[77] The manner in which Eulogius defended the martyrs was, of course, largely determined by the specific points of criticism that his opponents raised against them. Those who were unsympathetic were quick to point out that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Isaac and the rest diverged widely from the pattern set by the ancient martyrdoms. Using the Roman martyrs as a standard allowed the critics to package their criticism of Isaac and the rest in a way that would avert potentially damaging comparisons between their own brand of Christianity and the more "heroic" rendition embodied by the martyrs.

The survival of two passionaries from the tenth century makes it possible to reconstruct the "ideal-type" of the Roman martyr to which the Cordoban martyrs were adversely compared.⁽¹⁾ One passio that must have been particularly popular in Eulogius' time was that which commemorated Aciscius and Victoria, who died in Córdoba in the mid-third century.⁽²⁾ "At that time," the account begins, "the madness of the pagans raged throughout the entire world, so that if one despised the cults of the gods, he would be subject to torments of various kinds." Arrested for claiming that the Roman gods were "nothing but stones, no better than those who worshiped them," Acisclus and Victoria found themselves face-to-face with the prefect Dion, an "iniquitous persecutor of Christians." In an attempt to punish them for their error, Dion ordered Acisclus and Victoria cast into a fiery furnace, only to hear their songs of joy emanating from within. Next he had them bound to stones and cast into the Guadalquivir, only to find them floating on the surface unharmed. Finally he suspended them over a fire, only to have the flames get out of hand and kill hundreds of pagans. Having sufficiently demonstrated both their resolve to remain [78] Christian and the power that their God wielded, Acisclus and Victoria finally yielded to their would-be executioners and died.

This account of the martyrdom of Acisclus and Victoria is typical of the fifty-two passiones contained within the two passionaries.⁽³⁾ In most cases, the protagonist suffered arrest in the course of an official persecution, repeatedly condemned Roman idolatry, and survived a series of grievous tortures with the aid of divine intervention. Given the fidelity with which each Roman martyr lived up to this stylized pattern and the liturgical regularity with which the Cordoban Christians were exposed to it, the shortcomings of the newest martyrs were all too apparent. Why, if they were legitimate martyrs, were they not subject to any of the insidious tortures that exhausted the imaginations of the magistrates in the passionaries? Where were the astounding miracles that would have protected any true confessors and confounded their enemies? And how could the Muslims be considered analogous to the Romans when, first of all, they were not pagans, and secondly, they never persecuted the Christians?⁽⁴⁾

Eulogius took this challenge seriously and devoted much of the apologetic portions of his work to confronting these specific criticisms. To this end, he had two options. He could question his opponents' interpretation of the events in Córdoba, offering one more faithful to the Roman paradigm. Or he could modify the Roman model itself, by weighing the traditional attributes of martyrial sanctity in a manner more complimentary to Isaac and the rest. In the course of the next three chapters we will see Eulogius moving freely from the one strategy to the other. In the case of the alleged absence of miracles, Eulogius chose a combination of the two.

"If you believe this to be true martyrdom. . . then why are your accomplices neither heralded amidst the terrors of prodigies nor resplendent with signs for the amazement of the crowds?"⁽⁵⁾ Eulogius' opponents felt perfectly justified, on the basis of the Roman martyrologies, to expect such signs if the martyrs were, in fact, divinely inspired. For lack of miracles with which to vindicate his martyrs, Eulogius was forced to challenge the assumption that sanctity and miracle working necessarily went hand in hand. Fortunately for Eulogius, he was not the first ecclesiastic to argue this position. Though the circumstances were entirely different, [79] Gregory I addressed himself to the same issue at the outset of his pontificate 250 years before.

Gregory abandoned the monastic life to become a deacon and ultimately bishop of Rome. Though the papal see was presumably a position that Gregory wanted, it is hard to read his works without sensing a certain defensiveness about having sacrificed the cloister for the world of church politics. In his Liber regulae pastoralis,⁽⁶⁾ for example, Gregory tempered his praise for monks who placed their own spiritual welfare above service to their fellow Christians: "if they are judged strictly on their conduct, they are certainly guilty in proportion to the public service which they were able to afford."⁽⁷⁾ But it was in the Dialogues, written three years later, that Gregory expressed at length his opinions about the relative merits of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa.

Gregory began the Dialogues with a rhetorical lament for the peaceful life he had left behind. "At times I find myself reflecting with even greater regret on the life that others lead who have totally abandoned the present world. Seeing the heights these men have reached only makes me realize the lowly state of my own soul."⁽⁸⁾ When his literary foil - Peter - asked for examples of such holy men, the pope obliged him with a seemingly endless string of miracle stories. What is interesting about the Dialogues, in light of our inquiry, is that Gregory did not really do what Peter asked. He did not restrict his miracle accounts to those involving monks who had "totally abandoned the present world," but included secular ecclesiastics as well. In fact, overall, the miracle-working popes and bishops outnumber the abbots and monks. Gregory's decision to include episcopal miracle workers in a book ostensibly celebrating the vita contemplativa, then, apparently reflects a sensitivity to the imbalance between the two ecclesiastical statuses and a desire to correct it.

But this blurring of the distinction between holy bishops and holy monks by indiscriminately ascribing miracles to both was only half of Gregory's strategy to adjust the relative status of regular and secular clerics. For interspersed with the miracle accounts in the Dialogues are periodic disclaimers, questioning the need for miracles as indicators of sanctity. At one point, Peter interrupted Gregory's concatenation of tales to ask why such holy men were so rare in their own day. Gregory responded:

[80] I believe there still are many such men in the world, Peter. One cannot conclude that there are no great saints just because no great miracles are worked. The true estimate of life, after all, lies in acts of virtue, not in the display of miracles. There are many, Peter, who without performing miracles, are not at all inferior to those who perform them.⁽⁹⁾

To support his claim, Gregory pointed to the biblical accounts of Peter walking on water and Paul being shipwrecked. "In the very same element, then, where Paul was unable to proceed on board ship, Peter could go on foot. Though these two Apostles did not share equally in the power of performing miracles, it is clear that they have an equal share in the rewards of heaven."⁽¹⁰⁾ In many other places Gregory deliberately directed Peter's attention away from the miracle he had just described to the more praiseworthy humility or patience that characterized the miracle worker.⁽¹¹⁾

This depreciation of miracle working may seem, at first glance, out of place in a libellus miraculorum like the Dialogues. Yet if we recognize that Gregory's intention was to present the episcopacy as an office conducive to sanctity, the paradox dissolves. De-emphasizing miracles served to elevate the traditionally miracle-poor vita activa as effectively as any attempt to supply the missing evidence.⁽¹²⁾

Gregory, in other words, had his choice of two paths to follow in his vindication of episcopal holiness. He could either assent to the accepted continuity between holiness and miracle working and proceed to list miracles performed by bishops, or he could reject the one-to-one correspondence between the two and assent to the possibility of sanctity without such signification. The Dialogues represent an effort to do both simultaneously. Peter at one point summed up the ambivalent relationship between the two strategies when he said: "I realize now that in these matters one must consider a man's way of life, not his miracles. But since miracles are a testimony to holiness of life, I beg you not to end your narrative. . . ."⁽¹³⁾

Gregory did not feel comfortable with any straightforward identification of miracle working with sanctity. To do so would have been to admit to himself that his abandonment of the vita passiva, traditionally the more conducive to miracle activity, was a step down. Yet even if every saint did not work miracles, such signs, when present, were still important indicators of holiness, and as such merited record and respect.

When Eulogius' opponents asked him why his martyrs lacked the [81] miracles that would presumably have verified their status, they put him in a position very similar to that of Gregory. He was forced to explain away an apparent lack of miracles without compromising the holiness of his saints. Like the pope, the priest responded by rejecting this one-to-one correspondence. "It ought not to be surprising," Eulogius wrote, "if the martyrs. . . use the power they have received not for their own glory but in the service of their benefactor, if. . . they rejoice, . . . not because they can cast out demons, but because their names are inscribed in heaven." Virtue is what counts. For "both the holy and the reprobate do miracles and prodigies, which confer nothing more than the vain admiration of men. He who thus distinguishes himself may be famous among men, but unless he is righteous he will be condemned to eternal punishment."⁽¹⁴⁾

Like Gregory, too, Eulogius attempted to correct what he regarded as an imbalance between virtue and power as indicators of sanctity by looking at the martyrs from God's point of view: "He is nothing who is lacking in sincere faith, because God demands nothing else from us than faith." Ultimately, miracles count for very little. "God's witnesses either work miracles or they prepare for death without them. There is no difference. The author of heaven expects only one thing from them: that they consummate their agony bravely to the very end."⁽¹⁵⁾

Eulogius sounds enough like Gregory to suggest that he may have read the Dialogues.⁽¹⁶⁾ If indeed the pope was Eulogius' inspiration, we might have expected Eulogius to follow the pattern of the Dialogues even further and argue that in fact the martyrdoms of his day were graced with empirical evidence of God's approval. But interestingly enough, he chose not to do that. Instead he accepted his opponents' contention that his martyrs lacked the appropriate signs and proceeded to explain why.

This was not because there was nothing out of the ordinary to report. In the passiones Eulogius made mention of a variety of signs that he felt to be indicative of the sanctity of the confessors. The decapitation of Perfectus, which coincided with the festivities marking the end of Ramadân, attracted a huge crowd, many of whom took to the river in boats to get a better view. When one of the craft capsized and two men drowned, Eulogius remarked on the speed with which divina pietas avenged the death of one of its [82] "soldiers." Eulogius also claimed that in prison Perfectus had prophesied the death of Nasr, one of ^cAbd ar-Rahmân II's primary advisors. Within a year of Perfectus' death Nasr was poisoned. "Thus the Lord, glorifying his soldier with both miracles, strengthened the resolve of the faithful with the solace of great hope, and confounded with a vehement stupor the sacrilegious vanity of the impious."⁽¹⁷⁾

Eulogius recorded less vengeful signs in connection with some of the other martyrs. On the day of the execution of Emila and Hieremias an unexpected storm darkened the sky, as if to register divine disapproval.⁽¹⁸⁾ Eulogius himself witnessed a heavenly glow emanating from the bodies of Rudericus and Salomon.⁽¹⁹⁾ As we noted above, Eulogius regarded his release from prison as the product of a successful intercession on the part of Flora and Maria.

The remainder of the signs registered in Eulogius' writings could be categorized as portentous or prophetic. Three times Isaac was heard to speak in utero, and by age seven, he was experiencing visions that foretold his martyrdom.⁽²⁰⁾ Sabigotho and Digna also had visions of this kind, and Sisenandus was able to tell his companion in prison the exact moment when the guard was approaching to lead him to his death.⁽²¹⁾

At first it may seem curious that although Eulogius recorded these signs in his passiones, he did not refer to them when responding to criticism about the supposed lack of miracles. But there were good reasons for his hesitation. For one thing the signs were very few in number. They were nothing when compared to the endless stream of miracles that filled the pages of the Roman passionaries. Moreover, the miracles that Eulogius reported were not all that unusual. The drownings, the midday storm, and the release from prison were simply not extraordinary enough to forestall more mundane explanations. But perhaps most importantly, none of the miracles that Eulogius mentioned had, like those of Acisclus, ever served to postpone a martyr's fate. They all died with the very first stroke of the sword.

What accounts for the failure of Eulogius' martyrs to provide him with the empirical evidence he needed to make his case? The answer lies in the relationship between the prospective miracle worker and the surrounding religious community. A miracle is an [83] ambiguous phenomenon, defined not so much by the type or quality of the event itself as by the interpretation given the event by its witnesses.⁽²²⁾ The collective mentality of the audience determines whether or not something miraculous has occurred.⁽²³⁾ If, as was presumably the case with Acisclus and Victoria, the sympathies of the local Christians lay with the martyrs, their very expectations would ensure miracle activity. Over time, as the individuality of the martyrs became submerged in the ideal of martyrdom, their miracles would increase in stature and number.⁽²⁴⁾ The hagiographer, typically composing his text quite some time after the event, would have no lack of second-hand miracle accounts from which to draw.

The situation in ninth-century Córdoba differed in two key respects. First of all, the martyrs died before an audience dominated by assimilated Christians who viewed the confessors' actions as unworthy of their support, much less that of God.⁽²⁵⁾ Secondly, Eulogius often composed his passiones within months of the relevant executions. As a result he could not have profited from any exaggeration of details even if there had been enough Christians inclined to nurture the memory of the martyrs.⁽²⁶⁾

Eulogius, like Gregory, argued that miracle working was not a prerequisite of sanctity. But while the author of the Dialogues had been able to say this secure in the knowledge that Italy was nonetheless full of miracle-working bishops, none of the Cordoban martyrs had produced a single miracle upon which Eulogius could make a similar case. The priest, like the pope, knew that in the absence of such empirical verification there would always be some room for doubt about the holiness of the martyrs. Always, that is, unless Eulogius could demonstrate that special circumstances beyond the martyrs' control precluded the type of miracles with which, under normal conditions, they would undoubtedly have been blessed.

Eulogius offered two reasons why the mid-ninth century was not an auspicious time for such miracles. First he argued that the church, long since firmly established in the world, no longer needed the empirical signs that had played such an important role early on.

Truly the Lord performed miracles through his servants at a suitable time in [the history of] the world since he knew, by means of divine prescience, that they would have an effect on the people; he knew that those who [84] worked his miracles would not be acting in vain. And indeed those who had at first rejected the salutary precepts of the sacred law gave way before the wonder of the prodigies. In those times it was suitable for the martyrs of God to shine with signs since they were trying to solidify the original diffusion of Christianity with solid roots in the hearts of the believing people by means of verbal instruction, scriptural exhortation, and the revealing of signs as well as the rewards of passion.⁽²⁷⁾

This was by no means a new argument. The early Christian apologists, in their efforts to defend Jesus against accusations of sorcery, had to downplay his miracles. Origen was one of the first to suggest that these displays of supernatural power had never been intended to serve any broader function than that of leading the first generation to the "wonderful teachings of the gospel," which alone could effect the truly noteworthy miracles of making spiritually blind men see and spiritually lame men walk.⁽²⁹⁾ Later Augustine took the same position in order to allay the fears of his congregation that Christ, whose miracle activity was limited to the earliest years of the Church, held the Christians of later ages in less regard. But Augustine could claim that miracles were not necessary while secure in the knowledge that they were, in fact, occurring daily at the shrines of St. Stephen.⁽³⁰⁾ Again, Eulogius had no comparable signs to fall back on. All he could do was to build as strong a case as possible for the general absence of miracles in his own day.

Eulogius supplemented his argument that miracles properly belonged only to the primordium of church history, with a variation on the same theme borrowed from Gregory's commentary on job. "Prior to the appearance of the Leviathan . . . miracles will be removed from the holy Church. . ." No longer will the "divine dispensation. . . make itself known openly and repeatedly." The purpose, according to Gregory and Eulogius, was simply to separate the sheep from the goats: "the reward of the good who venerate the Church because of their faith in heavenly things and not because of present signs shall increase," while those who demand miracles will expose the superficial quality of their faith.⁽³¹⁾ This apocalyptic approach served Eulogius' purposes rather nicely, [85] for it was precisely this "faith in heavenly things" without signs that the priest was trying to engender for the sake of the martyrs.

If such temporal restrictions were not enough, Eulogius relied on his own exegesis to provide a fascinating geographical one, which specifically precluded the possibility of such signs occurring in Muslim Spain:

Not everyone is worthy of contemplating heavenly powers, as can be easily shown by looking at the apostolic miracles. When the apostles wanted to preach the gospel to the Asians, they were prevented by the Holy Spirit, which, when long ago it began to spread the gospel, knew that no one worthy of receiving the evangelical truth existed in Asia, and rightly prevented the disciples by the prophetic authority of divinity.⁽³²⁾

Only peoples originally designated "convertible" by the Holy Spirit could expect divine signs to testify to the truth of the Christian message. Eulogius considered groups like the Asians, and by extension the Andalusian Muslims, to be hopeless cases on which God would not waste his precious signs.

By precluding the possibility of miracle activity in ninth-century Córdoba, Eulogius defused his opponents' contention that a lack of signs was a reflection of the martyrs' status in God's eyes. What his opponents had used as evidence for repudiating the martyrs, Eulogius transformed into nothing more than a sign of the times and a reflection of geographic circumstances that had no bearing whatsoever on the status of the martyrs.

Had Eulogius fully worked out the implications of what he was saying, he might have realized that he had strained at a gnat only to swallow a camel. His argument, elevating the problem of miracles from his martyrs to the Andalusian church as a whole, succeeded in its designated purpose: it prevented the lack of miracles from being used against his martyrs. But Eulogius was prepared neither to follow up his apocalyptic explanation with prophecies of an imminent historical climax, nor to square the proscription against preaching the gospel in "Asia" with the continued existence of a Christian community in al-Andalus. We will never know if these problems bothered Eulogius. But the absence of any trace of uneasiness suggests that his efforts to vindicate the Cordoban martyrs engaged him so completely that any dubious implications of an otherwise useful argument could be brushed aside in the interests of the more pressing matter at hand.

1. Angel Fábrega Grau, Pasionario hispánico, 2 vols., Monumenta Hispaniae Sacra, serie litúrgica, 6 (Barcelona, 1953). Early medieval Christians, especially the heirs of the Visigoths, set great store by the liturgy as an authoritative basis for doctrinal argument: lex orandi, lex credendi. M. C. Díaz y Díaz, in his article "Literary aspects of the Visigothic liturgy," in Edward James, ed., Visigothic Spain: New Approaches (Oxford, 1980), p. 72, described the non-biblical texts within the Visigothic liturgy as ". . . condensed formulations of doctrines, moral norms, and hagiographical accounts," intended more for the rumination of the educated cleric than the edification of the congregation. As such they were considered sufficiently precise and authoritative for use in doctrinal debates. From the perspective of each of the participants in the debate, then, the fact that the Cordoban martyrs did not exactly fit the patterns established by the passionary was a serious problem.

2. Fábrega Frau, Pasionario 2:12-13.

3. Ibid.

4. The only criticism leveled against the martyrs that was not based on the passionary paradigm was the observation that the martyrs' bodies, which were typically left exposed after decapitation, were not immune to the processes of decomposition. Memoriale sanctorum 1.26 (PL 115:758 CSM 2:389).

5. Memoriale sanctorum 1.12 (PL 115:748 CSM 2:379). See also: Liber apologeticus martyrum 7 (PL 115:856; CSM 2:479-80).

6. Henry Davis, in his edition of the Liber regulae pastoralis, Ancient Christian Writers 11 (Westminster, Maryland, 1950), p. 8, rightly emphasizes the often overlooked regula aspect of the work. Gregory's intention was to provide bishops with their own "rule" to govern their lives in the world.

7. Liber regulae pastoralis 1.5, p. 31.

8. Gregory, Dialogues, trans. Odo J. Zimmerman, Fathers of the Church 39 (Washington, D.C., 1959), p. 5.

9. Gregory, Dialogues, p. 51.

10. Gregory, Dialogues, p. 52. Compare Sulpicius Severus, Letter to Eusebius. Matthew 14.29; Acts 27.14.

11. Gregory, Dialogues, pp. 13, 19-20, 27, 146-7.

12. The monk of Whitby, who composed the earliest known life of Gregory, followed his subject's example when he claimed that miracles were unnecessary for an attribution of sanctity, only to list numerous examples of such phenomena associated with Gregory. For the translated text, see: Charles W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early Medieval England (Ithaca, New York, 1947).

13. Gregory, Dialogues, p. 52.

14. Memoriale sanctorum 1.15 (PL 115:750; CSM 2:380-1). Luke 10.20.

15. Liber apologeticus martyrum 9,10 (PL 115:857; CSM 2:481). Eulogius took the same basic tack when addressing the criticism that the martyrs' bodies were not immune to decay: "The adversaries object to the corruption of the martyrs' bodies. But, I pray, let them answer what difference this makes to those bestowed with the heavenly reward; as if the martyrs -- who were well aware of the sentence suffered by mortals, as stated to Adam, 'You are dust and into dust shall you return,' and who knew that they would be handed over to be killed by the tyrant's punishments in order to achieve the desired end -- were aspiring to some honor of the flesh" Memoriale sanctorum 1.26 (PL 115:758; CSM 2:389); Genesis 3.19. After giving examples of biblical characters like Job and Lazarus who were clearly susceptible to the ravages of disease, he bade his opponents review the shining deeds of the victories of the rest of the holy men, as numerous as the stars in the sky, and then let the impious insult, if they dare, their putrid members, consumed with the pains and punishments of their torment. This temporal corruption of bodies in no way infers detriment to the soul of the holy. . ." Memoriale sanctorum 1.26 (PL 115:758-9; CSM 2:389-90); Isaiah 40.6; Acts 2.29; 2.7-8; and Luke 16.20. Eulogius seems to have taken some license with Acts 2.31, which in the Vulgate ends, ". . . neque caro eius vidit corruptionem," not ". . . et caro eius vidit corruptionem," and which refers not to David but to Christ.

16. Eulogius did know the Moralia in Iob. Memoriale sanctorum 1.13 (PL 115:748; CSM 2:379).

17. Memoriale sanctorum 2.1.5 (PL 115:769; CSM 2:400-1). Eulogius also regarded the death of ^cAbd ar-Rahmân II as an act of divine vengeance. Ibid., 2.16.2 (PL 115:797; CSM 2:436).

18. Memoriale sanctorum 2.12 (PL 115:793; CSM 2:432).

19. Liber apologeticus martyrum 31 (PL 115:866; CSM 2:402).

20. Memoriale sanctorum pref., 4-5 (PL 115:738; CSM 2:368-9).

21. Memoriale sanctorum 2.10.12 (PL 115:782; CSM2:421); 2.10.20 (PL 115:785; CSM 2:424); 3.8.2 (PL 115:805; CSM 2:446); 2.5 (PL 115:773; CSM 2:404).

22. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (New York, 1969), pp. 43-5, uses the term "plausibility structure" to indicate the propensity of a given audience to accept a particular way of looking at their world. Applying this same principle in a more individualized way to the witnesses of a miracle, Delahaye, Légendes, p. 11, noted that a witness, asked to describe what he had just seen, could offer nothing more objective than his own "legend," based on fact but embellished according to his particular impressions, feelings, sympathies, etc.

23. Peter Brown observed, in reference to relics, that "the supernatural becomes the depository of the objectified values of the group." "Society and the supernatural: a medieval change," Daedalus 104 (1975), p. 141.

24. Gregory of Tours illustrated this process when he wrote: "Some ask whether we should say the life of the saints or the lives of the saints. . . It is clear that it is better to talk about the life of the Fathers than the lives, because though there may be some difference in their merits, and virtues, yet the life of one body nourished them all in the world." Liber vitae patrum, quoted by Jones, Saints' Lives, p. 62.

25. It is possible, but exceedingly difficult to verify, that the more assimilated Christians were unreceptive to miracle activity as a result of the influence of Islamic doctrine, which did not officially recognize such miracles.

26. There are exceptions. Since Perfectus' martyrdom preceded the spontaneous martyrdoms by more than a year, we would expect there to be enough sympathy in the Christian community to recognize miracles. The initial support that the earliest spontaneous martyrs enjoyed prior to the clerical arrests accounts for the signs and portents that graced Isaac's birth and childhood. Memoriale sanctorum pref., 4-5 (PL 115:738; CSM 2:368-9).

27. Memoriale sanctorum 1.14 (PL 115:749; CSM 2:380).

28. Liber apologeticus martyrum 7 (PL 115:850; CSM 2:480).

29. Origen, Contra Celsum 2.49, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, 1953), p. 103.

30. Augustine, City of God 22.8.

31. Memoriale sanctorum 1.13 (PL 115:748-9; 379-80).

32. Memoriale sanctorum 1.14 (PL 115:749-50; CSM 2:380).