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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1771]

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had long since submitted to the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine and pork; and the name of Mozarabes ^210 (adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or religious conformity. ^211 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. ^212 The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigor 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 Mozarabes 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. ^213

[Footnote 207: The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of Africa, to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides, is dated A. H. 132 Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 168.)]

[Footnote 208: Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 287, 288.]

[Footnote 209: Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX. epist. 3; Gregor. VII. l. i. epist. 22, 23, l. iii. epist. 19, 20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A.D. 1053, No. 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.]

[Footnote 210: 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. Ae. 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.]

[Footnote 211: 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.)]

[Footnote 212: 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 a 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, of a treatise of a 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.)]

[Footnote 213: 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.]

After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews 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.

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