Thus far all was progressing hopefully, when, in 1499, Ximenes was invited by the Catholic sovereigns to assist Talavera in his important mission. In addition to the means already employed, Ximenes resorted to a large distribution of presents. "In order," says Von Hefele, "that his instructions might make some impression on their sensual minds, he did not hesitate to make the Moorish priests and doctors agreeable presents, consisting chiefly of costly articles of dress and silks. For this object he encumbered the revenues of his see for many years." [Footnote 167] Conversions followed in great numbers, and Ximenes baptized in one day 4000 persons. Many of the mosques were converted into churches, and the sound of bells for Mass and vespers was heard continually in the midst of a Moslem population. But this success produced a reaction. The Moors who were zealous for the false prophet raised a clamor against the archbishop and the government. The most noisy were arrested by Ximenes's order, but "in the height of his zeal he overstepped the bounds of the treaty which the government had made with the Moors, by trying to impose on the prisoners the obligation of receiving instruction from his chaplains in the Christian religion. Those who refused he even punished very severely." [Footnote 168]
[Footnote 167: Von Hefele, translated by Canon Dalton, p. 62.]
[Footnote 168: Id. p. 64.]
Among those who were thus imprisoned was a noble Moor named Zegri, who had distinguished himself in the recent wars. Being obliged to fast several days and wear heavy irons, he suddenly declared that Allah had appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to embrace the Christian faith. Certain it is that during the remainder of his life he attached himself to Ximenes with constant fidelity, and gave undeniable proofs of the sincerity of his conversion.
Encouraged by this signal success, Ximenes became more and more averse to dilatory measures. He believed that Providence designed the extinction of Islamism in Spain, and that he should best co-operate with the divine will by prompt and energetic steps. Some thousand copies of the Koran and other religious books were delivered up to him by the Moorish alfaquis, and committed to the flames in the public square. Works on medicine only escaped, and these were afterward placed in the library of the university which he founded at Alcalá. The children of those Christians who had become renegades were taken from their parents and received into the Church, for Ximenes would not suffer a treaty, which he perhaps considered too temporizing, to stand in the way of rescuing souls from error and converting an entire people.
About the end of the year 1499, a terrible outbreak checked for a time the progress of evangelization. Salzedo, the archbishop's major-domo, was sent by his master into the city with another servant and an officer of justice to seize the daughter of an apostate from Christianity. The young woman, however, raised a cry against the violation of the treaty; the Moors rushed to her aid; the officer of justice was killed by a stone; and the major-domo escaped a like fate only by secreting himself under the bed of an old Moorish woman who offered him assistance. The Albaycin, or Moslem quarter of the city, containing 5,000 dwellings, rose in arms. The palace of Ximenes was the object of their attack, and they cried for the blood of him whom a few days before they had extolled with praises.
The archbishop's friends urged him to fly to the fortress by a secret passage. But they knew not the temper of the man whom they counselled. He would never, he said, desert his servants in the hour of danger. All night he was engaged with them in repelling the Moors' assaults, and in the morning the Count of Tendilla arrived from the Alhambra with an armed force, and rescued Ximenes from imminent peril. The outbreak, however, was not so easily subdued. The herald sent by the count to the rebels was murdered, and his staff of office was broken in contempt. Nine days this frantic resistance continued, though without even a remote prospect of ultimate success. Ximenes tried in vain to soothe the raging multitude; but the milder archbishop, Talavera, going forth with his cross and a single chaplain, like Pope Leo when he encountered Attila, the crowd of rebels became appeased, and pressed round him to kiss his garment's hem. The governor Tendilla then appeared before them in a civil attire, threw his scarlet bonnet among the crowd, promised his influence to obtain the royal pardon, and left his wife and two children as hostages in the Albaycin.
Meanwhile, Ximenes, on the third day of the revolt, sent to the sovereigns at Seville an account of what had happened. His messenger was an Ethiopian slave—one of the telegraphic wires of those days—who could run fifty leagues in forty-eight hours. But the slave got drunk on the way, and arrived in Seville five days after he was despatched, instead of two. Reports frightfully exaggerated had reached the king and queen. The court was in a panic. Ximenes was blamed for his indiscretion; and Ferdinand, who had not forgotten the preference given to Ximenes over Alfonso of Aragon, his natural son, bitterly reproached Isabella for having raised an incompetent monk to the see of Toledo. But the archbishop soon appeared to plead his own cause. The king and queen were not only satisfied with his explanations, but thanked him for his services, and assented to his proposal that the inhabitants of the Albaycin should be punished for high treason, unless they purchased their pardon by being baptized. The treaty made with the Moors was thought to be annulled by the violence of the Moslems themselves. Those who persisted in their errors retired to the mountains or crossed over into Barbary; but by far the greater part of the Moors embraced Christianity, and the number of the converts is computed at about 60,000. Ximenes and Talavera together catechised the people, working in perfect harmony, except in reference to the translation of the Bible into Arabic. Talavera wished to make the version complete, while Ximenes, on the contrary, was of opinion that the Scriptures should be preserved in the ancient languages hallowed by being used in the inscriptions on the cross. To place the Bible in the vulgar tongue in the hands of neophytes and ignorant persons was, he believed, to cast pearls before swine, and would certainly issue in spiritual revolt. But the friendship of the two prelates remained unbroken, and Talavera declared that the triumphs of Ximenes exceeded those of Ferdinand and Isabella, since they had conquered only the soil, while he had won the souls of Granada. There can be no doubt that in the mass of converts there were many unworthy persons who afterward disgraced their profession. It will always be thus when worldly advantages are held out to proselytes; but Ximenes knew that this would be the case, and was prepared to meet the evil with appropriate remedies. He believed that good on the whole would result from his decisive measures; that many, to say the least, of the conversions would be sincere, and that the children of the converts in general would be educated in the true religion. We do not criticise his conduct, neither do we altogether set it up as exemplary. It was more suitable to his time and country than it would be to ours; and having recorded it faithfully, our work is done. By whatever means accomplished, the result has been a happy one. Islamism, after many spasmodic attempts at revival, has died out of Spain, and the cause of European morality and civilization has been saved from its most formidable enemy.