Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

hundred years the heresy which had stolen the throne, the temples, the palaces, and the cities, had fallen to pieces; it was a lost Babylon, no one could tell where it was. The awful irruptions of the Northern barbarians seemed to have thrown. upon the plains of Europe a great mass of soulless human flesh, which would corrupt the air, and make the country a wild desert; but the Church took these things to her bosom, and her supernatural warmth made those bones live again; she made them Christians, and they became men. It was not so when she fought the new enemy. The powerful genius of Mahomet made him dream that he could do what Cæsar and Alexander did, that he could enslave the world; and he matured his plans with care. The political aspect of the world was very inviting to an ambitious impostor, for the Western Empire had fallen, and the strong arm won the spoils; the Eastern was getting old and crazy, and all Asia was nearly independent of the Greek Emperors. Mahomet gave laws which were singularly adapted to please man's corrupt nature, and his laws were piously kept. He won his soldiers to his party by promising them rich booty, and by keeping his promises. The captains always shouted with Mokanna,

"Thrones to the victors, heaven to him who falls."

He did not give them thrones, common soldiers would not know what to do with them; but they were always ready to exchange the promised throne for present license to unmitigated avarice and lust, and the soldier was satisfied. It is true that the slain did not ascend to heaven, but they never came back to tell their surviving comrades so.

Some say that Mahomet was a reformed drunkard; others ascribe his law against wine-drinking to the fact that he could not use it. They do him injustice; he was an ambitious captain, and he knew that he could do nothing with a drunken army. Yet he had no easy task, for the Arabs were a nation of sots. Death was as common at their dinners as drunkenness But they consoled themselves with a gluttony that made their former drunkenness ashamed. In our own times, death from excessive eating at a genuine Turkish dinner is an event too common to attract much notice. "God is great, but Mustapha was a good eater.

at ours.

Who will die next?"

Soldiers and slaves must not think too much, or they will become captains and members of Provisional Governments. Cæsar knew it when he looked so at the lean and hungry Cassius. The Prætorian guards had much time for making and

hearing speeches, and the end of it was, that they became auctioneers, and sold the empire to the highest bidder. The Janizaries cared not who held the sword and purse, while they held the bowstring and dagger. A few years of idleness taught them that the word Sultan, when interpreted, means a strong army. From that moment the Grand Turk sat under the Janizaries as uneasily as Damocles did under the sword, until Mahmoud eased his mind by cutting their throats. Now Mahomet made war the rule, not the exception, of his public policy, and of course it followed that his people would have little time to cultivate their minds. He knew that the breathing intervals would be given to beastly indulgence, and in order to make their ignorance profound, he gave them the Koran, and told them to read nothing else. They treated it as Native Americans treat the Bible; they swore by it, but scarcely opened it. The views of Mahomet touching mental improvement were practically illustrated by Omar, when he burned the Alexandrian library. What a monument he would have, if every curse of the learned were a stone upon his grave!

Tell men that they can serve God and Mammon at the same time, charge them to indulge their passions freely, secure to them a heaven whose first law is sensual gratification, make ignorance the first commandment, and erect this scheme of lust and rapine into a religious system, and what remains to insure it long life? Punish apostasy with death. This stern

law of the Prophet is as faithfully kept now as it was under Al Raschid. We have often seen converted Turks, whose return to their own country would be instantly followed by their assassination. It is true, that the Sublime Porte issues firmans of toleration, but secret assassins are numerous, and justice is seldom obtained in the capital, elsewhere never.*

*A striking instance occurred in the year 950, when Otho, king of Germany, sent an embassy to Abderrahman, chief of the Spanish Moors. St. John of Veidieres was chosen for the dangerous undertaking. He was instructed to give the Moor a proper answer to some attacks which he had made upon Christianity in a letter to Otho.

When it was known that the despatches contained religious matter, John was detained until the Moor could be consulted. After some weeks he was permitted to go to the capital, but he was required to suppress the religious document, as a preliminary to an audience. John refused. It was represented to him that the laws condemned even the king to death, if he should hear a Christian concerning religion without punishing the offender with instant strangulation. John was inflexible. The king liked the stern honesty of John, and swore by his beard that he should not die. A messenger was sent by Abderrahman to Otho, begging him to

So Mahomet unfurled his banner, and in a twinkling it waved over a great host. He went forth to make converts and subjects. The process was quite simple. He held his tablet of laws in one hand, and the sword in the other, and in most cases the people chose to live and believe in one God, and in his prophet, Mahomet. The Jew was not forced to abandon all his venerable observances; the renegade eased his conscience by observing that Jesus ranked next to Mahomet in the new order of things; the idolater forswore his graven images, and changed the names of his gods. But this synthesis in theology was too ostentatious to be real. The spiritual headship of a minority, with the political sovereignty of nations differing in every thing excepting in the human shape, did not suit the purposes of Mahomet. He did not want an Ireland, an India, or a Canada, in his empire. He knew that his Christian and Jewish converts would never disturb the commonwealth, but he was not so sure of his many-colored Gentiles. Their Penates would make them quarrel among themselves, and then an easy process of reasoning would lead them to quarrel with him. He knew that the pagan who has no images forgets his theology, that he becomes an animal, with just enough of humanity to prevent him from walking on all fours. So Mahomet became an iconoclast. The worship of strange gods was an effect of man's worship of his own self. Idolatry always began at home. The Prophet wished not to destroy the cause; he simply diverted the effect into a new channel. To read his Koran one would think that the ideal formula of his system was the purest theism. So a discourse of Spinoza begins and ends with God. Cousin often speaks of the Divinity in terms that would do credit to a Father of the Church. When Hegel talks of God, his words sometimes become a hymn which might be chanted by an immortal choir. But get Spinoza, Cousin, and Hegel into a corner, force them to tell you what God is in the last analysis, make them speak in words which you can understand, and they will answer, God is I.

An outward profession of faith always satisfied the Prophet. The language of Caliph Vathek to the captains of the Emperor Theophilus was in substance the standing sermon of the Moslems to their captives. "Why will you die when your lives

dispense John from offering the paper to the Moor. Otho moderated some of the phrases in his letter, and John was admitted into the presence of Abderrahman.

are in your own hands? Why will you not leave the narrow way which the Son of Mary has marked for you? Enter into the broad path which the great Prophet has opened for this life and for the next. Are not his words full of wisdom, when he says, that God has given every imaginable good to his servants in this life, and paradise in the other world? God is good; he knew that his children were too weak to bear the yoke of Jesus, and he sent Mahomet to free them from the irksome burden. The faith of the true believers is enough for their salvation." The Mahometans said, Pecca fortiter, fortiter crede, before Luther, and they were more consistent besides. Their caprice, or the soul's involuntary tribute to virtue, made them suffer a few great saints to live quietly in their midst. But they lost no opportunity for tempting these heroes. When St. Nilus met some of them, they tried to make him a true believer; and when they saw that it was useless, they begged him to lay aside his austerities. "If you are resolved to torment yourself, wait until you are too old to enjoy the good things of this world."

The impostor ruled Arabia before he died, and he had the fortune which is commonly denied to political innovators; he left men who were equal to the task of prosecuting the work which he had begun. Under Abubekir, Omar, and Ali, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt were enslaved, and although schism, which must distract and finally ruin every society not upheld by God, was even then dividing the true believers, nevertheless the cause went on and prospered. The great Caliphate, so celebrated in Eastern romance, was established at Bagdad; then Persia became Mahometan, and the religion of the Prophet was professed along the shores and in the islands of the Indian Sea. The tide rolled westward; desperate attempts were made by the enemy to obtain foothold in Europe, and they were too successful. The African shores of the Mediterranean submitted, and the piratical nests scattered along the coast from Egypt to the Straits enabled the true believers to begin a series of operations against Sicily and Spain.

Mirza governed Africa in the name of Caliph Valid. He had been plotting the conquest of Spain, when Count Julian invited him to make a descent upon the coast. The Count had a private quarrel with King Roderic, who had debauched his daughter. The Moor entered Spain with a great army, and destroyed the kingdom of the Goths, which had flourished three hundred years. The Moors made Cordova their capital;

the Goths elected a new king, and retreated to the Asturias, when Pelagius began the war, which raged eight hundred years, until Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors back into Africa. The enemy crossed the Pyrenees, ascended the Rhone, and pushed their conquests in France as far as Sens at the eastward, leaving behind them ruined cities, wasted plains, and thousands of martyrs. At the westward they entered Aquitaine, where they were routed by Charles Martel. Two hundred years rolled away before the Church of France recovered from this blow. In Italy, Radelgise and Siconulph fought for the duchy of Benevento. The former called in the African Moors, the latter met them with the Saracens of Spain. It was a sore day for Italy. Rome was nearly taken; the Church of St. Peter was sacked, as well as the immense monastery of Monte Cassino. The infidels were bribed to go away, and the ornaments of the altar were sacrificed, as they have been often since. In 877, Pope John VIII. wrote to Charles the Bald, begging for aid. "The blood of Christians," wrote the Holy Father, "never flowed as it does now. If they are not murdered, they are sold into slavery. Cities, abandoned by their inhabitants, are masses of shapeless ruins; bishops beg their food from city to city. Rome itself is scarcely a safe asylum for them or for me; it is sitting in the dust, awaiting the moment of its destruction. Last year we sowed and our enemies reaped; this year we cannot hope for a harvest, for we dared not go outside our walls to throw seed into the ground." The Pope was forced to purchase the peace of his states by the annual payment of twenty-five thousand silver marks to the Moors. A few years after, they were encouraged to return by Athanasius of Naples, and they did not leave Lower Italy until it was so wet with blood that the flames of what were cities could scarcely dry the ground.

The Greeks stood condemned before the world of perfidy and injustice; before Heaven, of obstinate schism. They retreated towards Constantinople slowly; so slowly, that more than six hundred years passed on before the Saracens completed their work of destruction in the East. Nothing remained but the city of Constantine; and its hour came too. So the Mahometans came into the possession of a city which was more serviceable to them than any other in Europe; and they had scarcely taken possession of it when they turned their arms against the lower Slavonic provinces, and led their forces into Hungary, threatening Vienna with destruction, and Europe with

« AnteriorContinuar »