Eulogius became early noted for his practice of asceticism, and his desire for the life of a monk,[1] and for the glory of martyrdom.  When strong measures were taken by the authorities, in concert with Reccafredus, Bishop of Seville, to stamp out the mania for martyrdom by threats, stripes, and imprisonment, though many were frightened into submission, Eulogius, Alvar tells us,[2] remained firm, in spite of his being singled out as an “incentor martyrum” by a certain Gomez, who was a temporising Christian in the king’s service.[3]

    [1] Life by Alvar, sec. 3, “Ne virtus animi curis Saecularibus
    enervaretur, quotidie ad caelestia cupiens volare corporea
    sarcina gravabatur.”

    [2] “Hic inadibilis (=firm) nunquam vacillare vel tenui est
    visus susurro.”—­Life by Alvar, sec. 5.

    [3] This man, says Alvar, sec. 6, by a divine judgment, lost
    his hold on the Christian faith, which he thus scrupled not to
    attack.  See below, p. 72.

There is no doubt that Eulogius did all he could to interfere with and check that amalgamation of the Christians and Arabs which he saw going on round him.  Believing that such close relations between the peoples tended to the spiritual degradation of Christianity, he set himself deliberately to embitter those relations, and, as far as he could, to make a good understanding impossible.  To discourage the learning of Arabic by the Christians, he brought back with him from a journey to Pampluna the classical writings of Virgil, Horace (Satires), Juvenal, and Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei.”

At the time when these martyrdoms took place, Eulogius was a priest, but for some reason he tried to abstain from officiating at the mass on the ground that he was himself a great sinner.[1] However, his ecclesiastical superior[2] (?  Saul, Bishop of Cordova), soon made him take a different view of the question by threatening him with anathema if he neglected his duty any longer.  Coming forward as a prominent champion of the extreme party in the Church, he was imprisoned in 851, where he wrote treatises in favour of the martyrs, and was released, as we have seen, by the intercession of Flora and Maria on November 29th of that year.

[1] He pleads his “delicti onera,” ch. i. sec. 7.  Perhaps he was infected with one of the “Migetian errors” of the previous century, which was that “priests must be saints.”  Saul, Bishop of Cordova (850-861), in a letter to another bishop (Florez, xi. 156-163), refers with disapproval to those (?  Eulogius) who held that “sacramenta tunc esse solum modo sancta, cum sanctorum fuerint manibus praelibata;” and he quotes Augustine and Isidore against the error.

    [2] Pontifex proprius.

In 858,[1] on the death of Wistremirus, he was chosen by the votes of the people[2] to succeed him as Bishop of Toledo; but from some cause, perhaps by the intervention of the Moslems, he was prevented from occupying his see.  The people then determined to have no bishop, if they might not have him.[3] Yet, adds the pious Alvar, he got his bishopric after all, for “all holy men are bishops, though not all bishops holy men.”