—Influence of Islam, over Christianity—Innovating spirit
in Spain—Heresy in Septimania—Its possible connection with
Mohammedanism—Migetian heresy as to the Trinity—Its approach to
the Mohammedan doctrine—Other similar heresies—Adoptionism—Our
knowledge of it—Whence derived—Connection with Islam—Its author
or authors—Probably Elipandus—His opponents—His
character—Independence—Jealousy of the Free Church in the
North—Nature of Adoptionism—Not a revival of Nestorianism—Origin
of the name—Arose from inadvertence—Felix—His arguments—Alcuin’s
answers—Christ, the Son of God by adoption—Unity of Persons
acknowledged—First mention of theory—Adrian—-Extension of
heresy—Its opponents—Felix amenable to Church
discipline—Elipandus under Arab rule—Councils—Of
Narbonne—Friuli—Ratisbon—Felix abjures his heresy—Alcuin—Council
of Frankfort—Heresy anathematized —Councils of Rome and Aix—Felix
again recants—Alcuin’s book—Elipandus and Felix die in their
error—Summary of evidence connecting adoptionism with
Mohammedanism—Heresy of Claudius—-Iconoclasm Libri
Carolini—Claudius, bishop of Turin—Crusade against
image-worship—His opponents—Arguments—Independence—Summoned
before a Council—Refuses to attend—Albigensian heresy ……
114-136

CHAPTER X.

Mutual influences of the two creeds—Socially and
intellectually—”No monks in Islam”—Faquirs—The conventual system
adopted by the Arabs—Arab account of a convent—Moslem nuns—Islam
Christianised—-Christian spirit in Mohammedanism—Arab
magnanimity—Moslem miracles—-like Christian ones—Enlightened
Moslems—Philosophy—Freethinkers—Theologians—Almanzor—Moslem
sceptics—Averroes—The faquis or theologians—Sect of Malik ibn
Ans—Power of theologians—-Decay of Moslem customs—Wine
drunk—Music cultivated—Silk worn—Statues set up—Turning towards
Mecca—Eating of sow’s flesh—Enfranchisement of Moslem
women—Love—Distinguished women—-Women in mosques—At
tournaments—Arab love-poem—Treatise on love …… 136-148

CHAPTER XI.

Influence of Mohammedanism—Circumcision of Christians—-Even of a
bishop —Customs retained for contrast—Cleanliness rejected as
peculiar to Moslems— Celibacy of clergy—Chivalry—Origin—Derived
from Arabs— Favoured by state of Spain—Spain the cradle of
chivalry—Arab chivalry —Qualifications for a knight—Rules of
knighthood—The Cid—Almanzor—His generosity—Justice—Moslem
military orders—Holy wars—Christianity Mohammedanized—The
“Apotheosis of chivalry”—Chivalry a sort of religion—Social
compromise—Culminates in the Crusades ….. 149-156

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

Jews persecuted by Goths—Help the Saracens—Numbers—Jews in
France—Illtreated—Accusations against—Eleazar, an
apostate—Incites the Spanish Moslems against the
Christians—Intellectual development of Jews in Spain—Come to be
disliked by Arabs—Jews and the Messiah—Judaism
deteriorated—Contact with Islam—Civil position—Jews at
Toledo—Christian persecution of
Jews—Massacre—Expulsion—Conversion—The “Mala Sangre”—The
Inquisition …… 156-161

APPENDIX B.

Spain and the papal power—Early independence—Early importance of
Spanish Church—Arian Spain—Orthodox Spain—Increase of papal
influence—Independent spirit of king and clergy—Quarrel with the
pope—Arab invasion—Papal authority in the North—Crusade
preached—Intervention of the pope—St James’ relics—Claudius of
Turin—Rejection of pope’s claims—Increase of pope’s power in
Spain—Appealed to against Muzarabes—Errors of Migetius—Keeping of
Easter—Eating of pork—Intermarriage with Jews and Moslems—Fasting
on Sundays—Elipandus withstands the papal claims—Upholds
intercourse with Arabs—Rejects papal supremacy—Advance of
Christians in the North—Extension of power of the pope—Gothic
liturgy suspected—Suppressed—Authority of pope over king—Appeals
from the king to the pope—Rupture with the Roman See—Resistance
of sovereign and barons to the pope—Inquisition
established—Victims—Moriscoes persecuted—Reformation stamped
out—Subjection of Spanish Church …… 161-173

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

…… 175-182

CHAPTER I.

THE GOTHS IN SPAIN.

Just about the time when the Romans withdrew from Britain,
leaving so many of their possessions behind them, the Suevi,
Alani, and Vandals, at the invitation of Gerontius, the Roman
governor of Spain, burst into that province over the unguarded
passes of the Pyrenees.[1] Close on their steps followed the Visigoths;
whose king, taking in marriage Placidia, the sister of Honorius,
was acknowledged by the helpless emperor independent ruler of
such parts of Southern Gaul and Spain as he could conquer and
keep for himself. The effeminate and luxurious provincials
offered practically no resistance to the fierce Teutons. No
Arthur arose among them, as among the warlike Britons of our own
island; no Viriathus even, as in the struggle for independence
against the Roman Commonwealth. Mariana, the Spanish historian,
asserts that they preferred the rule of the barbarians. However
this may be, the various tribes that invaded the country found no
serious opposition among the Spaniards: the only fighting was
between themselves—for the spoil. Many years of warfare were
necessary to decide this important question of supremacy.
Fortunately for Spain, the Vandals, who seem to have been the
fiercest horde and under the ablest leader, rapidly forced their
way southward, and, passing on to fresh conquests, crossed the
Straits of Gibraltar in 429: not, however, before they had
utterly overthrown their rivals, the Suevi, on the river Baetis,
and had left an abiding record of their brief stay in the name
Andalusia.

For a time it seemed likely that the Suevi, in spite of their
late crushing defeat, would subject to themselves the whole of
Spain, but under Theodoric II. and Euric, the Visigoths
definitely asserted their superiority. Under the latter king the
Gothic domination in Spain may be said to have begun about ten
years before the fall of the Western Empire. But the Goths were
as yet by no means in possession of the whole of Spain. A large
part of the south was held by imperialist troops; for, though the
Western Empire had been extinguished in 476, the Eastern emperor
had succeeded by inheritance to all the outlying provinces, which
had even nominally belonged to his rival in the West. Among these
was some portion of Spain.

It was not till 570, the year in which Mohammed was born, that a
king came to the Gothic throne strong enough to crush the Suevi
and to reduce the imperialist garrisons in the South; and it was
not till 622, the very year of the Flight from Mecca, that a
Gothic king, Swintila, finally drove out all the Emperor’s
troops, and became king in reality of all Spain.

Scarcely had this been well done, when we perceive the first
indications of the advent of a far more terrible foe, the rumours
of whose irresistible prowess had marched before them. The dread,
which the Arabs aroused even in distant Spain as early as a
century after the birth of Mohammed, may be appreciated from the
despairing lines of Julian,[1] bishop of Toledo:—

“Hei mihi! quam timeo, ne nos
malus implicet error,

Demur et infandis gentibus
opprobrio!

Africa plena viris bellacibus
arma minatur,

Inque dies victrix gens Agarena
furit.”

Before giving an account of the Saracen invasion and its results,
it will be well to take a brief retrospect of the condition of
Christianity in Spain under the Gothic domination, and previous
to the advent of the Moslems.

There can be no doubt that Christianity was brought very early
into Spain by the preaching, as is supposed, of St Paul himself,
who is said to have made a missionary journey through Andalusia,
Valencia, and Aragon. On the other hand, there are no grounds
whatever for supposing that James, the brother of John, ever set
foot in Spain. The “invention” of his remains at Ira Flavia in
the 9th century, together with the story framed to account for
their presence in a remote corner of Spain so far from the scene
of the Apostle’s martyrdom, is a fable too childish to need
refutation.

The honour of first hearing the Gospel message has been claimed
(but, it seems, against probability) for Illiberis.[1] However that may be, the early
establishment of Christianity in Spain is attested by Irenæus,
who appeals to the Spanish Church as retaining the primitive
doctrine.[2] The long roll of Spanish
martyrs begins in the persecution of Domitian (95 A.D.) with the
name of Eugenius, bishop of Toledo. In most of the succeeding
persecutions Spain furnished her full quota of martyrs, but she
suffered most under Diocletian (303). It was in this emperor’s
reign that nearly all the inhabitants of Cæsar Augusta were
treacherously slaughtered on the sole ground of their being
Christians; thus earning for their native city from the Christian
poet Prudentius,[3] the proud title of “patria sanctorum
martyrum.”

The persecution of Diocletian, though the fiercest, was at the
same time the last, which afflicted the Church under the Roman
Empire. Diocletian indeed proclaimed that he had blotted out the
very name of Christian and abolished their hateful superstition.
This even to the Romans must have seemed an empty boast, and the
result of Diocletian’s efforts only proved the truth of the old
maxim—”the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

The Spanish Christians about this time[1] held the first ecclesiastical council whose
acts have come down to us. This Council of Illiberis, or Elvira,
was composed of nineteen bishops and thirty-six presbyters, who
passed eighty canons.

The imperial edict of toleration was issued in 313, and in 325
was held the first General Council of the Church under the
presidency of the emperor, Constantine, himself an avowed
Christian. Within a quarter of a century of the time when
Diocletian had boasted that he had extirpated the Christian name,
it has been computed that nearly one half of the inhabitants of
his empire were Christians.

The toleration, so long clamoured for, so lately conceded, was in
341 put an end to by the Christians themselves, and Pagan
sacrifices were prohibited. So inconsistent is the conduct of a
church militant and a church triumphant! In 388, after a brief
eclipse under Julian, Christianity was formally declared by the
Senate to be the established religion of the Roman Empire.

But the security, or rather predominance, thus suddenly acquired
by the church, resting as it did in part upon royal favour and
court intrigue, did not tend to the spiritual advancement of
Christianity. Almost coincident with the Edict of Milan was the
appearance of Arianism, which, after dividing the Church against
itself for upwards of half-a-century, and almost succeeding at
one time in imposing itself on the whole Church,[1] finally under the missionary zeal of
Ulphilas found a new life among the barbarian nations that were
pressing in upon all the northern boundaries of the Empire,
ready, like eagles, to swoop down and feast upon her mighty
carcase.

Most of these barbaric hordes, like the Goths and the Vandals,
adopted the semi-Arian Christianity first preached to them by
Ulphilas towards the close of the fourth century. Consequently
the nations that forced their way into Southern Gaul, and over
the Pyrenees into Spain, were, nominally at least, Christians of
the Arian persuasion. The extreme importance to Spain of the fact
of their being Christians at all will be readily apprehended by
contrasting the fate of the Spanish provincials with that which
befell the Christian and Romanized Britons at the hands of our
own Saxon forefathers only half-a-century later.

Meanwhile the Church in Spain, like the Church elsewhere, freed
from the quickening and purifying influences of persecution, had
lost much of its ancient fervour. Gladiatorial shows and
lascivious dances on the stage began to be tolerated even by
Christians, though they were denounced by the more devout as
incompatible with the profession of the Christian faith.

Spain also furnishes us with the first melancholy spectacle of
Christian blood shed by Christian hands. Priscillian, bishop of
Avila, was led into error by his intercourse with an Egyptian
gnostic. What his error exactly was is not very clear, but it
seems to have comprised some of the erroneous doctrines
attributed to Manes and Sabellius. In 380, the new heresy, with
which two other bishops besides Priscillian became infected, was
condemned at a council held at Saragoza, and by another held five
years later at Bordeaux. Priscillian himself and six other
persons were executed with tortures at the instigation of
Ithacius,[1] bishop of Sossuba, and
Idacius, bishop of Merida, in spite of the protests of Martin of
Tours and others. The heresy itself, however, was not thus
stamped out, and continued in Spain until long after the Gothic
conquest.

There is some reason for supposing that at the time of the Gothic
invasion Spain was still in great part Pagan, and that it
continued to be so during the whole period of Gothic
domination.[2] Some Pagans undoubtedly
lingered on even as late as the end of the sixth century,[3] but that there were any large numbers of
them as late as the eighth century is improbable.

Dr Dunham, who has given a clear and concise account of the
Gothic government in Spain, calls it the “most accursed that ever
existed in Europe.”[4] This is too sweeping a statement, though it
must be allowed that the haughty exclusiveness of the Gothic
nobles rendered their yoke peculiarly galling, while the position
of their slaves was wretched beyond all example. However, it is
not to their civil administration that we wish now to draw
attention, but rather to the relations of Church and State under
a Gothic administration which was at first Arian and subsequently
orthodox.

The Government, which began with being of a thoroughly military
character, gradually tended to become a theocracy—a result due in
great measure to the institution of national councils, which were
called by the king, and attended by all the chief ecclesiastics
of the realm. Many of the nobles and high dignitaries of the
State also took part in these assemblies, though they might not
vote on purely ecclesiastical matters. These councils, of which
there were nineteen in all (seventeen held at Toledo, the Gothic
capital, and two elsewhere), gradually assumed the power of
ratifying the election of the king, and of dictating his
religious policy. Thus by the Sixth Council of Toledo (canon
three) it was enacted that all kings should swear “not to suffer
the exercise of any other religion than the Catholic, and to
vigorously enforce the law against all dissentients, especially
against that accursed people the Jews.” The fact of the monarchy
becoming elective[1] no doubt contributed a good deal to throwing
the power into the hands of the clergy.

Dr Dunham remarks that these councils tended to make the bishops
subservient to the court, but surely the evidence points the
other way. On the whole it was the king that lost power, though
no doubt as a compensation he gained somewhat more authority over
Church matters. He could, for instance, issue temporary
regulations with regard to Church discipline. Witiza, one of the
last of the Gothic kings, seems even to have authorized, or at
least encouraged, the marriage of his clergy.[2] The king could preside in cases of
appeal in purely ecclesiastical affairs; and we know that Recared
I. (587-601) and Sisebert (612-621) did in fact exercise this
right. He also gained the power of nominating and translating
bishops; but it is not clear when this privilege was first
conceded to the king.[3] The Fourth Council of Toledo (633) enacted
that a bishop should be elected by the clergy and people of his
city, and that his election should be approved by the
metropolitan and synod of his province: while the Twelfth
Council, held forty-eight years later, evidently recognizes the
validity of their appointment by royal warrant alone. Some have
referred this innovation back to the despotic rule of Theodoric
the Ostrogoth, at the beginning of the sixth century; others to
the sudden accumulation of vacant sees on the fall of Arianism in
Spain. Another important power possessed by the kings was that of
convoking these national councils, and confirming their acts.

The sudden surrender of their Arianism by the Gothic king and
nobles is a noticeable phenomenon. All the barbarian races that
invaded Spain at the beginning of the fifth century were
inoculated with the Arian heresy. Of these the Vandals carried
their Arianism, which proved to be of a very persecuting type,
into Africa. The Suevi, into which nation the Alani, under the
pressure of a common enemy, had soon been absorbed, gave up their
Arianism for the orthodox faith about 560. The Visigoths,
however, remained Arians until a somewhat later period—until 589
namely, when Recared I., the son of Leovigild, held a national
council and solemnly abjured the creed of his forefathers, his
example being followed by many of his nobles and bishops.

The Visigoths, while they remained Arian, were on the whole
remarkably tolerant[1] towards both Jews and Catholics, though we
have instances to the contrary in the cases of Euric and
Leovigild, who are said to have persecuted the orthodox party.
The latter king, indeed, who was naturally of a mild and
forgiving temper, was forced into harsh measures by the unfilial
and traitorous conduct of his son Ermenegild. If the latter had
been content to avow his conversion to orthodoxy without entering
into a treasonable rebellion in concert with the Suevi and
Imperialists against his too indulgent father, there is every
reason to think that Leovigild would have taken no measures
against him. Even after a second rebellion the king offered to
spare his son’s life—which was forfeit to the State—on condition
that he renounced his newly-adopted creed, and returned to the
Arian fold. His reason—a very intelligible one—no doubt was that
he might put an end to the risk of a third rebellion by
separating his son effectually from the intriguing party of
Catholics. To call Ermenegild a martyr because he was put to
death under such circumstances is surely an abuse of words.

With the fall of Arianism came a large accession of bigotry to
the Spanish Church, as is sufficiently shewn by the canon above
quoted from the Sixth Council of Toledo. A subsequent law was
even passed forbidding anyone under pain of confiscation of his
property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in question the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church; the Evangelical Institutions; the
definitions of the Fathers; the decrees of the Church; and the
Sacraments. In the spirit of these enactments, severe measures
were taken against the Jews, of whom there were great numbers in
Spain. Sisebert (612-621) seems to have been the first systematic
persecutor, whose zeal, as even Isidore confesses, was “not
according to knowledge.”[1] A cruel choice was given the Jews between
baptism on the one hand, and scourging and destitution on the
other. When this proved unavailing, more stringent edicts were
enforced against them. Those who under the pressure of
persecution consented to be baptised, were forced to swear by the
most solemn of oaths that they had in very truth renounced their
Jewish faith and abhorred its rites. Those who still refused to
conform were subjected to every indignity and outrage. They were
obliged to have Christian servants, and to observe Sunday and
Easter. They were denied the ius connubii and the ius
honorum. Their testimony was invalid in law courts, unless a
Christian vouched for their character. Some who still held out
were even driven into exile. But this punishment could not have
been systematically carried out, for the Saracen invasion found
great numbers of Jews still in Spain. As Dozy[2] well says of the persecutors—”On le
voulut bien, mais on ne le pouvait pas.”

Naturally enough, under these circumstances the Jews of Spain
turned their eyes to their co-religionists in Africa; but, the
secret negotiations between them being discovered, the
persecution blazed out afresh, and the Seventeenth Council of
Toledo[1] decreed that relapsed
Jews should be sold as slaves; that their children should be
forcibly taken from them; and that they should not be allowed to
marry among themselves.[2]

These odious decrees against the Jews must be attributed to the
dominant influence of the clergy, who requited the help they thus
received from the secular arm by wielding the powers of anathema
and excommunication against the political enemies of the
king.[1] Moreover the cordial
relations which subsisted between the Church and the State,
animated as they were by a strong spirit of independence, enabled
the Spanish kings to resist the dangerous encroachments of the
Papal power, a subject which has been more fully treated in an
Appendix.[2]

CHAPTER II.

THE SARACENS IN SPAIN.

The Gothic domination lasted 300 years, and in that comparatively
short period we are asked by some writers to believe that the
invaders quite lost their national characteristics, and became,
like the Spaniards, luxurious and effeminate.[1] Their haughty exclusiveness, and the
fact of their being Arians, may no doubt have tended to keep them
for a time separate from, and superior to, the subject
population, whom they despised as slaves, and hated as heretics.
But when the religious barrier was removed, the social one soon
followed, and so completely did the conquerors lose their
ascendency, that they even surrendered their own Teutonic tongue
for the corrupt Latin of their subjects.

But the Goths had certainly not become so degenerate as is
generally supposed. Their Saracen foes did not thus undervalue
them. Musa ibn Nosseyr, the organiser of the expedition into
Spain, and the first governor of that country under Arab rule,
when asked by the Khalif Suleiman for his opinion of the Goths,
answered that “they were lords living in luxury and abundance,
but champions who did not turn their backs to the enemy.”[1] There can be no doubt that this praise
was well deserved. Nor is the comparative ease with which the
country was overrun, any proof to the contrary. For that must be
attributed to wholesale treachery from one end of the country to
the other. But for this the Gothic rulers had only themselves to
blame. Their treatment of the Jews and of their slaves made the
defection of these two classes of their subjects inevitable.

The old Spanish chroniclers represent the fall of the Gothic
kingdom as the direct vengeance of Heaven for the sins of
successive kings;[2] but on the heads of the clergy, even more than
of the king, rests the guilt of their iniquitous and suicidal
policy towards the Arians[3] and the Jews. The treachery of Julian,[4] whatever its
cause, opened a way for the Arabs into the country by betraying
into their hands Ceuta, the key of the Straits. Success in their
first serious battle was secured to them by the opportune
desertion from the enemy’s ranks of the disaffected political
party under the sons of the late king Witiza,[5] and an archbishop Oppas, who afterwards
apostatized; while the rapid subjugation of the whole country was
aided and assured by the hosts of ill-used slaves who flocked to
the Saracen standards, and by the Jews[6] who hailed the Arabs as fellow-Shemites and
deliverers from the hated yoke of the uncircumcised Goths.

Yet in spite of all these disadvantages the Goths made a brave
stand—as brave, indeed, as our Saxon forefathers against the
Normans. The first decisive battle in the South[1] lasted, as some writers have declared,
six whole days, and the Arabs were at one time on the point of
being driven into the sea. This is apparent from Tarik’s address
to his soldiers in the heat of battle: “Moslems, conquerors of
Africa, whither would you fly? The sea is behind you, and the foe
in front. There is no help for you save in your own right
hands[2] and the favour of God.”
Nor must we lay any stress on the disparity of forces on either
side, amounting to five to one, for a large proportion of
Roderic’s army was disaffected. It is probable that only the
Goths made a determined stand; and even after such a crushing
defeat as they received at Guadalete, and after the loss of their
king, the Gothic nobles still offered a stubborn resistance in
Merida, Cordova, and elsewhere.[3] One of them, Theodomir, after defending
himself manfully in Murcia for some time, at last by his valour
and address contrived to secure for himself, and even to hand
down to his successor Athanagild, a semi-independent rule over
that part of Spain.

But the great proof that the Goths had not lost all their ancient
hardihood and nobleness, is afforded by the fact that, when they
had been driven into the mountains of the North and West, they
seem to have begun at once to organize a fresh resistance against
the invaders. The thirty[1] wretched barbarians, whom the Arabs thought it
unnecessary to pursue into their native fastnesses, soon showed
that they had power to sting; and the handful of patriots, who in
the cave of Covadonga gathered round Pelayo, a scion of the old
Gothic line, soon swelled into an army, and the army into a
nation. Within six years of the death of Roderic had begun that
onward march of the new Spanish monarchy, which, with the
exception of a disastrous twenty-five years at the close of the
tenth century, was not destined to retrograde, scarcely even to
halt, until it had regained every foot of ground that had once
belonged to the Gothic kings.

Let us turn for a moment to the antecedents of the Arab invaders.
History affords no parallel, whether from a religious or
political point of view, to the sudden rise of Mohammedanism and
the wonderful conquests which it made. “The electric
spark[2] had indeed fallen on
what seemed black unnoticeable sand, and lo the sand proved
explosive powder and blazed heaven-high from Delhi to Granada!”
Mohammed began his preaching in 609, and confined himself to
persuasion till 622, the year of the Flight from Mecca. After
this a change seems to have come over his conduct, if not over
his character, and the Prophet, foregoing the peaceful and more
glorious mission of a Heaven-sent messenger, appealed to the
human arbitrament of the sword: not with any very marked success,
however, the victory of Bedr in 624 being counterbalanced by the
defeat of Ohud in in the following year. In 631, Arabia being
mostly pacified, the first expedition beyond its boundaries was
undertaken under Mohammed’s own leadership, but this abortive
attempt gave no indications of the astonishing successes to be
achieved in the near future. Mohammed himself died in the
following year, yet, in spite of this and the consequent revolt
of almost all Arabia, within two years Syria was overrun and
Damascus taken. Persia, which had contended for centuries on
equal terms with Rome, was overthrown in a single campaign. In
637 Jerusalem fell, and the sacred soil of Palestine passed under
the yoke of the Saracens. Within three years Alexandria and the
rich valley of the Nile were the prize of Amru and his army. The
conquest of Egypt only formed the stepping-stone to the reduction
of Africa, and the victorious Moslems did not pause in their
career until they reached the Atlantic Ocean, and Akbah,[3] riding his horse into the sea, sighed
for more worlds to conquer. We may be excused perhaps for
thinking that it had been well for the inhabitants of the New
World, if Fortune had delivered them into the hands of the
generous Arabs rather than to the cruel soldiery of Cortes and
Pizarro.

In 688, that is, in a little more than a generation from the
death of Mohammed, the Moslems undertook the siege of
Constantinople. Fortunately for the cause of civilisation and of
Christendom, this long siege of several years proved
unsuccessful, as well as a second attack in 717. But by the
latter date the footing in Europe, which the valour of the
Byzantines denied them, had already been gained by the expedition
into Spain under Tarik in 711. The same year that witnessed the
crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar in the West saw also in the
East the passage of the Oxus by the eager warriors of Islam.

There seems to be some ground for supposing that the Saracens had
attacked Spain even before the time of Tarik. As early as 648, or
only one year after the invasion of Africa, an expedition is said
to have been made into that country under Abdullah ibn
Sa’d,[1] which resulted in the
temporary subjugation of the southern provinces. A second inroad
is mentioned by Abulfeda[2] as having taken place in Othman’s reign
(644-656); while for an incursion in the reign of Wamba (671-680)
we have the authority of the Spanish historians, Isidore of Beja
and Sebastian of Salamanca, the former of whom adds the fact that
the Saracens were invited in by Erviga, who afterwards succeeded
Wamba on the throne—a story which seems likely enough when read
in the light of the subsequent treason of Julian. These earlier
attacks, however, seem to have been mere raids, undertaken
without an immediate view to permanent conquest.

By way of retaliation, or with a commendable foresight, the Goths
sent help to Carthage when besieged by the Arabs in 695; and,
while Julian their general still remained true to his allegiance,
they beat off the Saracens from Ceuta. But on the surrender of
that fortress the Arabs were enabled to send across the Straits a
small reconnoitring detachment of five hundred men under Tarif
abu Zarah,[3] a Berber. This took
place in October 710; but the actual invasion did not occur till
April 30, 711, when 12,000 men landed under Tarik ibn Zeyad.
There seems to have been a preliminary engagement before the
decisive one of Gaudalete (July 19th-26th)—the Gothic general in
the former being stated variously to have been Theodomir,[4] Sancho,[5] or Edeco.[6]

It will not be necessary to pursue the history of the conquest in
detail. It is enough to say that in three years almost all Spain
and part of Southern Gaul were added to the Saracen empire. But
the Arabs made the fatal mistake[1] of leaving a remnant of their enemies
unconquered in the mountains of Asturia, and hardly had the wave
of conquest swept over the country, than it began slowly but
surely to recede. The year 733 witnessed the high-water mark of
Arab extension in the West, and Christian Gaul was never
afterwards seriously threatened with the calamity of a Mohammedan
domination.

The period of forty-five years which elapsed between the conquest
and the establishment of the Khalifate of Cordova was a period of
disorder, almost amounting to anarchy, throughout Spain. This
state of things was one eminently favourable to the growth and
consolidation of the infant state which was arising among the
mountains of the Northwest. In that corner of the land, which
alone[2] was not polluted by the
presence of Moslem masters, were gathered all those proud spirits
who could not brook subjection and valued freedom above all
earthly possessions.[3] Here all the various nationalities that had
from time to time borne rule in Spain,

all the various classes, nobles, freemen, and slaves, were
gradually welded by the strong pressure of a common calamity into
one compact and homogeneous whole.[5] Meanwhile what was the condition of those
Christians who preferred to live in their own homes, but under
the Moslem yoke? It must be confessed that they might have fared
much worse; and the conciliatory policy pursued by the Arabs no
doubt contributed largely to the facility of the conquest. The
first conqueror, Tarik ibn Zeyad, was a man of remarkable
generosity and clemency, and his conduct fully justified the
proud boast which he uttered when arraigned on false charges
before the Sultan Suleiman.[6] “Ask the true believers,” he said, “ask also
the Christians, what the conduct of Tarik has been in Africa and
in Spain. Let them say if they have ever found him cowardly,
covetous, or cruel.”

The terms granted to such towns as surrendered generally
contained the following provisions: that the citizens should give
up all their horses and arms; that they might, if they chose,
depart, leaving their property; that those who remained should,
on payment of a small tribute, be permitted to follow their own
religion, for which purposes certain churches were to be left
standing; that they should have their own judges, and enjoy
(within limits) their own laws. In some cases the riches of the
churches were also surrendered, as at Merida,[1] and hostages given. But conditions even
better than these were obtained from Abdulaziz, son of Musa, by
Theodomir in Murcia. The original document has been preserved by
the Arab historians, and is well worthy of transcription:

“In the name of God the Clement and Merciful! Abdulaziz and
Tadmir make this treaty of peace—may God confirm and protect it!
Tadmir shall retain the command over his own people, but over no
other people among those of his faith. There shall be no wars
between his subjects and those of the Arabs, nor shall the
children or women of his people be led captive. They shall not be
disturbed in the exercise of their religion: their churches shall
not be burnt, nor shall any services be demanded from them, or
obligations be laid upon them—those expressed in this treaty
alone excepted…. Tadmir shall not receive our enemies, nor fail
in fidelity to us, and he shall not conceal whatever hostile
purposes he may know to exist against us. His nobles and himself
shall pay a tribute of a dinar[2] each year, with four measures of wheat and
four of barley; of mead, vinegar, honey, and oil each four
measures. All the vassals of Tadmir, and every man subject to
tax, shall pay the half of these imposts.”[3]

These favourable terms were due in part to the address of
Theodomir,[4] and partly perhaps to
Abdulaziz’s own partiality for the Christians, which was also
manifested in his marriage with Egilona, the widow of King
Roderic, and the deference which he paid to her. This
predilection for the Christians brought the son of Musa into ill
favour with the Arabs, and he was assassinated in 716.[5]

On the whole it may be said that the Saracen conquest was
accomplished with wonderfully little bloodshed, and with few or
none of those atrocities which generally characterize the
subjugation of a whole people by men of an alien race and an
alien creed. It cannot, however, be denied that the only
contemporary Christian chronicler is at variance on this point
with all the Arab accounts.

“Who,” says Isidore of Beja, “can describe such horrors! If every
limb in my body became a tongue, even then would human nature
fail in depicting this wholesale ruin of Spain, all its countless
and immeasurable woes. But that the reader may hear in brief the
whole story of sorrow—not to speak of all the disastrous ills
which in innumerable ages past from Adam even till now in various
states and regions of the earth a cruel and foul foe has caused
to a fair world—whatever Troy in Homer’s tale endured, whatever
Jerusalem suffered that the prophets’ words might come to pass,
whatever Babylon underwent that the Scripture might be
fulfilled—all this, and more, has Spain experienced—Spain once
full of delights, but now of misery, once so exalted in glory,
but now brought low in shame and dishonour.”[1]

This is evidently mere rhapsody, of the same character as the
ravings of the British monk Gildas, though far less justified as
it seems by the actual facts. Rodrigo of Toledo, following
Isidore after an interval of 500 years, improves upon him by
entering into details, which being in many particulars
demonstrably false, may in others be reasonably looked upon with
suspicion as exaggerated, if not entirely imaginary. His words
are: Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded, their
fathers fall in battle, the old men are massacred, the women
reserved for greater misfortune; every cathedral burnt or
destroyed, the national substance plundered, oaths and treaties
uniformly broken.[1]

To appreciate the mildness and generosity of the Arabs, we need
only compare their conquest of Spain with the conquest of England
by the Saxons, the Danes, and even by the Christian Normans. The
comparison will be all in favour of the Arabs. It is not
impossible that, if the invaders had been Franks instead of
Moors, the country would have suffered even more, as we can see
from the actual results effected by the invasion of Charles the
Great in 777. Placed as they were between the devil and the deep
sea, the Spaniards would perhaps have preferred (had the choice
been theirs) to be subject to the Saracens rather than to the
Franks.[2]

To the down-trodden slaves, who were very numerous all through
Spain, the Moslems came in the character of deliverers. A slave
had only to pronounce the simple formula: “There is no God but
God, and Mohammed is his Prophet”: and he was immediately free.
To the Jews the Moslems brought toleration, nay, even influence
and power. In fact, since the fall of Jerusalem in 588 B.C. the
Jews had never enjoyed such independence and influence as in
Spain during the domination of the Arabs. Their genius being thus
allowed free scope, they disputed the supremacy in literature and
the arts with the Arabs themselves.

Many of the earlier governors of Spain were harsh and even cruel
in their administration, but it was to Moslems and Christians
alike.[1] Some indeed increased
the tribute laid upon the Christians; but it must be remembered
that this tribute[2] was in the first instance very light, and
therefore an increase was not felt severely as an oppression.
Moreover, there were not wanting some rulers who upheld the cause
of the Christians against illegal exactions. Among these was
Abdurrahman al Ghafeki (May-Aug. 721, and 731-732), of whom an
Arab writer says:[3] “He did equal justice to Moslem and Christian
… he restored to the Christians such churches as had been taken
from them in contravention of the stipulated treaties; but on the
other hand he caused all those to be demolished, which had been
erected by the connivance of interested governors.” Similarly of
his successor Anbasah ibn Sohaym Alkelbi (721-726), we find it
recorded[4] that “he rendered equal
justice to every man, making no distinction between Mussulman and
Christian, or between Christian and Jew.” Anbasah was followed by
Yahya ibn Salmah (March-Sept. 726), who is described as
injudiciously severe, and dreaded for his extreme rigour by
Moslems as well as Christians.[5] Isidore says that he made the Arabs give back
to the Christians the property unlawfully taken from
them.[6] Similar praise is
awarded to Okbah ibn ulhejaj Asseluli (734-740).[7] Yet though many of the Ameers of Spain
were just and upright men, no permanent policy could be carried
out with regard to the relations between Moslems and Christians,
while the Ameers were so constantly changing, being sometimes
elected by the army, but oftener appointed by the Khalif, or by
his lieutenant, the governor of Africa for the time being. This
perpetual shifting of rulers would in itself have been fatal to
the settlement of the country, had it not been brought to an end
by the election of Abdurrahman ibn Muawiyah as the Khalif of
Spain, and the establishment of his dynasty on the throne, in May
756. But even after this important step was taken, the causes
which threatened to make anarchy perpetual, were still at work in
Spain. Chief among these were the feuds of the Arab tribes, and
the jealousy between Berbers and Arabs.

Most of the first conquerors of the country were Berbers, while
such Arabs as came in with them belonged mostly to the Maadite or
Beladi faction.[1] The Berbers, besides being looked down upon as
new converts, were also regarded as Nonconformists[2] by the pure Arabs, and consequently a
quarrel was not long in breaking out between the two parties.

As early as 718 the Berbers in Aragon and Catalonia rose against
the Arabs under a Jew named Khaulan, who was put to death the
following year. In 726 they revolted again, crying that they who
had conquered the country alone had claims to the spoil.[3] This formidable rising was only put down
by the Arabs making common cause against it. But the continual
disturbances in Africa kept alive the flame of discontent in
Spain, and the great Berber rebellion against the Arab yoke in
Africa was a signal for a similar determined attempt in
Spain.[4] The reinforcements
which the Khalif, Yezid ibn Abdulmalik, sent to Africa under
Kolthum ibn Iyadh were defeated by the Berbers under a chief
named Meysarah, and shut up in Ceuta.

Meanwhile in Spain, Abdalmalik ibn Kattan[1] Alfehri taking up the cause of the Berbers,
procured the deposition of Okbah ibn ulhejaj in his own favour,
but, this done, broke with his new allies. He was then compelled
to ask the help of the Syrian Arabs, who were cooped up in Ceuta,
though previously he had turned a deaf ear to their entreaties
that they might cross over into Spain.

The Syrians gladly accepted this invitation, and under Balj ibn
Besher, nephew of Kolthum, crossed the Straits, readily promising
at the same time to return to Africa when the Spanish Berbers
were overcome. This desirable end accomplished, however, they
refused to keep to their agreement, and Abdalmalik soon found
himself driven to seek anew the alliance of the Berbers and also
of the Andalusian Arabs against his late allies.[2] But the latter proved too strong for the
Ameer, who was defeated and killed by the Yemenite followers of
Balj.

These feuds of Yemenites against Modharites, complicated by the
accession of Berbers now to one side, now to the other, continued
without intermission till the first Khalif of Cordova,
Abdurrahman ibn Muawiyah, established his power all over Spain.

The successor of Balj and Thaleba ibn Salamah did indeed try to
break up the Syrian faction by separating them. He placed those
of Damascus in Elvira; of Emesa in Seville; of Kenesrin in Jaen;
of Alurdan[1] in Malaga and Regio; of
Palestine in Sidonia or Xeres; of Egypt in Murcia; of Wasit in
Cabra; and they thus became merged into the body of Andalusian
Arabs.

These Berber wars had an important influence on the future of
Spain; for, since the Berbers had settled on all the Northern and
Western marches, when they were decimated by civil war, and many
of the survivors compelled to return to Africa,[2] owing to the famine which afflicted the
country from 750 to 755, the frontiers of the Arab dominion were
left practically denuded of defenders,[3] and the Christians at once advanced their
boundaries to the Douro, leaving however a strip of desert land
as a barrier between them and the Moslems. This debateable land
they did not occupy till fifty years later.[4]

CHAPTER III.

THE MARTYRDOMS AT CORDOVA.

Abdurrahman Ibn Muawiyah landed in Spain with 750 Berber horsemen
in May 756. The Khalifate of Cordova may be said to begin with
this date, though it was many years before the new sultan had
settled his power on a firm basis, or was recognised as ruler by
the whole of Moslem Spain.

During the forty-five years of civil warfare which intervened
between the invasion of Tarik and the landing of Abdurrahman, we
have very little knowledge of what the Christians were doing. The
Arab historians are too busy recounting the feuds of their own
tribes to pay any particular attention to the subject Christians.
But we may gather that the latter were, on the whole, fairly
content with their new servitude.[1] The Moslems were not very anxious to
proselytize, as the conversion of the Spaniards meant a serious
diminution of the tribute.[2] Those Christians who did apostatize—and we may
believe that they were chiefly slaves—at once took up a position
of legal, though not social, equality with the other Moslems. It
is no wonder that the slaves became Mohammedans, for, apart from
their hatred for their masters, and the obvious temporal
advantage of embracing Islam, the majority of them knew nothing
at all about Christianity.[3] The ranks of the converts were recruited from
time to time by those who went over to Islam to avoid paying the
poll-tax, or even to escape the payment of some penalty inflicted
by the Christian courts.[4] One thing is noticeable. In the early years of
the conquest there was none of that bitterness displayed between
the adherents of the rival creeds, to which we are so accustomed
in later times. Isidore of Beja, the only contemporary Christian
authority, though he rhapsodizes about the devastations committed
by the conquerors, and complains of enormous tributes exacted,
yet speaks more fairly about the Moslems[5] than any other Spanish writer before the
fourteenth century. “If he hates the conquerors,” says
Dozy,[6] “he hates them rather
as men of another race than of another creed;” and the marriage
of Abdulaziz and Egilona awakens in his mind no sentiment of
horror.

On the whole the condition of the mass of the people, Christian
or renegade, was certainly preferable to their state before the
conquest.[1] Those serfs who
remained Christian, if they worked on State lands, payed
one-third of the produce to the State; if on private lands,
four-fifths to their Arab owners.[2] The free Christians retained their goods, and
could even alienate their lands. They paid a graduated tax
varying from thirteen pounds to three guineas.[3] In all probability the Christians under
Moslem rule were not worse off than their coreligionists in
Galicia and Leon. A signal proof of this is afforded by the fact
that, in spite of the distracted state of the country, which
would seem to hold out a great hope of success, we hear of no
attempts at revolt on the part of the subjected Christians in the
eighth century, except at Beja, where the Christians seem to have
been led away by the ambition of an Arab chief.[4] They were even somewhat indifferent to
the cause of their coreligionists in the North, and the attempts
which Pelayo and his successors made to induce them to rise in
concert with their brethren met with but scant success.[5]

There can be no doubt, however, that the good understanding,
which at first existed between the Moslems and their Christian
subjects, gradually gave place to a very different state of
things, owing in no small degree to the free Christians in the
North, whose presence on their borders was a continual menace to
the Moslem dominion, and a perpetual incentive to the subject
Christians to rise and assert their freedom.

Our purpose now is to trace out, so far as the scanty indications
scattered in the writers of the time will allow, the relations
that existed between the two religions during the 275 years of
the Khalifate, and the influence which these relations had upon
the development of the one and the other. It will be agreeable to
the natural arrangement to take the former question first.

With a view to the better understanding of the position of
Christianity and Mohammedanism at the very beginning of our
inquiry, we have thought it advisable to point out in a
preliminary sketch the development of Christianity in Spain
previous to the period when the Moslems, fresh from their native
deserts of Arabia and Africa, bearing the sword in one hand and
the Koran in the other, possessed themselves of one of the
fairest provinces of Christendom. This having been already done,
we can at once proceed to investigate the mutual relations of
Christianity and Mohammedanism in Spain during the 300 years of
the Khalifate of Cordova.

It was in fulfilment of a supposed prophecy of Mohammed’s, and in
obedience to the precepts of the Koran itself, that the Arabs,
having overrun Syria, Egypt, and Africa, passed over into Spain,
and the war from the very first took the character of a jehad, or
religious war—a character which it retained with the
ever-increasing fanaticism of the combatants until every
Mohammedan had been forced to abjure his creed, or been driven
out of Spain. But, as we have seen, the conquest itself was
singularly free from any outbursts of religious frenzy; though of
course there must have been many Christians, who laid down their
lives in defence of all that was near and dear to them, in
defence of their wives and their children, their homes and their
country, their religion and their honour. One such instance at
least has been recorded by the Arab historians,[1] when the Governor, and 400 of the
garrison, of Cordova, after three months’ siege in the church of
St George, chose rather to be burnt in their hold than surrender
upon condition either of embracing Islam, or paying tribute.

Omitting the story of the fabulous martyr Nicolaus, as being a
tissue of errors and absurdities,[2] the first martyr properly so called was a
certain bishop, named Anambad, who was put to death by Othman ibn
abi Nesah (727-728)—a governor guilty of shedding much Christian
blood, if Isidore is to be believed.[3]

Fifteen years later a Christian named Peter, pursuing very much
the same tactics as the pseudo-martyrs in the next century,
brought about his own condemnation and death. He held a
responsible post under Government, that of receiver of public
imposts, and seems to have stood on terms of friendship with many
of the Arab nobles. Perhaps he had been rather lax in his
religious observances, or even disguised his Christianity from
motives of interest. However, he fell sick, and thinking that his
life was near its end, he called together his Moslem friends, and
thanking them for showing their concern for him by coming, he
proceeded, “But I desire you to be witnesses of this my last
will. Whosoever believeth not on the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, the Consubstantial Trinity, is blind in heart, and
deserveth eternal punishment, as also doth Mohammed, your false
prophet, the forerunner of Antichrist. Renounce, therefore, these
fables, I conjure you this day, and let heaven and earth witness
between us.” Though greatly incensed, as was natural, the hearers
resolved to take no notice of these and other like words,
charitably supposing the sick man to be light-headed; but Peter,
having unexpectedly recovered, repeated his former condemnation
of Mohammed, cursing him, his book, and his followers. Thereupon
he was executed, and we cannot be altogether surprised at
it.[1]

Besides these two isolated cases of martyrdom, we do not find any
more recorded until the reign of Abdurrahman II. (May 822-Aug.
852). In the second year of this king’s reign, two Christians,
John and Adulphus, making public profession of their faith, and
denouncing Mohammed, were put to death on Sept 17, 824.[2]

This is the first definite indication we have that the toleration
shown by the Moslems was beginning to be abused by their
Christian subjects; and there can be no reasonable doubt that
this ill-advised conduct on the part of the latter was the main
cause of the so-called persecution which followed. But besides
this fanaticism on the part of a small section of the subject
Christians, there were other causes at work calculated to produce
friction between the two peoples. During the century which had
elapsed since the conquest, the Christians and Mohammedans,
living side by side under the same government, and one which,
considering the times in which it arose, was remarkable no less
for its equity and moderation than for its external splendour and
magnificence, had gradually been drawn closer together.
Intermarriages had become frequent among them;[1] and these proved the fruitful cause of
religious dissensions. Accordingly we find that the religious
troubles in the reigns of Abdurrahman II. (822-852) and Mohammed
I. (852-886) began with the execution of two children of mixed
parents. Nunilo and Alodia were the children of a Moslem father
and a Christian mother. Their father was a tolerant man, and,
apparently, while he lived, permitted his children to profess the
faith of their mother. On his death, the mother married again,
and the new husband, being a bigoted Mohammedan, and actuated, as
we may suppose, by the odio vitrici, immediately set about
reclaiming his step-children to the true faith of Islam, his
efforts in this direction leading him to ill-treat, even to
torture,[2] the young confessors.
His utmost endeavour to effect their conversion failing, he
delivered them over to the judge on the charge of apostasy, and
the judge to the executioner, by whom they were beheaded on Oct.
21, 840.[3]

Though there were some cases of martyrdom of this character,
where the sufferers truly earned their title of martyrs,—and we
may believe that all such cases have not been recorded—yet the
vast majority of those which followed in the years 851-860 were
of a different type. They were due to an outbreak of fanatical
zeal on the part of a certain section of the Christians such as
to overpower the spirit of toleration, which the Moslem
authorities had so far shown in dealing with their Christian
subjects, and to raise a corresponding tide of bigotry in the
less enlightened, and therefore more intolerant, masses of the
Mohammedans. The sudden mania for martyrdom which manifested
itself at this time is certainly the most remarkable phenomenon
of the kind that has been recorded in the annals of the Christian
Church. There had been occasional instances before of Christians
voluntarily offering themselves to undergo the penalty of the
laws for the crime of being Christians. One such instance in the
case of a Phrygian, named Quintus, had caused grave scandal to
the Church of Smyrna; for, having gone before the proconsul and
professed himself ready to die for the faith, when the reality of
the death, which he courted, had been brought home to him by the
sight of the wild beasts ready to rend him, the courage of the
Phrygian had failed, and he had offered incense to the gods.
Africa also had had her self-accused martyrs.

But the Spanish confessors have an interest over and above these,
both by reason of their number and the constancy which they
displayed in their self-imposed task. Not a single instance is
recorded, though there may have been some such, where the
would-be martyr from fear or any other cause forwent his crown.
Moreover these martyrdoms, by dividing the Church on the question
of their merit, whether, that is, the victims were to be ranked
as true martyrs or not, and, giving rise to a written controversy
on the subject, has supplied us with ample, if rather one-sided,
materials for estimating the provocation given, and received, on
either side.

As time went on, and the Christians and Moslems mingled more
closely together in political and social life, the Church no
doubt suffered some deterioration. Every interested motive was
enlisted in favour of dropping as far as possible out of
sight[1] those distinctive
features of Christianity which might be calculated to give
offence to the Moslems; of conforming to all those Mohammedan
customs, which are not in the Bible expressly forbidden to a
Christian;[2] and, generally, of
emphasizing the points on which Christianity agrees with
Mohammedanism, and ignoring those (far more important ones) in
which they differ. The Moslems had no such reason for dissembling
their convictions, or modifying their tenets. Consequently a
spiritual paralysis was creeping upon the Church, which
threatened in the course of time, if not checked, to destroy the
very life of Christianity throughout the peninsula. The case of
Africa, from which Islam had extirpated Christianity, showed that
this was no imaginary danger. But Spain had this advantage over
Africa: it contained a free Christian community which had never
passed under the Moslem yoke, where the fire of Christianity, in
danger of being swept away by the devouring flames of
Mohammedanism, might be nursed and cherished, till it could again
blaze forth with its former brilliancy.

Yet in Mohammedan Spain religious fervour was not wholly
vanished: it was still to be found among the clergy, and
specially among the dwellers in convents. Monks and nuns, severed
from all worldly influences, in the silence of their cloisters,
would read the lives of the Saints[1] of old, and meditate upon their glorious
deeds, and the miracles which their faith had wrought. They would
brood over such texts as, “Ye shall be brought before rulers and
kings for My sake;”[2] and, “Every one who shall confess Me before
men, him will I also confess before My Father, which is in
Heaven;”[3] till they brought
themselves to believe that it was their imperative duty to bring
themselves before rulers and kings, and not only to confess
Christ, but to revile Mohammed.

However, the reproach of fanatical self-destruction will not
apply, as the apologists of their doings have not failed to point
out, to the first two victims that suffered in this persecution.

Perfectus,[1] a priest of Cordova,
who had been brought up in the school attached to the church of
St Acislus, on going out one day to purchase some necessaries for
domestic use, was stopped by some of the Moslems in the street,
and asked to give his opinion of their Prophet. What led them to
make this strange request, we are not told,[2] but stated thus barely it certainly
gives us the impression that it was intended to bring the priest
into trouble. For it was a well-known law in Moslem countries
that if any one cursed a Mohammedan, he was to be
scourged,[3] if he struck him,
killed: the latter penalty also awaiting any one who spoke evil
of Mohammed, and extending even to a Mussulman ruler, if he heard
the blasphemy without taking notice of it.[4] Perfectus, therefore, being aware of this law,
gave a cautious[5] answer, declining to comply with their request
until they swore that he should receive no hurt in consequence of
what he might say. On their giving the required stipulation, he
quoted the words, “For there shall arise false Christs and false
prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that
if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect,”[6] and proceeded to speak
of Mohammed in the usual fashion, as a lying impostor and a
dissolute adulterer, concluding with the words, “Thus hath he,
the encourager of all lewdness, and the wallower in his own
filthy lusts, delivered you all over to the indulgence of an
everlasting sensuality.” This ill-advised abuse of one, whom the
Moslems revere as we revere Christ, and the ungenerous advantage
taken of the oath, which they had made, naturally incensed his
hearers to an almost uncontrollable degree. They respected their
promise, however, and refrained from laying hands on him at that
time, with the intention, says Eulogius, of revenging themselves
on a future occasion.[7]

If this was so, the opportunity soon presented itself, and
Perfectus, being abroad on an errand similar to the previous one,
was met[1] by his former
interrogators, who, on the charge of reviling Mohammed, and doing
despite to their religion, dragged him before the Kadi. Being
questioned, his courage at first failed him, and he withdrew his
words. He was then imprisoned to await further examination at the
end of the month, which happened to be the Ramadhan or fast
month. In prison the priest repented his weakness, and when
brought again before the judge on the Mohammedan Easter, he
recanted his recantation, adding, “I have cursed and do curse
your prophet, a messenger not of God, but of Satan, a dealer in
witchcraft, an adulterer, and a liar.” He was immediately led off
for execution, but before his death prophesied that of the King’s
minister, Nazar, within a year of his own. He was beheaded on
April 18, 850.[2] The apologists, on insufficient evidence,
describe the death of two Moslems, who were drowned the same day
in the river, as a manifest judgement of Heaven for the murder of
Perfectus.[3]

The example set by Perfectus did not bear fruit at once, but no
doubt the evidence which it gave of the ease and comparative
painlessness, with which a martyr’s crown could be obtained, was
not lost upon the brooding and zealous spirits living in solitary
retreats and trying by a life of religious devotion to cut
themselves off from the seductive pleasures of an active life.

The next victim, a little more than a year later, was a petty
tradesman, named John,[1] who does not seem to have courted his own
fate. He had aroused the animosity of his Moslem rivals by a
habit which he had contracted of pronouncing the name of the
Prophet in his market transactions, taking his name, as they
thought, in vain, and with a view to attracting buyers.[2] John, being taxed with
this, with ill-timed pleasantry retorted, “Cursed be he who
wishes to name your Prophet.” He was haled before the Kadi, and,
after receiving 400 stripes,[3] was thrown into prison. Subsequently he was
taken thence and driven through the city riding backwards on an
ass, while a crier was sent before him through the Christian
quarters, proclaiming: “Such shall be the punishment of those,
that speak evil of the Prophet of God.”

So far we have had cases, where the charge of persecution,
brought by the apologists of the martyrs against the Moslems, can
be more or less sustained, but the next instance is of a
different character. Isaac,[1] a monk of Tabanos, and descended from noble
and wealthy ancestors, was born in 824, and by his knowledge of
Arabic, attained in early life to the position of an exceptor, or
scribe,[2] but gave up his
appointment at the age of twenty, in order to enter the monastery
of Tabanos, which his uncle and aunt, Jeremiah and Elizabeth, had
founded near Cordova.

Roused by the tale of Perfectus’ death and John’s sufferings, he
voluntarily went before the Kadi, and, pretending to be an
“enquirer,” begged him to expound to him the doctrines of Islam.
The Kadi, congratulating himself on the prospect of such a
promising convert, gravely complied; when Isaac, answering him in
fluent Arabic, said: “He has lied unto you—may the curse of
Heaven consume him!—who full of all wickedness has led astray so
many men, and doomed them with himself to the lowest deep of
hell. Filled with Satan, and practising Satanic arts, he hath
given his followers a drink of deadly wine, and will without
doubt expiate his guilt with everlasting damnation.” Hearing
these, and other like chaste[1] utterances, the judge listened in a sort of
stupor of rage and astonishment, feelings which even found vent
in tears; till, his indignation passing all control, he struck
the monk in the face, who then said, “Dost thou strike that which
is made in the image of God?”[2] The assessors of the Kadi also reproached him
for striking a prisoner, their law being that one who is worthy
of death should not suffer other indignities. The Kadi, having
now recovered his self-command, gave his decision, that Isaac,
whether drunk or mad, had committed a crime which, by an express
law of Mohammed’s, merited condign punishment. He was accordingly
beheaded, and, his body being burnt, his ashes were cast into the
river (June 3, 851). This was done to prevent the Christians from
carrying off his body, and preserving it for the purpose of
working miracles.[3]

Isaac’s conduct and fate, Eulogius tells us, electrified the
people, who were amazed at the newness of the
thing.[4] It was at this point
that Eulogius himself began to shew his sympathy with these
fanatical doings by encouraging and helping others to follow
Isaac’s example.

The number of misguided men and women that now came forward and
threw their lives away is certainly remarkable, and seems to have
struck the Moslems as perfectly unaccountable. The Arabs
themselves were as brave men as the world has ever seen, and, by
the very ordinances of their faith, were bound to adventure their
lives for their religion in actual human conflict with infidel
foes, yet they were unable to conceive how any man in his senses
could willingly deprive himself of life in such a way as could do
no service to the cause, religious or other, which he had at
heart. They were quite unable to appreciate that intense
antagonism towards the world and its perilous environment, which
Christianity teaches; that spirit of renouncement of the
vanities, nay, even of the duties of life, which prompted men and
women to immure themselves in cloisters and retreats, far from
all spheres of human usefulness. Life under these circumstances
had naturally little to make it worth the living, and became all
the more easy to relinquish, when death, in itself a thing to be
desired, was further invested with the glories of martyrdom.

The example of Isaac was therefore followed within two days by a
monk named Sanctius[1] or Sancho, who was executed on June 5th. Three
days later were beheaded Peter, a priest of Ecija; Walabonsus, a
deacon of Ilipa; Sabinianus and Wistremundus, monks of St Zoilus;
Habentius, a monk of St Christopher’s Church at Cordova; while
Jeremiah,[2] uncle of Isaac, was scourged to death. Their
bodies were burned, and the ashes cast into the river.

Sisenandus of Badajos[3] found a similar fate on July 16th: four days
subsequently Paul, a deacon of St Zoilus, gave himself up; and
the same number of days later, Theodomir, a monk of Carmona: all
of whom were beheaded.

CHAPTER IV.

FANATICISM OF THE MARTYRS.

The next candidates for martyrdom were two young and beautiful
girls, whose history we learn from their patron, Eulogius, who
seems to have regarded one of these maidens, Flora, with a
Platonic love mingled with a sort of religious devotion.

Flora,[1] the daughter of a
Moslem father and a Christian mother, was born at Cordova. She is
said to have practised abstinence even in her cradle. At first
she was brought up as a Moslem, and lived in conformity with that
faith, until, being converted to Christianity about eight years
before this time, and finding the intolerance of her father and
her brother unbearable, she deserted her home. But when her
brother, in his efforts to discover and reclaim her, persecuted
many Christian families, whom he suspected of conniving at her
escape, she voluntarily surrendered herself to him, saying, “Here
am I whom you seek, and for whose sake you persecute the people
of God. I am a Christian. Do your best to annul that confession:
none of your torments will be able to overcome my faith.” Her
brother, after trying in vain, by alternate threats and
blandishments, to bring her back from her error, finally dragged
her before the Kadi; and he, hearing her brother’s accusation,
and her own confession, ordered her to be barbarously beaten, and
then given up nearly dead to her brother. She managed, however,
to recover, and escaped under angelic guidance.[2] Shortly afterwards,
while praying in a church, she was found by Maria, sister of
Walabonsus above-mentioned,[3] who had been martyred a few months previously.
Their father, being a Christian, converted his unbelieving wife.
They came to live at Froniano, near Cordova, and their daughter
was educated at the nunnery of Cuteclara, near the city, under
the care of the abbess, Artemia. Brooding over her brother’s
martyrdom, and perhaps, as was so often the case, seeing his
glorified spirit in a vision, she left the cloister, determining
to follow in his saintly footsteps. While on her way to give
herself up, she turned aside into a church to pray, and found
Flora there.

Together, then, did these devoted girls go forth[1] to curse Mohammed, of
whom they probably knew next to nothing, and lose their own
lives. The judge, however, pitying their youth and beauty, merely
imprisoned them. News of his sister’s imprisonment being brought
to Flora’s brother, he induced the judge to make a further
examination of her, and she was brought out of prison before the
Kadi, who, pointing to her brother, asked her if she knew him.
Flora answered that she did—as her brother according to the
flesh. “How is it, then,” asked the judge, “that he remains a
good Moslem, while you have apostatized?” She answered that God
had enlightened her; and, on professing herself ready to repeat
her former denunciations of the Prophet, she was again remanded
to prison. Here she and Maria are threatened with being thrown
upon the streets as prostitutes[2]—a punishment far worse than the easy death
they had desired. This shakes their constancy; when they find an
unexpected comforter in Eulogius himself, who is now imprisoned
for being an encourager and inciter of defiance to the laws. It
is strange that he should have been allowed to carry on in the
prison itself the very work for which he had been imprisoned. The
support of Eulogius enabled these tender maidens to stand firm
through another examination, and the judge, proving too merciful,
or too good a Moslem, to carry out the above-mentioned threat,
they were led forth to die (November 24, 851). Before their death
they had promised Eulogius to intercede before the throne of God
for his release, which accordingly is brought to pass six days
after their own execution.[3]

An interval of only a little more than a month elapsed before
Gumesindus, a priest of the district called Campania, near
Cordova, and Servus Dei, a monk, suffered death in the same way
(January 13, 852).[4]

There was now a pause for six months in the race for martyrdom,
and it seemed as if the Church had come to its right mind upon
this subject. This, however, was far from being the case.
Hitherto the victims had been almost without exception priests,
monks, and nuns; but the next martyrs afford us instances of
married couples claiming a share in this doubtful honour. These
were Aurelius, son of a Moslem father and a Christian mother, and
his wife Sabigotha (or Nathalia), the daughter of Moslem parents,
whose father dying, her mother married a Christian and was
converted; and Felix and his wife Liliosa.[1] It would seem that
with all the harm that was done by this outbreak of fanaticism,
some good was also effected in awaking the worldly-minded
adherents of Christianity from the spiritual torpor into which
they were sinking; for these new martyrs were of the class of
hidden[2] Christians, who were
now shamed into avowing their real creed.[3] Yet surely it had been far better if they had
been content to live like Christians instead of dying like
suicides. In their case, indeed, we find no sudden irresistible
impulse driving them to defy the laws, but a slowly-matured
conviction that it was their duty, disregarding all human ties,
to give themselves up to death. In this resolution they were
fortified by the advice and encouragement of Eulogius and
Alvar,[4] the latter of whom
prudently warns Aurelius to make sure that his courage is
sufficient to stand the trial.[5] Sabigotha is persuaded to accompany her
husband in his self-destruction, her natural reluctance to leave
her children being overcome by Eulogius,[6] who recommends that they should be given over
to the care of a monastery. A seasonable vision, in which Flora
and Maria appear to her, clenches her purpose.

Meanwhile a foreign monk from Bethlehem, who, being sent on
business connected with his monastery to Africa, had crossed over
in Spain, impelled by the wild enthusiasm there prevailing,
determined to offer himself as a candidate for martyrdom with the
four persons above mentioned.

They then take counsel together how they may best effect their
purpose, there being evidently enough difficulty in procuring
martyrdom for themselves to shew the statements of the
apologists, that there was a fierce persecution raging, to be at
least much exaggerated, if not entirely without foundation. The
plan decided upon, which the devisers audaciously attributed to
the suggestion of God,[1] was that the women should go forth unveiled
and with hurried steps to the church, in the hope that such an
unwonted sight would direct attention to them, and occasion the
arrest of the whole number. It fell out as desired, and they were
all brought before the judge, and interrogated with the usual
result, except that the judge on this occasion dismissed them
with scornful anger.[2] But George, disappointed at his untoward
clemency, as they were being led away broke out with,[3] “Can you not go down
to hell without seeking to drag us also thither as your
companions?”

This incoherent abuse naturally incensed the soldiers, as it was
no doubt intended that it should. Accordingly the prisoners were
dragged again before the Kadi, who asked them in a mild tone of
remonstrance, why they had abandoned the faith of Islam,[4] and refused to live,
promising them at the same time great rewards, if they would
become Moslems again. On their refusal they were remanded for two
days, which seemed a very long time, so eager were they to die.
They pass the time with singing hymns, and are blessed with
visits of angels and miraculous signs. Their chains drop off, and
the gaolers dare not again bind those whom Christ Himself had
loosed.[5] The authorities, now
as ever, anxious if possible to avoid extreme penalties,
determine to release George, because they had not
themselves[6] heard his blasphemy. He baulks their merciful
intention by repeating his words on the spot, and he is
accordingly led forth and beheaded with the others (July 27,
852).

Within a month Christopher,[7] a monk of Rojana, and of Arab lineage, and
Leovigild, a monk of Fraga, both being places near Cordova, are
executed for the same offence and in the same manner, their dead
bodies being nailed to stakes. While taking the air in his
palace,[8] the king saw these bodies, and ordered them to
be burnt, and the ashes scattered in the river. The same night
Abdurrahman II. was struck down with apoplexy, and the martyrs’
friends hailed it as a manifest judgment from Heaven.

He was succeeded by Mohammed I. (852-886), a less capable and
more bigoted ruler than his father. No sooner was he on the
throne than Emila, a deacon, and Jeremiah a priest of St
Cyprian’s church, near Cordova, following in the footsteps of so
many predecessors, came before the Kadi, and reviled
Mohammed,—the former being enabled to do this with the more point
and effect, as he was to a remarkable degree master of the Arabic
language.[1] Emila and Jeremiah won the prize they coveted,
and were put to death (September 15, 852). The customary prodigy
occurred after the execution, in describing which the pious
Eulogius breaks into metre, saying, “Athletas cecidisse pios
elementa fatentur.”

On the following day occurred an outrage which the most bigoted
partizans of the martyrs must have blushed to record. Two
eunuchs, Rogel, a monk of Parapanda, near Elvira, and Servio Deo,
a eunuch of foreign extraction, forced their way into a mosque,
and by way of preaching—as they said—to the assembled
worshippers, they reviled their Prophet and their religion.
[2] Being set upon and
nearly torn in pieces by the infuriated congregation, they were
rescued by the Kadi, who imprisoned them till such time as their
sentence should be declared. They were condemned to have their
hands and feet cut off, and be beheaded; which sentence was
carried into effect.[3]

Upon this fresh provocation the fury and apprehension of the king
knew no bounds. He might well be pardoned for thinking that this
defiance of the laws, and religious fanaticism, could only mean a
widespread disaffection and conspiracy against the Moslem rule.
In fact, as we shall see, the Christians of Toledo raised the
banner of revolt in favour of their Cordovan brethren at this
very time. Mohammed therefore seems to have meditated a real
persecution, such as should extirpate Christianity in his
dominions.[1] He is said even to have given orders for a
general massacre of the males among the Christians, and for the
slavery, or worse, of the women, if they did not
apostatize.[2] But the dispassionate advice of his
councillors saved the king from this crime. They pointed out that
no men of any intelligence, education, or rank among the
Christians had taken part in the doings of the zealots, and that
the whole body of Christians ought not to be cut off, since their
actions were not directed by any individual leader. Other
advisers seem to have diverted the king from his project of a
wholesale massacre by encouraging him to proceed legally against
the Christians with the utmost rigour, and by this means to cow
them into submission.[3]

These strong measures apparently produced some effect, for no
other executions are recorded for a period of nine months; when
Fandila, a priest of Tabanos,[4] and chosen by the monks of St Salvator’s
monastery to be one of their spiritual overseers, came forward
and reviled the Prophet: whereupon he was imprisoned and
subsequently beheaded (June 13, 853). His fate awakened the
dormant fanaticism of Anastasius,[5] a priest of St Acislus’ church; of Felix, a
Gaetulian monk of Alcala de Henares; and of Digna, a virgin of St
Elizabeth’s nunnery at Tabanos (the latter being strengthened in
her resolve by a celestial vision), who, pursuing the usual plan,
are beheaded the following day; their example being followed by
Benildis, a matron (June 15).[6]

The cloisters of Tabanos had furnished so many fanatics that the
Government now suppressed the place, removing the nuns and
shutting them up to prevent others giving themselves up.[1] One of these however,
Columba,[2] sister of Elizabeth
and of the abbot Martin, contrived to escape. This Columba had
persisted in remaining a virgin, in spite of her mother’s efforts
to make her marry, which only ceased when the mother died. She
now gave herself up and was beheaded (September 17).

Just one month later Pomposa,[3] from the monastery of St Salvator,
Pegnamellar, suffered the same fate. Then there was a pause in
these executions, which was not broken till July 11th of the
following year, when Abundius, a priest, was martyred. He seems
to have really deserved the name of martyr, for he was given up
to the authorities by the treachery of others,[4] and did not seek
martyrdom.

Another similar period elapsed before Amator, a priest of Tucci
(Tejada); Peter, a monk of Cordova; and Ludovic, a brother of
Paul, the deacon, beheaded four years before, shared the same
fate (April 30, 855).[5]

After nearly a year Witesindus, a repentant renegade; Elias, an
old priest of Lusitania; and Paul and Isidore, young monks, gave
themselves up to execution[6] (April 17, 856.) In June of that
year a more venerable victim was, like Abundius, betrayed to his
destruction. This was Argimirus, an old monk, once Censor of
Cordova (June 28).[7] Exactly one month later Aurea, a virgin and
sister of the brothers John and Adulphus, whose martyrdom has
been already mentioned, was brought before the magistrate.
Descended from one of the noblest Arab families,[8] she had long been left
unmolested, though her apostasy to Christianity was well known.
She was now frightened into temporary submission; but soon
repenting of her compliance, and avowing herself truly a
Christian, she gained a martyr’s crown (July 29).

The next example affords a similar instance of real persecution.
Ruderic,[1] a priest, whose
brother was a Moslem, unadvisedly intervened as a peacemaker, in
a quarrel, in which his brother was engaged. With the usual fate
of peacemakers, he was set upon by both parties, and nearly
killed. In fact his brother supposed him to be quite dead, and
had the body carried through the town, proclaiming that his
brother had become a Mussulman before his death.[2] However, Ruderic
recovered, and made his escape, but being obliged to return to
Cordova, met his brother, who immediately brought him before the
Kadi on a charge of apostasy. His life and liberty were promised
to him if he would only acknowledge that Christ was merely man,
and that Mohammed was the messenger of God. On refusing, he is
imprisoned, and finds in prison a certain Salomon, also charged
with apostasy from Islam. The two fellow-prisoners contract a
great friendship and are consequently separated. After a third
exhortation, they are condemned to death, but not before the
judge had done his best to bribe them to forego their purpose by
offers of honour and rewards.[3] They were executed March 13, 857, and their
bodies thrown into the river—even the stones sprinkled with their
blood being taken up and cast into the water, lest the Christians
should preserve them as relics. Ruderic’s body was washed on
shore, fresh as when killed; while Salomon, not being equally
fortunate, informed a devout Christian in a vision, where his
body lay in a tamarisk thicket near the town of Nymphianum.

Hitherto the aider and abettor of these martyrdoms had himself
contrived to escape the penalty, which he had urged others to
brave. Whether this was due to any unworthy fear of death on his
part is not clear, but it may have been owing to the respect in
which he was held by the Moslem authorities. To these he was well
known as a man of irreproachable character and unaffected piety,
and several Arabs of high rank, who were his personal friends,
shewed themselves anxious to screen him from the effects of his
folly. Eulogius[4] was descended from a Senatorial family of
Cordova, and was educated at the Church of St Zoilus, where he
devoted himself to ecclesiastical studies, and soon surpassed his
contemporaries in learning. With his friend Alvar he sat at the
feet of Speraindeo, an eminent abbot in the province of Baetica.
Besides a sister Anulo, Eulogius had two brothers engaged in
trade, and another brother, Joseph, who seems to have been in
government employ.[5]

Eulogius became early noted for his practice of asceticism, and
his desire for the life of a monk,[1] and for the glory of martyrdom. When strong
measures were taken by the authorities, in concert with
Reccafredus, Bishop of Seville, to stamp out the mania for
martyrdom by threats, stripes, and imprisonment, though many were
frightened into submission, Eulogius, Alvar tells us,[2] remained firm, in
spite of his being singled out as an “incentor martyrum” by a
certain Gomez, who was a temporising Christian in the king’s
service.[3]

There is no doubt that Eulogius did all he could to interfere
with and check that amalgamation of the Christians and Arabs
which he saw going on round him. Believing that such close
relations between the peoples tended to the spiritual degradation
of Christianity, he set himself deliberately to embitter those
relations, and, as far as he could, to make a good understanding
impossible. To discourage the learning of Arabic by the
Christians, he brought back with him from a journey to Pampluna
the classical writings of Virgil, Horace (Satires), Juvenal, and
Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei.”

At the time when these martyrdoms took place, Eulogius was a
priest, but for some reason he tried to abstain from officiating
at the mass on the ground that he was himself a great
sinner.[1] However, his
ecclesiastical superior[2] (? Saul, Bishop of Cordova), soon made him
take a different view of the question by threatening him with
anathema if he neglected his duty any longer. Coming forward as a
prominent champion of the extreme party in the Church, he was
imprisoned in 851, where he wrote treatises in favour of the
martyrs, and was released, as we have seen, by the intercession
of Flora and Maria on November 29th of that year.

In 858,[1] on the death of
Wistremirus, he was chosen by the votes of the people[2] to succeed him as
Bishop of Toledo; but from some cause, perhaps by the
intervention of the Moslems, he was prevented from occupying his
see. The people then determined to have no bishop, if they might
not have him.[3] Yet, adds the pious Alvar, he got his
bishopric after all, for “all holy men are bishops, though not
all bishops holy men.”

In the following year he was again imprisoned as being a
disturber of the public peace, but as on a former occasion he had
been allowed to support and encourage Flora and Maria, so now was
he permitted to finish in prison a book in defence of the
martyrs,[1] which had the direct
tendency of inciting others to go and do likewise. The occasion
of Eulogius’ second imprisonment was as follows:—Leocritia, a
maiden of Arab extraction and of noble birth,[2] had been secretly
baptised by Liliosa, the wife of Felix. Her parents, learning her
apostasy, cruelly ill-treated, and even beat her, in order to
make her renounce Christ. She naturally turned to Eulogius and
his sister Anulo for advice in her afflictions, expressing a wish
to escape to a part of Spain where the Christian worship was
free. As a first step to this, she leaves her parents under
pretence of going to a wedding, and takes refuge with Eulogius.
Her parents, furious at her escape, get all sorts of people
imprisoned on the charge of aiding her; and she is at last
betrayed and surprised at the house of her protector. They are
both dragged before the Kadi, who asks Eulogius angrily why he
persists in defying the laws in this way.[3] The bishop defends himself by pleading that
Christian clergy are bound to impart a knowledge of their
religion, if asked, as he had been by Leocritia.[4] The judge then
threatens to have him scourged, but Eulogius, preferring death to
so painful and degrading a punishment, repeats the lesson which
he had taught to so many others, and reviles Mohammed. Even so
the judge shows a disposition to treat him with leniency, and he
is remanded to prison with Leocritia.

When brought up again before the royal Council,[5] an influential friend
makes a last effort to save him, saying: “Fools and idiots rush
on their own destruction, but what induces you, a man of approved
wisdom and blameless character, in defiance of all natural
instincts, to throw away your life in this manner?” He urges
Eulogius to say but one word of concession in the hour of peril,
promising that he should afterwards be free to exercise his
religion as he pleased, without let or hindrance. But the bishop
could hardly turn back now, and he rejected all such offers with
the ejaculation, “If they only knew the joy that awaits us on
high!”

On his way to execution, when struck by one of the bystanders on
one cheek, he turned the other meekly to the striker. He was
beheaded on March 11, 859, and Leocritia four days later.
Miraculous appearances honoured the body of the martyred bishop,
which was buried in the Church of St Genesius, whence it was
translated in the next year to his own church of St Zoilus, and
in 883 was given up, together with that of Leocritia, to Alphonso
III. (866-910) by express stipulation.

CHAPTER V.

CONTROVERSY CONCERNING THE MARTYRS.

With the death of Eulogius the series of voluntary martyrdoms
comes to an end, and it will be convenient at this point to
consider the whole question of the relation of the Church to the
civil power, and how far those “confessors,” who were put to
death under the circumstances already related, were entitled to
the name of martyrs. Unfortunately the evidence we have on the
subject is drawn almost entirely from the apologists of their
doings, and therefore may fairly be suspected of some bias. Yet
even from them can be shown conclusively enough that no real
persecution was raging in Mohammedan Spain at this time, such as
to justify the extreme measures adopted by the party of zealots.

If we except the cases of John and Adulphus, and of Nunilo and
Alodia, the date of which is doubtful, there is not a single
recorded instance of a Christian being put to death for his
religion by the Arabs in Spain before the middle of the ninth
century. The Muzarabes,[1] as the Christians living under the Arabs were
called, enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom in the exercise of
their religion—the services and rites of the Church being
conducted as heretofore.[2] In Cordova alone we find mention of the
following churches:[3] the Church of St Acislus, a former martyr of
Cordova; of St Zoilus; of the Three Martyrs—Faustus, Januarius,
Martialis; of St Cyprian; of SS. Genesius and Eulalia; and of the
Virgin Mary.

Of the last of these there is an interesting account in an Arab
writer, who died in 1034.[1] “I once entered at night,” he says, “into the
principal Christian Church. I found it all strewed with green
branches of myrtle, and planted with cypress trees. The noise of
the thundering bells resounded in my ears; the glare of the
innumerable lamps dazzled my eyes; the priests, decked in rich
silken robes of gay and fanciful colours, and girt with girdle
cords, advanced to adore Jesus. Everyone of those present had
banished mirth from his countenance, and expelled from his mind
all agreeable ideas; and if they directed their steps towards the
marble font it was merely to take sips of water with the hollow
of their hands. The priest then rose and stood among them, and
taking the wine cup in his hands prepared to consecrate it: he
applied to the liquor his parched lips, lips as dark as the dusky
lips of a beautiful maid; the fragrancy of its contents
captivated his senses, but when he had tasted the delicious
liquor, the sweetness and flavour seemed to overpower him.” On
leaving the church, the Arab, with true Arabian facility,
extemporized some verses to the following effect: “By the Lord of
mercy! this mansion of God is pervaded with the smell of
unfermented red liquor, so pleasant to the youth. It was to a
girl that their prayers were addressed, it was for her that they
put on their gay tunics, instead of humiliating themselves before
the Almighty.” Ahmed also says: “the priests, wishing us to stay
long among them, began to sing round us with their books in their
hands; every wretch presented us the palm of his withered hand
(with the holy water), but they were even like the bat, whose
safety consists in his hatred for light; offering us every
attraction that their drinking of new wine, or their eating of
swine’s flesh, could afford.” This narrative is in many respects
very characteristic of an Arab writer, who would not feel the
incongruity of an illustration on such a theme drawn from “the
lips of a maid,” or the irrelevancy of a reference to swine’s
flesh. But the account merits attention on other grounds, for it
shews how little even the more intelligent Moslems understood the
ceremonies of the religion which they had conquered, though they
might be pardoned for thinking that the Christians worshipped the
Virgin Mary, both because Mohammed himself fell into the same
error, and because probably the Roman Church and its adherents
had already begun to pay her idolatrous worship.

The chief church in Cordova at the conquest seems to have been
the church of St Vincent. On the taking of the town,[2] the Christians had to
give up half of it to the Arabs, a curious arrangement, but one
enforced elsewhere by the Saracens. In 784 the Christians were
induced, or compelled, to sell their half for 100,000 dinars, and
it was pulled down to make room for the Great Mosque.[3] In 894 we find that
the Cordovans were allowed to build a new church.

Besides these within the walls, there were ten or twelve
monasteries and churches in the immediate neighbourhood of
Cordova: among them the monastery of St Christopher, the famous
one of Tabanos, suppressed as above mentioned, in 854;[1] those of St Felix at
Froniano, of St Martin at Royana, of the Virgin Mary at
Cuteclara, of St Salvator at Pegnamellar; and the churches of SS.
Justus and Pastor, and of St Sebastian.

We have given the names of these churches and monasteries[2] at or near Cordova,
both to shew how numerous they were, and also because from one or
other of them came nearly all the self-devoted martyrs, of whom
we are about to consider the claims. Except in cases like that
above-mentioned, the Christians were not allowed to build new
churches,[3] but considering the diminution in the numbers
of the Christians owing to the conquest, and the apostasy of a
great many, this could not be reckoned a great hardship. Moreover
the Christian churches, it was ordained, should be open to
Moslems as well as Christians, though during the performance of
mass it seems that they had to be kept closed. The Mosques were
never to be polluted by the step of an infidel.[4]

The religious ferment, which manifested itself so strongly at
Cordova, did not extend to other parts of Spain. For instance, at
Elvira, the cradle of Spanish Christianity, it was shortly after
the Cordovan martyrdoms (in 864) that the mosque, founded in the
year of the conquest, and left unbuilt for 150 years, was finally
finished. What we hear about the Christians at Elvira at this
time is not to their credit, their bishop, Samuel, being
notorious as an evil liver.[1] It is in Cordova that the main interest at
this period centres; and to Cordova we will for the present
confine our attention.

There is abundant evidence to show that the party of enthusiasts,
both those who offered themselves for martyrdom, and those who
aided and abetted their more impulsive brethren, were a
comparatively small body in the Church of Spain; and that their
proceedings awakened little short of dismay in the minds of the
more sensible portion of the Christian community, both in the
Arab part of Spain, and perhaps in a less degree in the free
North.[2] The chief leaders of
the party of zealots—as far as we find mention of them—were Saul,
bishop of Cordova (850-861), Eulogius, and Samson, abbot of the
monastery of Pegnamellar; while Reccafredus, bishop of Seville,
and Hostegesis of Malaga, were the prominent ecclesiastics on the
other side.

Before relating what steps the latter took in conjunction with
the Moslem authorities to put down the dangerous outbreak of
fanaticism, it will be interesting to note what was the attitude
of the different sections of the Church towards the misguided men
who gave themselves up to death, and their claims to the crown of
martyrdom. Those who denied the validity of these claims, rested
their contention on the grounds, that the so-called martyrs had
compassed their own destruction, there being no persecution at
the time; that they had worked no miracles in proof of their high
claims; that they had been slain by men who believed in the true
God; that they had suffered an easy and immediate death; and that
their bodies had corrupted like those of other men.

It was an abuse of words, said the party of moderation, to call
these suicides by the holy name of martyrs, when no violence in
high places had forced them to deny their faith,[1] or interfered with
their due observance of Christianity. It was merely an act of
ostentatious pride—and pride was the root of all evil—to court
danger. Such conduct had never been enjoined by Christ, and was
quite alien from the meekness and humility of His
character.[2]

They might have added that such voluntary martyrdoms had been
expressly condemned,

(a.) By the circular letter of the Church of Smyrna to the
other churches, describing Polycarp’s martyrdom, in the terms:
“We commend not those who offer themselves of their own accord,
for that is not what the gospel teacheth us:”[3]

(b.) By St Cyprian,[4] who, when brought before the consul and
questioned, said “our discipline forbiddeth that any should offer
themselves of their own accord;” and in his last letter he says:
“Let none of you offer himself to the pagans, it is sufficient if
he speak when apprehended:”

(c.) By Clement of Alexandria: “We also blame those who
rush to death, for there are some, not of us, but only bearing
the same name, who give themselves up:”[5]

(d.) Implicitly by the synod of Elvira, or Illiberis
(circa 305), one of the canons of which forbade him to be
ranked as a martyr, who was killed on the spot for breaking
idols:

(e.) By Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, who, when consulted
on the question of reducing the immense lists of acknowledged
martyrs, gave it as his opinion that those should be first
excluded who had courted martyrdom.[6] One bishop alone, and he a late one, Benedict
XIV. of Rome,[7] has ventured to approve what the Church has
condemned. Nor is this the only instance in which the Roman
Church has set aside the decisions of an earlier Christendom.

The charges against the zealots were twofold, that there had been
no persecution worthy of the name, such as to justify their
doings, and that those doings themselves were contrary to the
teaching and spirit of Christianity. The latter part of the
charge has already been dealt with, and may be considered
sustained. As to the other part, the apologists, it must be
confessed, answer with a very uncertain sound. Sometimes, indeed,
they deny it point-blank:[1] “as if,” says Eulogius, “the destruction of
our churches,[2] the insults heaped upon our clergy, the
monthly tax[3] which we pay, the perils of a hard life, lived
on sufferance, are nothing.” These insults and affronts are
continually referred to. “No one,” says the same author,[4] “can go out or come in
amongst us in security, no one pass a knot of Moslems in the
street without being treated with contumely. They mock at the
marks[5] of our order. They
hoot at us and call us fools and vain. The very children jeer at
us, and even throw stones and potsherds at the priests. The sound
of the church-going bell[6] never fails to evoke from Moslem hearers the
foulest and most blasphemous language. They even deem it a
pollution to touch a Christian’s garment.” Alvar adds that the
Moslems would fall to cursing when they saw the cross;[7] and when they
witnessed a burial according to Christian rites, would say aloud,
“Shew them no mercy, O God,” throwing stones withal at the Lord’s
people, and defiling their ears with the filthiest abuse.[8] “Yet,” he indignantly
exclaims, “you say that this is not a time of persecution; nor is
it, I answer, a time of apostles. But I affirm that it is a
deadly time[9] … are we not bowed beneath the yoke of
slavery, burdened with intolerable taxes, spoiled of our goods,
lashed with the scourges of their abuse, made a byword and a
proverb, aye, a spectacle to all nations?”[10]

That there was a certain amount of social ill-treatment, and that
the lower classes of Moslems did not take any pains to conceal
their dislike and scorn of such Christian beliefs and rites as
were at variance with their own creed, and moreover regarded
priests and monks with especial aversion, there can be no doubt.
But, on the other hand, there is no want of evidence to show that
the condition of the Christians was by no means so bad as the
apologists would have us suppose. Petty annoyances could not fail
to exist anywhere under such circumstances, as were actually to
be found in Spain at this time, and we may be sure that the
Christian priests in particular did not bear themselves with that
humility which might have ensured a mitigation of the annoyances.
Organised opposition to Christianity, unless the Moslem rule can
itself be called such, there was none, till it was called into
being by the action of the fanatics themselves. But apart from
all the other facts which point to this conclusion, we can call
the apologists themselves in evidence that there was no real
persecution going on at the time of the first martyrdoms.

Eulogius[1] admits that the
Christians were not let or hindered in the free exercise of their
religion by saying that this state of things[2] was not due to the
forbearance (forsooth!) of the Moslems, but to the Divine mercy.
Alvar, too, in a passage which seems to contradict the whole
position which he is trying to defend, says[3]:—”Though many were the
victims of persecution, very many others—and you cannot deny
it—offered themselves a voluntary sacrifice to the Lord. Is it
not clear that it was not the Arabs who began persecuting, but we
who began preaching? Read the story of the martyrs, and you will
see that they rushed voluntarily on their fate, not waiting the
bidding of persecutors, nor the snares of informers; aye,
and—what is made so strong a charge against them—that they tired
out the forbearance of their rulers and princes by insult upon
insult.”[4]

As to the other part of the accusation, that voluntary martyrs
were no martyrs, Eulogius could only declaim against the
Scriptures quoted by his opponents,[1] and refer to the morally blind, who make evil
their good, and take darkness to be their light;[2] while he brought
forward a saying of certain wise men that “those martyrs will
hold the first rank in the heavenly companies who have gone to
their death unsummoned.”[3]

He also sought to defend the practice of reviling Mohammed by the
plea that exorcism was allowed against the devil, which is
sufficiently ridiculous; but Alvar goes further, and calmly
assures us that these insults and revilings of the prophet were
merely a form of preaching[4] to the poor benighted Moslems, naïvely
remarking that the Scriptures affirm that the Gospel of Christ
must be preached to all nations. Whereas, then, the Moslems had
not been preached to, these martyred saints had taken upon
themselves the sacred duty of rendering them “debtors to the
faith.”

The second count[5] against the martyrs was that they had worked
no miracles—a serious deficiency in an age when miracles were
almost the test of sanctity. Eulogius[6] could only meet the charge by admitting the
fact, but adding that miracles were frequent in the early ages,
in order to establish Christianity on a firm basis; and that the
constancy of the martyrs was in itself a miracle (which was true,
but not to the point). Had he been content with this, he had done
wisely; but he goes on: “Moreover, miracles are no sign of truth,
as even the unbelievers can work them.”[7] Now, by trying to show why these martyrs did
not perform any miracles, he admits by implication that they were
deficient in this particular;[8] and yet in other parts of his work he mentions
miracles performed by these very martyrs, as, for instance, by
Isaac, and by Flora, and Maria.[9] So that the worthy priest is placed in this
dilemma: If miracles are really no sign of truth, why attribute
them to the martyrs, when, as is allowed elsewhere, they were
unable to work them? if, on the other hand, they did perform
these miracles, why not adduce them in evidence against the
detractors?

The third objection is a curious one, that the martyrs were not
put to death by idolaters, but by men worshipping God and
acknowledging a divine law,[1] and therefore were not true martyrs. Eulogius
misses the true answer, which is obvious enough, and scornfully
exclaims:—”As if they could be said to believe in God, who
persecute His Church, and deem it hateful to believe in a Christ
who was very God and very man.”[2]

Fourthly, the martyrs died a quick and easy death. But, as
Eulogius points out,[3] pain and torture give no additional claim to
the martyr’s crown.

Lastly, it was objected that the bodies of these martyrs, as
indeed was to be expected, corrupted, and were even, in some
cases, devoured by dogs. “What matter,” says Eulogius,[4] “since their souls are
borne away to celestial mansions.”

But it was not objections brought by fellow-Christians only that
Eulogius took upon himself to answer, but also the taunts and
scoffs of the Moslems. “Why,” said they, “if your God is the true
God, does He not strike terror into the executioners of his
saints by some great prodigy? and why do not the martyrs
themselves flash forth into miracles while the crowd is round
them? You rush upon your own destruction, and yet you work no
wonders that might induce us to change our opinion of your creed,
thereby doing your own side no good, and ours no harm.”[1]

Yet the constancy of the martyrs affected the Moslems more than
they cared to confess, as we may infer from the taunts levelled
at the Christians, when, in Mohammed’s reign, some Christians,
from fear of death, even apostatized. “Whither,” they
triumphantly asked,[2] “has that bravery of your martyrs vanished?
What has become of the rash frenzy with which they courted
death?” Yet though they affected to consider the martyrs as fools
or madmen, they could not be blind to the effect that their
constancy was likely to produce on those who beheld their death,
and to the reverence with which their relics were regarded by the
Christians. They therefore expressly forbade the bodies of
martyrs to be preserved[3] and worshipped, and did their best to make
this in certain cases impossible by burning the corpses and
scattering the ashes on the river, though sometimes they
contented themselves with throwing the bodies, unburnt, into the
stream.

However, in spite of these regulations, many bodies were secretly
carried off and entombed in churches, where they were looked upon
as the most precious of possessions; and martyrs, who, by the
admission of their admirers themselves, had never worked any
miracles when living, were enabled, when dead, to perform a
series of extraordinary ones, which did not finally cease till
modern enlightenment had dissipated the darkness of the Middle
Ages.

We happen to possess a very interesting account of the
circumstances under which the relics of three of these Cordovan
martyrs were transferred from the troubled scene of their passion
to the more peaceful and more superstitious cloisters of
France.[1]

It was in 858 that Hilduin, the abbot of the monastery of St
Vincent and the Holy Cross, near Paris, learning that the body of
their patron saint, St Vincent, was at Valencia, sent two monks,
Usuard and Odilard, with the king’s[2] permission, to procure the precious relics for
their own monastery. On their way to perform this commission, the
monks learnt that the body was no longer at Valencia. It had
been, in fact, carried[3] by a monk named Andaldus to Saragoza. Senior,
the bishop of that city, had seized it, and it was still held in
veneration there, but under the name of St Marinus, whose body
the monk had stoutly asserted it to be. Senior apparently doubted
the statement, and tortured Andaldus to get the truth out of him,
but in vain; for the monk, knowing that St Vincent had been
deacon of Saragoza, feared that the bishop would never surrender
the body if aware of its identity. However, Usuard and Odilard
knew not but that the body was that of Marinus, as stated.

Disappointed, therefore, in their errand, they lingered about at
Barcelona, thinking to pick up some other relics, when a friend,
holding a high position in that town, Sunifridus by name,
mentioned the persecution at Cordova, news of which does not seem
to have travelled beyond Spain. They determine at once to go to
Cordova, relying on a friend there, named Leovigild, to help them
to obtain what they wished. Travelling in Spain, however, seems
to have been by no means safe[1] at this period, and their bold resolution is
regarded with fear and admiration by their friends. The lord of
the Gothic marches, Hunifrid, being on friendly terms with the
Wali of Saragoza, writes to him on their behalf, and he entrusts
them to the care of a caravan which chanced to be just starting
for Cordova.

On reaching Cordova, after many days, they go to St Cyprian’s
Church, where lay the bodies of John and Adulphus. The rumour of
their arrival brings Leovigild (called Abad Salomes), who proves
a very useful friend, and Samson, who just at this juncture is
made abbot of the monastery at Pegnamellar, where the bodies of
George, Aurelius, and Sabigotha were buried—the very relics which
they had decided to try and obtain.

The monks of the monastery naturally object to parting with such
precious possessions, but Samson contrives to get the bishop’s
permission to give up the bodies.

This was all the more opportune, as a chance was now given them
of returning to Barcelona, by joining the expedition which
Mohammed I. was on the point of making against Toledo. Orders had
been given that all the inhabitants, strangers as well as
citizens, except the city guard, should go out with the King.
However, the Frankish monks were met by an unexpected difficulty.
In the temporary absence of the abbot, the monks of Pegnamellar
refused to give up the relics, and it was only with much
difficulty that the bishop Saul was induced to confirm his former
permission to remove them.

The bodies were now exhumed without the knowledge of the Moslems,
and sealed with Charles’ own seal, brought for that purpose.
George’s body was found whole, but of the other two, only the
head of Nathalia, and the trunk of Aurelius’ body. The two latter
are united to form one corpse, as it is written, “they two shall
be one flesh.” After a stay in Cordova of eight weeks, they set
out under the protection of some Christians serving in the army.
Leovigild, who had been away on the King’s business, now returns,
and escorts them to Toledo. The approach of the army having
cleared away the brigands who infested those parts, the monks
with their precious freight got safely away to Saragoza, and
returned with their booty to France, where the relics worked
numbers of astonishing miracles.

Let us return from this digression to the steps taken by the
moderate party among the Christians, and by the Moslem
authorities, to put an end to what seemed so dangerous an
agitation. That Reccafredus was not the only ecclesiastic of high
position who took exception to the new movement we learn clearly
enough from Alvar,[1] who tells us that “bishops, priests, deacons,
and ‘wise men’ of Cordova joined in inveighing against the new
martyrdoms, under the impulse of fear wellnigh denying the faith
of Christ, if not in words, yet by their acts.” We may,
therefore, conclude that the greater part of the ecclesiastical
authorities were heart and soul with the Bishop of Seville, while
the party led by Eulogius and Saul was a comparatively small one.
However, strong measures were necessary, and Reccafredus did not
hesitate to imprison several priests and clergy.[2] Eulogius complains
that the churches were deprived of their ministers, and the
customary church rites were in abeyance, “while the spider wove
her web in the deserted aisles, tenanted only by a dreadful
silence.” In this passage the writer doubtless gives reins to his
imagination, yet there must have been a certain amount of truth
in the main assertion, for he repeats it again and again.[3]

The evidence of Alvar is to the same effect: “Have not those who
seemed to be columns of the church, the very rocks on which it is
founded, who were deemed the elect of God, have they not, I say,
in the presence of these Cynics, or rather of these Epicureans,
under no compulsion, but of their own free will, spoken evil of
the martyrs of God? Have not the shepherds of Christ, the
teachers of the Church, bishops, abbots, priests, the chiefs of
our hierarchy, and its mighty men, publicly denounced the martyrs
of our Church as heretics?”[4]

Not content with imprisoning the fanatics, the party of order
forced them to swear that they would not snatch at the martyr’s
palm by speaking evil of the Prophet.[1] Those who disobeyed were threatened with
unheard-of penalties, with loss of limbs, and merciless
scourgings.[2] This last statement must be taken with
reservation, at least if put into the mouth of the Christian
party under Reccafredus. It is extremely unlikely that Christian
bishops and priests should have had recourse to such treatment of
their coreligionists: yet they had a spiritual weapon ready to
their hands, and they were not slow to use it. They
anathematised[3] those who aided and abetted the zealots; and
Eulogius himself seems to have narrowly escaped their sentence of
excommunication.[4]

This action against the zealots was in all probability taken, if
not at the instigation of the Moslem authorities, yet in close
concert with them. Eulogius[1] attributes all the evils which had befallen
the Church, such as the imprisonment of bishops, priests, abbots,
and deacons, to the wrath of the King; and Alvar distinctly
states that the King was urged, even bribed, to take measures
against the Christians.[2] It is not likely that the King required much
persuading. Mohammed at least seems to have been thoroughly
frightened by the continued agitation against Mohammedanism. He
naturally suspected some political plot at the bottom of it; a
supposition which receives some countenance from the various
references in Eulogius[3] to the martyrs as “Soldiers of God” bound to
war against His Moslem enemies; and from the undoubted fact that
the Christians of Toledo did rise in favour of their
coreligionists at Cordova.[4] However that may be, the King in 852 certainly
took counsel[5] with his ministers, how the agitation should
be met, and he seems to have assembled a sort of grand
council[6] of the Church, when
the same question was discussed. Stronger measures were in
consequence taken, and a more rigorous imprisonment resorted to.
But Mohammed went farther than this. He deprived of their posts
all Christians, who held offices in the palace,[7] or in connection with
the Court, and withdrew from the Christian “cadet corps,”[8] the royal bounty
usually extended to them. He ordered the destruction of all
churches built since the conquest, and of all later additions to
those previously existing. He made a severe enactment against
those who reviled Mohammed.[9] He even had in mind to banish all Christians
from his dominions.[10] This intention, together with the order
respecting the churches, was not carried out, owing probably to
the opportune revolt at Toledo.[11]

In one of his works on this subject, Eulogius expresses a fear
lest the intervention of the martyrs should bring disaster on the
Church in Spain, just as the intervention of Moses in Egypt did
much at first to aggravate the hardships of the
Israelites.[1] He ought not, therefore, to have been
surprised, when such a result actually did follow; nor ought he
to complain that now the Moslems would only let the Christians
observe their religion in such a way as they chose to dictate;
and that the Christians were subjected to all sorts of taxes and
exactions.[2]

These combined measures of repression, taken by the King and the
Bishop of Seville, soon produced their effect. The extreme party
were broken up, some escaping to quieter regions, others hiding,
and only venturing abroad in disguise and at night—not, as
Eulogius is careful to add, from fear of death, but because the
high prize of martyrdom is not reserved for the unworthy many,
but for the worthy few.[3]

Some even apostatized,[1] while many of those who had applauded the
proceedings of the martyrs, now called them indiscreet, and
blamed them for indulging in a selfish desire to desert the
suffering Church for an early mansion in the skies.[2] Others, in order to
retain posts under Government, or to court favour with the King,
dissembled their religion, taking care not to pray, or make the
sign of the cross in public.[3] Eulogius himself was singled out at the
meeting of the King’s Council by one of the royal secretaries,
Gomez, son of Antonian, son of Julian,[4] as the ringleader of the new seditious
movement. This man was a very worldly-minded Christian,[5] and was, no doubt, at
this time, in fear of losing his lucrative office at Court, which
he had obtained by his remarkable knowledge of Arabic. He did, in
fact, lose his post with all the other Christian officers of the
Court, but regained it by becoming a Moslem;[6] and such was the
ardour of the new proselyte that he was called “the dove of the
mosque.”[7]

The result of this council was, as we have seen, hostile to the
party of which Eulogius and Saul were the chiefs, but the former
writer, mentioning the actual decree that was passed, pretends
that it was merely a blind to deceive the king, and spoken
figuratively; and he acknowledges that such hypocrisy was
unworthy of the prelates and officers assembled.[8] Is it not more
reasonable to suppose that Eulogius and his supporters voted for
it—as they seem to have done—with a mental reservation, while
their opponents honestly considered such a step necessary?

CHAPTER VI.

THE MUZARABES.

The death of Eulogius was a signal for the cessation of the
dubious martyrdoms which had for some years become so common,
though the spirit, which prompted the self-deluded victims, was
by no means stifled either in Spain or the adjoining
countries.[1] Yet the measures taken to put down the mania
for death succeeded in preventing any fresh outbreak for some
time.

Under the weak government of Abdallah (888-912) the Christians,
determining to lose their lives to better purpose than at the
hands of the executioner, rose in revolt, as will be related
hereafter, in several parts of Spain. After the battle of
Aguilar, or Polei, in 891, between the Arab and Spanish factions,
1000 of the defeated Christians were given the choice of Islam or
death, and all, save one, chose the latter alternative.[2]

During the long reign of Abdurrahman III. (912-961) there were a
few isolated cases of martyrdom, which may as well be mentioned
now. After the great battle in the Vale of Rushes,[3] where Abdurrahman
defeated the kings of Navarre and Leon, one of the two fighting
bishops, who were taken prisoners on that occasion, gave, as a
hostage for his own release, a youth of fourteen, named Pelagius.
The king, it is said, smitten with his beauty, wished to work his
abominable will upon the boy, but his advances being rejected
with disdain, the unhappy youth was put to death with great
barbarity, refusing to save his life by apostasy.[4] A different version of
the story is given by a Saxon nun of Gaudersheim, named
Hroswitha, who wrote a poem on the subject fifty years later. She
tells us that the king tried to kiss Pelagius, who thereupon
struck him in the face, and was in consequence put to death by
decapitation (June 26, 925).[5]

In the death of Argentea (Ap. 28, 931) we have the last instance
in Spain of a Christian seeking martyrdom. She was the daughter
of the great rebel Omar ibn Hafsun,[1] and his wife Columba, and was born at that
chieftain’s stronghold of Bobastro. Upon her mother’s death Omar
wished her to take up her mother’s duties in the palace, for Omar
had become a sort of king on his own domain. She declined, asking
only for a quiet retreat, where she might prepare her soul for
martyrdom; and she wrote to a devout Christian, whose wishes
inclined him in the same direction, suggesting that they should
seek the crown of martyrdom together.[2] On the destruction of Bobastro by Abdurrahman
in 928, she went to Cordova.[3] She there met with a Gaul named Vulfura, who
had been warned in a dream that in that city he should find a
virgin, with whom he was to suffer martyrdom. However, his object
becoming known, Vulfura is cast into prison by the governor of
the city. Argentea goes to visit him there, and is stopped by the
guards, who, finding she is a Christian, take her before the
judge as a renegade, and she is imprisoned with Vulfura. The
alternative of Islam instead of death being refused, they are
both executed, but Argentea, as being an “insolens rebellis,” is
first scourged with 1000 stripes, and her tongue cut out. Her
body was buried at the church of the three saints.

In the year 934[4] we hear of two hundred monks of Cardena being
massacred by the Berbers in Abdurrahman’s army; and in some sense
they can be regarded as martyrs to their faith.

In 953 a martyr named Eugenia is said to have perished;[1] and thirty years
later, the last martyrs of whom we have any record under the Arab
rule. Dominicus Sarracinus, son of John, and his companions taken
prisoners at the capture of Simancas, were kept for two years and
a-half in prison.[2] They were then brought out and put to death,
just when Ramiro III., or his successor, had sent to ransom
them.[3]

There is no evidence whatever to show that there was a
persecution of the Christians under the great Abdurrahman, and
the statements of those writers who intimate the contrary may be
set aside as unsupported by evidence.[4]

We will now turn back and take a general view of the Christian
Church and its condition under the Arabs in Spain, especially—for
our information is greatest as to those periods—under the two
kings Abdurrahman II. and III.

Under the former of these sovereigns the condition of the
Christians, until the persecution, which they themselves
provoked, began, was very tolerable, and the majority of the
Christians were quite content with their lot. They served in the
army, both free men and slaves; they held lucrative posts at
Court, or in the houses of the Arab nobles, or as government
officials. But though the lay community was well off, the clergy
and stricter churchmen had something to complain of; for the
Church[5] could not be said to
be free, though the worship was, since the power of summoning
councils had now passed to the Arab executive, who, as we have
seen, made even Moslems and Jews sit at these councils. Sees were
also put up to auction, and the scandalous spectacle was not
unknown, of atheists and heretics holding the titles, and drawing
the emoluments, of bishops.[6]

As was to be expected, Arabic soon began to displace Latin
throughout the country, and even before the ninth century the
Scriptures were translated into the tongue of the conquerors
[1] by Odoarius, Bishop of
Accita, and John of Seville. Hischem I. (788-796) forbade the use
of any language but Arabic, so that his Christian subjects had to
use Arabic Gospels;[2] and the Spaniards were soon not even permitted
to write in Latin.[3] Even if this statement be doubtful, we know
that Latin came gradually to be neglected and forgotten. Alvar
utters an eloquent protest against this: “Alas, the Christians
are ignorant of their own tongue, and Latins neglect their
language, so that in all the College of Christ[4] there is scarcely to
be found one who can write an address of welcome to his brother
intelligibly in Latin, while numbers can be found competent to
mouth the flowery rhetoric of the Chaldeans.”[5] In the department of
poetry—the peculiar boast of the Arabs—the Christians seem even
to have surpassed their masters; and to the rivalry of the two
nations in this art we may attribute the excellence and abundance
of native ballads of which Spain can boast.

We have seen how Eulogius did his best to check this neglect of
Latin, by introducing into Spain some of the masterpieces in that
language; but it is doubtful whether his efforts had much result.
We can see from the remains of the Spanish writers which we
possess that the structure of that language had considerably
degenerated in Spain.[6]

Some sentences are so ungrammatical as to be scarcely
intelligible. Moreover, we find Samson[1] directly accusing Hostegesis, Bishop of
Malaga, of not being able to write Latin; and similarly Jonas of
Orleans (839) accusing Claudius, Bishop of Turin, who was himself
a Spaniard, of the same defect.

The neglect of Latin was accompanied by an increasing
indifference to the doctrinal basis of Christianity, educated
Christians being led to devote their time, which might have been
more profitably spent on their own Scriptures, to becoming
acquainted with the Mohammedan religion, and even to unravelling
the intricacies of the controversial theology which had grown up
round, and overlaid, the original simplicity of the
Koran.[2] The great Fathers of
the Church were laid aside unread, and even the Prophets and
Apostles, and the Gospel itself, found few to study them. While
the higher classes were indifferent to religion, the lower were
sunk in poverty[3] and ignorance.[4] The inevitable result of this indifference,
ignorance, and poverty, was a visible deterioration in the
character of Spanish Christianity, of which there are only too
many proofs.

We find the abbot Samson distinctly accusing Hostegesis, Bishop
of Malaga, of simony, asserting that he sold the priesthood to
low and unworthy people;[1] while Alvar charges Saul, Bishop of Cordova,
with obtaining his bishopric by bribery.[2] Other irregularities imputed to Hostegesis
were that he held his see from his twentieth year, contrary to
the canons of the church, and that he beat priests, in order to
extort money from them, till they died under his hands.

Besides the election to the priesthood, by unworthy means, of
unworthy men, whose ignorance and impudence the congregation had
to endure in silence,[3] many were informally ordained without vouchers
for character being given, or the assent of their fellow-clergy
and flocks being obtained.[4] Many churches presented the unseemly spectacle
of two rival pastors, contrary to the ordinances received from
the Fathers.[5]

Changes, too, were made in doctrine and ritual, for which no
authority could be alleged, in contravention of established
custom and the teaching of the Church. So far was this carried
that Samson was accused by his opponents of being a heretic and
an idolator because he permitted the marriage of cousins;
dissented from the view that God was ever enclosed in the
chambers of the Virgin’s heart;[6] asserted the omnipresence of God, even in
idols and the Devil, and this in an actual, not a metaphysical,
sense;[7] and denied that God
sat upon an exalted throne above his creatures. From this it is
clear that Hostegesis and those who thought with him[8] were infected with the
anthropomorphite heresy.

Not only did many of the clergy hold heretical views, but their
depravity was notorious. Hostegesis did not blush to spend the
produce of the church tithes and offerings, which he had with
difficulty extorted from his flock,[1] in bribing the court officials and the king’s
sons, giving them feasts at which open and flagrant vice was
indulged in.[2] The clergy were not above pretending illness
in order to avoid paying the monthly tax to their Moslem
rulers.[3] Some, even in the
highest positions in the Church, denied their Saviour and
apostatized to the Moslems; one of these renegades being Samuel,
Bishop of Elvira, the uncle of Hostegesis’ mother, who, with a
pervert’s zeal, persecuted the Church he had deserted,
imprisoning the clergy, taxing his former flock, and even forcing
some to embrace Islam.[4]

It is not surprising, therefore, that bishops and clergy were
sometimes deposed. Samson, indeed, underwent this disgrace at the
hands of a hostile faction under Hostegesis, on the ground of his
pretended heresy; and, similarly, Valentius,[5] Bishop of Cordova, was
deprived of his see because he was a supporter of Samson. But
these instances reflect more discredit on the deposers than on
their victims. Instances of deposition are not wanting, in the
free states the North. Sisenandus, seventh Bishop of Compostella
(940), was deposed by King Sancho for dissolute living, and
malversation of Church moneys.[6] On the king’s death he recovered his see,
driving out his successor. Pelayo, another bishop of Compostella,
suffered the same punishment.[7]

When the kings of Castile gradually drove back the Moors, and
when Alfonso took Toledo in 1085, his wife, Constance of
Burgundy, and her spiritual adviser, a monk named Bernard, were
horrified at the laxity in morals and doctrine of the Muzarabic
Christians. Their addiction to poetry and natural science was
regarded with suspicious aversion, and the pork-eating,
circumcision, and, not least, the cleanly habits,[1] contracted from an
intercourse with Moslems, were looked upon as so many marks of
the beast. In 1209 the Crusaders, who had swarmed to the wars in
Spain, even wished to turn their pious arms against these poor
Muzarabes, so scandalised were they at the un-Romish rites. Yet
we are told that Alfonso the Great, when building and restoring
churches in the territory newly wrested from the Moors, set up
again the ordinances of the Goths, as formerly observed at
Toledo.[2]

The free church in the North had itself been in great danger of
extinction, when the armies of the great Almanzer (977-1002)
swept yearly through the Christian kingdoms like some devastating
tempest.[3] Fifty-two victorious
campaigns did that irresistible warrior lead against the
infidels.[4] Barcelona, Pampluna, and Leon fell before his
arms, and the sacred city of Compostella was sacked, and for a
time left desolate, the bells of St James’ shrine being carried
off to Cordova to serve as lamps in the grand mosque. We are not,
therefore, surprised to find that there were many bishops in the
North who had lost their sees; and this was the case even before
the tenth century, for a bishop named Sabaricus, being driven
from his own see by the Arabs, was given that of Mindumetum by
Alfonso III. in 867,[5] and twenty years later a bishop named
Sebastian received the see of Auria in the same way.[6]

It is natural enough that the Moslems and the clergy of the
Christian Church should be hostile to one another, but it is
surprising to find—as we do find in some cases—the latter making
common cause with the Arabs in ill-treating their
fellow-countrymen and coreligionists. Thus, as we have seen,
Hostegesis, relying on the support of the secular arm,[7] beat and imprisoned
the clergy for withholding from him the Church tithes, dragging
them through the city naked, with a crier crying before
them:—”Such is the punishment of those who will not pay their
tithes to their bishop.”[8] Bishops were even found to make episcopal
visitations, getting the names of all their flock, as if with the
intention of praying for them individually, and then to hand in
their names to the civil power for the purpose of
taxation.[9] Others obtained from the Arabs the privilege
of farming the revenues derived from Christian taxation, and
cruelly oppressed their coreligionists.[10]

These nefarious measures were backed up, even if they were not
instigated, by Servandus, the Christian Count of Cordova. He was
the son of a serf of the Church,[1] and married a cousin of Hostegesis.[2] Instead of championing
the cause of the Christians, as his position should have impelled
him to do, he went so far in the opposite direction as to call
them up before him, and try to shake their attachment to
Christianity—a religion, nominally at least, his own also. Those
who held firm he forced to pay increased taxes, and even levied
blackmail on the churches. He did not scruple to drag forth the
bodies of martyrs from under the altars of churches, and, showing
them to the king, to remind him that it had been forbidden to
Christians to bury their martyrs.[3]

Following up the hostile measures instituted by Hostegesis
against Samson and Valentius, he proceeded to accuse them of
inciting the fanatics to revile Mohammed, urging that they should
be tested with this dilemma. They should be asked whether what
the revilers said were true or not. “If they answer, ‘true,’ let
them be punished as well as the reviler; if ‘false,’ bid them
slay the man themselves; refusing which, you will know that they
have aided and abetted him to abuse your Prophet. In that case,
give me permission, and I will slay the three myself.”[4]

We have had occasion to mention one or two cases of Church, and
national, Councils held in Spain under the Arabs, and it will be
worth while to enumerate all the instances which are recorded,
that we may contrast them with those held under the Goths. It was
one of the most characteristic features of the Old Church in
Spain that it was united so closely with the civil power as
almost to render the Government of Spain a theocracy. This
intimate connection of Church and State was naturally overthrown
by the Arab conquest; but the Moslem rulers, seeing how useful
such institutions as general councils were likely to be in
adjusting the relations between Mussulmans and Christians, both
allowed purely ecclesiastical councils to be called under their
jurisdiction, and also summoned others in which they took part
themselves, together with Jews, to the great scandal of the
stricter Christians.[1]

To the purely ecclesiastical kind belong a council held at
Seville by Elipandus[2] to condemn the errors of Migetius; and
another, held by Cixila at Toledo in 776, against the errors of
Egila, bishop of Elvira.[3] Whether Egila abjured his error is not known,
but it is certain that he remained bishop.

Elipandus is also said, but on very doubtful authority, to have
held a council, whereat he renounced his own error of
Adoptionism.[4]

But the other class of councils, partly ecclesiastical and partly
political, seem to have been commoner, and we have already seen
how Reccafredus, Bishop of Seville, in conjunction with the
Moslem authorities, held such a council, in order to coerce the
fanatical party among the Christians; and we have a more
particular account of another, which was held by Hostegesis,
Bishop of Malaga, and Servandus, Count of Cordova.[1] This council seems to
have had some connection with the preceding one under
Reccafredus, for Servandus was a strong and unscrupulous opponent
of the party led by Eulogius, while Samson was their devoted
supporter, though he did not carry his opinions so far as to
suffer martyrdom in his own person. Samson was now accused of
heresy[2] and sacrilege, as has
been already mentioned. Hostegesis forced his views on the
assembled bishops by the help of the secular arm, and a sentence
of anathema and deposition was accordingly pronounced against the
unfortunate Abbot.[3] One of the apparently consenting bishops was
Valentius, Bishop of Cordova, but his judgement had evidently
been coerced, for after the close of the council he sounded the
other consenting bishops, and some who had not attended, as to
their opinions, and found that most of them were ready to affirm
Samson’s orthodoxy, and a memorial was drawn up to that effect
This action of Valentius’ brought upon him also a sentence of
deposition, and he was succeeded by Stephanus Flaccus,[4]—the election of the
latter being quite informal, as no metropolitan assisted
thereat,[5] and neither the clergy
nor laymen of his diocese made a petition in his favour.

This fresh deposition was formally sanctioned by a new council,
held at the church of St Acislus; Flaccus, and some of those who
had sided with Valentius, but were now terrified into submission,
being in attendance; while the places of those who refused to
come were taken by Jews and Moslems.[1] These high-handed proceedings nearly led to an
open rupture in the Church.[2]

In 914 a council is said to have been held (but on doubtful
authority) by Orontius of Toledo,[3] and twenty years later by Basilius of Cordova.
These would fall under the reign of the greatest of the Umeyyade
Khalifs of Spain.[4]

CHAPTER VII.

SPAIN UNDER ABDURRAHMAN III.

Abdurrahman III., Annasir Lidinillah (912-961), may be looked
upon as the Solomon of the Spanish Sultans. Succeeding to the
throne when quite a youth, to the exclusion of his uncles, the
sons of the late Sultan, he found the country torn by innumerable
factions, and the king’s power openly defied by rebels, Arab,
Berber, and Christian. In person, and through his generals, he
put down all these rebels, and though not uniformly successful
against the Christians in the North, yet he defeated them in a
series of great engagements.[1] He welded all the discordant elements under
his rule into one great whole,[2] thereby giving the Arab domination in Spain
another lease of life. In 929 he took the title of Amir al
Mumenin, or Commander of the Faithful. His alliance was sought by
the Emperor of the East,[3] and he treated on equal terms with the Emperor
of Germany and the King of France. To this great king, with more
truth than to his namesake Abdurrahman II., may be applied the
words of Miss Yonge:—[4]

“He was of that type of Eastern monarch, that seems moulded on
the character of Solomon—large-hearted, wise, magnificent,
tolerant, and peaceful. He was as great a contrast to the stern,
ascetic, narrow-minded, but earnest Alfonso or Ramiro, as were
the exquisite horse-shoe arches, filagree stonework lattices,
inlaid jewellery of marble pavements, and slender minarets, to
their dark vault-like, low-browed churches, and solid castles
built out of hard unmanageable granite.”

We find in this king none of that suspicious jealousy which we
saw in Mohammed, even though Omar, the arch rebel, and Christian
renegade, still held out at Bobastro, when he ascended the
throne; and his treatment of Christians was, throughout his
reign, tolerant and politic.

But his claims in this respect will be best seen from a very
interesting fragment that has come down to our own times,
describing the embassy of a certain John of Gorz, a monk from an
abbey near Metz, who carried letters from Otho, emperor of
Germany, to the Spanish Sultan.[1]

In 950 Abdurrahman had sent an embassy to the emperor. A bishop
who had been at the head of this embassy died, and this seems to
have caused a delay in the answer. As the Khalif’s letter
contained blasphemies against Christ, it was determined to write
a reply in the king’s name, such as might perhaps convince
Abdurrahman of the error of his ways. A certain bishop, Adalbero,
was appointed to be at the head of the return embassy,[2] and he asks the abbot
of the monastery of Gorz to give him two assistants. Two are
chosen, but one of these quarrels with his superior, and is
expelled from the body; whereupon John offers himself as a
substitute. The abbot only gives his consent to John’s going with
great reluctance, knowing that the young monk had an ardent
longing to be a martyr, if he could only get the opportunity.

Going through Lyons, and by ship to Barcelona, the ambassadors
reached the frontier town, Tortosa, and at last got to Cordova,
where they were assigned a house two miles from the palace, and,
though well entertained, were informed, to their dismay, that, as
the Moorish ambassadors had been made to wait three years for an
answer, Otho’s messengers would have to wait nine years.
Moreover, they now discovered that the king had been already
apprised of the contents of the letter, which Otho had sent, by a
comrade of the late ambassador-bishop, whom John and his
companions had taken with them to Barcelona.

The king employs Hasdai, a Jew, as his go-between; who warns them
not to divulge the contents of the letter, as it would make them
liable to punishment; for the letter contained what Moslems would
consider blasphemy against their Prophet. Soon after this John,
the Bishop of Cordova, is sent to them to suggest that they
should carry their gifts to the king, and say nothing of the
letter. But John of Gorz stoutly refused to do this, saying that
the delivery of the letter was his chief duty, and that as
Abdurrahman had begun by reviling Christ, he must not be
surprised at Otho’s retaliating against Mohammed. However, John
of Cordova begs him to remember the position in which the
Christians stood, viz., under Pagan rule. “We are forbidden,” he
said, “by the apostle to resist the powers that be. In our
calamity, we have this one consolation, we are allowed to observe
our own laws and rites, and our rulers, if they see us diligent
in our religion, honour us, cherish us, and delight in our
society, while they abhor the Jews. As our religion, then,
suffers no harm at their hands, let us obey the Moslems in other
things.” The bishop was anxious, therefore, that the letter
should be suppressed, as calculated to do harm to the Christian
community, and no good to Otho. His advice, however, fell on deaf
ears. The monk of Gorz was resolved on doing what he deemed his
plain duty; nor was he content to forego his chance of martyrdom,
though his action might entail disastrous consequences on the
Christians subject to the Moors. He taunted the bishop with
giving his advice from a fear of man. “Better die of hunger than
eat the salt of unbelievers;” and expressed horror at the fact
that the bishop was circumcised, and also abstained from certain
meats in deference to Moslem scruples. It was in vain that the
bishop pointed out that otherwise they could not live with the
Saracens.

John of Gorz now expressed his intention of delivering the letter
forthwith; but the king denied the ambassadors an audience,
leaving them to themselves for six or seven weeks. Early in 955,
however, the king sent to them, and asked if they held firm to
their previous resolve, and on receiving an answer in the
affirmative, he threatened all the Christians in his dominions
with loss of privileges and even death. John of Gorz merely
answers that the guilt would be on the king’s head; but the
latter is persuaded to milder counsels by his advisers, who
remind him of Otho’s power, and the certainty that he would
interfere in favour of his ambassadors.

John of Gorz now proposes the only practicable course, that
Abdurrahman should send a fresh embassy to Otho and ask for
instructions for his ambassadors under the circumstances.
Recemundus,[1] a Christian, offers to go as ambassador, if a
vacant bishopric be given him as a reward. He sets out and
reaches Gorz in February 956. Otho gives him a fresh letter, with
instructions to suppress the former one, to conclude an alliance
with the Sultan, and make an arrangement with him for putting
down the brigands who infested the marches.

Leaving Gorz with Dudo, the emperor’s legate, on March 30, he
reached Cordova on June 1st, but the Sultan declined to receive
the second comers till he had received the earlier embassy. So,
after three years semi-captivity, John is released, and told to
prepare himself for the king’s presence by shaving, washing, and
putting on new apparel. He declines to go in any otherwise than
he is; and even when the king, thinking his refusal due to
poverty, sends him a sum of money, the monk accepts the gift and
distributes it to the poor, but says he will only see the king as
a poor monk. The king good-naturedly said: “Let him come as he
likes.” On June 21, 956, the ambassadors were conducted to the
king’s presence along a road thronged with sight-seers. The steps
of the palace were laid down with tapestry, and a guard of honour
lined both sides of the approach. On John’s entrance, the king,
as a great mark of distinction, gave him his open palm to kiss,
and beckoned him to a seat near his own couch. After a silence
Abdurrahman apologised to the monk for the long delay which he
had been obliged to impose on the embassy, and which was in no
sense due to disrespect for John himself, whose virtue and wisdom
he could not but acknowledge. As a proof that this was no mere
empty compliment, the king expressed his readiness to give him
whatever he asked. John’s wrath vanishes at these gracious words,
and they talk amicably together. But when the monk asks leave to
depart Abdurrahman says:—”After waiting so long to see one
another, shall we part so soon?” He suggests that they should
have at least three interviews. At their next meeting they
discourse on the respective power of the empires of Otho and the
Khalif himself; and the Sultan, taught by the experience of
Spain, points out the unwisdom of allowing feudal subjects to
become too powerful, by dividing kingdoms between them.

So ends this unique and interesting fragment, which throws so
pleasant a light on the character and the Court of the greatest
of Spanish Sultans, and proves that the Christians at that time
enjoyed considerable freedom, and even honour, at the hands of
the Moslem Government.

The reason why the king was unwilling to receive the first letter
brought by John was not so much because he was reluctant to read
words against Mohammed, as because he would by so doing render
himself liable to the penalty of death, which was ordained by law
to any Moslem—king or slave—who listened to abuse of the Prophet
without exacting summary vengeance from the blasphemer. But—and
here was the king’s dilemma—he could not punish the ambassadors
without incurring the enmity of Otho. The only possible
alternative was that suggested by John, that Otho should be asked
to withdraw the objectionable letter, without the Sultan having
officially read it, and this Abdurrahman adopted. The moderation
of the king is conspicuous throughout, for we must regard the
threat against the Christians as merely a threat, never really
intended to be put into execution.

In showing tolerance towards their Christian subjects, the
Spanish khalifs might be thought to have forgotten the traditions
of Islam; but, as a matter of fact, Mohammed seems to have been
very inconsistent in his views with regard to Christians and Jews
at different times of his career, and while he enjoined the
necessity of Holy Wars,[1] he permitted the people of the book to be
admitted to tribute.[2] In one passage he even seems to allow the
possibility of salvation to Jews, Christians, and Sabians:
“Verily they who believe, and those who Judaize, and the Sabians,
and the Christians—whoever of these believeth in God and the last
day, and doeth that which is right—there shall come no fear on
them, neither shall they be grieved.”[3] And there is one remarkable text to find in
the mouth of Mohammed, “Let there be no violence in religion.”
[4]

Moreover, some of the best Mohammedan rulers that have ever lived
upheld the same principle of toleration. Abbas II., one of the
Persian Sufis, is reported to have said: “It is for God, not for
me, to judge of men’s consciences, and I will never interfere
with what belongs to the tribunal of the great Creator and Lord
of the Universe.”[5] Again, Akbar, one of the greatest kings that
ever lived, followed in practice the principle thus expressed by
his minister, Abul Fazl: “Persecution after all defeats its own
ends; it obliges men to conceal their opinions, but produces no
change in them.”[6] Noble sentiments surely, and such as we should
expect from followers of Christ rather than of Mohammed!

Yet far too often have portions of the Christian Church been
conspicuous for intolerance rather than tolerance. Alcuin,
indeed, does say in his letter to Aquila, Bishop of Winchester,
that he does not approve of punishing heresy with death, because
God, by the mouth of His prophet, had said: “I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way
and live;”[1] but Alcuin was a man of unusual mildness and
sweet reasonableness, as his letters to Felix and Elipandus
testify. On the other hand, there were too many frantic bigots in
the Church, like Arnold of Citeaux, whose impious words, in
connection with the massacre of Albigensians, are not likely to
be forgotten—”Slay all; God will know His own.”

In fact, so opposed did the Christian spirit come to be to the
Mohammedan in this respect, that their toleration was made a
principal argument against the Moors by the Archbishop of
Valencia in his memorial to Philip III. at the end of the
sixteenth century.[2]

A very melancholy instance of bigotry and intolerance is afforded
by Bernard, a French monk, who was made Archbishop of Toledo by
Alfonso, on the capture of that city in 1085. By the treaty of
capitulation certain mosques had been expressly reserved to the
Moslems, just in the same way as certain churches had been
reserved for the Christians by Musa in 712. But Bernard, by way
of showing his zeal in the cause of God, in defiance of the
king’s plighted word, chose to perform mass in the chief mosque.
Alfonso was furiously angry when he heard of his archbishop’s
proceedings, but the Moslems, with wonderful forbearance, seeing
that the king had not authorised Bernard’s outrageous conduct,
came forward of their own accord and begged him to pardon the
act, and even voluntarily surrendered their mosque.[3]

Not only were the Christians allowed to practise their religion,
but even, as we have seen above, encouraged in it.[4] Almanzor, the champion
of Islam, allowed his Christian servants to rest on Sundays.
Christians in every reign held high posts at court[5] and throughout the
land, and not only timeserving Christians but men like Samson and
Leovigild, who were known to sympathise with the party of
zealots, were employed by the king to write letters to, and
negotiate with, the neighbouring kings. This was no doubt due to
their general trustworthiness, their quickness, and their
knowledge of Arabic as well as Latin.

Among the great functionaries of state there was one who held the
office of Kitabatu-dh-dhimam, which, being interpreted, is “the
office of protection.” The Christians and Jews were under his
general jurisdiction, and were called “the people of the
protection.”[1] But besides this Arab “Secretary of State for
the Christians,” the latter had their own counts—a relic of the
Gothic system—who, however, did not always stand up for their
interests.[2] There were also Christian censors,[3] but it is not known
what position they held in the State.

The young Christian cadets of noble birth were brought up at
Court, and numbers of Sclavonian Christians served in the king’s
bodyguard, of whom under Hakem I. (796-822) there were
2000.[4]

All things considered, it is a matter for surprise that these two
peoples, so unlike in race, habits, prejudices, and religion,
lived so comparatively quietly side by side in spite of a
perpetual state of warfare between the Arabs and the Christians
in the North, which tended to keep alive the animosities of the
two races in that part of Spain which was under Mohammedan
rule.[1] Moreover, the pride of
race was very strong in the pure-blooded Arabs. Thus the poet
Said ibn Djoud, in a poem called the “battle of the town”
(Polei), boasts that the conquerors are of the pure race of Adnan
and Kahtan, without any foreign admixture; while he calls the
defeated Spaniards miscreants, followers of a false
faith,[2] sons of the
pale-faces. The haughty Arabs, in fact, were too prone to look
upon all the Spaniards, both renegades and Christians, as mere
canaille.[3]

But, in spite of this, the races to a certain extent amalgamated;
and Eulogius endeavours to prove that, but for the outbreak of
fanaticism in the middle of the ninth century, this amalgamation
would have had serious results for Christianity in Spain.[4]

The Arabs did not disdain to seek the alliance of the free
Christian States, nor were the latter averse from doing the same,
when political occasion demanded it. As early as 798 the Walis of
the frontier cities sought to make themselves independent by what
the Arab writer describes as “vile policy and unworthy acts,”
i.e., by seeking the friendship of the Christian
kings;[5] and there are many
instances of these kings asking aid, even servilely, from Arab
princes.[6]

Again, as was inevitable from the nature of the case,
intermarriages were common between the two races. The example was
early set by the widow of Roderic, the last Gothic king, marrying
Abdulaziz, son of Musa. The sons of Witiza also married Arab
women, and Sarah, the daughter of one of these princes, was the
progenetrix of a noble family of Arabs, one of her descendants
being the historian, Ibn al Kuttiya, which means son of the
Gothic princess.[1] Abdurrahman Anassir, the greatest of all the
Spanish Sultans, was the son of a Christian slave, named
Maria,[2] and the mighty
Almanzor had for grandmother the daughter of a renegade
Christian.[3] These are some instances, but it is not
necessary to dwell on what was so common an occurrence as
intermarriage between the peoples, and is forbidden neither by
the Koran,[4] nor by the Bible.

However, there is one point in this connection which deserves a
more particular notice. The intermingling of the races has been
supposed to have been facilitated in part by the yearly tribute
of 100 maidens paid by the northern kings to the earlier Arab
Sultans. Modern historians mostly throw doubt upon the story,
saying that of the early historians none mention it, and that the
Arabs do not even allude to it.[5] But if Conde is to be trusted, an Arab writer
does speak of it, as of a thing well known. In a letter of
Omar[6] ibn Alaftas Almudafar,
King of Algarve, to Alfonso VI., in 1086, occur the words:—”Do
thou remember the time of Mohammed Almanzor, and bring to thy
mind those treaties wherein thy forefathers offered him the
homage even of their own daughters, and sent him those damsels in
tribute even to the land of our rule.”

The maiden tribute is the subject of several ancient ballads by
the Christian Spaniards. The following are two verses from one of
these:—

“For he who gives the Moorish
king a hundred maids of Spain

Each year when in the season the
day comes round again;

If he be not a heathen he swells
the heathen’s train—

‘Twere better burn a kingdom than
suffer such disdain!

“If the Moslems must have
tribute, make men your tribute-money,

Send idle drones to tease them
within their hives of honey;

For, when ’tis paid with maidens,
from every maid there spring

Some five or six strong soldiers
to serve the Moorish king.”[1]

Southey also says that the only old Portuguese ballad known to
him was on this subject. The evidence, then, of the ballads is
strong for a fact of this kind, telling, too, as it does, so much
against the writers of the ballads.[2]

As to the Christian chroniclers, it is quite true that we find no
mention of this tribute in the history of Sebastian of Salamanca
and the Chronicle of Albeldum, but there is a direct allusion to
it in a document included in the collection of Florez.[3] “Our ancestors,” says
Ramiro, “the kings of the land—we blush to record it—to free
themselves from the raids of the Saracens, consented to pay them
yearly a shameful tribute of a hundred maidens distinguished for
their beauty, fifty of noble birth, and fifty from the people.”
It was to put an end to this nefarious tribute that Ramiro now
ordered a levy en masse. This, if the document is genuine
(and Florez gives no hint to the contrary), is good evidence for
the fact. Many succeeding writers mention it. Lucas of
Tuy[4] says that Ramiro was
asked for the tribute in 842. Johannes Vasaeus[5] speaks of it, as also
Alfonso, Bishop of Burgos;[6] and lastly, Rodrigo of Toledo[7] says that Mauregatus
(783-788), having obtained the throne of Leon by Saracen help,
agreed to send this tribute yearly.

On the whole, then, the evidence is in favour of the maiden
tribute being no myth, but of its having been regularly paid for
more than fifty years. Most of these Christian maidens probably
embraced the religion of their husbands, but in some cases they
no doubt converted them to their own faith.

From different causes, some of which will be mentioned elsewhere,
conversions were frequent from one religion to the other. Motives
of worldly interest naturally caused the balance in these to fall
very much against the Christians, but as the Mohammedan power
declined the opposite was the case. Though voluntary apostasy
was, and is, unpardonable, Mohammed seems to have made allowances
for those who apostatized under compulsion; for when one of his
followers, Ammar ibn Yaser, being tortured by the Koreish,
renounced his belief in God and in Mohammed’s mission, but
afterwards came weeping to the Prophet, Mohammed received him
kindly, and, wiping his eyes, said: “What fault was it of thine,
if they forced thee?”[8]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MUWALLADS.

That the conversions from Christianity to Islam were very
numerous at first we can sufficiently gather from the fact that
the new converts formed a large and important party in the State,
and almost succeeded in wresting the government of Spain from the
Arabs. The disorder and civil war which may almost be said to
have been chronic in Spain during the Arab dominion were due to
the fact that three distinct races settled in that country were
striving for the mastery, each of these races being itself
divided into two bitterly hostile factions. The Arabs were split
up into the two factions of Yemenite or Beladi Arabs, the
descendants of Kahtan, and Modharites, the Arabs of Mecca and
Medina, who claimed descent from Adnan.[1] To the latter section belonged the reigning
family of Umeyyades. The Berbers, who looked upon themselves as
the real conquerors of Spain, and whose numbers were subsequently
reinforced by fresh immigrations, were composed of two hostile
tribes of Botar and Beranis. Thirdly, there were the Spaniards,
part Christian, part Mohammedan; the latter being either
renegades themselves or the descendants of renegades. These
apostates were called by the Arabs Mosalimah, or New
Moslems,[2] and their descendants
Muwallads,[3] or those not of Arabic origin. The Christians
were either tribute-paying Christians, called Ahlu dh dhimmah; or
free Christians, under Moslem supremacy, called Ajemi;[4] or apostates from
Islam,[5] called Muraddin. The
Muwallads, in spite of the Mohammedan doctrine of the equality
and brotherhood of Moslems, were looked down upon with the utmost
contempt by the pure-blooded Arabs.[6] Their condition was even worse than that of
the Christians, for they were, generally speaking, excluded from
lucrative posts, and from all administration of affairs—a
dangerous policy, considering that they formed a majority of the
population.[7] Stronger and more humane than the Berbers,
they were friends of order and civilization. Intellectually they
were even superior to the conquering Arabs.[8]

The natural result of their being Spaniards by race, and Arabs by
religion, was that they sided now with one faction and now with
another, and at one time, under the weak Abdallah (888-912), were
the mainstay of the Sultan against his rebellious subjects. After
breaking with the Sultan they almost succeeded in gaining
possession of the whole kingdom, and carried fire and desolation
to the very gates of Cordova.[9]

As early as 805 the Muwallads of Cordova, incited by certain
theologians, revolted under Hakem I., but the rising was
suppressed. In 814, however, they again rose, and the rebellion
being put down with great severity by the help of the Berbers,
the Cordovan Muwallads were exiled, 1500 going to Alexandria, and
8000 to Fez.[1] But though exterminated in Cordova, the
renegades still mustered strong in Spain. At Elvira they rose in
Abdallah’s reign, under a chief named Nabil, and threw off the
Arab yoke;[2] and, previously to this, Abdurrahman ibn
Merwan ibn Yunas and Sadoun had headed similar revolts at Badajos
and Merida.[3] At Seville the Muwallad element was specially
strong, as we see from the many family names, such as Beni
Angelino, Beni Sabarico, which betray a Spanish origin. The
majority of the inhabitants embraced Islam early, and had their
mosque by the middle of the ninth century, but they retained many
Spanish customs and characteristics. When the Arabs of Seville
revolted against the Sultan, the renegade party joined the
latter. At Saragoza, the Beni Kasi, descendants of a noble Gothic
family, set up an independent kindgom, waging war indifferently
with all their neighbours.

It does not come within the scope of this inquiry to trace out
the history of all the revolts made by the Arabs or Berbers
against the Sultan’s authority, but the policy and position of
the Muwallads and Christians are a necessary part of our subject.
The latter, though well treated on the whole, naturally looked
back with regret to the days of their own supremacy, and were
ready to intrigue with anyone able to assist them against their
Arab rulers. Accordingly we find them communicating with the
kings of France; and there is still extant a letter from Louis
the Debonnaire to the people of Merida, written in 826, which is
as follows:— “We have heard of your tribulation, which you suffer
from the cruelty of your king Abdurrahman, who has tried to take
away your goods, and has oppressed you just as his father Abulaz
did. He, making you pay unjust taxes, which you were not bound to
pay, turned you from friends into enemies, and from obedient to
disobedient vassels, inasmuch as he infringed your liberties. But
you, like brave men, we hear, are resisting the tyrant, and we
write now to condole with you, and to exhort you to continue your
resistance, and since your king is our enemy as well as yours,
let us join in opposing him.

“We purpose to send an army to the frontier next summer to wait
there till you give us the signal for action. Know then that, if
you will desert him and join us, your ancient liberties shall be
secured to you, and you shall be free of all taxes and tributes,
and shall live under your own laws.”[1]

The army promised was sent under the king’s son, but seems to
have effected nothing.

During the period of religious disturbance at Cordova, when the
voluntary martyrdoms became so frequent, and just at the time of
Mohammed’s accession, the Christians of Toledo, encouraged, we
may suppose, by their proximity to the free Christians, revolted
in favour of their coreligionists at Cordova. No wonder then that
Mohammed imagined that the outbreak of fanaticism in Cordova was
but the signal for a general mutiny of his Christian subjects. As
we have already seen, the king set out with an army against the
Toledans, who appealed to Ordono I. of Leon for help. Glad enough
to get such an opportunity for weakening the Arab government,
Ordono sent a large auxiliary force, but the Toledans and
Leonnese were defeated with great slaughter by the Sultan’s
troops.[2] Within twenty years,
however, Toledo became practically independent, except for the
payment of tribute.[3]

From all this it will be clear that the Spanish part of the
population, whether Moslem or Christian, was opposed to the
exclusiveness of the old Arabs, and ready to make common cause
against them. The unity of race prevailed over the difference of
creed, as it did in the case of the English Roman Catholics in
the war with Spain, and as it usually will under such
circumstances. The national party were fortunate enough to find
an able leader in the person of the celebrated rebel, Omar ibn
Hafsun, who came near to wresting the sovereignty of Spain from
the hands of the Umeyyades. Omar was descended from a Count
Alfonso,[1] and his family had
been Christians till the apostasy of his grandfather Djaffar.
Omar, being a wild unmanageable youth, took up the lucrative and
honourable profession of bandit, his headquarters being at
Bobastro or Bishter, a stronghold somewhere between Archidona and
Ronda, in the sierra stretching from Granada to
Gibraltar.[2] After a brief sojourn in Africa, where his
ambition was inflamed by a prophecy announcing a great future, he
returned to Spain, and at once began business again as brigand at
Bobastro with nearly 6000 men.[3] Being captured, he was brought to Cordova, but
spared on condition of enlisting in the king’s forces. But he
soon escaped from Cordova, and became chief of all the Spaniards
in the South, Moslem and Christian,[4] whose ardour he aroused by such words as
these: “Too long have you borne the yoke of the Sultan, who
spoils you of your goods, and taxes you beyond your means. Will
you let yourselves be trampled on by the Arabs, who look upon you
as their slaves? It is not ambition that prompts me to rebel, but
a desire to avenge you and myself.” To strengthen his cause he
made alliances at different times with the Muwallads in Elvira,
Seville, and Saragoza, and with the successful rebel, Abdurrahman
ibn Merwan, in Badajos.

Openly defying the Sultan’s forces, he was only kept in check by
Almundhir, the king’s son, who succeeded his father in 886. Omar
was further strengthened by the accession to his side of Sherbil,
the Count of Cordova.[1] The death of Almundhir in 888 removed from
Omar’s path his only able enemy, and, during Abdallah’s weak
reign, the rebel leader was virtual king of the south and east of
Spain. The district of Regio[2] was made over to him by the king, and Omar’s
lieutenant, Ibn Mastarna, was made chief of Priejo.

This protracted war, which was really one for national
independence, was carried on year after year with varying
success. At one time Omar conceived the intention of proclaiming
the Abasside Khalifs,[3] at another he grasped at the royal power
himself; and Abdallah’s empire was only saved by a seasonable
victory in 891 at Hisn Belay (or Espiel).[4] The battle was fought on the eve of the
Passover, and the Moslems taunted their enemies with having such
a joyful feast, and so many victims to commemorate it with. This
shows that a large, perhaps the largest, part of Omar’s army was
Christian. Another indication of this is found in a poem of
Tarikh ibn Habib,[5] where, speaking of the coming destruction of
Cordova, he says: “The safest place will then be the hill of Abu
Abdu, where once stood a church,” meaning that Omar’s Christian
soldiers would respect that sanctuary, and no other. Indeed, it
is certain that Omar himself became a Christian some time before
this battle,[6] as his father had done before him. He took the
name of Samuel, and his daughter Argentea, as we have seen,
suffered martyrdom. This change of creed on Omar’s part changed
the character of the war, and gave it more of a
religious,[7] and perhaps less of a national, character, for
the Spanish Moslems fell off from him, when he became Christian
and built churches.

Towards the close of his reign Abdallah was able to assert his
supremacy, though Omar and his followers still held out. Omar
himself did not die till 917, some years after Abdallah’s death.
The king’s successor, Abdurrahman III., was a different stamp of
man from Abdallah, and the reduction of Omar became only a
question of time, though, in fact, the apostasy of Omar from
Islam had made the ultimate success of the national party very
doubtful, if not impossible. After Omar’s death, his son,
Djaffar, thought to recover the support of the Spanish Moslems by
embracing Islam; but he thereby lost the confidence of the
Christians, by whom he was murdered. In 928 his brother Hafs
surrendered, with Bobastro, to the Sultan, and the great
rebellion was finally extinguished.

So ended the grand struggle of the national party, first under
the-direction of the Muwallads, and then of the Christians, to
shake off the Arab and Berber yoke. During the remainder of the
tenth century the strong administration of Abdurrahman III.,
Hakem II., and the great Almanzor, gave the Christians no chance
of raising the cry of “Spain for the Spanish.” The danger of a
renewal of the rebellion once removed, the position of the
Christians does not seem to have been made any worse in
consequence of their late disaffection, and Abdurrahman, himself
the son of a Christian mother, treated all parties in the revolt
with great leniency, even against the wishes and advice of the
more devout Moslems. Almanzor, too, made himself respected, and
even liked, by his Christian subjects, and there is no doubt that
his victories over the Christian States in the North[1] were won very largely
with the aid of Christian soldiers. His death was the signal for
the disruption of the Spanish Khalifate, and from 1010-1031, when
the khalifate was finally extinguished, complete anarchy
prevailed in Saracen Spain. The Berbers made a determined effort
to regain their ascendency, and their forces, seconded by the
Christians, succeeded in placing Suleiman on the throne in 1013.
A succession of feeble rulers, set up by the different
factions—Arab, Berber, and Slave—followed, until Hischem III. was
forced to abdicate in 1031, and the Umeyyade dynasty came to an
end, after lasting 275 years. By this time the Christians in the
North had gathered themselves together for a combined advance
against the Saracen provinces, never again to retrograde,
scarcely even to be checked, till in 1492 fell Granada, the last
stronghold of the Moors in Spain.[2]

CHAPTER IX.

CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS IGNORANT OF ONE

ANOTHER’S  CREED.

In spite of the close contact into which the Christians and
Mohammedans were brought in Spain, and the numerous conversions
and frequent intermarriages between the two sections, no thorough
knowledge seems to have existed, on either side, of the creed of
the other party. Such, at least, is the conclusion to which we
are driven, on reading the only direct records which remain on
the subject among Arab and Christian writers. These on the
Christian side consist chiefly of quotations from a book on
Mohammedanism by the abbot Speraindeo in a work of his disciple,
Eulogius;[1] and some rather incoherent denunciations of
Mohammed and his religion by Alvar,[2] another pupil of the abbot’s. In these, as
might be expected, great stress is laid on the sensuality of
Mohammed’s paradise,[3] and the lewdness of the Prophet himself. As to
the latter, though many of Gibbon’s coarse sarcasms do not rest
on good authority, very little can be said for the Prophet. But
among other blasphemies attributed by Speraindeo to Mohammed is
one of which we find no mention in the Koran—the assertion,
namely, that he would in the next world be wedded to the Virgin
Mary. John, Bishop of Seville, is equally incorrect when, in a
letter to Alvar,[4] he alleges a promise on the part of Mohammed
that he would, like Christ, rise again from the dead; whereas his
body, being neglected by his relations, was devoured by dogs. The
Christian bishop does not hesitate to add—sepultus est in
infernum—he was buried in hell.[5]

It is generally supposed that Mohammed could neither read nor
write, and this appears to have been the opinion of
Alvar;[1] but the same witness
acknowledges that the Koran was composed in such eloquent and
beautiful language that even Christians could not help reading
and admiring it.[2]

On the important question of Mohammed’s position with regard to
Christianity, Eulogius[3] at least formed a correct judgment. Mohammed,
he tells us “blasphemously taught that Christ was the Word of
God,[4] and His
Spirit;[5] a great
prophet,[6] endowed with much
power from God;[7] like Adam in His creation,[8] but not equal to God
(the Creator);[9] and that by reason of His blameless[10] life, being filled
with the Holy Spirit,[11] He showed marvellous signs and wonders
through the power of God,[12] not working by His own Godhead, but as a
righteous Man, and an obedient servant,[13] obtaining much power and might from the
Almighty God through prayer.”

Alvar is much more unfair to Mohammed than his friend Eulogius,
and he even seems to have had a prejudiced idea[1] that the Prophet set
himself deliberately to preach doctrines the opposite of those
taught by Christ. It would be nearer to the truth to say that the
divergence between the two codes of morals was due to the natural
ignorance of an illiterate Arabian, brought into contact only
with an heretical form of Christianity, the real doctrines of
which he was therefore not likely to know.

According to Alvar, the sixth day of the week was chosen for the
Mohammedan holy day, because Christ suffered on that day. We
shall realise the absurdity of this when we consider the
reverence in which Mohammed held the very name of Christ, going
so far even as to deny that Christ Himself was crucified at
all.[2] The true reason for
selecting Friday, as alleged by Mohammed himself, was, because
the work of creation ended on that day.[3]

Again, sensuality was preached, says Alvar, because Christ
preached chastity. But Mohammed cannot fairly be said to have
preached sensuality, though his private life in this respect was
by no means pure.

Gluttony was advocated instead of fasting. A more baseless charge
was never made; for how can it be contended that Christianity
enjoins fasting, while Islam disapproves of it, in the face of
such texts as Matthew ix. 14,[4] and Isaiah lviii. 6—”Is not this the fast that
I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the
heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free?” on the one
hand; and on the other the express injunction of the
Koran[5]:—”O true believers, a
fast is ordained you, as it was ordained to those before you …
if ye fast, it will be better for you, if ye knew it. The month
of Ramadan shall ye fast.” But Alvar goes on to make a more
astonishing statement still:—”Christ ordained that men should
abstain from their wives during a fast, while Mohammed
consecrated those days to carnal pleasure.” Christ surely gives
us no such injunction, though St Paul does say something of the
kind. The Koran[6] explicitly says—”It is lawful for you on the
night of the fast to go in unto your wives; they are a garment
unto you, and you are a garment unto them.” We even find an
incident recorded by an Arabian writer, where Yahya ibn Yahya,
the famous faqui, imposed a penance of a month’s extra fast on
Abdurrahman II. (822-852) for violating the Prophet’s ordinance,
that wives should be abstained from during the fasting
month.[7] Alvar, being a layman,
may perhaps be supposed not to have studied Mohammedanism
critically, and that his zeal was not according to knowledge is
perhaps the best explanation of the matter. In one place[8] he informs us of his
intention of writing a book on the Cobar,[9] but the work, if ever written, has not
survived. Nor is this much to be regretted, if we may judge by
the wild remarks he indulges in elsewhere[10] on this theme. In
that passage he seems to apply the obscure prophecy of
Daniel[11] to Mohammed,
forgetting that verse 37 speaks of one who “shall regard not the
desire of women,” a description hardly characteristic of
Mohammed. He identifies the God Maozim (Hebr. Mauzim), which our
revised version (v. 38) translates the “God of fortresses” with
the Mohammedan Cobar;[12] and the strange god, whom he shall
acknowledge, Alvar identifies with the devil which inspired the
Prophet in the guise of the angel Gabriel. All this, as the
writer himself allows, is very enigmatical.

Alvar does not scruple even to accuse the Moslems of idolatry,
asserting that the Arabian tribes worship their idol (the Caaba
black stone[1]) as they used to do of yore, and that they set
apart a holy month, Al Mozem, in honour of this idol.[2]

Finally, Mohammed is spoken of variously as the precursor of
Antichrist,[3] or as Antichrist himself.[4]

Let us now see how far we can gather the opinions of educated
Moslems with regard to Christian doctrine and worship. If we find
these to be no less one-sided and erroneous than the opinions of
Christians as to Mohammedanism, yet can we the more easily excuse
the Moslems, for the Koran itself, the very foundation and guide
of all their religious dogmas, is full of incorrect and
inconsistent notions on the subject.

The most important of these mistakes was that the Christians
worshipped a Trinity of Deities—God, Christ, Mary.[5] The inclusion of the
Virgin Mary into this Trinity was perhaps due to the fact that
worship was paid to her even at that early date, as it certainly
is among the Roman Catholics at this day. As will have been seen
from a passage quoted above,[6] something very like adoration was already paid
to the Virgin in the churches of Spain.

But the following extract from a treatise on Religions, by Ali
ibn Hazm,[1] the prime minister of Abdurrahman V. (Dec.
1023-March 1024), will show that some educated Moslems knew
enough of the Christian creed to appreciate its difficulties:—”We
need not be astonished,” says Ibn Hazm, “at the superstition of
men. Look at the Christians! They are so numerous that God only
knows their numbers. They have among them men of great
intelligence, and princes of great ability. Nevertheless they
believe that three is one, and one is three; that one of the
three is the Father, another the Son, another the Spirit; that
the Father is, and is not, the Son; that a man is, and is not,
God; that the Messiah is God in every respect, and yet not the
same as God; that He who has existed from all eternity has been
created.

“One of their sects, the members of which they call Jacobites,
and which number hundreds of thousands, believes even that the
Creator Himself was scourged, crucified, and put to death; so
that the Universe for three days was deprived of its Governor.”

Another extract from an Arabic writer will show us what the
Moslems thought of the worship of St James, the patron saint of
Spain, round whose shrine rallied the religious revival in the
north of the Peninsula. It is Ibn Hayyan,[2] who, in his account of Almanzor’s fiftieth
expedition against the Christians, says:—”Shant Yakoh
(Santiago)[3] is one of the sanctuaries most frequented, not
only by the Christians of Andalus, but of the neighbouring
continent, who look upon its church with a veneration such as
Moslems entertain for the Caaba of Mecca; for their Caaba is a
colossal idol (statue) which stands in the middle of the church.
They swear by it, and repair to it in pilgrimage from the most
distant parts, from Rome, as well as other countries beyond Rome,
pretending that the tomb to be seen in the church is that of
Yakob (James), one of the twelve apostles, and the most beloved
by Isa (Jesus).—May the blessing of God be on him, and on our
Prophet!—The Christians call this Yakob the brother of Jesus,
because, while he lived, he was always with him. They say that he
was Bishop of Jerusalem, and that he wandered over the earth
preaching the religion [of Christ], and calling upon the
inhabitants to embrace it, till he came to that remote corner of
Andalus; that he then returned to Syria, where he died at the age
of 120 solar years. They pretend likewise that, after the death
of Yakob, his disciples carried his body and buried it in that
church, as the most remote part, where he had left traces [of his
preaching].”

In a country where literature and the arts were so keenly
cultivated, as they were in Spain during the time of Arab
domination, and where the rivalry of Christian, Jew, and Moslem
produced a sustained period of intellectual activity such as the
world has rarely seen, controversial theology could not fail to
have been largely developed. But the books, if any were written,
from the Christian or Moslem standpoint, have all perished, and
we have only such slight and unsatisfactory notices left to us as
those already quoted.

In estimating, therefore, what influences the rival religions of
Spain had upon each other, we are driven to draw such inferences
as we can from the meagre hints furnished to us by the writers of
the period; from our knowledge of what Christianity was in Spain,
and Mohammedanism in Africa, before they were brought into
contact in Andalusia, compared with what they became after that
contact had made itself felt; and from the observed effects of
such relations elsewhere. Upon a careful consideration of these
scattered hints we shall see that certain effects were visible,
which, had the amalgamation of the two peoples been allowed to
continue uninterruptedly for a longer period, and had there been
no disturbing element in the north of Spain and in Africa, would
in all probability have led to some marked modification in one or
both religions, and even to their nearer assimilation.

CHAPTER IX.

HERESIES IN SPAIN.

Such mixtures of religions are by no means without example in
history. The Sabians, for instance, were the followers of a
religion, which may have been a cross between Judaism,
Christianity, and Magianism.[1] But Mohammedanism itself has furnished the
most marked instances of such amalgamation. In Persia Islam
combined with the creed of Zoroaster to produce Babyism; while in
India Hinduism and Mohammedanism, fused together by the genius of
Nanak Guru, have resulted in Sikhism.

It may be said that Mohammedanism has been able to unite with
Zoroastrianism and Hinduism owing to their very dissimilarity
with itself, whereas Christianity is too near akin to Islam to
combine with it in such a way as to produce a religion like both,
and yet different from either.[2] Christianity and Mohammedanism, each have two
cardinal doctrines (and two only) which cannot be abrogated if
they are to remain distinctive creeds. In one of these, the unity
of God, they agree. In the other they do, and always must,
differ. The divinity of Christ on the one side, and the divine
mission of Mohammed on the other, are totally incompatible
doctrines. If the one is true, the other cannot be so. Surrender
both, and the result is Judaism. No compromise would seem
possible. Yet a compromise was attempted, if we can credit a
statement attributed by Dozy to Ibn Khaldun,[3] in recounting the
history of the successful rebel, Abdurrahman ibn Merwan ibn
Yunas, who during the last quarter of the ninth century, while
all Moslem Spain was a prey to the wildest anarchy, became a
leader of the renegade or Muwallad party in Merida and the
neighbourhood. Thinking to unite the Muwallads and Christians in
one revolt, he preached to his countrymen a new religion, which
held a place halfway between Christianity and Islam. This is all
we are told of an endeavour, which might have led to the most
important consequences. That we hear no more of it is evidence
enough that the attempt proved abortive. The only other attempt,
if it can be called so, to combine Islam and Christianity has
resulted in that curious compound called the religion of the
Druses.

But though no religion, holding a position midway between Islam
and Christianity, arose in Spain, yet those religions could
hardly fail to undergo considerable modifications in themselves
by reason of their close contact for several centuries.

In respect to Christianity we shall naturally find the traces (if
any) of such modification in the so-called heresies which may
have arisen in Spain during this period. These will require a
somewhat strict examination to be made to yield up their secret.

The Church of Spain seems to have gained a reputation for
introducing innovations[1] into the doctrines and practices of the true
faith, and even of priding itself on its ingenuity in this way.
The very first Council whose acts have come down to us, held at
Elvira in Spain, early in the fourth century, contains a canon
censuring the use of pictures. The very first heretics, who were
punished for their error with death by the hands of their
fellow-Christians, were reared in the bosom of the Spanish
Church. The doctrine, novel then, but accepted now by all the
Western Churches, of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the
Son as well as from the Father, was first formulated in a Spanish
Council at the end of the sixth century, but not universally
received in the West until 600 years later.[2] And as we have seen,
the use of pictures was denounced long before the times of the
Iconoclasts.

We will now take in order the several heresies that made
themselves noticeable in Spain, or Gothic Gaul, during the Arab
supremacy, and see if we can trace any relation between them and
the Moslem faith.

To take an unimportant one first, a heresy is mentioned as having
arisen in Septimania (Gothic Gaul), presumably during the eighth
century.[3] It was more practical
than speculative, and consisted in a denial of the need of
confession to a priest, on the (unimpeachable) ground that men
ought to confess to God alone. This appears to us Protestants a
wholly laudable and reasonable contention; but not so to the
worthy abbé who records it: cette doctrine, si favorable à
libertinage, trouva un grand nombre de partisans, et excite
encore le zèle d’Alcuin.[4]

That this error was due in any sense to the influence of the
Arabs in the neighbouring territories of Spain, it is of course
impossible to affirm, but at all events the reform was quite in
the spirit of the verses of the Koran: “O ye who have
received[1] the Scripture come to
a just determination between us and you, that we worship not any
except God, and associate no creature with Him: and that the one
of us take not the other for lords, beside God.” And “They take
their priests and monks for their lords besides God.”[2]

Let us next consider an heretical view of the Trinity attributed
to Migetius (circa 750). According to the rather obscure
account, which has come down to us,[1] he seems to have regarded the Three Persons of
the Trinity, at least in their relations with the world, as
corporeal, the Father being personified in David, the Son in
Jesus, and the Holy Ghost in Paul. It is difficult to believe
that the doctrine, thus crudely stated by Elipandus, was really
held by anyone. We may perhaps infer[2] that Migetius revived the error of Priscillian
(itself a form of Sabellianism), and reducing the Three Persons
of the Trinity to one, acknowledged certain ένεργειαι or powers,
emanating from Him, which were manifested in David, Jesus, Paul
respectively. As the first and last of these three recipients of
the Divine powers were confessedly men, it follows that Migetius
was ready to strip Jesus of that Divinity, which is the cardinal
doctrine of Christianity, and which more than any other doctrine
distinguishes it from the creed of Mohammed. Accordingly he
appears to have actually denied the divinity of the Word,[3] and in this he made an
approach to Mohammedanism.[4]

A similar, but seemingly not identical, error was propagated by
those who, as we learn from a letter of Alvar to Speraindeo, did
not believe the Three in One and One in Three, “denying the
utterances of the prophets, rejecting the doctrine of learned
men, and, while they claimed to take their stand upon the Gospel,
pointing to texts like John xx. 17, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and
your Father, unto my God and your God,’ to prove that Christ was
merely man.”[1] In his answer to Alvar’s letter, Speraindeo
says, “If we speak of the Trinity as one Person, we Judaize;” he
might have added, “and Mohammedanize.” These heretics, according
to the abbot, spoke of three powers (virtutes) forming one
Person, not, as the orthodox held, three Persons forming one
God.[2] Here we see a close
resemblance to the error mentioned in the preceding paragraph;
but the heretics we are now dealing with make an even closer
approach to the teaching of Mohammed in their quotation of John
xx. 17 given above, as will be seen, if we compare with that text
the following passages of the Koran, put into the mouth of
Christ: “Verily, God is my Lord, and your Lord; therefore serve
him:”[3] “They are surely
infidels who say, verily, God is Christ, the Son of Mary, since
Christ said, O children of Israel, serve God, my Lord and your
Lord:”[4] and, “I have not
spoken unto them any other than what thou didst command
me—namely, worship God, my Lord and your Lord.”[5]

We come next to the famous Adoptionist heresy, the most
remarkable and original of those innovations to which Alcuin
taunts the Spanish Church with being addicted. Unfortunately we
derive little of our knowledge of the new doctrine from the
originators and supporters of it—our information on the subject
coming chiefly from passages quoted by their opponents (notably
our own Alcuin) in controversial works. But that the heresy had
an important connection with the Mohammedan religion has been the
opinion of many eminent writers on Church history. Mariana, the
Spanish historian, and Baronius, the apologist for the Roman
Church, held that the object of the new heresiarchs was, “by
lowering the character of Christ, to pave the way for a union
between Christians and Mohammedans.”[1] Enhueber,[2] also, in his treatise on this subject, quotes
a tract, “De Primatu Ecclesiae Toletanae,” which attributes the
heresy to its author, Elipandus, being brought into so close a
contact with the Saracens, and living on such friendly terms with
them.[3]

Neander[4] thinks that there are
some grounds for supposing that Felix, one of the authors of the
heresy, had been employed in defending Christianity against
objections brought against it from the Moslem standpoint,[5] and in proving the
divinity of Christ, so that they might be induced to accept it.
Felix, therefore, may have been led to embrace this particular
doctrine, called Adoptionism, from a wish to bring the Christian
view of Christ nearer to the Mohammedan opinion.

There is considerable doubt as to who first broached the new
theory, the evidence being of a conflicting character, and
pointing now to Elipandus, bishop of Toledo and primate of all
Spain, now to Felix, bishop of Urgel, in Catalonia.[6]

The claims of Felix[1] are supported by Eginhard,[2] Saxo, and Jonas of
Orleans; while Paulinus of Aquileia, in his book entitled
“Sacrosyllabus,” expressly calls Elipandus the author of the
baneful heresy; and Alcuin, in his letter to Leidrad,[3] says that he is
convinced that Elipandus, as he was the first in rank, so also
was the chief offender.

The evidence being inconclusive, we are driven to follow à
priori considerations, and these point to Elipandus as the
author. According to Neander,[4] he was a violent, excitable, bigoted man; and
he certainly uses some very strong language in his writings
against his opponents, and stands a good deal on his dignity as
head of the Spanish Church. For instance, speaking of his
accusers, Etherius, Bishop of Osma, and Beatus,[5] a priest of Libana, he
says of the former that he wallows in the mire of all
lasciviousness;[6] that he is totally unfit to officiate at God’s
altar;[7] that he is a false
prophet[8] and a heretic; and,
forgetting the courtesies of controversy, he doesn’t hesitate, in
another place, to call him an ass. Beatus also he accuses of
gross sensuality, and calls him that iniquitous priest of
Astorga,[9] accusing him of
heresy, and giving him the title Antiphrasius, which means that
instead of being called Beatus, he should have been named the
very opposite.[10]

But in spite of outbreaks like these we must beware of judging
the venerable Elipandus too hardly. Alcuin himself, in his letter
to the bishop, written, as he says, “with the pen of charity,”
speaks of him as most blameless,[1] and confesses that he has heard much of his
piety and devotion, an admission which he also makes with regard
to Felix, in a letter to him.[2] Yet in his book against Elipandus, he
exclaims, not without a touch of bathos: “For all the garments of
wool on your shoulders, and the mitre upon your brow, wearing
which you minister to the people, for all the daily shaving of
your beard[3] … if you renounce not these doctrines, you
will be numbered with the goats!” Another testimony (of doubtful
value, however) in Elipandus’ favour is to be found in the
anonymous life of Beatus,[4] where Elipandus is said to have succeeded
Cixila in the bishopric of Toledo, because of his reputation for
learning and piety, which extended throughout Spain.

Elipandus, who boasted of having refuted and stamped out the
Migetian errors, and who also took up so independent an attitude
with regard to the See of Rome, was not the man to endure being
dictated to in the matter of what was, or what was not, sound
doctrine, and, in the letter quoted above, he scornfully remarks
that he had never heard that it was the province of the people of
Libana to teach the Toledans. Here, as in the defiant attitude
taken up towards the Pope, we may perhaps see a jealousy, felt by
the old independent Church of Spain under its own primate,
towards the new Church, that was growing up in the mountains of
the North, the centre of whose religious devotion was soon to be
Compostella, and its spiritual head not the primate of Spain, but
the bishop of Rome.

It is now time to explain what the actual heresy advocated by
Elipandus and Felix was. Some have held the opinion that
Adoptionism was merely a revival of the Bonosian errors, which
had long taken root in Spain;[1] others, that it was a revival of
the Nestorian[2] heresy, a new phase of the controversy between
the schools of Antioch and Alexandria;[3] or that it was an attempt to reform
Christianity, purging it from later additions.[4] Alcuin, however,
speaks of its followers as a new sect, unknown to former
times.[5] Stated briefly, the
new doctrine was that Jesus, in so far as His manhood was
concerned, was son of God by adoption. This error had been
foreseen and condemned in advance by Cyril of Alexandria
(348-386):[6] by Hilary of Arles (429-449).[7] The Eleventh Council
of Toledo had also guarded against this same error a hundred
years before this (675), affirming that Christ the Son of God was
His Son by nature, not by adoption.

It is a mistake to suppose Adoptionism to be a mere resuscitation
of Nestorianism.[1] It agreed with the latter in repudiating the
term “Mother of God” as applied to the Virgin Mary,[2] but it differed from
it in the essential point of acknowledging the unity of person in
Christ. What Felix—and on him devolved the chief onus of defence
in the controversy—wished to make clear, was that the predicates
of Christ’s two natures could not logically be
interchanged.[3] He therefore reasoned thus: Christ in respect
to His Deity is God, and Son of God; with respect to His Manhood
He is also God and Son of God, not indeed in essence, but by
being taken into union with Him, who is in essence God,
and Son of God. Therefore Christ, unless He derived His humanity
from the essence of God, must as man, and in respect of that
humanity, be Son of God only in a nuncupative sense. This
relation of Jesus the Man to God he preferred to describe by the
term Adoption—a word not found in Scripture in this connection,
“but,” says Felix, “implied therein,[4] for what is adoption in a son, if it be not
election, assumption (susceptio).” The term itself was no
doubt found by Elipandus in the Gothic Liturgy;[5] and he most likely
used it at first with no thought of raising a metaphysical
discussion on so knotty a point. Being brought to task, however,
for using the word by those whom he deemed his ecclesiastical
inferiors, he was led to defend it from a natural dislike to
acknowledge himself in the wrong. “We can easily believe,” says
Enhueber, “that Elipandus, who appears to have been the chief
author of the heresy at this time, fell into it at first from
ignorance and inadvertently, and did not appear openly as a
heretic, till, admonished of his error, he arrogantly and
obstinately defended a position which he had only taken up
through ignorance.”[6]

Elipandus also seems to have applied to Felix[7] for his opinion on
Christ’s Sonship; and the latter, who was a man of great
penetration and acuteness, first formulated the new doctrine,
stating in his answer that Christ must be considered with regard
to His Divinity as truly God and Son of God, but with regard to
His Manhood, as Son of God in name only, and by adoption.