nd 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 t