Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/513

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 491 plied to their civil or religious conformity. ^43 About the middle of the twelfth century, the worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary, and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and Grenada. '^^* The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinaiy rigour might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon and Por- tugal. The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally revived by ad. 1535 the papal missionaries ; and, on the landing of Charles the Fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of Rome. '^■^■' After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and Chris- Toleration tians of the Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience, christianB which was granted by the Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics, Avhose name of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his in- veterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of the Mahometan government. ^''^ Yet this partial jeal- ousy was healed by time and submission ; the churches of Egypt ^" About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the intrepid envoy of the emperor Otho I. (Vit. Johan. Gorz. in Secul. Benedict. V. No. 115, apud Fleury, Hist. Eccl^s. tom. xii. p. 91). 2-*^Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.d. 1149, No. 8, 9. He justly observes that, when Seville, &c. were retaken by Ferdinand of Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found in the place ; and that the Mozarabic churches of Africa and Spain, described by James a Vitriaco, A.D. 1218 (Hist. Hierosol. c. 80, p. 1095, in Gest. Dei per Francos), are copied from some older book. I shall add that the date of the Hegira, 677 (a.d. 1278), must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise of jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the Christians of Cordova (Bibliot. Arab. Hist. tom. i. p. 471) ; and that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of Grenada (A.D. 1313), could either discountenance or tolerate (tom. ii. p. 288). ^^s Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo Africanus would have flattered his Roman misters, could he have discovered any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa. ^-iBAbsit (said the Catholic to the Vizir of Bagdad) ut pari loco habeas Nestori- anos, quorum prseter .A.rabas nullus alius rex est, et Grascos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello non desistunt, &c. See in the collections of Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient, tom. iv. p. 94-101) the state of the Nestorians under the caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more concisely exposed in the preliminary Dissertation of the second volume of Assemannus,