THE UMA YYAD REGIME 211commentator, Ibn Sa'id, wrote of it: 'The Moslem inhabitants of
Andalus being either Arabs or Mustarabs, their language as well may
be inferred was no other than Arabic. However it cannot but be said
that the common speech both among the higher and the lower classes,
has considerably deviated from the rules of Arabic grammar. ,68
The growing attraction of Arab culture and language, and with it
the danger of the lure of the religion of Islam that was inextricably
associated with it, became a matter of deep concern to a small group
of Christians in mid ninth-century Cordoba. This band, many of whom
were closely linked together by ties of family and friendship, delib-
erately sought martyrdom at the hands of the Muslim authorities
by public denunciations of Mul}.ammad and of Islam, offences known
to be punishable by death. The whole episode is described in the
Memoriale Sanctorum, written by the Cordoban priest and later Bishop
elect of Toledo, Eulogius, who acted as spiritual adviser to some of
them, and who himself was to die by decapitation in 859, when found
harbouring an Arab girl who had converted to Christianity. With his
execution our principal source of information is lost but it seems
likely that this act also marked the ending of the movement that he
had defended and glorified.
The beginning of the Cordoban martyr movement were largely
accidental, although indications in the works of Eulogius and of his
friend Paul Alvar suggest that the decline of traditional Christian
Latin culture and the growth of Arabising were already a matter of
deep concern to them and their friends. In 850 a monk called Perfectus
from one of a number of small monasteries in the surrounding coun-
tryside was goaded into a theological discussion in the market place
in Cordoba with a group of Muslims, in the course of which he
denounced Mul}.ammad as a false prophet. Although this had no
immediate effect, on a subsequent visit to the city he was recognised
and seized by an angry crowd which carried him before the qadi. Mter
being held in prison he again publicly abused the Prophet of Islam
and was executed at the end of the month of Ramadan, the Muslim
fast. His fate was not initially of his own choosing in that it was the
result of Muslims deliberately pressing him to give his views on their
prophet, but once driven to speak he was inevitably committed.^69
By contrast the successors of this protomartyr actively sought their
own deaths. For example Isaac, the subject of the second of the
Passions in Eulogius's Memoriale, came from one of the noble families
of Cordoba, but gave up his career as an administrator in Umayyad