" said the prince, "I name you Bishop of Coimbra in the
room of the rebel who has fled. You will prepare to celebrate High Mass
this morning, and to pronounce my absolution."

The Christianized Moor fell back a step, his face paling under its
copper skin to a sickly grey. In the background, the hindmost members of
the retreating clerical procession turned and stood at gaze, angered and
scandalized by what they heard, which was indeed a thing beyond belief.

"Ah no, my lord! Ah no!" Don Zuleyman was faltering. "Not that!"

The prospect terrified him, and in his agitation he had recourse to
Latin. "Domine, non sum dignus," he cried, and beat his breast.

But the uncompromising Affonso Henriques gave him back Latin for Latin.

"Dixi--I have spoken!" he answered sternly. "Do not fail me in
obedience, on your life." And on that he clanked out again with his
attendants, well-pleased with his morning's work.

As he had disposed with boyish, almost irresponsible rashness, and in
flagrant contravention of all canon law, so it fell out. Don Zuleyman,
wearing the bishop's robes and the bishop's mitre, intoned the Kyrie
Eleison before noon that day in the Cathedral of Coimbra, and pronounced
the absolution of the Infante of Portugal, who knelt so submissively and
devoutly before him.

Affonso Henriques was very pleased with himself. He made a jest of the
affair, and invited his intimates to laugh with him. But Emigio Moniz
and the elder members of his council refused to laugh. They looked with
awe upon a deed that went perilously near to sacrilege, and implored him
to take their own sober view of the thing he had done.

"By the bones of St. James!" he cried. "A prince is not to be
brow-beaten by a priest."

Such a view in the twelfth century was little short of revolutionary.
The chapter of the Cathedral of Coimbra held the converse opinion that
priests were not to be browbeaten by a prince, and set themselves to
make Affonso Henriques realize this to his bitter cost. They dispatched
to Rome an account of his unconscionable, high-handed, incredible
sacrilege, and invited Rome to administer condign spiritual flagellation
upon this errant child of Mother Church. Rome made haste to vindicate
her authority, and dispatched a legate to the recalcitrant, audacious
boy who ruled in Portugal. But the distance being considerable, and
means of travel inadequate and slow, it was not until Don Zuleyman had
presided in the See of Coimbr