The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

Meanwhile the zeal of the Cordovan Christians was bearing fruit. A foolish priest, Perfectus, had been led into cursing the dominant religion, and had been executed on a great Mohammedan feast-day, when all the world was rejoicing at the termination of the rigorous fast of Ramadan, which had lasted a whole month. The Moslems, men and women, made this feast a special occasion of merry-making, and the execution of the offending priest added a new subject of excitement to the crowds that thronged the streets and sailed on the river and frolicked on the great plain outside the city. The poor priest died bravely, cursing Mohammed and his religion with his last breath, surrounded by a vast crowd of scoffing and pitiless Moslems. The Bishop of Cordova, followed by an army of priests and devotees, took down his body, buried him with the holy relics of St. Acisclus, a martyr of Diocletian's persecution, in whose church he had officiated, and forthwith had him made a saint. The same evening two Moslems were drowned, and this was at once accepted as the judgment of God on the murderers of Perfectus. The black slave, Nasr, who had superintended the execution, died within the year, and the Christians triumphantly declared that Perfectus had predicted his decease: "It was another judgment!"

Soon a monk named Isaac sought an interview with the Kādy, on the pretext of wishing to be converted to the Mohammedan religion; but no sooner had the learned judge explained the doctrines of Islam than the would-be convert turned round, and began to heap maledictions upon the creed which he had asked to be taught. It was no marvel that the astonished Kādy gave him a cuff. "Do you know," said he, "that our law condemns people to death for daring to speak as you have spoken?" "I do," answered the monk; "condemn me to death; I desire it; for I know that the Lord said, 'Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" The Kādy was sorry for the man, and begged the Sultan to overlook his crime, but in vain. Isaac was decapitated, and thereupon became a saint, and it was proved conclusively that he had worked many miracles, not only ever since his childhood, but even before he came into the world.

Presently one of the Sultan's guards, Sancho, a pupil of Eulogius, blasphemed Mohammed, and lost his head. Next Sunday six monks rushed before the Kādy and shouted, "We, too, say what our holy brothers Isaac and Sancho said," and forthwith fell to blaspheming Mohammed, and to crying, "Avenge your accursed Prophet! Treat us with all your barbarity!" Their heads were cut off. Three more priests or monks, infected with the fever of suicide, rushed excitedly to present their necks to the headsman. Eleven thus fell in less than two months during the summer of 851.

The great body of the Christians were dismayed at the indiscreet zeal of their brethren. It must not be forgotten that the Spaniards had not so far been remarkable for religious fervour. Their creed sat lightly upon them, and so many of them had been converted to Islam, that the two creeds and the two peoples had become to a considerable extent mixed together in friendly intercourse. The Christians had come to despise their old Latin language and literature; they learned Arabic, and soon were able to write it as well as the Arabs themselves. Eulogius himself deplores this change. The Christians, he says, delight in the Arabic poems and romances instead of the Holy Scriptures and the works of the Fathers. The younger generations know only Arabic; they read the Moslems' books with ardour, form great libraries of them, and find them admirable; while they will not glance at a Christian book. They are forgetting their own language, he adds, and hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter; yet they indite excellent Arabic verse. The Christians, in fact, found Arab romances and poetry much more entertaining than the writings of the Fathers of the Church. They were growing more and more Arab; more civilized, more refined, and also more indifferent to distinctions of faith. They were grateful to the Moors for treating them well, and the sudden animosity displayed by their excited brethren amazed and shocked them. They endeavoured to avert the threatening storm by showing their brethren the futility of their conduct. They argued with them; reminded them how tolerant the Moslems had always been to the Christians; recalled to them the peaceful teaching of the gospel, and the words of the apostle, that "Slanderers shall not enter the kingdom of heaven;" and told them how the Moslems regarded these deaths with no disquietude, for they argued, "If your religion were true, God would have avenged His martyrs."

These worthy Christians of the common kind, who knew not the force of spiritual exaltation for good and for evil, and only did their duty to their neighbours and said their prayers in the simple, old-fashioned manner, tried in vain to restrain the zealots. They perceived that these continued insults and swift-following punishments must at last end in real persecution. Eulogius, on the contrary, who set himself to answer their objections with texts out of the Bible and the Lives of the Saints, coveted such a result, and the zealots desired nothing better than the fire of persecution. The ecclesiastical authorities, worked upon by the moderate party, and also by the Moorish government, could not permit the spirit of revolt to continue much longer unreproved; the bishops met in council under the presidentship of the Metropolitan of Seville, and though they could not precisely repudiate the former "martyrdoms," since the Church had already canonized the sufferers, yet they ordained that no more exhibitions of the kind should be made, and in furtherance of this decision the leaders of the zealots were thrown into prison. Here Eulogius met Flora again. She had been praying earnestly one day in a church, when she saw beside her a fellow-enthusiast, a sister of that monk Isaac who had been one of the earliest "martyrs." Mary wanted to join her brother in the kingdom of heaven, and Flora resolved to accompany her. They went before the Kādy and did their best to excite his anger by blaspheming the name of Mohammed and his religion. Two young and beautiful girls, professing most sincerely the religion of "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," stood before the magistrate with lips full of cursing and bitterness, reviling his faith as "the work of the devil." But the good judge was not to be roused so easily. He was weary of all this hysterical mania, and had many a time pretended to be deaf when people thrust themselves upon death; he thought it was a pity of these two girls, and wished they would not be so foolish. He would try to induce them to retract, or make as though he had not heard. But they persisted in their heroic purpose, and he had to put them in prison.

Here, in the long confinement, the maidens were daunted, and almost inclined to waver in their sacrificial ardour, when Eulogius came to strengthen and destroy them. His task was the hardest in the world: to encourage the woman whom he loved with all his soul to go to the scaffold; yet, in spite of every natural and human feeling, this man of iron nerved himself to fan the flame of enthusiasm to the point of martyrdom. It was a daily agony to the unhappy priest, but he never relaxed his efforts in what he believed to be the good cause. He even wrote an entire treatise to convince Flora—who needed it but little—of the supreme beauty and glory of martyrdom for the faith. He spent his days and nights in reading and writing, to banish from his heart those feelings of compunction and love which threatened to shake his resolution. But it was only too firm. Flora and Mary remained constant and undismayed in spite of the anxious efforts of the Kādy to help them to save themselves; and after the final interview, when sentence of death was pronounced, Eulogius saw Flora:—"She seemed to me an angel," he wrote afterwards, glorying in the spiritual triumph. "A celestial illumination surrounded her; her face lightened with happiness; she seemed already to be tasting the joys of the heavenly home.... When I heard the words of her sweet mouth, I sought to stablish her in her resolve by showing her the crown that awaited her. I worshipped her; I fell down before this angel, and besought her to remember me in her prayers; and strengthened by her speech, I returned less sad to my sombre cell." Flora and her companion Mary were executed at last, 24th November, 851, and Eulogius wrote a pæan of joy to celebrate what he deemed a great victory of the Church.

Soon after this, Eulogius and the other priests were released from prison, and the next year Abd-er-Rahmān II. died, and was succeeded by his son Mohammed, a rigid, cold-hearted egotist, who screwed savings out of the salaries of his ministers, and was universally detested for his meanness and unworthiness. The theologians alone liked him, for he seemed likely to avenge to the full the insults which the excited Christians had poured upon the Mohammedan religion. Churches were demolished, and such severe persecutions were set on foot, that though many Christians had become Moslems when the bishops had officially condemned suicidal martyrdom, many more now followed their example; indeed, according to Eulogius and Alvaro, the majority recanted. The wise and kindly policy of Abd-er-Rahmān and his ministers, who shut their eyes when the Christians were wantonly committing themselves, was now exchanged for a policy of cruel repression, and it is no wonder that apostacy was the rule.

Still, the influence of the little band of zealots was powerful, and had already extended far beyond the limits of Cordova. Toledo made Eulogius its bishop, and when the Sultan refused his consent, the primacy was kept vacant until the zealot should be permitted to occupy it. Two French monks came to Cordova to beg some relics of the holy martyrs, and went back to St. Germain-des-Pres with a handsome bag of bones, which were presently displayed to the faithful at Paris. But a heavy blow was about to fall upon the enthusiasts. Another girl deserted her parents to follow Eulogius; and this time she and her teacher were brought before the Kādy. Eulogius was guilty only of proselytizing, and his legal punishment was but a scourging. But the priest was not made of the stuff that endures the whip. Humble and long-suffering before his God, willing to inflict any torture on his own body for the sake of the faith, he could not submit to be flogged by the infidel. "Make sharp thy sword, judge," he cried; "send my soul to meet my Creator; but think not that I will suffer my body to be lacerated with whips." And here he burst into a flood of maledictions against Mohammed and his religion.

The Kādy would not take upon himself the responsibility of executing the sentence upon so prominent a leader as Eulogius, and the priest was accordingly brought before the privy council. One of the body expostulated with him, and asked why a man of sense and education should voluntarily run his head into peril of death; he could understand fools and maniacs doing so, he said, but Eulogius was of a different stamp. "Listen to me," he added, "I entreat you; yield for once to necessity; retract what you said before the Kādy; say but the word, and you shall go free." But it was too late. Eulogius, though he preferred the position of trainer of martyrs to setting the example himself, could not retreat from his ground with dignity. He must go on to the bitter end. And refusing to retract anything, he was forthwith led out to execution, and died with courage and devotion on March 11, 859.[15]

Deprived of their leader, the Christian martyrs lost heart, and we do not hear of their mad devotion again.