[2] Cp. Acts xxiii. 3.

[3] Eulog., "Lib. Apolog.," sec. 35, mentions a proposed edict
of the authorities, visiting the seeker of relics with severer
penalties.

[4] See Eulog., Letter to Alvar, apud Florez., xi. 290.

The number of misguided men and women that now came forward and threw
their lives away is certainly remarkable, and seems to have struck the
Moslems as perfectly unaccountable. The Arabs themselves were as brave
men as the world has ever seen, and, by the very ordinances of their
faith, were bound to adventure their lives for their religion in actual
human conflict with infidel foes, yet they were unable to conceive how
any man in his senses could willingly deprive himself of life in such a
way as could do no service to the cause, religious or other, which he
had at heart. They were quite unable to appreciate that intense
antagonism towards the world and its perilous environment, which
Christianity teaches; that spirit of renouncement of the vanities, nay,
even of the duties of life, which prompted men and women to immure
themselves in cloisters and retreats, far from all spheres of human
usefulness. Life under these circumstances had naturally little to make
it worth the living, and became all the more easy to relinquish, when
death, in itself a thing to be desired, was further invested with the
glories of martyrdom.

The example of Isaac was therefore followed within two days by a monk
named Sanctius[1] or Sancho, who was executed on June 5th. Three days
later were beheaded Peter, a priest of Ecija; Walabonsus, a deacon of