[107] Each of the motives that scholars have, over the past four hundred years, attributed to the martyrs of Córdoba can be traced back to some aspect of the literary battle that Eulogius waged on their behalf. The traditional Spanish claim that the martyrs were responding to persecution was simply an extension of Eulogius' argument. French and Dutch scholars opted for the perspective of the unsympathetic Cordoban Christians. Similarly the efforts of Eulogius and Alvarus to recast Islam as the antithesis of Christianity inspired the interpretation of the martyrs as apocalyptically-minded missionaries. Even the "proto-nationalism" thesis, though lacking any direct analogue in the writings of Eulogius, represents little more than a politicization of the polemical line that Eulogius attempted to draw between Muslims and Christians.

We have thus far avoided offering any alternative theories to explain the behavior of the martyrs. From the very beginning, Eulogius has been our primary focus, using his writings to determine who he was, why he wrote in defense of the martyrs, and how he defended their actions. Yet having come to a more thorough understanding of Eulogius, we find ourselves in an advantageous position to comprehend the martyrs. Having a better sense of why Eulogius wrote and what sort of contact he had with the martyrs, we can approach his martyrology more critically and extract the events of the 850s from their apologetic context.

Isaac's behavior in front of the Cordoban judge in the spring of 851 was, as we noted, unprecedented. Though Perfectus had been executed for the same crime some fourteen months before, he had not deliberately flouted the laws against blasphemy. Eulogius was very much aware of this difference in circumstances. As he saw it, Isaac "held the honor of being the principatus among the martyrs" of [108] his day because even though Perfectus was killed earlier, "the priest was dragged forcibly to his passion," while the monk went freely to his own.⁽¹⁾ Eulogius' decision to include Perfectus along with four other reluctant martyrs was, we have suggested, a way of strengthening his case on behalf of the martyrs as a whole. In any case, this group of martyrs does not particularly concern us. Our task is to determine what prompted Isaac and others like him to come forward sponte, without provocation, to denounce Islam and acclaim the truth of Christianity.

Eulogius, unfortunately, tells us less about Isaac than we would like to know. But what he did record -- that Isaac relinquished his position as exceptor or kâtib, entered the monastery at Tabanos, and finally sought a martyr's death -- is highly suggestive. While Isaac's reasons for taking each of these steps cannot be ascertained with perfect certainty, we can offer some speculation based on the more complete information we have about other Cordoban Christians who found themselves in similar situations.

The most easily explained step in Isaac's progression from kâtib to martyr is his choice of the monastery at Tabanos as his retreat. We know from Eulogius' account that Isaac's cousin Hieremia,

famous for his wealth and abounding in material possessions, had, along with his venerable wife Elisabeth, devoted himself sometime before to this coenobium, which was built by their families at their own expense, so that he and Elisabeth might dedicate themselves freely for the rest of their lives to the fulfillment of the divine commandments.⁽²⁾

Years before Hieremia and Elisabeth retired to Tabanos, they had already taken a step in the direction of withdrawing from the world by vowing to pursue, in their own home, an ascetic lifestyle: propositum. . . adhuc vulgo admisti gerebant.⁽³⁾ By so doing they became, in the language of the church, poenitentes.

The role of the penance ritual in the Christian church was to provide the Christian guilty of committing a heinous sin with a way of restoring the spiritual purity of the newly baptized.⁽⁴⁾ In its earliest form, as it first appeared in the second century, the process involved a formal petition to the bishop on the part of the sinner for entrance [109] into the order of penitents. For a period of time, which varied according to the flagrancy of the violation, the penitent was excluded from communion and obliged to undertake a spiritually therapeutic regimen of prayer, fasting, and the distribution of alms, and to avoid potentially compromising activities such as sex, business negotiations, and public office.⁽⁵⁾ What distinguished this so-called "public" penance from the private type that would begin to supplant it in some areas of continental Europe as early as the ninth century, was not only the duration of the imposed regimen, but the fact that the penance could not be repeated. "Sicut unum baptisma," wrote Ambrose, "ita una poenitentia."⁽⁶⁾ The church had nothing but its prayers to offer a relapsed sinner.⁽⁷⁾

Recognizing the great spiritual dangers that the absolved sinner faced, church leaders from early on decided to extend the social restrictions placed on the penitent. Then, even after the prescribed period of penance had elapsed and the penitent was once again allowed to attend mass, sex and the other potentially damning pursuits remained off limits so as to protect the reconciled sinner from a fatal relapse.⁽⁸⁾ In the words of R. C. Mortimer, the penitent had become "to all intents and purposes a professed religious."⁽⁹⁾

As onerous as the ordo poenitentiae must have appeared to Christians obliged to enter it in expiation of a mortal sin, it proved a strong magnet for others who, while not guilty of any particular infraction, were attracted to the ascetic discipline that it involved. The late antique church had to cater to the needs of a growing number of Christians who voluntarily adopted the religious regimen and social liabilities associated with public penance.⁽¹⁰⁾

The popularity of this poenitantia spontanea among lay men and women seems itself to have been a product of the inherent limitations of a penitential system based on poenitentia coactitia. Because each Christian could apply for the cleansing effects of public penance only once in a lifetime, it became a standard practice to postpone penance until the deathbed to minimize the occasion for relapse.⁽¹¹⁾ While this may have proved the safest avenue in terms of the ultimate goal of salvation, such procrastination afforded little in the way of solace for anyone anxious about a lifelong accumulation of venial sins. Voluntary penance offered the conscientious Christian not only a way of avoiding many potentially sinful situations, but an opportunity to make a positive [110] contribution to his or her own spiritual standing by means of a self-imposed ascetic discipline.⁽¹²⁾

The frequency of references in church councils, especially those of Visigothic Spain, to Christians who "received penance without having confessed any palpable sins" attests to the increasing popularity of this religious option in the century before the Muslim invasion.⁽¹³⁾ The terms used to describe the penitents in the conciliar canons varied according to the circumstances of their profession, as well as their gender and marital status. The ecclesiastics who attended the fourth council of Toledo distinguished first of all between those who received penance voluntarily and those who, in their minority, were dedicated by their parents. The same canon divided the female penitents into three groups: virgins, widows, and married poenitentibus feminis.⁽¹⁴⁾ In each case the professio poenitentiae entailed the donning of a "religious habit" in church or in the presence of a priest, an act which symbolized the individual's decision to renounce worldly attachments. The ease with which a layperson could adopt a life of penance stood in marked contrast to the subsequent difficulty of resuming a normal secular life. Like monks, penitents were permanently bound to their professions. Predictably, the majority of the canons related to such penitents were aimed at preventing those who had assumed the habitum religiosum from later reverting to the habitum laicalem. To this end the councils repeatedly authorized bishops and priests to enforce the penitent's commitment with threats of anathema.⁽¹⁵⁾

It is interesting, in light of what we know about Hieremia's and Elisabeth's decision to retire to Tabanos, that the councils also made a distinction between those penitents who chose to lead their socially restricted lives at home and those who retired to monasteries.⁽¹⁶⁾ The domestic option did not lend itself to effective ecclesiastical control, a situation that provoked commentary from more than one Visigothic churchman. Leander of Seville, the older brother of Isidore, once wrote to his sister, asking her to "flee the private life" that always "constricts with a multitude of concerns the lives of the virgins who remain in cells in the cities." He advised her instead to live regulariter like the monks in a monastery.⁽¹⁷⁾

We do not know whether the decision of Hieremia and Elisabeth to transplant their domestic regimen to the mountains of Tabanos was prompted by their own conscience or by the urgings of a [111] concerned ecclesiastic. But regardless of the circumstances, the monastery at Tabanos seems to have served their spiritual needs as a family-owned and operated retreat inhabited by penitents like themselves seeking the most conducive environment for the fulfillment of their individual proposita.⁽¹⁸⁾

This type of familial monastery was a very common feature of early medieval Europe in general,⁽¹⁹⁾ and the canons of the Toledan councils attest to the frequency of such arrangements in Visigothic Spain. Rich laymen who built churches and monasteries on their own land could retain a great deal of control over the maintenance of the church fabric, the collection of revenues, and the appointment of the priests, abbots, and other appropriate clerics.⁽²⁰⁾ Such provisions were intended to protect these privately sponsored institutions from any excessive encroachment of episcopal jurisdiction, especially in the form of revenue tapping.⁽²¹⁾ Of course such extensive lay powers led to various abuses of their own. Fructuosus, who dedicated much of his literary energies to the composition of rules that would help to regulate the reception of families into religious life, once observed that:

Some are accustomed out of fear of hell to establish monasteries for themselves in their homes, and with their wives, children, servants, and neighbors, to join themselves together by means of the terms of an oath, and in their own villae, as we have said, to consecrate churches in the name of the martyrs, and call them, falsely, monasteries. We, however, do not consider them to be monasteries, but rather see them as the perdition of souls and the subversion of the church.⁽²²⁾

There is no indication that Isaac lived as a penitent in his own home prior to entering the monastery. Given the fact that by 848, when he relinquished his office and decided to live the life of a religious, the family retreat at Tabanos was already well-established, there would have been little reason for Isaac to consider any other option. Nevertheless, the new life that Isaac assumed at [112] Tabanos was, like that of his cousin, one which allowed him to live out a sanctum propositum.⁽²⁴⁾

If we keep this relationship between voluntary penance and Cordoban monasticism in mind, we will be in a much better position to understand Isaac's ultimate confrontation with the judge. For in fact the step from monk to martyr was, unlike that from kâtib to monk, less qualitative than quantitative, representing more than anything else a heightening of the spiritual anxieties that had pushed him to the monastery in the first place. Martyrdom was in fact a perfect solution to the spiritual anxiety produced by an inflexible penitential system. Not only did it epitomize self-abnegation and separation from the world, but it guaranteed that there would be no opportunity to sin again. It represented a uniquely inviolable stage of penitential discipline. Again, the limited information that we have about Isaac makes it difficult to confirm this connection between his martyrdom and the propositum that he observed at Tabanos. But we can extrapolate from the cases of some of the other martyrs.

Columba was impressed by her sister Elisabeth's decision to lead a life of domestic penance. "Frequently visiting her sister at her home," Eulogius wrote, Columba "longed to consign herself to the same sort of vows and desired to become a zealous servant of the same propositum."⁽²⁵⁾ But this did not fit into her mother's plan to give her remaining daughter away in marriage. As it happened, however, Columba's mother died before she could realize her intentions. By then, Elisabeth had left for Tabanos with her husband Hieremia and her brother Martinus, and Columba hastened to join them.

Eulogius' account of Columba's experience at Tabanos is, despite its hyperbole, revealing. Columba suffered from overwhelming anxiety about her own spritual shortcomings, a profound uncertainty about her own ability to resist temptation. "She was thus encouraged to pursue greater sanctity, and, driven by her fear of the enemy, she struggled for the height of virtue in the midst of a harassed life. The tempter frequently tormented her with anxieties, incited pride, simulated the form of men, added food, and wore her down with various dreams. Shaken with fear of these things, she mourned excessively lest she be deprived upon death of the company of [Christ,] her spouse."⁽²⁶⁾

[113] Presumably Columba's decision to follow her siblings to Tabanos was the first step toward alleviating these anxieties. But could she even count on the discipline of the monastic life to relieve her stress? The fact that, as Eulogius reports, she ultimately chose to separate herself from her sisters and engage in more than the normal share of austerities suggests that she was not certain. And this uncertainty made the prospect of martyrdom attractive to her:

Unceasingly engaged in these devotions, and pursuing the burden of her vigils, fasts and prayers, holy Columba inflicted upon herself more punishment, I reckon, than any executioner could have. Yet it was as if all the torment she brought upon herself was nothing; as if she had no confidence in her own merits, though she undertook great things. Afraid lest the hundredth fruit of her virginity appear empty of merit in the eyes of the father, she aspired toward the ineffable wealth of martyrdom, which sends the sinner on a direct path to the kingdom of heaven.⁽²⁷⁾

Columba was not the only confessor who demonstrated an intense preoccupation with her spiritual status and serious doubts about her ability to achieve the desired level of purity through the established channels. Eulogius' account of the events leading up to the deaths of Sabigotho and her husband Aurelius reveals the same sort of religious intensity.

Sabigotho and Aurelius married as secret apostates and were content to practice their Christianity clandestinely for a number of years. Aurelius was, however, more comfortable with this situation than Sabigotho:

While I was living for myself, dead to God, you, my sweet wife, with unremitting exhortation, always tried to lead me to confession, pressuring me daily to separate myself from the pleasures of the world. You placed the happiness of the eternal kingdom above the dark affections of the world. You attempted to persuade me to relinquish all sin. You spoke highly of the monks and praised those who had renounced the world, delighting in the conversation of the religious, frequently sighing over the lives of the saints. But I, not yet illuminated with the compunction of celestial grace, was by no means able to acquiesce to your salutary exhortations. Or perchance, not yet following the admonition prescribed by God the father [114] for my correction, I put off pursuing that which I envisioned, albeit tenuously, in my mind.⁽²⁸⁾

Behold, my dearest one, the time has come. The days of our salvation are at hand, in which, recoiling from external and past things, we project ourselves into that which lies ahead of us. First of all, striving perfectly for purity and continence, let us take time for prayer, by means of which we may hasten more easily to the holy work that remains. May you, who were my wife, now become my sister; let the bed of our union give way to fraternal affection. Let offspring of the spirit emerge from it, let a generation of the spirit grow out of it. Having disdained the filth of such bodily union, the mind, free from carnal desire, will learn to produce progeny in the form of eternal salvation.⁽²⁹⁾

As in the case of Columba, Sabigotho's regimen did not entirely satisfy her. Her frequent visits to the cell of Flora and Maria made her all the more cognizant of the incomparable quality of their mode of self-denial. Once the two had been executed, Sabigotho was left alone with her concerns, more anxious than ever about her ability to achieve her goal through voluntary penance. In this state of mind she experienced a vision in which Flora and Maria approached her resplendent in their celestial glory. Sabigotho quickly availed herself of this opportunity to obtain some reassurance:

Tell me if I shall receive the benefits of my vows, lest running to no end, I perish into nothingness; lest my efforts turn out to be in vain; lest, while my whole intention seeks one thing, my merit aims at another. Because God favors merit more than prayers, he is known to have rejected a multitude of prayers that is not aided by any dignity of merit. Therefore my lords, wives of Christ, tell me if up until now my hope of sustaining the reward of your spouse has stood on firm ground.

The profits of your labor are deposited in heaven and are preserved for you to collect at the right time. Nor will the things necessary for battle, which compel the invincible athletes to go forth to the kingdom, be lacking. For martyrdom has been predestined and fixed for you from the time the world was created.⁽³¹⁾

Though the majority of the passiones are not nearly as detailed as those we have just considered, we can tell by association or by the use of certain characteristic terms that Columba, Aurelius, and Sabigotho were not isolated cases. We know, for example, little about Felix and Liliosa except that they were guilty of apostasy, that Felix was related to Aurelius, and that the couple's fate was bound up with that of Aurelius and Sabigotho. Yet we can be fairly certain that they followed the other couple's example and lived as domestic penitents prior to handing themselves over to martyrdom. In the case of Fandila, Eulogius wrote only that, out of fear of God, "he dictated his mind to heaven, despising all earthly things, and longed more to be killed and thus be with Christ, than to remain bound to filth."⁽³²⁾ But the fact that his formative years prior to becoming a priest at the monastery at San Salvador were spent under the regulari disciplina vel regimine of abbot Martinus at Tabanos speaks for itself. The austerities in which Flora engaged prior to her martyrdom were part of her effort to "fulfill her vow as a wife of Christ."⁽³³⁾ Finally, we know that when Maria's mother died, not only did her father "set out on the narrow path of eternal life," having aspired to the gradu confessionis, but he made certain that his [116] son Walabonsus would be raised ecclesiasticis regulis, and dedicated his daughter as a virgin to God.⁽³⁴⁾

We find evidence of this spiritual anxiety not only in the passiones but in the apologetic portions of Eulogius' martyrologies. At one point the priest attributed the spontaneity of the martyrs' confessions to their search "for a short cut by which, freed from their bodies, they might come more quickly to their celestial homeland."⁽³⁵⁾ Elsewhere, in defense of the absence of miracles, Eulogius pointed out that the intention of the martyrs was not to perform signs but to inscribe their names in heaven.⁽³⁶⁾ Interestingly enough, the detractors themselves were aware of the personal spiritual motives that lay behind the martyrdoms. They accused the confessors of selfishness, being more concerned about their own salvation than about the fate of the Andalusian Christian community as a whole. Such audaciously suicidal behavior, in their opinion, was motivated by pride, initium omnis peccati. It proved that the confessors were "indiscreet and unwilling to suffer with the weaker Christians, striving instead to purchase the comfort of their own peace and tranquility in heaven with their blood."⁽³⁷⁾

It is also significant that in one of the later Arabic accounts of a Cordoban Christian seeking martyrdom, the author presents the Christian as an ill-informed fanatic with his eye on a quick and easy way to an assured salvation. When the qâdî Aslam ibn ^cAbd al-^cAziz asked the Christian why he would want to die when he had committed no crime, the Christian responded that only his corporeal self would die, while his true self would immediately ascend to heaven.⁽³⁸⁾

There is, then, evidence, both direct and indirect, for attributing at least some of the martyrdoms to acute spiritual anxiety on the part of the confessors. This is, in fact, the only explanation with any kind of a textual basis apart from the polemics and apologetics that surrounded the executions. But the picture is still not complete. If indeed this type of penitential angst were the key ingredient in the recipe for a martyrs' movement, would we be safe in assuming that it was, in itself, sufficient to cause the martyrdoms? Was the spiritual stress to which Cordoban Christians were susceptible any more intense than that which afflicted Christians in other parts of Europe?

The decision to lead a penitential or monastic life, by definition, [117] involved a critique of one's previous existence, a rejection of the secular world within which one had hitherto operated. This was true of poenitentes and monks in Christian Europe as well as those who lived in Muslim Spain. But in the latter case, the fact that the surrounding secular society was at least theoretically Islamic added a new dimension to this critique. A rejection of the world became indistinguishable from a rejection of Islam. Under these special circumstances, a decision to abandon the world was easily transformed into a statement of religious identity. This may explain why the, confessors ultimately chose the particular means of invoking their martyrdom that they did: a public denunciation of  Islam and profession of faith in Christianity. It also suggests that those Christians who remained a part of Andalusian society might have suffered from a certain defensiveness about their own religious identities, which the example of the monks would only have exacerbated.

Though the identification of Islam and the secular world may have contributed to the negative sentiments that the poenitentes and monks felt toward Islam, it does not really explain what prompted them to take as radical a step as martyrdom. This brings us to a second major point. It is not enough to show that the spontaneous martyrdoms were a response to obsessive concerns about personal salvation and the need to reject an Islamic world. If this were all that there was to it then why do we not see any unprovoked martyrdoms before 851, when presumably the spiritual concerns of Cordoban Christians were much the same?

The answer is simply that no one before Isaac had ever conceived of spontaneous martyrdom as an option. There was, prior to Isaac's dramatic gesture, no precedent for behavior of this sort. As we saw in the previous two chapters, the circumstances in al-Andalus did not suggest obvious parallels to the situation in imperial Rome, where martyrdom was an accepted Christian response. The Andalusian Christians were not subject to pagan rule nor were they the target of any organized persecution. When, however, Isaac publicly asserted the exclusive truth of Christianity and the falsehood of Islam, he provided a new perspective, one which emphasized the similarities between ninth-century al-Andalus and third-century Rome. And his subsequent martyrdom, which made perfect sense in light of the antithetical relationship that he [118] attributed to Christianity and Islam, opened the door to waves of imitators, many of whom recognized the act of martyrdom as the perfect realization and culmination of their penitential programs.⁽³⁹⁾

This brings us back to our original question: what was it that prompted Isaac to take the unprecedented step from monk to spontaneous martyr? The answer perhaps lies in the unusual circumstances that surrounded his retirement. The best clue we have as to why Isaac gave up his government position is the manner in which he invoked his martyrdom. As we have already seen, Isaac approached the judge asking for instruction in the tenets of Islam, as if he were considering conversion. Only after the official expounded at length on various doctrinal points did Isaac make his true intentions clear, railing against the poor judgement of a man who, despite his scholarly achievements, was incapable of recognizing the errors of Islam. None of the subsequent confessors ever made a similar request of a Muslim official. With few exceptions they launched directly into their diatribes against Islam.

It is difficult to make sense of the judge's willingness to cooperate with Isaac and his utter shock when the monk insulted him if he did not have reason to believe that his explanation would indeed have a positive effect, to wit, the monk's conversion. Now we know that one of Isaac's successors as exceptor fell victim to Muhammad I's purge of the Cordoban bureaucracy some months after the new emir took power. We also know that a short time later the same official converted to Islam and was reinstated. It is possible, given the perennial nature of dhimmî purges of this sort in other parts of the Muslim world,⁽⁴⁰⁾ that Isaac too had lost his position as a result of his religious affiliation. If that was indeed the case, then the Muslim judge from whom he solicited information about Islam, a man who probably knew Isaac from his years of employment in the palace, would have regarded Isaac's request as a logical first step toward resuming his duties as kâtib.

If Isaac's official position did become contingent upon his conversion to Islam, his resignation may have marked the first time in his life that he had defined himself religiously. Given the general tendency of Andalusian Christians to maintain a low religious profile in the interests of assimilating into Islamic society, the climate was right for cases of second conversion. The voluntary assumption of penitential discipline, a decisive phase in many of the [119] confessors' lives, was one particularly popular way of demonstrating a renewed commitment to Christianity, of publicly defining oneself as a Christian. In Isaac's case the precipitating factor -- the threat of dismissal from his post as kâtib -- forced him to weigh his position against his religious identity, to decide whether or not his Christianity was expendable. The change in religiosity from a Christian bureaucrat who must have espoused the most "ecumenical" attitudes towards the Muslims to have risen as high as he did in government service, to a monk who would have quite naturally equated Andalusian Islamic society with the world that he had rejected, was a radical one. It may even have been radical enough to prompt him to demonstrate his repudiation of Islam and identification with Christianity with a singularly dramatic gesture.⁽⁴¹⁾

The combination of spiritually insecure Christians and a spontaneous martyr was a volatile one. Neither ingredient in isolation could have produced anything like the Cordoban martyrs' movement. Had Isaac stayed in Tabanos instead of confronting the Muslim judge, Hieremia, Columba, Aurelius, and Sabigotho would presumably have lived out their lives as penitents or monks, engaging in all of the usual austerities in their search for a sense of spiritual security. And had there not been Christians such as these, who were ready to try anything to relieve the fear that all of their efforts at securing their salvation might be in vain, Isaac would have been an isolated victim of the Islamic proscriptions against blasphemy.

1. Memoriale sanctorum pref., 2, 6 (PL 115:736, 738; CSM 2:367, 369).

2. Memoriale sanctorum 2.2 (PL 115:770; CSM 2:402).

3. Memoriale sanctorum 3.10.2 (PL 115:807; CSM 2:447). In Toledo 6.6 (638), "propositum" refers to the vow taken by those who voluntarily assume the habitum religiosum and/or associate themselves with some religious institution. Vives, p. 238.

4. Toledo 1.2 (397-400), Vives, p. 20: "When we speak of penitents we mean those who after baptism have been reconciled before the divine altar, having done public penance dressed in a robe, on account of murder or other serious crimes and sins." For a general treatment of the subject, see: Severino Gonzáles Rivas, S. J., La penitencia en la primitiva iglesia española (Salamanca, 1949).

5. Toledo 3.11 (589), Vives, p. 128: ". . . let him who had repented of his sin first be suspended from communion and, with the other penitents, be made to receive the imposition of the hands."

6. Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), p. 4.

7. Council of Elvira 7 (300-6), Vives, p. 3: "If any of the faithful, after having committed fornication and having done the necessary penance, should fornicate again, he shall not have communion even at the end of his life." As Tentler, p. 5, points out, expulsion from the Christian community was a logical way of dealing with discipline problems while the church was still an exclusive community. The need for a system of reconciliation followed closely upon the conversion of the empire, when the church was adjusting to its new role as an inclusive religious body.

8. Council of Barcelona 1.6-7 (540), Vives, p. 53: "Male penitents who wear the tonsure and religious habit shall pass the rest of their lives in prayer and fasting. Penitents shall not attend parties, nor give themselves over to business, whether it be in giving or receiving, but rather dedicate themselves to a frugal life in their own homes."

9. R. C. Mortimer, The Origins of Private Penance in the Western Church (Oxford, 1939), p. 2.

10. Gerard Gilles Meersseman, "I penitenti nei secoli XI e XII," I laici nelle "societas christiana" dei secoli XI e XII. Pubblicazione dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medievali, vol. 5. (Milan, 1965), p. 309. Though Meersseman focuses on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, his article begins with an overview of the late antique origins of medieval penitential practices.

11. Isidore, Sententiae 2.13, 15; De EccI. officiis 2.9, 17. Carleton M. Sage, "Paul Albar of Córdoba: Studies of his life and writings" (dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1943), p. 106, n. 10. Barcelona 1.8 (540), specifically requiring those who recovered from their illness after receiving penance to remain penitents, attests to the frequency of the practice (Vives, p. 53). Gonzáles Rivas, La penitencia, pp. 113-18.

12. Augustine, De poenitentibus (PL 39:1713-15); "Do you wish to free yourself from doubt? Do penance while you are healthy." Quoted by Tentler, p. 9.

13. Toledo 4.54 (633), Vives, p. 209. The earliest precise conciliar reference in Spain: the second council of Barcelona (599), Vives, p. 160.

14. Toledo 4.55 (633), Vives, p. 632.

15. Toledo 4.55, 56 (633), Vives, p. 210; Toledo 6.6 (638), Vives, p. 238; Toledo 10.5, 6 (656), Vives, p. 312-13.

16. Toledo 6.6 (638) Vives, p. 238: ". . . any men or women who at one time or another spontaneously donned the habitum religiosum, or any man dedicated to the choir of a church, or any woman dedicated to a monastery of women who prevaricates shall be obliged against his or her will to return to the former propositum . .

17. Leander, Regula ad Florentiana sororem suam 17 (PL 72:890).

18. There is a marked and misleading tendency among historians of early medieval monasticism to treat these institutions as more formal and uniform than they actually were. In their search for the first traces of Benedictine influence in the Iberian peninsula, Spanish scholars have largely ignored the indigenous traditions and interesting local variations. As Antonio Linage Conde observed in his El Monacato en España e Hispanoamérica (Salamanca, 1977), p. 23, efforts to understand early medieval monasticism have been hampered by a "proyección anacronística" of modern notions of the religious life to a remote past. José Orlandis, Estudios sobre instituciones monásticas medievales (Pamplona, 1971), is an exception to this rule. Working closely with the sources, Orlandis presents a whole spectrum of monastic alternatives each reflecting the particular spiritual needs and physical means of its founder.

19. E. John, "Secularium Prioratus' and the Rule of St. Benedict," Revue bénédictine 75 (1965), pp. 212-39.

20. In the case of Tabanos, the families of both Elisabeth and Hieremia were involved in its foundation. Yet given the fact that Elisabeth served as abbess and her brother Martinus as abbot, it is likely that the land upon which the monastery rested was a part of her family's holdings.

21. Typical are Seville 2.10 (619), Vives, pp. 169-70, and Toledo 4.51 (633), Vives, pp. 208-9. As Orlandis has noted, p. 133, the examples of canons aimed at curbing abuses by the lay founders of monasteries and churches are, in comparison, few and far between. Council of Lérida (540), Vives, p. 56.

22. Fructuosus, Regula monastica communis 1 (PL 87:1111).

23. Ibid.

24. Memoriale sanctorum 2.2 (PL 115:770; CSM 2:402).

25. Memoriale sanctorum 3.10.2 (PL 115:807; CSM 2:447).

26. Memoriale sanctorum 3.10.4-5 (PL 115:808; CSM 2:448).

27. Memoriale sanctorum 3.10.10 (PL 115:810; CSM 2:450-1). Matthew 11:12.

28. Memoriale sanctorum 2.10.7 (PL 115:779; CSM 2:418).

29. Ibid. Franke, p. 24, regards the case of Aurelius and Sabigotho as the best example of the connection between asceticism and martyrdom. He did not, however, recognize the institutionalized penitential basis of the couple's regimen.

30. Memoriale sanctorum 2.10.9 (PL 115:780; CSM 2:4,9).

31. Memoriale sanctorum 2.10.12-13 (PL 115:782-3; CSM 2:421-2).

32. Memoriale sanctorum 3.7.3 (PL 115:804; CSM 2:444).

33. Memoriale sanctorum 2.8.3 (PL 115:836; CSM 2:409).

34. Memoriale sanctorum 2.8.9 (PL 115:839; CSM 2:412). In other cases, it is more difficult to make the connection between martyrdom and penitential anxiety. Seven of the priests who died as spontaneous martyrs had no known monastic connections and were, as a result of their clerical status, not permitted access to the normal public penitential process. But these very restrictions, combined with the fact that secular clerical duty was universally considered less conducive to personal sanctification than monastic withdrawal from the world, may in themselves have led spiritually sensitive priests to their deaths once Isaac had provided them with such an effective way of overcoming the limitations of their office.

35. Memoriale sanctorum 1.6 (PL 115:743; CSM 2:374).

36. Memoriale sanctorum 1.15 (PL 115:750; CSM 2:381).

37. Memoriale sanctorum 2.15.1 (PL 115:795; CSM 2:434).

38. Historia de los jueces, p. 232.

39. The importance of precedent as the "generator" of the martyrs' movement is apparent in the frequency with which individual martyrs were influenced by the example of a friend or relative who had already been martyred. Dozy, 1:328.

40. Tritton's chapter on non-Muslims in government service is full of references not only to the ubiquity of the practice but the regularity of purges in response to criticism by Muslims who regarded such practices as abhorrent. See especially ^cUmar II's letter to this effect, pp. 21-2.

41. Daniel (Arabs and Medieval Europe, pp. 25-6), too, sees Isaac's decision to retire -- a decision stemming from "emotional and perhaps mental imbalance," caused by conflicts between his Christian identity and his vocation -- as a key component in his decision to seek martyrdom.