At the time of the Conquest, a certain number of churches were set aside for Christian worship; but that number could not be increased, nor could additions be even made to the ancient edifices. In case reconstruction or repairs were necessary, the identical old materials were required to be used. The stringency of these rules was, however, often relaxed by the generous indulgence of the authorities. The law which forbade that a building erected by a Christian should be of greater height than that of a Moslem was also frequently evaded. In Spain and Sicily the towers of church and cathedral often overtopped the minaret of the mosque, an implication of superiority which, in other countries of the Mohammedan world, would have caused their instant demolition. In those two kingdoms of Islam alone the use of bells was tolerated. Elsewhere, boards suspended by cords and beaten with mallets took their place and announced the opening of Christian service. The greatest liberty was permitted in the exercise of public worship. The clergy wore their sacred vestments. They discharged the duties of their holy calling in peace and security, and those who ventured to interfere with them were liable to severe punishment. They celebrated mass with all the pomp of the ancient Visigothic ceremonial. The priest carried the viaticum to the dying, in solemn procession through the crowded streets. The bodies of the dead, enveloped in the smoke of tapers and incense, and preceded by chanting choristers, were borne to the cathedral for the performance of the final rites of the Church. The toleration of the Spanish Moslems even went to the extent of permitting the use of images—execrated as idolatrous by every follower of the Prophet—in Christian temples. Effigies of saints were by no means rare. In the Cathedral of Santa Maria at Cordova was a statue of the Virgin. Her shrine was famous for its sanctity, and, more accessible than that of Santiago, yearly attracted multitudes of devout pilgrims from every part of Europe. In each church was preserved the body of the martyr to whom the sacred edifice was dedicated, and from whom it derived its name. The great city of Cordova contained six Christian houses of worship besides the cathedral. Eleven monasteries and convents offered a refuge to those who sought the devotional retirement of cloistered life. Of these, three were in the city and eight upon the wooded slopes of the Sierra Morena. Some, instituted probably with a view to the acquisition of increased merit by resistance to constant temptation, were occupied by both sexes under a single abbot. The monks appeared in cowl and tonsure; the nuns were constantly veiled. All members of the monastic orders, as well as those of the secular priesthood, traversed at will and unmolested the streets of the capital. St. Eulogius, Cyprian, Samson, and other contemporaneous ecclesiastical writers bear repeated and voluntary testimony to the indulgent forbearance extended to Christians by the Khalifs of Cordova.
In Sicily, practically the same conditions prevailed. As, however, the indigenous population overwhelmingly exceeded in number that of the invaders, toleration was necessary for the maintenance of public tranquillity, and was, in fact, a measure of expediency as well as of justice. The civil organization of the Byzantine Empire was continued. The magistrates retained the same titles and exercised the same jurisdiction as formerly, subject always to the supervision of the officials of the Divan. The procedure of the ancient tribunals was but slightly modified. The rights of person and property were fully recognized. Freedom of worship was guaranteed to all law-abiding tributaries. Taxation was uniform and regular; the legal impositions were far less onerous than those exacted by the tyrannical rapacity of the Greek administration. Under the Moors, all persons whose condition or infirmities prevented them from obtaining a livelihood were exempt; the Byzantine fiscal agents carried their merciless perquisitions into the abodes of helplessness, disease, and destitution. The Moslem law regulating the distribution of estates and the rights of heirs was so admirably adapted to the purpose, that it was continued, with trifling modifications, by the Normans, after it had been in force for nearly two centuries. No lands were confiscated but those which had been abandoned by their owners. The number of these was so great that they afforded ample space for the settlements of the Saracen colonists, who occupied the most valuable portions of the States of Trapani, Palermo, and Agrigentum.
The restrictions imposed upon the Sicilian Christians were more harsh than the requirements exacted of their Spanish brethren. The general provisions of the Mohammedan code relating to the prohibited acts of misbelievers were, of course, rigidly enforced. The Christian priests of Sicily, like those of Spain, were compelled to perform the rites of their religion behind closed doors. Like them also, they were forbidden to publicly discuss the merits of their creed or to attempt to secure proselytes. The laws of that island, considering the numerical weakness of the dominant race, were strangely severe. As tokens of degradation, peculiar marks were placed upon the houses of Christians; they were restricted to a costume distinctive in materials and color, and wore girdles of woollen cloth or leather. They were forbidden to mount a horse, to own saddles, to bear arms. They could not use seals with Arabic inscriptions or give their children Arabic names. In the streets they gave way to their Saracen masters, and always stood with bowed heads in their presence. Drinking wine in the sight of a Mussulman was visited with exemplary punishment. No Christian woman was allowed to remain in the bath with a Mohammedan, even though the latter were one of the humblest maid-servants of the harem. If one of the tributary sect admitted the slave of a Mussulman into his house, he was liable to a heavy fine. The ringing of the bells of church or monastery loudly was prohibited, as was also the reading of the Scriptures in the hearing of the followers of the Prophet. No Christian could cross himself in public. The slightest interference with Moslem worship was punishable with death.
Despite these arbitrary and often oppressive laws, the condition of the Christians of Sicily was, upon the whole, far more agreeable and prosperous under the Arabs than it had been under the Greeks. Relief from arbitrary taxation made secure the profits of industry. Every branch of commerce was open to the enterprising. The system of guilds and corporations, which had existed among tradesmen since the Roman domination, remained unimpaired. If a Christian distrusted the integrity or capacity of his own magistrate, he was at liberty to submit his cause to the kadi, who rendered judgment according to the maxims and precedents of Moslem jurisprudence.
In the Spanish Peninsula, the government of the Church presented a strange and portentous anomaly. As the representative of Islam was a member of the family of the Ommeyades, which had, in the beginning, exerted all the influence of a powerful caste to overwhelm its founder and render his teachings odious, so now the interests of Christianity were delivered over to the tender mercies of its hereditary and most unrelenting foe. The Visigothic sovereigns, chosen by ecclesiastical councils, were, by virtue of their election, clothed with a certain degree of sanctity, and enjoyed an ample measure of spiritual power. The monarch practically controlled the policy of the Church. His decision was final in all matters not important enough to be submitted to the assembled wisdom of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the kingdom. He consecrated bishops. He exercised without question the sacerdotal rights of presentation, translation, investiture. He convoked councils. The fate of every member of the hierarchy, from acolyte to archbishop, was in his hands. Even the metropolitan see of Toledo, the primacy of Spain, could not be filled without his sanction. He could appoint the most unworthy candidate to the most exalted station in the priesthood. He could arbitrarily depose ministers whose lives had exhibited the practice of every Christian virtue. He interpreted and dictated the application of intricate points of ecclesiastical law. Notwithstanding the apparent ascendency of the sacerdotal order in the temporal affairs of the government on the one hand, it was largely neutralized on the other by the influence of the Crown over the fortunes of the Church, an influence always weighty and often predominant.
These prerogatives, dangerous to religious liberty and liable to abuse even in the hands of an orthodox sovereign, were transmitted, in all their force, to the Arabian khalifs, as the lords of the lost heritage of the Visigothic kings. The principle upon which such authority could pass to the head of a hostile sect, whose sworn purpose was the annihilation of the very religion which he was presumed, by virtue of his office, in duty bound to protect, has not been, and never can be, explained by any considerations of honor, consistency, or equity. It was practically a flagrant usurpation of privileges for which the Moslem sovereign could not allege even a shadow of right. It was not conferred by conquest. It could not be accounted for under the color of a legal fiction. Supremacy in ecclesiastical government, where the practice of public worship was guaranteed by treaty, and the clergy purchased by tribute the management of their affairs and the enforcement of discipline, certainly was not implied by the fact that it had been enjoyed by the ruling prince of the vanquished faith. Its peaceful exercise for centuries—for its validity does not seem to have been questioned in the writings of even the most bigoted ecclesiastics—is one of the most singular problems of religious history.
The consequences of this anomalous condition were, as may readily be conjectured, fatal to the dignity and order of the Catholic hierarchy. The khalif was, to all intents and purposes, the spiritual head of two hostile religions,—one of which it was his duty, as well as his inclination, to exalt; the other of which he was prompted by the prejudices of race, inheritance, and belief to destroy. There were few Hispano-Arab monarchs who did not contribute their share to the degradation of Christianity. The highest offices of the Church were put up at auction. The orthodoxy and fitness of the candidate were never considered; his qualifications were ignored; and his success was dependent upon the amount he was willing to disburse for the coveted dignity. In this scandalous traffic the women of the harems and the eunuchs were the recognized agents of the purchaser. There was no secrecy about these transactions. The practice of simony was so universal that even the greatest offenders made no attempt to conceal it. A profligate canon, named Saul, entered into a written obligation to pay these corrupt intermediaries four hundred ounces of silver for the bishopric of Cordova. Some of those raised to the richest sees of the Peninsula were heretics or infidels. It was not unusual for a prelate, even during Holy Week, to abandon the service of the altar and indulge in the most shameless excesses of drunkenness and debauchery. The ordinances of the Church were interpreted by men ignorant of the first rudiments of ecclesiastical law. Priests, whose atheism was notorious, administered the sacraments with mock humility and imparted hypocritical consolation to the devout. If any of his flock eluded the search of the tax-collector, the bishop, more faithful to the power to which he owed his authority than to the interests of the congregation over which he presided, stood ready to furnish the desired information from the registers of the diocese, and to assist in the punishment of the delinquents. When a prelate disregarded the summons to a council, the vacancy was filled by the appointment of a Mussulman or a Jew. Such circumstances as these were not propitious to either sacerdotal welfare or successful proselytism.
Nor were abuses of power confined to the ecclesiastical system. The dignity of count, the most eminent office of the Christian magistracy, was also a subject of negotiation and barter. The opportunities it afforded for extortion and peculation made it one of the most lucrative employments in the gift of the khalif. It was ordinarily bestowed upon a member of the Visigothic nobility, but the rapacity of the eunuchs looked rather to the means than to the birth of the aspirant; and persons of base origin and doubtful integrity not infrequently received the coveted distinction, which was utilized largely for the benefit of their patrons,—the fiscal officers and the degraded servitors of the harem. Count Servandus, the son of a slave, who lived during the reign of the Khalif Mohammed, has been handed down to the execration of all good Christians as one of the most cruel and infamous of oppressors. On a single occasion, he extorted from his unhappy vassals the enormous sum of a hundred thousand solidi, equal in our time to more than half a million dollars.
The various gradations of the hierarchy were preserved as before the Arab occupation. The archbishops had the usual number of suffragans subject to their jurisdiction; the lower orders of the clergy, their clerks, choristers, readers, and other subordinates. To exercise the office of priest it was necessary for both parents to be of the Christian faith; if the father were a Moslem, the law of the conqueror interposed its claim upon the candidate, who, regarded as a Mussulman by birth, was liable to condemnation for apostasy. Unlike the canonical practice of other Catholic countries, an ecclesiastic was eligible to offices of the most distinguished rank, even to the primacy itself, without being compelled to pass through the intermediate grades of the priesthood. There was no diminution of pomp or solemnity in the celebration of the rites of Christian worship. Councils for the regulation of church government and discipline were even more frequent than under the Visigoths; during the ninth century, three were held at Cordova alone in less than thirty-five years. In many of the monasteries, schools were established for the communication of instruction, on both sacred and profane subjects, to those whose religious scruples prevented them from profiting by the splendid opportunities afforded by the great Arab institutions of learning. In some of these religious houses were extensive libraries, composed for the most part, however, of treatises of patristic science, polemics, and hagiology. To St. Eulogius, alarmed by the increasing influence of the Mussulman academies, which offered irresistible attractions to the Christian youth, is due the credit of having introduced to the notice of his countrymen the works of Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, and others of the Latin classics, copies of which he obtained during a visit to Navarre.
In Spain, as in Sicily, the influence of the Holy See disappeared with the advent of Moslem supremacy. The clergy of the khalifate became independent of the Papacy, and did not even recognize the authority of the Asturian priesthood, whose members held councils and promulgated canons, with a nominal allegiance to Rome. In the abeyance of Papal representation, the Metropolitan of Toledo was the supreme head of the Spanish hierarchy. The Christians of Sicily acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. During the Moorish occupation of Southern France, the existing religion was scarcely interfered with. No counts were appointed to govern or oppress the conquered. No unworthy prelates were assigned to rich sees as the result of intrigue or corruption. Few churches were transformed into mosques. The only attempt to restrain the Christian tributaries was shown by a disposition to isolate, as far as possible, the clergy of the provincial settlements from those of the larger towns. The tolerance of Mussulman rule is disclosed by the great preponderance of the subject race existing at Narbonne, which was always rather a Christian than a Moslem capital.