s garment." Alvar adds that the Moslems
would fall to cursing when they saw the cross;[7] and when they
witnessed a burial according to Christian rites, would say aloud, "Shew
them no mercy, O God," throwing stones withal at the Lord's people, and
defiling their ears with the filthiest abuse.[8] "Yet," he indignantly
exclaims, "you say that this is not a time of persecution; nor is it, I
answer, a time of apostles. But I affirm that it is a deadly time[9] ...
are we not bowed beneath the yoke of slavery, burdened with intolerable
taxes, spoiled of our goods, lashed with the scourges of their abuse,
made a byword and a proverb, aye, a spectacle to all nations?"[10]

[1] Eul., "Mem. Sanct.," i. sec. 21: Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec.
3.

[2] _Ibid._; and Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 7.

[3] Leovigild, "De habitu Clericorum." "Migne," 121, p. 565.

[4] Eul., l.l.

[5] Stigmata.

[6] Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 6, "Derisioni et contemptui
inhiantes capita moventes infanda iterando congeminant." He
adds: "Daily and nightly from their minarets they revile the
Lord by their invocation of Allah and Mohammed!" Eul., "Lib.
Ap.," sec. 19, confesses that hearing their call to prayer
always moved him to quote Psalm xcvi. 7: "Confounded be all
they that worship carved images"--a very irrelevant
malediction, as applied to the Moslems.

[7] Alvar, l.l., "Fidei signum opprobrioso elogio decolorant."

[8] "Spurcitiarum fimo."--_Ibid._

[9] "Mortiferum."--"Ind. Lum.," sec. 3.

[10] Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 31, gives us a very savage
picture of the Moslem character: "Sunt in superbia tumidi, in
tumore cordis elati, in delectatione carnalium operum fluidi,
in comestione superflui ... sine misericordia crudeles, sine
iustitia invasores, sine honore absque veritate, benignitatis
nescientes affectum ... humilitatem velut insaniam deridentes,
castitatem velut spurcitiam respuentes."

That there was a certain amount of social ill-treatment, and that the
lower classes of Moslems did not take any pains to conceal their dislike
and scorn of such Christian beliefs and rites as were at variance with
their own creed, and moreover regarded priests and monks with especial
aversion, there can be no doubt. But, on the other hand, there is no
want of evidence to show that the condition of the Christians was by no
means so bad as the apologists would have us sup