But it was not objections brought by fellow-Christians only that Eulogius took upon himself to answer, but also the taunts and scoffs of the Moslems. "Why," said they, "if your God is the true God, does He not strike terror into the executioners of his saints by some great prodigy? and why do not the martyrs themselves flash forth into miracles while the crowd is round them? You rush upon your own destruction, and yet you work no wonders that might induce us to change our opinion of your creed, thereby doing your own side no good, and ours no harm."[1] Yet the constancy of the martyrs affected the Moslems more than they cared to confess, as we may infer from the taunts levelled at the Christians, when, in Mohammed's reign, some Christians, from fear of death, even apostatized. "Whither," they triumphantly asked,[2] "has that bravery of your martyrs vanished? What has become of the rash frenzy with which they courted death?" Yet though they affected to consider the martyrs as fools or madmen, they could not be blind to the effect that their constancy was likely to produce on those who beheld their death, and to the reverence with which their relics were regarded by the Christians. They therefore expressly forbade the bodies of martyrs to be preserved[3] and worshipped, and did their best to make this in certain cases impossible by burning the corpses and scattering the ashes on the river, though sometimes they contented themselves with throwing the bodies, unburnt, into the stream. [1] "Mem. Sanct.," i. sec. 12. [2] Eulog., "Mem. Sanct.," iii. sec. 6. [3] See "De Translatione corporum Sanctorum Martyrum," etc., sec. 11. "Non enim, quos martyres faciunt, venerari Saraceni permittunt." See above, p. 38. The bodies of earlier martyrs were more freely given up at the request of the Christians. See "Chron. Silen.," secs. 95-100; Dozy, iv. 119, for the surrender of the body of Justus; and Eul., "Ad Wiliesindum," sec. 9, where Eulogius mentions that he had taken the bodies of Saints Zoilus and Austus to Pampluna. Later, Hakem II. (961-976) gave up the body of the boy Pelagius at Ramiro III.'s request. Mariana, viii. 5. However, in spite of these regulations, many bodies were secretly carried off and entombed in churches, where they were looked upon as the most precious of possessions; and martyrs, who, by the admission of their admirers themselves, had never worked any miracles when living, were enabled, when dead, to perform a series of extraordinary ones, which did not finally cease till modern enlightenment had dissipated the darkness of the Middle Ages. We happen to possess a very interesting account of the circumstances under which the relics of three of these Cordovan martyrs were transferred from the troubled scene of their passion to the more peaceful and more superstitious cloisters of France.[1]