isition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of
circumcision, which health, rather than superstition, had first invented
in the climate of Aethiopia. [160] A new baptism, a new ordination, was
inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with horror when the most
holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious
of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defense of
their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with desperate
but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood
of the insurgents: two abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were
slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns; and neither
merit, nor rank, nor sex, could save from an ignominious death the
enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the
constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most
faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason,
perhaps of fear: and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly
revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his
father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch, and restored to
the wishes of the nation the faith and the discipline of Egypt. The
Monophysite churches resounded with a song of triumph, "that the sheep
of Aethiopia were now delivered from the hyaenas of the West;" and the
gates of that solitary realm were forever shut against the arts, the
science, and the fanaticism of Europe. [161]

[Footnote 159: Religio Romana...nec precibus patrum nec miraculis ab
ipsis editis suffulciebatur, is the uncontradicted assurance of the
devout emperor Susneus to his patriarch Mendez, (Ludolph. Comment.
No. 126, p. 529;) and such assurances should be preciously kept, as an
antidote against any marvellous legends.]

[Footnote 160: I am aware how tender is the question of circumcision.
Yet I will affirm, 1. That the Aethiopians have a physical reason
for the circumcision of males, and even of females, (Recherches
Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. ii.) 2. That it was practised
in Aethiopia long before the introduction of Judaism or Christianity,
(Herodot. l. ii. c. 104. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73.) "Infantes
circumcidunt ob consuetudinemn, non ob Judaismum," says Gregory the
Abyssinian priest, (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana, p. 720.) Yet in the
heat of dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of
uncircumcised, (La Croze,