As an example of the rare instances of such a conversion being recorded, the account may here be cited which Fürer von Haimendorf, who was in Cairo in 1565, gives of the conversion of a German scholar who had studied in the University of Leipzig. “Sed dum nos hanc moram Cairi nectimus, accidit ut Justus quidam Stevenius Germanus Hamelensis qui in iisdem ædibus nobiscum habitaverat, fide Christianorum abnegata Turcarum religioni se initiandum atque circumcidendum obtulerit. Vir erat doctus, qui diu se Witebergæ ac Lipsiæ studiis operam dedisse sæpe nobis narrabat: verum de hoc facto interrogatus, peculiarem nunc sibi Spiritum adesse ajebat, sine cujus instinctu nihil vel facere sibi, vel cogitare fas esset; quæ hominis apostasia nimium quantum animos nostros commovit, et ad fugam quasi excitavit. Eodem quoque die Judæus quidam, qui paucis diebus ante religionem Mahumetanam amplexus fuerat, triumphali pompa per urbem circumducebatur; quod idem cum Stevenio isto futurum esse, Janissarii quidam nobis affirmabant.” [241] From the historical sources quoted above, we have as little information respecting the number of these converts as of the proselytising efforts made to induce them to change their faith. A motive frequently assigned for going over to Islam is the desire to escape the death penalty by means of apostasy. European travellers make frequent mention of such cases. A late example of such an account may be selected, for the picturesqueness of its language, from the report of a Jesuit, who was in Cairo in 1627; he saw a Copt who, having allowed himself to be carried away “partly by passion and partly by the violence of an indiscreet zeal, had killed his brother with his own hand, in detestation of his having in a dastardly manner left Jesus Christ to embrace Mahometanism, in order to deliver himself from the vexation of the Turks. The poor man was at once seized in the heat of his crime, and he boldly confessed that the renegade, unworthy of being his brother, could only wipe out so black a spot by his blood. He was urged to abandon his faith in order to save his life,” but he declared that he was resolved to die a Christian; the cruel torments, however, inflicted on him by the executioners, weakened his resolution and he yielded at the last moment. “This disaster changed him in a moment from a confessor into a renegade, from a martyr into an apostate, from a saint into one of the damned, and from an angel into a veritable devil. He made the profession of faith or rather of perfidy, after the manner of the Mahometans ... he was set at liberty, the liberty not of the sons of God, but of the sons of perdition.” Later on, the reproaches of his conscience caused him again to recant and he was put to death by the Muhammadans for his apostasy. [242]