mies. He gained over the city of Medina to his cause; the number of his adherents continually increased. In 630 he captured Mecca; and as prince and prophet consecrated the Kaaba as the chief temple of Islamism;2 leaving at his death, in 1632,3 to his successors, the caliphs, (i.e. vicegerents), the whole of Arabia subject to his sway and obedient to his religion. The first caliph, Abubekr, Mohammed's father-in-law, collected, in 604, the revelations which Mohammed professed to have received, at different times, and for special cases, through the angel Gabriel. This work, entitled the Korân5 (divided into 114 suras or sections), is the sacred book of the Mohammedans. It is composed of disconnected sentences, of a commonplace, bombastic, and declamatory character, and in many parts is a wretched imitation of portions of the Old and New Testaments. With the Korân are also associated two other works, that are authoritative sources of Mohammedan doctrine. The first, entitled the Hadith or Sunna, is a collection of the oral teachings of the "prophet;" and the second, called Idschma el-Umme, is the concensus of doctrine according to the more immediate heads of Islamism.

Before his death, Mohammed had sent ambassadors to emperors and kings, demanding that they should acknowledge himself to be the messenger of God, and had made a successful beginning in compelling faith in his religion by

1 The date of this flight (Hegira, or Hedschra) is the Mohammedan epoch. 2 Islâm signifies submission to God, resignation; Imân means faith. Hence the Mohammedans are called either Muslimîn or Muminîn.

3 His death was caused by eating the flesh of a poisoned sheep, which a Jewess had set before him after the storming of the Jewish city Chaibar. According to the story, Mohammed took a piece of the flesh, chewed it, but spat it out, saying, 'This sheep tells me that it is poisoned.' But the poison was left in his system, and he ever after complained that the meat of Chaibar troubled him. In his last hours, just before his death, he said to his favorite wife Aisha: "The meat of Chaibar is bursting all my veins."

4 Mohammed left no sons, and only one daughter, Fatima, who became the wife of Ali.

5 Edited in Arabic, with a Latin translation, by Marraccius, Patav, 1698; Arabic text edited by Redslob, and published by Tauchnitz, 1837; translated into English by Sale, London, 1734; into German by L. Ullmann; and into French by Savary, 1782, and Pauthier, 1844.

the sword. Animating his successors by the assurance that God had given the world into their hands, they followed up his designs by his method. They were favored by the weak condition of the Roman Empire, and the dissensions of the Oriental Church. Under the leadership of Omar, the second and greatest of the caliphs, and his successors,1 the Mohammedans conquered Syria and Palestine 2 (639), Egypt (640), Persia (651), North Africa (807), and Spain (711). They pushed forward even into France, with the design of connecting the East with the West by a line of conquests, and building a firm bridge for the passage of their religion from the Asiatic to the European world. But this design was frustrated by the victory of the French king, Charles Martel, at the battle of Poictiers, in 732, which forever broke the Arabic power north of the Pyrenees. Though repulsed in the West, the Mohammedans afterwards twice laid seige to Constantinople, once in 669-670, and again in 717-718. Islamism threw down all the walls of separation between the nations which it overran, but was itself, in the midst of its victories, split into two great parties, by the dispute respecting the succession to Mohammed's office and power, and the differences relating to the Mohammedan theology that were connected with it. The two parties were headed by Omar, and Ali, Mohammed's son-in-law, who became the fourth caliph (654–660). The great division of the Shiites (to which the Persians belong) held that the civil and religious offices of caliph and imam belonged to the line of Ali alone, and rejected the first three caliphs, together with the entire body of traditions, from Abubekr downward. In opposition to them, the orthodox moslems, who called themselves the Sunnites (Ahl es-Sunna, the people of the

1 Histoires des Arabes sous le gouvernment des Califes, par De Marigny, Paris, 1750; Von Hammer Gemäldesaal moslimischer Herrscher.

2 Jerusalem was captured in 637 by the Saracens under the Caliph Omar, who, by stipulation with the patriarch Sophronius, granted to the inhabitants their lives, property, and churches; only converting the national temple into a mosque. Jerusalem, with its patriarchs, remained under the Mohammedan yoke until it was temporarily delivered from it by the Crusaders.

8 Murphy History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain, London, 1816.

tradition), "respected the memory of Abubekr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, as the holy and legitimate successors of the prophet, but assigned the humblest place to the last." This division of the Mohammedans was dominant at the Ottoman court, and throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Mohammedanism granted toleration to the Christians upon the payment of a poll-tax; but many Christians in the conquered countries, especially in the East, from fear or hope of earthly advantage, followed the fortunes of the victors, and adopted their religion, so that the Christian Church in these regions lost almost entirely its visible form. The Catholic patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were henceforth only nominal and titular. The Saracenic persecution in Spain was the only instance in which the Mohammedans spilt Christian blood. The Saracen laws had allowed the Christians the free practice of their religion, and they had, in fact, been but little molested, until, about the year 850, Saracen arrogance enkindled the martyr zeal. This soon passed the bounds of Christian sobriety and prudence, in a fanatical party of Christians, who were urged on by the presbyter Eulogius of Cordova, afterwards bishop of Toledo, and his friend Paul Alvarus, notwithstanding the endeavor of the council of Cordova in 852 to restrain their enthusiasm. A somewhat long and bloody persecution was the consequence. But in the mountains of northern Spain a prolonged and chivalrous contest for national independence and Christianity, in opposition to the Arabic dominion, was even now beginning, and Christianity conquered in the end.

CHAPTER SECOND.

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

$ 96.

CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND.

Gale Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae Scriptores, in Gallandi Bibliotheca XII. 189, sq. Lingard The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Turner History of the Anglo-Saxons. Schröd1 Das erste Jahr. hundert der Englischen Kirche. Bede Ecclesiastical History. Wilkins Concilia Magnae Britannicae et Hiberniae. Usher Britannicae Ecclesiae Antiquitates. Lanigan Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. Hume History of England.

CHRISTIANITY had become firmly established in Ireland and Scotland during the preceding period (§ 68); but in the meanwhile the Anglo-Saxons, by their invasion, had to a great degree broken up the ancient British churches and Christian institutions in England, and introduced paganism again. The conversion of the Saxons and the re-Christianizing of England proceeded from Rome.

Gregory the Great, while yet a Roman abbot, had been deeply moved to go as a missionary to England, by the sight of young pagan Anglo-Saxon slaves, and was prevented only by the pressing entreaties of the Roman Church (Bede's Ecclesiastical history, b. II. c. 1). After being appointed bishop of Rome, in 590, he was purposing to buy AngloSaxon slaves, in order to instruct them in Christianity, that they might disseminate it in their native land, when a favorable circumstance afforded him a more speedy opportunity of carrying out his design. Ethelbert, king of Kent, the most powerful prince in the English heptarchy, had married

Bertha, a Christian princess, the daughter of a French king. Emboldened by this fact, Gregory ordained, in 596, a Roman abbot Augustine together with a presbyter Laurentius (St. Lawrence) and a monk Peter, and some thirty other monks, as missionaries to England. While on their journey the company were frightened by reports of the savage wildness of the Anglo-Saxons, but were reassured and strengthened in their purpose by Gregory's Christian exhortations (Gregorii Epp. vi. 51) and Augustine's courage, and in 597 landed upon the little island of Thanet, east of Kent. At first, the king, from whom after announcing their arrival they reverently withdrew and kept themselves solemnly aloof, took them to be magicians. But soon he gave them his confidence, granted them permission to preach the gospel, even in his chief city Durovern (Canterbury), and in 597 received baptism himself, without, however, compelling his people to follow his example, as Augustine had taught him that the service of Christ is a voluntary one. After laboring for some time with great success,' Augustine, in conformity with instructions from Rome, went to Arles to receive episcopal ordination from archbishop Etherick, in order that he might discharge the office of a bishop in the new church. He then sent Laurentius and Peter to Rome, to give an account to Gregory of what had been accomplished, and to ask advice in reference to the future. To his inquiries Gregory gave very wise and discreet replies. He dissuaded him from all narrow and stiff adherence to the usages of the Roman church, recommended moderation in the suppression of idol-worship, and bade him estimate the miracles by which he supposed his missionary work was accompanied, by their practical effects upon the hearts of the heathen (Gregorii Epp. xi. 28). At the same time he sent copies of the Bible, and a new corps of assistants with the abbot Mellitus at their head, and appointed Augustine archbishop of London, with the commission to found a second arch

1 Upon one Christmas festival, ten thousand were baptized (Gregorii Epp. VIII. 30).