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By Root 1334 0

sought martyrdom their denunciations of Islam were now carefully and deliberately contrived to be unpardonable. Christians desiring martyrdom now made a point of coming into the capital to denounce Islam and to achieve salvation. The next was a monk, Isaac, from a wealthy family, and a scholar in Arabic who had been appointed as a government secretary. He came to the qadi in open court and said that he wished to make the Muslim profession of faith. But as the judge was instructing him, Isaac suddenly shouted out, “Your Prophet has lied, he has deceived you; may he be accursed, wretch that he is, who has dragged so many wretches down with him to hell. Why do you not, as a man of sense, abjure these pestilent doctrines?” Infuriated, the qadi struck him across the face, but he was restrained by his advisers, who told him that even a condemned criminal should not be insulted.

Recovering his self-control, the qadi suggested to Isaac that he might be either drunk or mad, since he could not be ignorant that death was the only punishment for blasphemy. “Qadi,” the monk replied quietly, “I am in my right mind, and I have never tasted wine. Burning with the love of truth, I have dared to speak out to you and the others here present. Condemn me to death: far from dreading the sentence, I yearn for it; hath not the Lord said, ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for the truth’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ ”

The qadi tried to avoid imposing the inevitable sentence, but under the law he had no option. Isaac duly met his desired end, on June 3, 851. Thereafter the headsman was kept busy. Two days after Isaac, a man named Sancho blasphemed and lost his head. Two days after that, six monks, among them Isaac’s uncle, came before the qadi and declared, “We also echo the words of our holy brothers Isaac and Sancho.” More followed, until eleven had died as martyrs in less than two months. Many Christians opposed these sacrifices, fearing that they would provoke Muslim anger against the whole Christian minority.

The interests of the Muslim authorities and the wider Christian community in preventing these suicidal confrontations were identical. A church council was summoned to prevent further martyrdoms, but it seemed only to rouse the staunchest Christians to ever more ecstatic zeal. Two monks entered the Great Mosque of Cordoba at Friday prayers, and shouted, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand for the faithful, but for you infidels, hell yawns, and it will shortly open and swallow you up.” They narrowly escaped lynching by the faithful at prayer, and were swiftly judged and decapitated in the marketplace.

The final victims of their own zeal were Bishop Eulogius and a young woman, Leocritia. Eulogius had written a powerful account of the martyrdom movement and sent it north for safekeeping beyond the frontier of Muslim Spain. He was arrested and accused of seeking to convert Leocritia, who had been born of Muslim parents. The qadi was reluctant to condemn so senior a Christian, and ordered him to be whipped for a more minor offense. Then Eulogius denounced the Prophet Mohammed in the most vitriolic terms. But still the magistrate refused formally to condemn him and simply committed him to the court of the vizier, the senior official of Cordoba. One of the court members came to Eulogius and said,

I am not surprised, Eulogius, when madmen and imbeciles offer their heads without cause to the executioner; but how is it that a learned man like yourself, and one who enjoys general esteem, follows their example? What frenzy impels you? Why have you thus plotted against your own life? I pray you heed my words. Bow to the necessity; utter but a single word retracting what you have said before the Qadi, and in that case I will answer for my colleagues and myself that you will have nothing to fear.

But Eulogius refused to recant, and set out to secure a truly memorable martyr’s death. He was formally condemned and sent for execution. A court eunuch abused him and struck him across the face on the way to the killing ground. In accordance