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CHAP.

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complains that his naked body had been scourged by the Saracens, and that his authority was disputed by the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his throne. Two epistles of Gregory the seventh are destined to soothe the distress of the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint, that three bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother, announces the speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order. The Chris- and Spain, tians of Africa and Spain had long since submitted &c. to the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine and pork; and the name of Mozarabes (adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or religious conformity. About the middle of the twelfth century the worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary, and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and Grenada. The throne of

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Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX. epist. 3. Gregor. VII. 1. i. epist. 22, 23. 1. iii. epist. 19, 20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi (tom. iv. A. D. 1053, N° 14. A. D. 1073, No 13), who investigates the name and family of the Moorish prince, with whom the proudest of the Roman pontiffs so politely corresponds.

b Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is interpreted in Latin (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40. Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18). The Mozarabic liturgy, the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been attacked by the popes, and exposed to the doubtful trials of the sword and of fire (Marian. Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. ix. c. 18. p. 378). It was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet in the xith century it was found necessary (A. Æ. C. 1687, A. D. 1039) to transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of Spain (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 547), for the use of the bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.

c About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the intrepid envoy of the emperor Otho I. (Vit. Johan. Gorz, in Secul. Benedict. V. No 115. apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 91).

d Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A. D. 1149, No 8, 9. He justly observes, that when Seville, &c. were retaken by Ferdinand of Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found in the place; and that the Mozarabic churches of Africa and Spain, described by James à Vitriaco, A. D. 1218 (Hist. Hierosol. c. 80. p. 1095. in Gest. Dei per Francos), are copied from some older book. I shall add, that the date of the Hegira 677 (A. D. 1278) must apply to the copy, not the composition, VOL. VI.

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A.D. 1149,

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CHAP. the Almohades, or Unitarians, was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigour might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon and Portugal. The faith of the MozaA.D. 1535. rabes was occasionally revived by the papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles the fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of Rome."

Toleration

of the

After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews Christians. and Christians of the Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience which was granted by the Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics, whose name of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of the Mahometan government. Yet this partial jealousy was healed by time and submission: the churches of Egypt were shared with the Catholics; and all the oriental sects were included in the common benefits of toleration. The of a treatise of jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the Christians of Cordova (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 471); and that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of Grenada (A. D. 1313), could either discountenance or tolerate (tom. ii. p. 288).

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Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have discovered any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.

f Absit (said the Catholic to the Vizir of Bagdad) ut pari loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum præter Arabas nullus alius rex est, et Græcos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello non desistunt, &c. See in the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101) the state of the Nestorians under the caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more concisely exposed in the Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume of Assemannus.

8 Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384. 387, 388. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch, Alex. p. 205, 206. 257. 332. A taint of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the Arabs.

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rank, the immunities, the domestic jurisdiction, of CHAP. the patriarchs, the bishops, and the clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries and physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of the revenue; and their merit was sometimes raised to the command of cities and provinces. A caliph of the house of Abbas was heard to declare that the Christians were most worthy of trust in the administration of Persia. "The Moslems," said he, "will abuse their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness; and the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance.' But the slaves of despotism are exposed to the alter- Their hardnatives of favour and disgrace. The captive churches ships. of the East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints must be offensive to the pride, or the zeal, of the Christians. About two hundred years after Mahomet, they were separated from their fellow-subjects by a turban or girdle of a less honourable colour; instead of horses or mules, they were condemned to ride on asses, in the attitude of women. Their public and private buildings were measured by a diminutive standard; in the streets or the baths it is their duty to give way or bow down before the meanest of the people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may tend to the prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of processions, the sound of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their worship: a decent

h Motadhed, who reigned from A. D. 892 to 902. The Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the empire (Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97).

i Reland explains the general restraints of the Mahometan policy and jurisprudence (Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 16-20). The oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel (A. D. 847-861), which are still in force, are noticed by Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 448) and D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 640). A persecution of the caliph Omar II. is related, and most probably magnified, by the Greek Theophanes (Chron. p. 334).

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CHAP. reverence for the national faith is imposed on their sermons and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter a mosch, or to seduce a Musulman, will not be suffered to escape with impunity. In a time, however, of tranquillity and justice the Christians have never been compelled to renounce the Gospel, or to embrace the Koran; but the punishment of death is inflicted upon the apostates who have professed and deserted the law of Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the sentence of the cadhi, by the public confession of their inconstancy, or their passionate invectives against the person and religion of the prophet.'

The empire of the

Caliphs,

A. D. 718.

At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the privileges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the companions of Mahomet expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that

¿ The martyrs of Cordova (A. D. 850, &c.) are commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a victim himself. A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously censured their rashness. The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile their conduct with the discipline of antiquity, toutefois l'autorité de l'eglise, &c. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p. 415-522, particularly p. 451. 508, 509). Their authentic acts throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in the ixth century.

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were exercised at their own expense. Under the last CHAP. of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic ocean. And if we retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of the Mahometan religion diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris.'

* See the article Eslamiah (as we say Christendom), in the Bibliothéque Orientale (p. 325). This chart of the Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year of the Hegira 385 (A. D. 995). Since that time, the losses in Spain have been overbalanced by the conquests in India, Tartary, and the European Turkey.

1 The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c. to the Provençal, Spanish, and Portuguese (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 74, &c.)

END OF VOL. VI.

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