Christianity and Islam in Spain, A.D. 756-1031Haines, Charles Reginald
Islamic
Christianity and Islam in Spain, A.D. 756-1031
Haines, Charles Reginald
Christian martyrs -- Spain; Christianity -- Spain; Islam -- Spain
When the kings of Castile gradually drove back the Moors, and when
Alfonso took Toledo in 1085, his wife, Constance of Burgundy, and her
spiritual adviser, a monk named Bernard, were horrified at the laxity in
morals and doctrine of the Muzarabic Christians. Their addiction to
poetry and natural science was regarded with suspicious aversion, and
the pork-eating, circumcision, and, not least, the cleanly habits,[1]
contracted from an intercourse with Moslems, were looked upon as so many
marks of the beast. In 1209 the Crusaders, who had swarmed to the wars
in Spain, even wished to turn their pious arms against these poor
Muzarabes, so scandalised were they at the un-Romish rites. Yet we are
told that Alfonso the Great, when building and restoring churches in the
territory newly wrested from the Moors, set up again the ordinances of
the Goths, as formerly observed at Toledo.[2]
The free church in the North had itself been in great danger of
extinction, when the armies of the great Almanzer (977-1002) swept
yearly through the Christian kingdoms like some devastating tempest.[3]
Fifty-two victorious campaigns did that irresistible warrior lead
against the infidels.[4] Barcelona, Pampluna, and Leon fell before his
arms, and the sacred city of Compostella was sacked, and for a time left
desolate, the bells of St James' shrine being carried off to Cordova to
serve as lamps in the grand mosque. We are not, therefore, surprised to
find that there were many bishops in the North who had lost their sees;
and this was the case even before the tenth century, for a bishop named
Sabaricus, being driven from his own see by the Arabs, was given that of
Mindumetum by Alfonso III. in 867,[5] and twenty years later a bishop
named Sebastian received the see of Auria in the same way.[6]
It is natural enough that the Moslems and the clergy of the Christian
Church should be hostile to one another, but it is surprising to
find--as we do find in some cases--the latter making common cause with
the Arabs in ill-treating their fellow-countrymen and coreligionists.
Thus, as we have seen, Hostegesis, relying on the support of the secular
arm,[7] beat and imprisoned the clergy for withholding from him the
Church tithes, dragging them through the city naked, with a crier crying
before them:--"Such is the punishment of those who will not pay their
tithes to their bishop."[8] Bishops were even found to make episcopal
visitations, getting the names of all their flock, as if with the
intention of praying for them individually, and then to hand in their
names to the civil power for the purpose of taxation.[9] Others obtained
from the Arabs the privilege of farming the revenues derived from
Christian taxation, and cruelly oppressed their coreligionists.[10]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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