were women, and their
stubborn love for their religion cannot but excite our sympathy, however
ill advised and unavailing it may have been. The story is told of two
poor young girls, Munila and Alodia, the children of a Moslem father and
a Christian mother, who had carefully brought them up in her own faith.
These maidens became so beautiful that they were called "roses springing
from thorns." As the story goes, "their father died and their mother
married a less tolerant Moslem, who, finding their faith proof against
his threats, brought them before the Kadi. Splendid marriages were
offered them if they would quit the Christian faith; but they answered
that they knew of no spouse equal to their Lord, no bliss comparable to
what He could bestow: and persuasion and torture alike failed with them,
until they sealed their confession with their lives." The rage for
martyrdom now seemed to grow, and there is a long list of those who went
to death as the result of their voluntary acts. Conspicuous here is the
case of a wealthy young woman named Columba, who left the Moslem
Church, in spite of the entreaties of her family, and entered a convent
at Tabanos. By order of the authorities, the other nuns of the
establishment were taken to Cordova and locked up, that they might not
become violent in their talk and bring destruction upon themselves as
the result of their intemperate acts; and Columba was kept in solitary
confinement, in the hope that she might be induced to abjure her newly
found faith. But she refused to change her belief in any way, and one
day escaped, went at once and reviled Mohammed before the kadi, and went
to her death, as was inevitable, according to the law of the land.

In the middle of the ninth century, Eulogius, the recently elected
Metropolitan Bishop of Toledo, was considered too zealous and too
uncompromising in his beliefs, and he was soon summoned before the divan
to answer to the charge of participation in the flight and conversion of
a Moslem lady, who had taken the name of Leocritia, under which she was
canonized at a later date. It was said that the woman had become a
Christian through his efforts, and that he had hidden her for a time in
the house of his sister. He was decapitated, and his body was thrown
into the river; and if the legend be true, a white dove flew over it as
it floated down the stream. Leocritia also was put to death. Here,
however, the record of these martyrdoms apparently com