[8] Ibid., xvii. sec.  I, “Grandi fastu Arabicae traducis
    exornabatur.”

The next example affords a similar instance of real persecution.  Ruderic,[1] a priest, whose brother was a Moslem, unadvisedly intervened as a peacemaker, in a quarrel, in which his brother was engaged.  With the usual fate of peacemakers, he was set upon by both parties, and nearly killed.  In fact his brother supposed him to be quite dead, and had the body carried through the town, proclaiming that his brother had become a Mussulman before his death.[2] However, Ruderic recovered, and made his escape, but being obliged to return to Cordova, met his brother, who immediately brought him before the Kadi on a charge of apostasy.  His life and liberty were promised to him if he would only acknowledge that Christ was merely man, and that Mohammed was the messenger of God.  On refusing, he is imprisoned, and finds in prison a certain Salomon, also charged with apostasy from Islam.  The two fellow-prisoners contract a great friendship and are consequently separated.  After a third exhortation, they are condemned to death, but not before the judge had done his best to bribe them to forego their purpose by offers of honour and rewards.[3] They were executed March 13, 857, and their bodies thrown into the river—­even the stones sprinkled with their blood being taken up and cast into the water, lest the Christians should preserve them as relics.  Ruderic’s body was washed on shore, fresh as when killed; while Salomon, not being equally fortunate, informed a devout Christian in a vision, where his body lay in a tamarisk thicket near the town of Nymphianum.

Hitherto the aider and abettor of these martyrdoms had himself contrived to escape the penalty, which he had urged others to brave.  Whether this was due to any unworthy fear of death on his part is not clear, but it may have been owing to the respect in which he was held by the Moslem authorities.  To these he was well known as a man of irreproachable character and unaffected piety, and several Arabs of high rank, who were his personal friends, shewed themselves anxious to screen him from the effects of his folly.  Eulogius[4] was descended from a Senatorial family of Cordova, and was educated at the Church of St Zoilus, where he devoted himself to ecclesiastical studies, and soon surpassed his contemporaries in learning.  With his friend Alvar he sat at the feet of Speraindeo, an eminent abbot in the province of Baetica.  Besides a sister Anulo, Eulogius had two brothers engaged in trade, and another brother, Joseph, who seems to have been in government employ.[5]

    [1] Eulog., “Lib.  Apol.,” sec. 21 ff.

    [2] So the Inquisitors in Spain used to pretend that their
    victims had abjured their errors before being burnt.

    [3] Eul., “Lib.  Apol.,” sec. 27.

    [4] Life by Alvar, c. i. sec. 2.

    [5] Eul. ad Wiliesindum, sec. 8, “Joseph, quem saeva tyranni
    indignatio eo tempore a principatu dejecerat:”  unless this is a
    metaphorical allusion to Joseph in Egypt.