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with Christian precepts, Eulogius presented the other, unbruised, side of his face, and said, “Smite that also.” The eunuch obliged, and a few minutes later, at a little after nine in the morning on March 1, 859, the bishop lost his head. His body was exposed to be gnawed by scavenging dogs, cats, and rats, until the Christians gained permission to recover it. Leocritia was executed four days later and her body thrown into the river, “to be eaten by fishes.” The demise of so senior a figure as Eulogius made a much greater impact than the deaths of all the more humble martyrs, and when the king of Leon made a treaty with the sultan Mohammed in 883, one of the terms was that the bones of the holy martyrs Eulogius and Leocritia were to be ceded to him.57

THE MOTIVES THAT IMPELLED THE MARTYRS HAVE NEVER BEEN SATISFACTORILY explained.58 Many of them came from mixed families, with both Islamic and Christian beliefs in their background. Many came from the small monastic communities clustered around Cordoba, notably from one foundation at Tabanos that produced no fewer than ten martyrs. As the number of martyrdoms mounted, the Muslim authorities responded with collective punishments. Significantly, the traditional limitations on the minorities were for the first time rigidly enforced. Christians were dismissed from their government posts and forced to wear the distinctive dress prescribed by law. Churches were examined to see if any were newly built and therefore subject to destruction. Even minor repairs or improvements could lead to their demolition. Many Christians turned against the enthusiasts. Eulogius recorded that at first Christians may have been impressed by the martyrdoms, but

when the divine fire inflamed many and led crowds of the faithful to go down to the square and denounce the enemy of the church with the same confession of faith that Isaac made, soon everyone, frightened by the rage of the savage tyrant, with amazing fickleness changed their minds; they disparaged and cursed the martyrs, and declared that both the martyrs and their supporters were the authors of a great crime.59

Eventually, around 854, the martyrs were formally denounced as heretics before the qadi by a group of leading Christians—bishops, abbots, priests, and nobles—in an attempt to prevent further pressure on the Christian community.

The blood of martyrs had sustained the early church, and eventually brought down pagan rule. “The prototype of the Christian saint was the martyr; and as in due course holy men and women who had not died for Christ came to take their place alongside the martyrs, the figure of the martyr still remained the paradigm of the saint. The cult of the saints … had its undisputed origins in the cult of the martyrs.”60 With the conversion of the emperor Constantine, martyrs were no longer needed: but in the face of the infidel (and seemingly unconquerable) power of Islam, this most powerful weapon in the church’s armory was used again. If the precise causes of the martyrs movement lie within the heart of each of them who decided to lay down his or her life, its intention was clear. All the stories of the martyrs under Roman tyranny were a kind of miracle of the faith that would in some way, known only to God, bring about the triumph of the church.

One author, al-Kushani, contrasted Christian zealotry with Islamic reason. He retold the story of a Christian who came before the qadi some sixty years after the martyrs, in 920. The story’s narrator explains that Christians believed this sort of suicide to be a pious act, although Jesus never encouraged any such thing. The qadi reprimanded the Christian for trying to commit suicide; the Christian replied that it would not be he who was killed, but only his image (shabhi), “while I myself will go to heaven.” The qadi had him whipped, then asked on whose back the whip had fallen. “On mine,” the Christian replied. “Just as the sword will fall on your neck,” said the qadi.61 So, although the occasional self-martyr and fanatic was still to be found, by the tenth century something