[7] 1740-1748: in his "De Servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione," Bk. iii. 16, sec. 7. Fleury, v. 541.
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]
[1] Eul., "Mem. Sanct.," i. sec. 21: Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 3.
[2] Ibid.; and Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 7.
[3] Leovigild, "De habitu Clericorum." "Migne," 121, p. 565.
[4] Eul., l.l.
[5] Stigmata.
[6] Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 6, "Derisioni et contemptui inhiantes capita moventes infanda iterando congeminant." He adds: "Daily and nightly from their minarets they revile the Lord by their invocation of Allah and Mohammed!" Eul., "Lib. Ap.," sec. 19, confesses that hearing their call to prayer always moved him to quote Psalm xcvi. 7: "Confounded be all they that worship carved images"—a very irrelevant malediction, as applied to the Moslems.
[7] Alvar, l.l., "Fidei signum opprobrioso elogio decolorant."
[8] "Spurcitiarum fimo."—Ibid.