by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a victim himself. A
synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously censured their rashness. The
moderate Fleury cannot reconcile their conduct with the discipline of
antiquity, toutefois l'autorite de l'eglise, &c. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles.
tom. x. p. 415-522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509.) Their authentic
acts throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in
the ixth century.]

At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most
potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their prerogative was not
circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles,
the freedom of the commons, the privileges of the church, the votes of
a senate, or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the
companions of Mahomet expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs
of the Arabian tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality
and independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the
successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their actions,
they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. They
reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to whom
the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in
their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised at
their own expense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire
extended two hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines
of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we
retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the
long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from
Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to
the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. [219]
We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that
pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress
of the Mahometan religion diffused over this ample space a general
resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran
were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor
and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of
Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all
the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. [220]

[Footnote 219: See the article Eslamiah, (as we say Christendom,) in the
B