[96] The fact that the Muslims worshiped one God was not the only thing that distinguished them, in the eyes of Eulogius' opponents, from the ancient authorities. The manner in which they treated the Christians also differed. For one thing, as the detractors observed, the Romans "harassed the Christian soldiers who resisted and fought them with insults, afflictions, lashes, gibbets, flames, beasts, drownings, and various other kinds of torments, hoping, by means of punishment, to recall their souls from the practice of their religion. . ." In contrast these "soldiers and confessors of our day, receiving a speedy death at the edge of a sword, have not had to perspire under protracted torments or to endure any of the bitterness of fierce torture."⁽¹⁾

There was no denying that the Cordoban martyrs were spared the elaborate tortures that filled the pages of the Roman passionaries. Examples of mistreatment by the Muslims were in fact rare enough for Eulogius to register his surprise when they occurred. As the priest reported in the passio of Isaac, Muslim officials restrained and chastised the qâdî who struck the blasphemous monk. For, Eulogius observed, "according to their law, he who, as a result of his crimes, merits death, ought not to be subject to any physical abuse."⁽²⁾

If Eulogius had to admit that the martyrs suffered little prior to their executions, he could and did question the importance of torture in the long run. "What does it matter if one perishes after extended torture or with a sudden stroke, when the same zeal for God and the same love of the eternal kingdom crowns both?" Moreover, his opponents were forgetting how awful a thing death in itself really was. "What among all the punishments," asked Eulogius, "is more cruel than death? What is more terrible than to [97] see in plain view the quivering sword ready to fall on the neck of the confessor?" The only meaningful criterion for evaluating a given death was the end for which it was endured, not the means by which it was accomplished. "Death may come quickly or slowly; what matters is whether they suffered their passions for the sake of the faith, whether they strove to lose their lives on behalf of Christ, the one who crowns martyrs, so that they might be saved."⁽³⁾ As Eulogius saw it, there was no glory inherent in mutilation. The quality of one's intention was all that really mattered. Like the thief on the cross, the martyrs could expect to be judged not in terms of the circumstances that led to their deaths, but in terms of the degree of their commitment to Christ.

More problematic for Eulogius than the lack of torture was the absence of a general persecution that would have helped justify the actions of the martyrs. The vast majority of the ancient martyrs whose deaths were celebrated liturgically in ninth-century Córdoba died during designated periods of persecution, particularly under Decius in the mid-third century and Diocletian in the early fourth. Typically, as in the case of Aciscius and Victoria, the local magistrates sought out and arrested recalcitrant Christians, ordered them to venerate the imperial deities, and punished their refusal with torture and execution. In marked contrast, Isaac and most of the others who followed came forward, unsummoned and without any pressure to forsake their religion, to denounce Islam in deliberate violation of the laws against blasphemy. Paraphrasing the sentiments of his opponents, Eulogius wrote: "No violence compelled them to deny their faith or forced them away from the practice of the holy and pious religion; but giving themselves over to destruction of their own free will and on account of their pride -- which is the beginning of all sin -- they killed themselves and brought about the parricide of their own souls."⁽⁴⁾ By so doing they had proved themselves unworthy of the ranks of the Roman martyrs.

The points at issue were actually two: the excessive volition that characterized the confessors' pursuit of martyrdom and the lack of provocation on the part of the authorities. In both cases Eulogius chose to deny his opponents' observations, claiming on the one hand that the zeal of the martyrs was no more excessive than that of some of the Roman confessors, and on the other that a state [98] of persecution did indeed exist in Córdoba in their own time. The precise boundaries of acceptable volition on the part of a Christian facing execution had never really been established during the martyrial phase of church history. No one doubted that will was a necessary component of proper martyrdom. The victims of the Roman persecutions were glorified by the surviving Christians precisely because, when faced with a choice between life and death, they chose their own destruction. The question was not, therefore, whether individual will played a part in martyrdom, but rather how much will a prospective martyr ought to exercise in securing his goal.

Two of the earliest recorded martyrdoms illustrate the wide latitude of opinion on the matter. In the early second century Ignatius of Antioch presented himself as a Christian to Trajan, knowing full well that his admission would lead to the amphitheatre. Writing to dissuade the senate from remitting his sentence, he pleaded lest any "unseasonable show of good will" on their part prevent him from being "ground by the teeth of the wild beasts" and thus being transformed into the "pure bread of Christ."⁽⁵⁾

The intensity of Ignatius' desire to undergo any "tearings, breakings and dislocations" necessary to attain his spiritual goal, stands in marked contrast to the reluctance of another second-century bishop, Polycarp of Smyrna. He managed to elude the magistrates who were looking for him by hiding in three different houses before he was finally betrayed by a servant, arrested, and executed. Evarestus, Polycarp's biographer, was apparently concerned lest the bishop's flight be construed as weakness. The subsequent passio assumed an apologetic tone intent upon presenting a martyrdom "more becoming to the gospel," for Polycarp had "waited to be delivered up, even as the Lord had done." Applauding this combination of sober reluctance and unwavering fortitude, Evarestus posed the case of one Quintus as a counter example. An active seeker of martyrdom of the Ignatius mold, Quintus suffered a last minute flagging of the spirit and apostasized. "Wherefore, brethren, we do not commend those who give themselves up, seeing the gospel does not teach so."⁽⁶⁾

These conflicting patterns of martyrdom which began in the second century begat conflicting theological interpretations in the third. W. H. C. Frend has distinguished between men like Clement [99] of Alexandria, who decried the inherent exhibitionism of the "suicidist and braggart" in search of mindless short cuts to God, and Tertullian, who regarded martyrdom as "something to be invoked, not feared," as the perfect means of imitating Christ.⁽⁷⁾ The "rigorism" characteristic of Tertullian's native North Africa would continue to foster radical opinions about martyrdom. The serious threat to Cyprian's episcopal authority in Carthage, following his retreat in the face of the Decian persecutions, was symptomatic of these sentiments.⁽⁸⁾ In the fourth century the same attitude would inform the Donatists, for whom willingness to die was regarded as the best recommendation for ecclesiastical office.⁽⁹⁾

Eulogius drew upon the New Testament and the liturgy in his search for precedents. He reminded his readers of Paul's decision to go to Jerusalem despite the visions of the prophet Agabus, which foretold that if Paul went he would be "delivered into the hands of the gentiles" and die.⁽¹⁰⁾ Turning to the passionary, Eulogius recounted in some detail the case of Felix, a student in Mauritania, who, learning of persecutions in Gerona, left for Spain and "triumphantly achieved martyrdom, the opportunity for which was lacking in his own land."⁽¹¹⁾ Eulogius also listed, without further comment, the names of other "voluntary" martyrs, including Adrian, the Roman officer in Nicomedia who was so impressed by the fortitude of some Christians under torture that he joined them; Eulalia of Barcelona who let nothing, not even her mother's pleading, prevent her from making her Christianity known to the authorities; and Justus and Pastor, two schoolboys who, like Felix, set aside their books to follow what they considered to be the more noble pursuit of their own martyrdom.⁽¹²⁾ Their names alone were enough to evoke, in the minds of his readers, the lessons of the passionary that pertained to Eulogius' argument.

Of all the ancient examples that Eulogius garnered, only the story of the seven brothers, which Eulogius knew from the passio of St. Julian and St. Basilissa, really served his purpose. According to the passionary account, Diocletian, out of respect for the loyalty of one of his magistrates, allowed his seven sons to practice their Christianity undisturbed. But when the seven brothers witnessed the plight of the Christian Julian in prison, they resolved to join him despite their unique dispensation.⁽¹³⁾ When Eulogius' opponents argued that martyrdom made no sense since the Muslims permitted [100] the Christians to practice their religion, this was the most appropriate precedent to which he could appeal.

But even in this case the fit between the ancient and modern martyrs was not as close as Eulogius might have liked. For the Roman confessors, regardless of whether they ran to their deaths or were dragged, died during periods of official persecution. The passionaries underline this point over and over again with such formulaic prefaces as: "In those times, when the demented, sacrilegious fury of the emperors shook the entire world and increased pressure pushed the Christians toward the ungodly cult of the demons. ."⁽¹⁴⁾ The picture that these narratives paint is one of an outlawed religion trying to hold its own against an alien government bent on its extirpation. The imperial government, in other words, had created a situation that theoretically forced each Christian to choose between religious compromise and death, thus effectively lifting the responsibility for his or her death from the shoulders of even the most masochistic Christian.

The situation in Muslim Córdoba was quite different. There were no laws against the practice of Christianity nor were any Christians legally bound to demonstrate their loyalty to Muhammad or Islam. The initiative behind the spontaneous martyrdoms had, therefore, to come from the victims themselves. "No violence on the part of the authorities forced them to deny their faith," and without such provocation the confessors had, in the opinion of their detractors, transgressed the limits of acceptable volition in a way that none of Eulogius' handpicked examples from the passionary could have. Eulogius foresaw this difficulty and did his best to forestall criticism by questioning whether or not the Andalusian church was indeed free from religious persecution. In fact Eulogius would go so far as to demonstrate that the Christians of ninth-century Córdoba were the victims of a persecution at least as pervasive and oppressive as those which plagued the late antique church.

The following passage illustrates one of the ways in which Eulogius attempted to create a sense of Christian persecution:

You do not regard as provocation the destruction of churches, the hate directed towards the priests, and the fact that we pay a monthly tribute with great hardship? Death is more profitable for us than the laborious peril of such a deprived life . . . Who, among all the persecutors of the faithful, has assailed the church as cruelly as this abomination? Who has [101] heaped up so much in subversion of the catholics as this unfortunate one? For no one of us may walk secure in their midst, no one is left in peace, no one may pass through their walls without being dishonored. Whenever the need for any ordinary thing compels us to go forth in public, when it is necessary to go out into the forum from our abodes for any household necessity, the moment they notice the symbols of our sacred order, they attack, as if madmen or fools, calling out derision; not to mention the daily mockery of children, for whom it is not enough to inflict verbal abuse and heap up shameful examples of scurrility, but who do not even refrain from pelting us with rocks from behind. Which reminds me of what they do as an insult to the holy sign. For when the psalmody schedule dictates that we give the signal to the faithful, and the approaching hour of prayer obliges us to make the customary indication, these liars, misled by superstition, listen intently to the clang of the reverberating metal and begin to exercise their tongues in every curse and obscenity. Therefore, not unsuitably are they cursed who, with such hate, direct their followers against the clergy. We are calumnied incessantly by them, and everywhere we suffer their ferocity for the sake of religion. Many of them judge us unworthy to touch their garments and curse to themselves if we approach too closely. They deem it pollution if we mix in any of their affairs.⁽¹⁵⁾

The "persecutions" which Eulogius enumerated were: the destruction of churches, taxation, the cursing prompted by the tolling of bells, restricted interpersonal contact between Christians and Muslims, calumny, mockery, rock throwing, and hatred of priests. Keeping in mind the traditional restrictions of the dhimma and their sporadic enforcement by the emirs in times of political stress, the provocations that Eulogius delineated were predictable. The recent push to enforce the traditional restrictions on church building could appear persecutory given the laxity with which they were usually applied. Similarly, the hostility that the sound of bells evoked from some Muslims was, whether Eulogius knew it or not, probably a vestige of an old prohibition against bell ringing. The taxes to which Christians were subject were also in accordance with [102] the dhimma, though they might well have been increased under ^cAbd ar-Rahmân II. Even the type of verbal and physical abuse about which Eulogius complained seems to have been inspired by the spirit behind the pact. For the Christians whom Eulogius described as victims of mockery and pelting were not ordinary Christians, but priests, bearing publicly the "symbol of our sacred order," evoking hostility from those Muslims who regarded their attire as an inappropriately public expression of a subordinate religion.

None of this, of course, mattered to Eulogius. His task was to convince his readers that the Muslims had only one goal in mind as they "weighed down the necks of the faithful with a grievous yoke": "to exclude the entire Christian race. . . from the borders of their kingdom; at times allowing us to exercise Christianity only as it pleases them; other times making our Sweat turn foul in servitude to the Pharaonic rite; and still other times imposing a tax on our miserable necks."⁽¹⁶⁾ If this meant exaggerating the ills of Christian life in Córdoba, it was a small price to pay for the vindication of the martyrs.

But this was not the only means that Eulogius employed for creating a sense of persecution. Though Isaac's death was without a doubt the catalyst that led to the first and most virulent outbreak of martyrial dissent, the monk was not, as Eulogius was quick to indicate, the first Christian to suffer at the hands of the Muslim authorities. Prior to Isaac's deliberate flouting of the proscription against blasphemy, Perfectus was arrested and executed for unwittingly committing the same crime. Though this was an entirely unrelated event, Eulogius nevertheless composed an account of the incident, portraying Perfectus as an innocent victim of Muslim faithlessness and false witness, and used it as the opening passio of the Memoriale sanctorum. Likewise, Eulogius reserved a place in his apology for the merchant Joannes who was not even a martyr, but who had received a harsh punishment for a less flagrant violation of the law against blasphemy.

The cases of Perfectus and Joannes served Eulogius' purposes particularly well in that they helped support his contention that no Christian was safe from victimization at the hands of the Muslims.⁽¹⁷⁾ In fact, on two occasions Eulogius went so far as to suggest that the martyrs' movement as a whole was a direct reaction to the [103] persecutory treatment of Perfectus: "Such a crime, committed against a priest, impelled many, who in the leisure of their secure confession in the lonely mountains were enjoying the solitude of the woods, contemplating God, to come forth to detest and curse, publicly and freely, the sinful prophet."⁽¹⁸⁾ Eulogius wisely made no attempt to account for the fourteen months that separated the execution of Perfectus and Isaac's fateful encounter with the judge.

Perfectus and Joannes were not the only reluctant victims of the Cordoban penal process to find their names incorporated into Eulogius' passionary. Like Perfectus, Argimirus and, most likely, Abundius were arrested for blasphemy and decapitated despite their claims of innocence. In addition, two of the apostates, Aurea and Rudericus, never voluntarily handed themselves over to the authorities. These individual martyrs, it would seem, were not guilty of the charge of excessive volition leveled against the martyrs as a group, for they had not sought their own executions. Eulogius' decision to lump them together with the spontaneous martyrs, like his decision to begin his martyrology with Perfectus and Joannes, should be appreciated in light of his apologetic goal. All of them served as examples of Muslim persecution.

The third and final technique that Eulogius used to create a sense of persecution is best illustrated by his letter to Bishop Wiliesindus of Pamplona, in which he complained of "a fierce, tyrannical madness, rising up against the Church of God," that had "subverted, laid waste, and dispersed everything, dragging bishops, priests, abbots, deacons, and the entire clergy to prison."⁽¹⁹⁾ Again, this passage, with its references to the exercise of tyrannical fury, the subversion and disruption of the church, and the imprisonment of clerics, could have been extracted from the work of some third- or fourth-century hagiographer describing the plight of the church under Decius or Diocletian. Why did Eulogius not refer to these hostile actions on the part of the authorities when listing the precipitating factors behind the martyrs' actions? Because the clerical arrests and imprisonment were not the cause of the martyrdoms, but one of their effects. The "storm" that led to the clerical arrests had gathered in response to the earliest wave of voluntary martyrdoms.

The fact that the arrows of cause and effect pointed in the wrong direction did not deter Eulogius from making the most out of these [104] "persecutions" by focusing on the role they played in encouraging subsequent martyrdoms. Carefully reinterpreting the emirs' actions, Eulogius transformed their basically defensive policy, aimed at preventing any future defamation of the Prophet, into one of aggressive proselytization, a "fierce conspiracy" designed to make Christians "prostrate themselves . . . to their rite."⁽²⁰⁾

Despite his efforts to construct a persecutory backdrop for the martyrs' actions, Eulogius characteristically hesitated to lean too heavily on it. Already we have seen him try to vindicate the martyrs by arguing both that there were precedents for spontaneous martyrdom and that the Cordoban Christian community was afflicted with its own persecution. Yet a third approach provided him with a way of transcending the issue altogether by questioning the very criterion that his opponents were applying to his martyrs.

A state of persecution was not, after all, what made a martyr. The definitive element, as Eulogius saw it, was the willingness to bear witness to the truth no matter what the consequences. Iustitia, the right order of things, could not tolerate something as aberrant as Christian subjection to a secta falsa. From this perspective, the martyrs' unprovoked attacks on Islam made sense, for it was "highly meritorious to subvert the impious, to challenge the enemies of the church, to prepare for war against the adversaries of the faith with the spear of God's word."⁽²¹⁾

Eulogius' use of such "church militant" images has suggested to Allan Cutler that the martyrs were missionaries intent on ushering in the apocalypse through suicidal proselytization. But if we take into consideration Eulogius' habit of leaving no stone unturned in his search for a strong defense, it can be misleading to trust any single motive that he attributed to the martyrs. The single most difficult task that Eulogius faced in his defense of the martyrs was to create a sense of a persecuted community. Having presented as convincing a case as possible for a beleaguered Cordoban church, he stepped back, just as we saw him do in the case of the miracles, and asked rhetorically whether indeed a state of persecution was even necessary to justify the martyrs' actions. If he was to argue successfully that it was not, he had little choice but to refer to Jesus' instructions to his apostles and portray the martyrs as agents of the church militant.

1. Liber apologeticus martyrum 3 (PL 115:853-4; CSM 2:477).

2. Memoriale sanctorurn 1 pref., 3 (PL 115:737; CSM 2:367). Eulogius also seemed surprised when reporting that Hieremia was whipped and Leovigildus struck. Memoriale sanctorum 2.4 (PL 115:772; CSM 2:404), 2.11 (PL 115:793; CSM 2:431)

3. Liber apologeticus martyrum 5-6 (PL 115:854-5; CSM 2:478-9). Psalm 115:15.

4. Memoriale sanctorum 1.18 (PL 115:751; CSM 2:382).

5. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans 4-5, Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols. (New York, 1903), 1:75-6.

6. Evarestus, Life of Polycarp 1, Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:39.

7. W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of the Conflict from the Macabees to Donatus (Oxford, 1965), ch. 12.

8. Peter Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church (London, 1974).

9. W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church (Oxford, 1952).

10. Memoriale sanctorum 1.23 (PL 115:757; CSM 2:388). Acts 2 1:10-14.

11. Memoriale sanctorum 24 (PL 115:758; CSM 2:389).

12. Fábrega Grau, Pasionario, 2:266-79, 233-7, 328-31. Eulogius also mentioned Babylas of Antioch (pp. 196-202), Thyrsus of Nicomedia (pp. 202-20), and Sabastian (pp. 148-76).

13. Fábrega Grau, Pasionario 2:133.

14. Fábrega Grau, Pasionario 2:47.

15. Memoriale sanctorum 1.21 (PL 115:754-5; CSM 2:385-6). Cf., Indiculus luminosus 6-7 (PL 12 1:520-2; CSM 1:278-9). According to Lewis, p. 34, such concern about pollution was rare in the Islamic West.

16. Documentum martyriale 18 (PL 115:829-30; CSM 2:470).

17. This strategy is even more obvious in Alvarus apologetics. The first section of the Indiculus luminosus is, in part, a portrait of Andalusian persecution in which Perfectus and Joannes are the key figures. Only after painting this backdrop did Alvarus refer to the heroic resistance of Isaac. Indiculus luminosus 12 (PL 121:527; CSM 1:285).

18. Memoriale sanctorum 2.1.6 (PL 115:769-70; CSM 2:401). Cf., Memoriale sanctorum 1.10 (PL 115:747; CSM 2:378).

19. Epistula 3.10 (PL 115:849; CSM 2:501).

20. Memoriale sanctorum 3.3 (PL 115:801-2; CSM 2:441).

21. Memoriale sanctorum 1.20 (PL 115:753; CSM 2:384).