e; the doctrine of Cyprian and Augustin
was no longer studied. Five hundred episcopal churches were overturned
by the hostile fury of the Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors.
The zeal and numbers of the clergy declined; and the people, without
discipline, or knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the yoke
of the Arabian prophet Within fifty years after the expulsion of the
Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the tribute of
the infidels was abolished by their conversion; [207] and, though he
sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his specious pretence was
drawn from the rapid and extensive progress of the Mahometan faith. In
the next age, an extraordinary mission of five bishops was detached from
Alexandria to Cairoan. They were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch
to cherish and revive the dying embers of Christianity: [208] but the
interposition of a foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy
to the Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African
hierarchy. It was no longer the time when the successor of St. Cyprian,
at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain an equal contest
with the ambition of the Roman pontiff. In the eleventh century, the
unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of Carthage implored the
arms and the protection of the Vatican; and he bitterly complains that
his naked body had been scourged by the Saracens, and that his authority
was disputed by the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his
throne. Two epistles of Gregory the Seventh [209] are destined to soothe
the distress of the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The
pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may
hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint that three
bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother, announces the
speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order. The Christians
of Africa and Spain had long since submitted to the practice of
circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine and pork; and the
name of Mozarabes [210] (adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or
religious conformity. [211] About the middle of the twelfth century, the
worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were abolished along
the coast of Barbary, and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of
Valencia and Grenada. [212] The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians,
was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary