On the other hand, little information of value is to be gleaned from the Christian chroniclers. Those who have related the events of their times were all members of the persecuted faction. Both contemporary and subsequent writers were blinded by prejudice and actuated by every motive of sectarian bigotry to the perversion of the truth. Prolix in their enumeration of the sufferings of martyrs, their accounts of all other occurrences are remarkable for extreme meagreness of detail. No descriptions are given of the social relations of the dominant and subject races; no direct mention is ever made of the thousand incidents constantly transpiring in the intercourse of the two peoples, trivial in themselves, yet most important in forming a correct idea of the character, the aspirations, and the life of a nation. Such matters, so interesting to posterity as depicting the manners of a class during a period conspicuous in history, were too insignificant for the pen of the monkish annalist, and must now be gathered at random from the narratives of other events, in the elucidation of which they have been casually and undesignedly mentioned. The works of these ecclesiastical writers are filled with errors. They are, as usual, overloaded with absurd legends and spurious miracles. It is apparent, even from a superficial perusal, that not only the sufferings, but the virtues of the saints whose lives they describe are largely fictitious and often exaggerated. To such authorities, therefore, little credit can be given by the historian.