Martyrs underwent the most exquisite tortures with unshaken constancy. In no other province which recognized the predominance of the Papacy was there greater reverence for ecclesiastical tradition; and, as a legitimate consequence, in no other was prevalent a more marked degree of ignorance in the masses, or a more habitual defiance of the laws of morality and justice by those indebted for their superiority to the influence of the Church. The number of slaves owned by the Holy See and employed upon its estates was enormous. The greater part of its wealth was computed to be derived from their labor and from the traffic in their children. The arts of the confessor secured from the wealthy penitent immense estates and valuable legacies, the reluctant tribute of terror and remorse. These possessions, once in the iron grasp of the sacerdotal order, a master endowed with legal immortality, were never relinquished. The oblations of grateful convalescents enriched the treasuries of chapel and cathedral. Pilgrims flocked in great numbers to those shrines which enjoyed an extensive reputation for sanctity, and whose relics were believed to possess unfailing virtues for the cure of the sick and the relief of the afflicted. A profitable trade was supported at the expense of the superstitious credulity of these devout strangers. Well aware of its importance as an adjunct to their temporal power, and taking advantage of the relations of its parishioners with the Byzantine court, the early bishops of Rome extended every aid to the Sicilian branch of the Catholic hierarchy. It enjoyed peculiar privileges. It was exempted from vexatious impositions. Its legates were received with distinguished courtesy by the papal court. Gregory founded from his private purse seven monasteries in the island. Adrian frequently referred to it as the citadel of the Italian clergy. No portion of the patrimony of St. Peter could boast a priesthood more opulent, more arrogant, more powerful, more corrupt. At the time of the Moorish invasion Sicily had become thoroughly Byzantine. The glorious traditions of the Greek occupation were forgotten. In Messina alone the style of architecture, the physical characteristics of the people, the comparative purity of language, revealed significant traces of the influence of the most polished nation of antiquity. In no other province subject to Rome had the brutal doctrine of force, the basis of both republican and imperial power, been so sedulously inculcated and applied. The harvests of Sicily aided largely to sustain the idle population of the metropolis of the world. Its commerce and its revenues furnished inexhaustible resources to the venality and peculations of the proconsul. The Roman aristocracy had there its most sumptuous villas, its largest and most productive estates, its most numerous bodies of retainers. It was not unusual for a patrician in the days of the Empire to own twenty thousand slaves.