a charge of
apostasy. His life and liberty were promised to him if he would only
acknowledge that Christ was merely man, and that Mohammed was the
messenger of God. On refusing, he is imprisoned, and finds in prison a
certain Salomon, also charged with apostasy from Islam. The two
fellow-prisoners contract a great friendship and are consequently
separated. After a third exhortation, they are condemned to death, but
not before the judge had done his best to bribe them to forego their
purpose by offers of honour and rewards.[3] They were executed March 13,
857, and their bodies thrown into the river--even the stones sprinkled
with their blood being taken up and cast into the water, lest the
Christians should preserve them as relics. Ruderic's body was washed on
shore, fresh as when killed; while Salomon, not being equally fortunate,
informed a devout Christian in a vision, where his body lay in a
tamarisk thicket near the town of Nymphianum.

Hitherto the aider and abettor of these martyrdoms had himself contrived
to escape the penalty, which he had urged others to brave. Whether this
was due to any unworthy fear of death on his part is not clear, but it
may have been owing to the respect in which he was held by the Moslem
authorities. To these he was well known as a man of irreproachable
character and unaffected piety, and several Arabs of high rank, who were
his personal friends, shewed themselves anxious to screen him from the
effects of his folly. Eulogius[4] was descended from a Senatorial family
of Cordova, and was educated at the Church of St Zoilus, where he
devoted himself to ecclesiastical studies, and soon surpassed his
contemporaries in learning. With his friend Alvar he sat at the feet of
Speraindeo, an eminent abbot in the province of Baetica. Besides a
sister Anulo, Eulogius had two brothers engaged in trade, and another
brother, Joseph, who seems to have been in government employ.[5]

[1] Eulog., "Lib. Apol.," sec. 21 ff.

[2] So the Inquisitors in Spain used to pretend that their
victims had abjured their errors before being burnt.

[3] Eul., "Lib. Apol.," sec. 27.

[4] Life by Alvar, c. i. sec. 2.

[5] Eul. ad Wiliesindum, sec. 8, "Joseph, quem saeva tyranni
indignatio eo tempore a principatu dejecerat:" unless this is a
metaphorical allusion to Joseph in Egypt.

Eulogius became early noted for his practice of asceticism, and his
desire for the life of a monk,[1] a