rmed Force.--The
Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, and Casuistry._

_The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily.--His
Conflict with and Overthrow by the Pope.--Spread of Mutiny among the
mendicant Orders._

[Sidenote: The pressure from the West upon Rome.] A pressure upon the
Italian system had meantime been arising in the West. It was due to the
presence of the Arabs in Spain. It is necessary, therefore, to relate
the circumstances of their invasion and conquest of that country, and to
compare their social and intellectual condition with the contemporary
state of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Barbarism of Europe.] From the barbarism of the native people
of Europe, who could scarcely be said to have emerged from the savage
state, unclean in person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it
was a mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats
against the wall; miserably fed on beans, vetches, roots, and even the
bark of trees; clad in garments of untanned skin, or at the best of
leather--perennial in durability, but not conducive to personal
purity--a state in which the pomp of royalty was sufficiently and
satisfactorily manifested in the equipage of the sovereign, an ox-cart,
drawn by not less than two yokes of cattle, quickened in their movements
by the goads of pedestrian serfs, whose legs were wrapped in wisps of
straw; from a people, devout believers in all the wild fictions of
shrine-miracles and preposterous relics; from the degradation of a base
theology, and from the disputes of ambitious ecclesiastics for power, it
is pleasant to turn to the south-west corner of the continent, where,
under auspices of a very different kind, the irradiations of light were
to break forth. The crescent in the West was soon to pass eastward to
its full.

But I must retrace my steps through four centuries, and resume the
description of the Arabian movement after the subjugation of Africa, as
related in the former volume, Chapter XI.

[Sidenote: Arab invasion of Spain.] Those were the circumstances of the
Arab conquest of Spain. In that country the Arian Creed had been
supplanted by the orthodox, and the customary persecutions had set in.
From the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who had transported 50,000 Jewish
families into Spain, that race had greatly increased, and, as might be
expected, had received no mercy at the hands of the orthodox. Ninety
thousand individuals had