havoc of a prodigal or madman; and the minor was compelled by the laws
to solicit the same protection, to give validity to his acts till he
accomplished the full period of twenty-five years. Women were condemned
to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex
created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age
of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty
spirit of the law, which had been insensibly mollified before the time
of Justinian.

II. The original right of property can only be justified by the accident
or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it is wisely
established by the philosophy of the civilians. The savage who hollows a
tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden handle, or applies a string to
an elastic branch becomes in a state of nature the just proprietor of
the canoe, the bow, or the hatchet. The materials were common to all,
the new form, the produce of his time and simple industry, belong solely
to himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own
injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest overtaken or
slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his provident care
preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose nature is tractable to
the arts of education, he acquires a perpetual title to the use and
service of their numerous progeny, which derives its existence from him
alone. If he encloses and cultivates a field for their sustenance and
his own, a barren waste is converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the
manure, the labor, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest are
painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year.

In the successive states of society the hunter, the shepherd, the
husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which forcibly
appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is
the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who envies their
felicity may purchase similar acquisitions by the exercise of similar
diligence. Such, in truth, may be the freedom and plenty of a small
colony cast on a fruitful island. But the colony multiplies, while the
space still continues the same; the common rights, the equal inheritance
of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest
is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the
peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the claim of
the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air, and the
waters. In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the
steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute
monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active,
insatiable principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and
the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive
property have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence of
the human race.

Except in the singular institutions of Sparta, the wisest legislators
have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and dangerous innovation.
Among the Romans the enormous disproportion of wealth surmounted the
ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition and an obsolete statute; a
tradition that the poorest follower of Romulus had been endowed with the
perpetual inheritance of two jugera; a statute which confined the
richest citizen to the measure of five hundred jugera, or three hundred
and twelve acres of land. The original territory of Rome consisted only
of some miles of wood and meadow along the banks of the Tiber, and
domestic exchange could add nothing to the national stock. But the goods
of an alien or enemy were lawfully exposed to the first hostile
occupier; the city was enriched by the profitable trade of war, and the
blood of her sons was the only price that was paid for the Volscian
sheep, the slaves of Britain, to the gems and gold of Asiatic kingdoms.
In the language of ancient jurisprudence, which was corrupted and
forgotten before the age of Justinian, these spoils were distinguished
by the name of manceps or mancipium, taken with the hand; and whenever
they were sold or emancipated, the purchaser required some assurance
that they had been the property of an enemy and not of a fellow-citizen.

A citizen could only forfeit his rights by apparent dereliction, and
such dereliction of a valuable interest could not easily be presumed.
Yet, according to the _Twelve Tables_, a prescription of one year for
movables, and of two years for immovables, abolished the claim of the
ancient master, if the actual possessor had acquired them by a fair
transaction from the person whom he believed to be the lawful
proprietor.[32] Such conscientious injustice, without any mixture of
fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small republic; but
the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty years, determined by
Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude of a great empire. It is
only in the term of prescription that the distinction of real and
personal fortune has been remarked by the civilians; and their general
idea of property is that of simple, uniform, and absolute dominion. The
subordinate exceptions of use, of usufruct, of servitudes, imposed for
the benefit of a neighbor on lands and houses, are abundantly explained
by the professors of jurisprudence. The claims of property, as far as
they are altered by the mixture, the division, or the transformation of
substances, are investigated with metaphysical subtlety by the same
civilians.

The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by his
death: but the possession, without any appearance of change, is
peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his toil and the
partners of his wealth. This natural inheritance has been protected by
the legislators of every climate and age, and the father is encouraged
to persevere in slow and distant improvements, by the tender hope that a
long posterity will enjoy the fruits of his labor. The _principle_ of
hereditary succession is universal; but the _order_ has been variously
established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national
institutions, or by some partial example which was originally decided by
fraud or violence. The jurisprudence of the Romans appears to have
deviated from the equality of nature much less than the Jewish, the
Athenian, or the English institutions. On the death of a citizen all his
descendants, unless they were already freed from his paternal power,
were called to the inheritance of his possessions. The insolent
prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were placed on a
just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled to an equal portion
of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the sons had been intercepted
by a premature death, his person was represented and his share was
divided by his surviving children.

On the failure of the direct line, the right of succession must diverge
to the collateral branches. The degrees of kindred are numbered by the
civilians, ascending from the last possessor to a common parent, and
descending from the common parent to the next heir: my father stands in
the first degree, my brother in the second, his children in the third,
and the remainder of the series may be conceived by fancy, or pictured
in a genealogical table. In this computation a distinction was made,
essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome; the _agnats_,
or persons connected by a line of males, were called, as they stood in
the nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a female was incapable of
transmitting any legal claims; and the _cognats_ of every rank, without
excepting the dear relation of a mother and a son, were disinherited by
the _Twelve Tables_, as strangers and aliens. Among the Romans a _gens_
or lineage was united by a common _name_ and domestic rites; the various
_cognomens_ or _surnames_ of Scipio or Marcellus distinguished from each
other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or Claudian
race: the default of the _agnats_, of the same surname, was supplied by
the larger denomination of _gentiles_; and the vigilance of the laws
maintained in the same name the perpetual descent of religion and
property.

A similar principle dictated the Voconian law, which abolished the right
of female inheritance. As long as virgins were given or sold in
marriage, the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of the
daughter. But the equal succession of independent matrons supported
their pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the
riches of their fathers. While the maxims of Cato were revered, they
tended to perpetuate in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till
female blandishments insensibly triumphed, and every salutary restraint
was lost in the dissolute greatness of the republic. The rigor of the
decemvirs was tempered by the equity of the prætors. Their edicts
restored and emancipated posthumous children to the rights of nature;
and upon the failure of the _agnats_ they preferred the blood of the
_cognats_ to the name of the _gentiles,_ whose title and character were
insensibly covered with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers
and sons was established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the
humanity of the senate. A new and more impartial order was introduced by
the _Novels_ of Justinian, who affected to revive the jurisprudence of
the _Twelve Tables_. The lines of masculine and female kindred were
confounded: the descending, ascending, and collateral series was
accurately defined; and each degree, according to the proximity of blood
and affection, succeeded the vacant possessions of a Roman citizen.

The order of succession is regulated by nature, or at least by the
general and permanent reason of the law-giver: but this order is
frequently violated by the arbitrary and partial wills, which prolong
the dominion of the testator beyond the grave. In the simple state of
society this last use or abuse of the right of property is seldom
indulged; it was introduced at Athens by the laws of Solon; and the
private testaments of a father of a family are authorized by the _Twelve
Tables_. Before the time of the decemvirs a Roman citizen exposed his
wishes and motives to the assembly of the thirty curiæ or parishes, and
the general law of inheritance was suspended by an occasional act of the
legislature. After the permission of the decemvirs, each private
law-giver promulgated his verbal or written testament in the presence
of five citizens, who represented the five classes of the Roman people;
a sixth witness attested their concurrence; a seventh weighed the copper
money, which was paid by an imaginary purchaser, and the estate was
emancipated by a fictitious sale and immediate release.

This singular ceremony, which excited the wonder of the Greeks, was
still practised in the age of Severus, but the prætor had already
approved a more simple testament, for which they required the seals and
signatures of seven witnesses, free from all legal exception and
purposely summoned for the execution of that important act. A domestic
monarch, who reigned over the lives and fortunes of his children, might
distribute their respective shares according to the degrees of their
merit or his affection; his arbitrary displeasure chastised an unworthy
son by the loss of his inheritance, and the mortifying preference of a
stranger. But the experience of unnatural parents recommended some
limitations of their testamentary powers. A son or, by the laws of
Justinian, even a daughter, could no longer be disinherited by their
silence; they were compelled to name the criminal and to specify the
offence; and the justice of the Emperor enumerated the sole causes that
could justify such a violation of the first principles of nature and
society. Unless a legitimate portion, a fourth part, had been reserved
for the children, they were entitled to institute an action or complaint
of _inofficious_ testament; to suppose that their father's understanding
was impaired by sickness or age, and respectfully to appeal from his
rigorous sentence to the deliberate wisdom of the magistrate.

In the Roman jurisprudence an essential distinction was admitted between
the inheritance and the legacies. The heirs who succeeded to the entire
unity, or to any of the twelve fractions of the substance of the
testator, represented his civil and religious character, asserted his
rights, fulfilled his obligations, and discharged the gifts of
friendship or liberality, which his last will had bequeathed under the
name of legacies. But as the imprudence or prodigality of a dying man
might exhaust the inheritance and leave only risk and labor to his
successor, he was empowered to retain the Falcidian portion; to deduct,
before the payment of the legacies, a clear fourth for his own
emolument. A reasonable time was allowed to examine the proportion
between the debts and the estate, to decide whether he should accept or
refuse the testament; and if he used the benefit of an inventory, the
demands of the creditors could not exceed the valuation of the effects.
The last will of a citizen might be altered during his life or rescinded
after his death; the persons whom he named might die before him, or
reject the inheritance, or be exposed to some legal disqualification. In
the contemplation of these events he was permitted to substitute second
and third heirs, to replace each other according to the order of the
testament; and the incapacity of a madman or an infant to bequeath his
property might be supplied by a similar substitution. But the power of
the testator expired with the acceptance of the testament; each Roman of
mature age and discretion acquired the absolute dominion of his
inheritance, and the simplicity of the civil law was never clouded by
the long and intricate entails which confine the happiness and freedom
of unborn generations.

Conquest and the formalities of law established the use of codicils. If
a Roman was surprised by death in a remote province of the empire he
addressed a short epistle to his legitimate or testamentary heir, who
fulfilled with honor, or neglected with impunity, this last request,
which the judges before the age of Augustus were not authorized to
enforce. A codicil might be expressed in any mode, or in any language;
but the subscription of five witnesses must declare that it was the
genuine composition of the author. His intention, however laudable, was
sometimes illegal; and the invention of _fidei-commissa_, or trusts,
arose from the struggle between natural justice and positive
jurisprudence. A stranger of Greece or Africa might be the friend or
benefactor of a childless Roman, but none, except a fellow-citizen,
could act as his heir.

The Voconian law, which abolished female succession, restrained the
legacy or inheritance of a woman to the sum of one hundred thousand
sesterces, and an only daughter was condemned almost as an alien in her
father's house. The zeal of friendship and parental affection suggested
a liberal artifice: a qualified citizen was named in the testament, with
a prayer or injunction that he would restore the inheritance to the
person for whom it was truly intended. Various was the conduct of the
trustees in this painful situation; they had sworn to observe the laws
of their country, but honor prompted them to violate their oath; and if
they preferred their interest under the mask of patriotism, they
forfeited the esteem of every virtuous mind. The declaration of Augustus
relieved their doubts, gave a legal sanction to confidential testaments
and codicils, and gently unravelled the forms and restraints of the
republican jurisprudence. But as the new practice of trusts degenerated
into some abuse, the trustee was enabled, by the Trebellian and Pegasian
decrees, to reserve one-fourth of the estate, or to transfer on the head
of the real heir all the debts and actions of the succession. The
interpretation of testaments was strict and literal; but the language of
trusts and codicils was delivered from the minute and technical accuracy
of the civilians.

III. The general duties of mankind are imposed by their public and
private relations: but their specific _obligations_ to each other can
only be the effect of (1) a promise, (2) a benefit, or (3) an injury;
and when these obligations are ratified by law, the interested party may
compel the performance by a judicial action. On this principle the
civilians of every country have erected a similar jurisprudence, the
fair conclusion of universal reason and justice.

1. The goddess of faith (of human and social faith) was worshipped, not
only in her temples, but in the lives of the Romans; and if that nation
was deficient in the more amiable qualities of benevolence and
generosity, they astonished the Greeks by their sincere and simple
performance of the most burdensome engagements. Yet among the same
people, according to the rigid maxims of the patricians and decemvirs, a
naked pact, a promise, or even an oath, did not create any civil
obligation, unless it was confirmed by the legal form of a stipulation.
Whatever might be the etymology of the Latin word, it conveyed the idea
of a firm and irrevocable contract, which was always expressed in the
mode of a question and answer. Do you promise to pay me one hundred
pieces of gold? was the solemn interrogation of Seius. I do promise, was
the reply of Sempronius. The friends of Sempronius, who answered for his
ability and inclination, might be separately sued at the option of
Seius; and the benefit of partition, or order of reciprocal actions,
insensibly deviated from the strict theory of stipulation. The most
cautious and deliberate consent was justly required to sustain the
validity of a gratuitous promise; and the citizen who might have
obtained a legal security, incurred the suspicion of fraud and paid the
forfeit of his neglect. But the ingenuity of the civilians successfully
labored to convert simple engagements into the form of solemn
stipulations. The prætors, as the guardians of social faith, admitted
every rational evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act, which in
their tribunal produced an equitable obligation, and for which they gave
an action and a remedy.

2. The obligations of the second class, as they were contracted by the
delivery of a thing, are marked by the civilians with the epithet of
real. A grateful return is due to the author of a benefit; and whoever
is intrusted with the property of another has bound himself to the
sacred duty of restitution. In the case of a friendly loan, the merit of
generosity is on the side of the lender only; in a deposit, on the side
of the receiver; but in a pledge, and the rest of the selfish commerce
of ordinary life, the benefit is compensated by an equivalent, and the
obligation to restore is variously modified by the nature of the
transaction. The Latin language very happily expresses the fundamental
difference between the _commodatum_ and the _mutuum_, which our poverty
is reduced to confound under the vague and common appellation of a loan.
In the former, the borrower was obliged to restore the same individual
thing with which he had been accommodated for the temporary supply of
his wants; in the latter it was destined for his use and consumption,
and he discharged this mutual engagement by substituting the same
specific value according to a just estimation of number, of weight, and
of measure. In the contract of sale, the absolute dominion is
transferred to the purchaser, and he repays the benefit with an adequate
sum of gold or silver, the price and universal standard of all earthly
possessions.

The obligation of another contract, that of location, is of a more
complicated kind. Lands or houses, labor or talents, may be hired for a
definite term; at the expiration of the time the thing itself must be
restored to the owner, with the additional reward for the beneficial
occupation and employment. In these lucrative contracts, to which may be
added those of partnership and commissions, the civilians sometimes
imagine the delivery of the object, and sometimes presume the consent of
the parties. The substantial pledge has been refined into the invisible
rights of a mortgage or _hypotheca_; and the agreement of sale, for a
certain price, imputes from that moment the chances of gain or loss to
the account of the purchaser. It may be fairly supposed that every man
will obey the dictates of his interest; and if he accepts the benefit,
he is obliged to sustain the expense of the transaction. In this
boundless subject, the historian will observe the _location_ of land and
money, the rent of the one and the interest of the other, as they
materially affect the prosperity of agriculture and commerce.

The landlord was often obliged to advance the stock and instruments of
husbandry, and to content himself with a partition of the fruits. If the
feeble tenant was oppressed by accident, contagion, or hostile violence,
he claimed a proportionable relief from the equity of the laws; five
years were the customary term, and no solid or costly improvements could
be expected from a farmer who at each moment might be ejected by the
sale of the estate. Usury, the inveterate grievance of the city, had
been discouraged by the _Twelve Tables_, and abolished by the clamors of
the people. It was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the
discretion of the prætors, and finally determined by the _Code_ of
Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the moderate
profit of 4 per cent. 6 was pronounced to be the ordinary and legal
standard of interest; 8 was allowed for the convenience of manufacturers
and merchants; 12 was granted to nautical insurance, which the wiser
ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in this perilous
adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely restrained.[33]
The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and
West; but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the laws
of the republic, had resisted with equal firmness the decrees of the
Church, and even the prejudices of mankind.[34]

3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing an
injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right
and a legitimate action. If the property of another be intrusted to our
care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the
benefit which we derive from such temporary possession; we are seldom
made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a
voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. A Roman pursued
and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might
pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing less
than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original claim.
They were restored by the sentence of the prætor, and the injury was
compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as the
deed had been perpetrated by secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber
had been surprised in the fact or detected by a subsequent research. The
Aquilian law defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves and
cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest price was
allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment of
the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was
granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal
injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the times and the
sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of a word or
blow cannot easily be appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent.

The rude jurisprudence of the decemvirs had confounded all hasty
insults, which did not amount to the fracture of a limb by condemning
the aggressor to the common penalty of twenty-five _asses_. But the same
denomination of money was reduced in three centuries from a pound to the
weight of half an ounce: and the insolence of a wealthy Roman indulged
himself in the cheap amusement of breaking and satisfying the law of the
_Twelve Tables_. Veratius ran through the streets striking on the face
the inoffensive passengers, and his attendant purse-bearer immediately
silenced their clamors by the legal tender of twenty-five pieces of
copper, about the value of one shilling. The equity of the prætors
examined and estimated the distinct merits of each particular complaint.
In the adjudication of civil damages the magistrate assumed the right to
consider the various circumstances of time and place, of age and
dignity, which may aggravate the shame and sufferings of the injured
person: but if he admitted the idea of a fine, a punishment, an example,
he invaded the province, though, perhaps, he supplied the defects of the
criminal law.

IV. The execution of the Alban dictator, who was dismembered by eight
horses, is represented by Livy as the first and the last instance of
Roman cruelty in the punishment of the most atrocious crimes. But this
act of justice, or revenge, was inflicted on a foreign enemy in the heat
of victory and at the command of a single man. The _Twelve Tables_
afford a more decisive proof of the national spirit, since they were
framed by the wisest of the senate, and accepted by the free voices of
the people; yet these laws, like the statutes of Draco, are written in
characters of blood. They approve the inhuman and unequal principle of
retaliation; and the forfeit of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
a limb for a limb, is rigorously exacted, unless the offender can redeem
his pardon by a fine of three hundred pounds of copper. The decemvirs
distributed with much liberality the slighter chastisements of
flagellation and servitude; and nine crimes of a very different
complexion are adjudged worthy of death.

1. Any act of treason against the state, or of correspondence with the
public enemy. The mode of execution was painful and ignominious: the
head of the degenerate Roman was shrouded in a veil, his hands were tied
behind his back, and after he had been scourged by the lictor, he was
suspended in the midst of the Forum on a cross or inauspicious tree.

2. Nocturnal meetings in the city; whatever might be the pretence, of
pleasure, or religion, or the public good.

3. The murder of a citizen; for which the common feelings of mankind
demand the blood of the murderer. Poison is still more odious than the
sword or dagger; and we are surprised to discover in two flagitious
events how early such subtle wickedness has infected the simplicity of
the republic, and the chaste virtues of the Roman matrons.[35] The
parricide, who violated the duties of nature and gratitude, was cast
into the river or the sea, enclosed in a sack; and a cock, a viper, a
dog, and a monkey were successively added as the most suitable
companions. Italy produces no monkeys; but the want could never be felt
till the middle of the sixth century first revealed the guilt of a
parricide.[36]

4. The malice of an incendiary. After the previous ceremony of whipping,
he himself was delivered to the flames; and in this example alone our
reason is tempted to applaud the justice of retaliation.

5. Judicial perjury. The corrupt or malicious witness was thrown
headlong from the Tarpeian Rock to expiate his falsehood, which was
rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws and the
deficiency of written evidence.

6. The corruption of a judge who accepted bribes to pronounce an
iniquitous sentence.

7. Libels and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the peace
of an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a worthy
chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to expire under the
blows of the executioner.

8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor's corn.
The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres. But the sylvan
deities were less implacable, and the extirpation of a more valuable
tree was compensated by the moderate fine of twenty-five pounds of
copper.

9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the Latian
shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to extinguish his life,
and to remove from their seats his deep-rooted plantations. The cruelty
of the _Twelve Tables_ against insolvent debtors still remains to be
told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense of antiquity to the
specious refinements of modern criticism. After the judicial proof or
confession of the debt, thirty days of grace were allowed before a Roman
was delivered into the power of his fellow-citizen. In this private
prison twelve ounces of rice were his daily food; he might be bound with
a chain of fifteen pounds weight, and his misery was thrice exposed in
the market-place, to solicit the compassion of his friends and
countrymen. At the expiration of sixty days the debt was discharged by
the loss of liberty or life; the insolvent debtor was either put to
death or sold in foreign slavery beyond the Tiber; but, if several
creditors were alike obstinate and unrelenting, they might legally
dismember his body and satiate their revenge by this horrid partition.

The advocates for this savage law have insisted that it must strongly
operate in deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which
they were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this
salutary terror by proving that no creditor could be found to exact this
unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners of Rome were
insensibly polished, the criminal code of the decemvirs was abolished by
the humanity of accusers, witnesses, and judges; and impunity became the
consequence of immoderate rigor. The Porcian and Valerian laws
prohibited the magistrates from inflicting on a free citizen any
capital, or even corporal, punishment, and the obsolete statutes of
blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to the spirit, not of
patrician but of regal tyranny.

In the absence of penal laws and the insufficiency of civil actions, the
peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the private
jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our jails
are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer may be
commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For the
perpetration of similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim and
abuse the sacred character of a member of the republic; but on the proof
or suspicion of guilt, the slave or the stranger was nailed to a cross:
and this strict and summary justice might be exercised without restraint
over the greatest part of the populace of Rome. Each family contained a
domestic tribunal, which was not confined, like that of the prætor, to
the cognizance of external actions; virtuous principles and habits were
inculcated by the discipline of education, and the Roman father was
accountable to the State for the manners of his children, since he
disposed, without appeal, of their life, their liberty, and their
inheritance. In some pressing emergencies the citizen was authorized to
avenge his private or public wrongs. The consent of the Jewish, the
Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the slaughter of the nocturnal
thief; though in open daylight a robber could not be slain without some
previous evidence of danger and complaint. Whoever surprised an
adulterer in his nuptial bed might freely exercise his revenge; the most
bloody and wanton outrage was excused by the provocation; nor was it
before the reign of Augustus that the husband was reduced to weigh the
rank of the offender, or that the parent was condemned to sacrifice his
daughter with her guilty seducer.

After the expulsion of the kings the ambitious Roman who should dare to
assume their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted to the infernal
gods; each of his fellow-citizens was armed with the sword of justice;
and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to gratitude or prudence, had
been already sanctified by the judgment of his country. The barbarous
practice of wearing arms in the midst of peace, and the bloody maxims of
honor were unknown to the Romans; and during the two purest ages, from
the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars, the
city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted with atrocious
crimes. The failure of penal laws was more sensibly felt, when every
vice was inflamed by faction at home and dominion abroad. In the time of
Cicero each private citizen enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each
minister of the republic was exalted to the temptations of regal power,
and their virtues are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous
fruits of nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust,
rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be sued
for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling;
and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and perhaps the accuser
himself, that on refunding a thirteenth part of his plunder Verres
could retire to an easy and luxurious exile.[37]

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and
punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his
sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license rather than to
oppress the liberty of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary
proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. But in the
character of a legislator he respected the prejudices of the times; and
instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or
assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined
a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the
penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the
interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian and afterward the Pompeian
and Julian laws introduced a new system of criminal jurisprudence; and
the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised their increasing
rigor under the names of the original authors.

But the invention and frequent use of _extraordinary pains_ proceeded
from the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In the
condemnation of illustrious Romans the senate was always prepared to
confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial and legislative
powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their
province by the arbitrary and rigid administration of justice; the
freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish
malefactor, who claimed the privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the
command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. Occasional rescripts
issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty
or importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of a
proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for honorable
persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burned, or buried in
the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Armed
robbers were pursued and extirpated as the enemies of society; the
driving away of horses or cattle was made a capital offence, but simple
theft was uniformly considered as a mere civil and private injury. The
degrees of guilt and the modes of punishment were too often determined
by the discretion of the rulers, and the subject was left in ignorance
of the legal danger which he might incur by every action of his life.

A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate each
other; but as often as they differ a prudent legislator appreciates the
guilt and punishment according to the measure of social injury. On this
principle the most daring attack on the life and property of a private
citizen is judged less atrocious than the crime of treason or rebellion,
which invades the _majesty_ of the republic; the obsequious civilians
unanimously pronounced that the republic is contained in the person of
its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by the incessant
diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the sexes may be
tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source of disorder
and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of the husband,
are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The wisdom of
Augustus, after curbing the freedom of revenge, applied to this domestic
offence the animadversion of the laws; and the guilty parties, after the
payment of heavy forfeitures and fines, were condemned to long or
perpetual exile in two separate islands.

Religion pronounces an equal censure against the infidelity of the
husband; but, as it is not accompanied by the same civil effects, the
wife was never permitted to vindicate her wrong; and the distinction of
simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important in the canon
law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and the _Pandects_. I
touch with reluctance and despatch with impatience a more odious vice,
of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates the idea. The
primitive Romans were infected by the example of the Etruscans and
Greeks; in the mad abuse of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is
innocent was deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, which had been
extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished by the lapse of
time and the multitude of criminals.

By this law the rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous youth was
compensated as a personal injury by the poor damages of ten thousand
sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be slain by the
resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to believe that at Rome,
as in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate deserter of his sex was
degraded from the honors and the rights of a citizen. But the practice
of vice was not discouraged by the severity of opinion; the indelible
stain of manhood was confounded with the more venial transgressions of
fornication and adultery, nor was the licentious lover exposed to the
same dishonor which he impressed on the male or female partner of his
guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal the poets accuse and celebrate the
degeneracy of the times; and the reformation of manners was feebly
attempted by the reason and authority of the civilians till the most
virtuous of the Cæsars proscribed the sin against nature as a crime
against society.

A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose in the
empire with the religion of Constantine. The laws of Moses were received
as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes adapted
their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious turpitude.
Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the frailty of the
sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to sorcery or
parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active
guilt of pederasty, and all criminals of free or servile condition were
either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames. The
adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers
of their own sex were pursued by general and pious indignation: the
impure manners of Greece still prevailed in the cities of Asia, and
every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the monks and clergy.

Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the
guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end
of two years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband.
But the same Emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly
lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the
purity of his motives. In defiance of every principle of justice he
stretched to past as well as future offences the operations of his
edicts, with the previous allowance of a short respite for confession
and pardon. A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the
sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and
tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the
propriety of the execution, since the criminals would have lost their
hands had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace
and agony two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of Diospolis, were
dragged through the streets of Constantinople, while their brethren were
admonished by the voice of a crier to observe this awful lesson, and not
to pollute the sanctity of their character. Perhaps these prelates were
innocent. A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight
and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant; the guilt of the green
faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora was presumed by the
judges, and pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could
be imputed. A French philosopher[38] has dared to remark that whatever
is secret must be doubtful, and that our natural horror of vice may be
abused as an engine of tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same
writer, that a legislator may confide in the taste and reason of
mankind, is impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and
extent of the disease.

V. The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed in all criminal cases
the invaluable privilege of being tried by their country.

1. The administration of justice is the most ancient office of a prince:
it was exercised by the Roman kings and abused by Tarquin, who alone,
without law or council, pronounced his arbitrary judgments. The first
consuls succeeded to this regal prerogative; but the sacred right of
appeal soon abolished the jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all
public causes were decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a
wild democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the essential
principles of justice: the pride of despotism was envenomed by plebeian
envy, and the heroes of Athens might sometimes applaud the happiness of
the Persian, whose fate depended on the caprice of a _single_ tyrant.
Some salutary restraints, imposed by the people on their own passions,
were at once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the
Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates. A vote
of the thirty-five tribes could inflict a fine; but the cognizance of
all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental law to the assembly of
the centuries, in which the weight of influence and property was sure to
preponderate. Repeated proclamations and adjournments were interposed to
allow time for prejudice and resentment to subside: the whole proceeding
might be annulled by a seasonable omen or the opposition of a tribune;
and such popular trials were commonly less formidable to innocence than
they were favorable to guilt. But this union of the judicial and
legislative powers left it doubtful whether the accused party was
pardoned or acquitted; and in the defence of an illustrious client the
orators of Rome and Athens address their arguments to the policy and
benevolence, as well as to the justice, of their sovereign.

2. The task of convening the citizens for the trial of each offender
became more difficult as the citizens and the offenders continually
multiplied, and the ready expedient was adopted of delegating the
jurisdiction of the people to the ordinary magistrates or to
extraordinary inquisitors. In the first ages these questions were rare
and occasional. In the beginning of the seventh century of Rome they
were made perpetual: four prætors were annually empowered to sit in
judgment on the state offences of treason, extortion, peculation, and
bribery; and Sylla added new prætors and new questions for those crimes
which more directly injure the safety of individuals. By these
inquisitors the trial was prepared and directed; but they could only
pronounce the sentence of the majority of judges. To discharge this
important though burdensome office, an annual list of ancient and
respectable citizens was formed by the prætor. After many constitutional
struggles they were chosen in equal numbers from the senate, the
equestrian order, and the people; four hundred and fifty were appointed
for single questions, and the various rolls or _decuries_ of judges must
have contained the names of some thousand Romans who represented the
judicial authority of the State. In each particular cause a sufficient
number was drawn from the urn; their integrity was guarded by an oath;
the mode of ballot secured their independence; the suspicion of
partiality was removed by the mutual challenges of the accuser and
defendant; and the judges of Milo, by the retrenchment of fifteen on
each side, were reduced to fifty-one voices or tablets of acquittal, of
condemnation, or of favorable doubt.[39]

3. In his civil jurisdiction the prætor of the city was truly a judge,
and almost a legislator; but as soon as he had prescribed the action of
law he often referred to a delegate the determination of the fact. With
the increase of legal proceedings, the tribunal of the centumvirs in
which he presided acquired more weight and reputation. But whether he
acted alone, or with the advice of his council, the most absolute powers
might be trusted to a magistrate who was annually chosen by the votes of
the people. The rules and precautions of freedom have required some
explanation; the order of despotism is simple and inanimate. Before the
age of Justinian, or perhaps of Diocletian, the decuries of Roman judges
had sunk to an empty title: the humble advice of the assessors might be
accepted or despised, and in each tribunal the civil and criminal
jurisdiction was administered by a single magistrate, who was raised and
disgraced by the will of the emperor.

A Roman accused of any capital crime might prevent the sentence of the
law by voluntary exile or death. Till his guilt had been legally proved
his innocence was presumed, and his person was free: till the votes of
the last _century_ had been counted and declared, he might peaceably
secede to any of the allied cities of Italy, or Greece, or Asia.[40] His
fame and fortunes were preserved, at least to his children, by this
civil death; and he might still be happy in every rational and sensual
enjoyment, if a mind accustomed to the ambitious tumult of Rome could
support the uniformity and silence of Rhodes or Athens. A bolder effort
was required to escape from the tyranny of the Cæsars; but this effort
was rendered familiar by the maxims of the Stoics, the example of the
bravest Romans, and the legal encouragements of suicide. The bodies of
condemned criminals were exposed to public ignominy, and their children,
a more serious evil, were reduced to poverty by the confiscation of
their fortunes. But if the victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the
decree of the prince or senate, their courage and despatch were
recompensed by the applause of the public, the decent honors of burial,
and the validity of their testaments. The exquisite avarice and cruelty
of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of this last
consolation, and it was still denied even by the clemency of the
Antonines.

A voluntary death which, in the case of a capital offence, intervened
between the accusation and the sentence, was admitted as a confession of
guilt, and the spoils of the deceased were seized by the inhuman claims
of the treasury. Yet the civilians have always respected the natural
right of a citizen to dispose of his life; and the posthumous disgrace
invented by Tarquin,[41] to check the despair of his subjects, was never
revived or imitated by succeeding tyrants. The powers of this world have
indeed lost their dominion over him who is resolved on death, and his
arm can only be restrained by the religious apprehension of a future
state. Suicides are enumerated by Vergil among the unfortunate rather
than the guilty;[42] and the poetical fables of the infernal shades
could not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the
precepts of the gospel, or the Church, have at length imposed a pious
servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to expect,
without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the executioner.

The penal statutes form a very small proportion of the sixty-two books
of the _Code_ and _Pandects_; and in all judicial proceeding the life or
death of a citizen is determined with less caution or delay than the
most ordinary question of covenant or inheritance. This singular
distinction, though something may be allowed for the urgent necessity of
defending the peace of society, is derived from the nature of criminal
and civil jurisprudence. Our duties to the state are simple and uniform:
the law by which he is condemned is inscribed not only on brass or
marble, but on the conscience of the offender, and his guilt is commonly
proved by the testimony of a single fact. But our relations to each
other are various and infinite; our obligations are created, annulled,
and modified by injuries, benefits, and promises; and the interpretation
of voluntary contracts and testaments, which are often dictated by fraud
or ignorance, affords a long and laborious exercise to the sagacity of
the judge. The business of life is multiplied by the extent of commerce
and dominion, and the residence of the parties in the distant provinces
of an empire is productive of doubt, delay, and inevitable appeals from
the local to the supreme magistrate. Justinian, the Greek emperor of
Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the Latian
shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the Tiber. In a period
of thirteen hundred years the laws had reluctantly followed the changes
of government and manners, and the laudable desire of conciliating
ancient names with recent institutions destroyed the harmony and swelled
the magnitude of the obscure and irregular system.

The laws which excuse on any occasions the ignorance of their subjects
confess their own imperfections. The civil jurisprudence, as it was
abridged by Justinian, still continued a mysterious science and a
profitable trade, and the innate perplexity of the study was involved in
tenfold darkness by the private industry of the practitioners. The
expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the prize, and
the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or prudence of the
claimants. Such costly justice might tend to abate the spirit of
litigation, but the unequal pressure serves only to increase the
influence of the rich, and to aggravate the misery of the poor. By these
dilatory and expensive proceedings, the wealthy pleader obtains a more
certain advantage than he could hope from the accidental corruption of
his judge. The experience of an abuse, from which our own age and
country are not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke a generous
indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our elaborate
jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a Turkish cadi. Our
calmer reflection will suggest that such forms and delays are necessary
to guard the person and property of the citizen; that the discretion of
the judge is the first engine of tyranny, and that the laws of a free
people should foresee and determine every question that may probably
arise in the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the
government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and servitude; and
the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the multiplicity of their
laws and the arbitrary will of their master.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Among the works which have been recovered, by the persevering and
successful endeavors of M. Mai and his followers to trace the
imperfectly erased characters of the ancient writers on these
palimpsests, Gibbon at this period of his labors would have hailed with
delight the recovery of the _Institutes_ of Gaius, and the fragments of
the Theodosian _Code_, published by M. Peyron of Turin.

[27] Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406; and in 1411 the
_Pandects_ were transported to the capital. These events are authentic
and famous.

[28] They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich casket, and
shown to curious travellers by the monks and magistrates bareheaded and
with lighted tapers.

[29] Gibbon, dividing the _Institutes_ into four parts, considers the
appendix of the criminal law in the last title as a fourth part.

[30] This parental power was strictly confined to the Roman citizen. The
foreigner, or he who had only _jus Latii_, did not possess it. If a
Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or a foreign wife, he did not
possess this power over his son, because the son, following the legal
condition of the mother, was not a Roman citizen. A man, however,
alleging sufficient cause for his ignorance, might raise both mother and
child to the rights of citizenship.

[31] The edict of Constantine first conferred this right; for Augustus
had prohibited the taking as a concubine a woman who might be taken as a
wife; and if marriage took place afterward, this marriage made no change
in the rights of the children born before it; recourse was then had to
adoption, properly called arrogation.

[32] The Roman laws protected all property acquired in a lawful manner.
They imposed on those who had invaded it, the obligation of making
restitution and reparation of all damage caused by that invasion; they
punished it moreover, in many cases, by a pecuniary fine. But they did
not always grant a recovery against the third person, who had become
_bona fide_ possessed of the property. He who had obtained possession of
a thing belonging to another, knowing nothing of the prior rights of
that person, maintained the possession. The law had expressly determined
those cases, in which it permitted property to be reclaimed from an
innocent possessor. In these cases possession had the characters of
absolute proprietorship. To possess this right, it was not sufficient to
have entered into possession of the thing _in any manner_; the
acquisition was bound to have that character of publicity, which was
given by the observation of solemn forms, prescribed by the laws, or the
uninterrupted exercise of proprietorship during a certain time: the
Roman citizen alone could acquire this proprietorship. Every other kind
of possession, which might be named imperfect proprietorship, was called
_in bonis habere_. It was not till after the time of Cicero that the
general name of _dominium_ was given to all proprietorship.

[33] Justinian has not condescended to give usury a place in his
_Institutes_; but the necessary rules and restrictions are inserted in
the _Pandects_ and the _Code_.

[34] Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the practice or abuse
of usury. According to etymology, the principal is supposed to
_generate_ the interest: "A breed for barren metal," exclaims
Shakspeare--and the stage is an echo of the public voice.

[35] Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious eras, of three thousand
persons accused, and of one hundred and ninety noble matrons convicted,
of the crime of poisoning. Hume discriminates the ages of private and
public virtue. Rather say that such ebullitions of mischief (as in
France in the year 1680) are accidents and prodigies which leave no
marks on the manners of a nation.

[36] The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after the Second Punic
War. During the Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first matricide.

[37] Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the Second
Triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony for the
sake of his Corinthian plate.

[38] Montesquieu, that eloquent philosopher, conciliates the rights of
liberty and of nature, which should never be placed in opposition to
each other.

[39] We are indebted for this interesting fact to a fragment of Asconius
Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of Tiberius. The loss of his
_Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero_ has deprived us of a valuable
fund of historical and legal knowledge.

[40] The extension of the Empire and _city_ of Rome obliged the exile to
seek a more distant place of retirement.

[41] When he fatigued his subjects in building the Capitol, many of the
laborers were provoked to despatch themselves: he nailed their dead
bodies to crosses.

[42] The sole resemblance of a violent and premature death has engaged
Vergil to confound suicides with infants, lovers, and persons unjustly
condemned. Some of his editors are at a loss to deduce the idea or
ascertain the jurisprudence of the Roman poet.

AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND

A.D. 597

THE VENERABLE BEDE[43] JOHN RICHARD GREEN

     St. Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury. He was
     educated in Rome under Pope Gregory I, by whom he was sent to
     Britain with forty monks of the Benedictine order, for the purpose
     of converting the English to Christianity. Bertha, wife of
     Ethelbert, king of Kent, was a Christian. She was a daughter of
     Charibert, king of Paris, and had brought her chaplain with her,
     who held services in the ruined church of St. Martin, near
     Canterbury.

     There seemed little prospect, however, of the faith spreading among
     the wild islanders until Augustine arrived on the Isle of Thanet
     A.D. 596. The occasion of his being sent on this missionary errand
     is said to have been connected with an incident which has often
     been related, wherein it appears that Gregory, while yet a monk,
     struck with the beauty of some heathen Anglo-Saxon youths exposed
     for sale in the slave market at Rome, inquired concerning their
     nationality. Being told that they were Angles, he said: "_Non Angli
     sed angeli_ ['Not Angles, but angels'], and well may, for their
     angel-like faces it becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in
     heaven. In what province of England do they live?" "Deira" was the
     reply. "From _Dei ira_ ['God's wrath'] are they to be freed?"
     answered Gregory. "How call ye the king of that country?" "Ælla."
     "Then Alleluia surely ought to be sung in his kingdom to the praise
     of that God who created all things," said the gracious and clever
     monk.

     "The conversion of the English to Christianity," says Freeman, "at
     once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our
     history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had
     had but little to do, either in war or peace, with any nations
     beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connection being
     kept up between the Angles and Saxons who settled in Britain, and
     their kinsfolk who abode in their original country. By its
     conversion England was first brought, not only within the pale of
     the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political
     society of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the
     events of our earlier history, was not without its effect on the
     peculiar character of Christianity as established in England.
     England was the first great territorial conquest of the spiritual
     power, beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, beyond the influence
     of Greek and Roman civilization."

     The following account from the _Ecclesiastical History_ of the
     Venerable Bede, the "father of English history," and foremost
     scholar of England in his age, is in the modern English rendering
     by Thomson, of King Alfred's famous translation, made for the
     instruction of the English people as the best work of that period
     on their own history.

     As a contrast John Richard Green's treatment of the same episode is
     appended.

THE VENERABLE BEDE

When according to forthrunning time [it] was about five hundred and
ninety-two years from Christ's hithercoming, Mauricius, the Emperor,
took to the government, and had it two-and-twenty years. He was the
fifty-fourth from Augustus. In the tenth year of that Emperor's reign,
Gregory, the holy man, who was in lore and deed the highest, took to the
bishophood of the Roman Church, and of the apostolic seat, and held and
governed it thirteen years and six months and ten days. In the
fourteenth year of the same Emperor, about a hundred and fifty years
from the English nation's hithercoming into Britain, he was admonished
by a divine impulse that he should send God's servant Augustine, and
many other monks with him, fearing the Lord, to preach God's word to the
English nation.

When they obeyed the bishop's commands, and began to go to the mentioned
work, and had gone some deal of the way, then began they to fear and
dread the journey, and thought that it was wiser and safer for them that
they should rather return home than seek the barbarous people, and the
fierce and the unbelieving, even whose speech they knew not; and in
common chose this advice to themselves; and then straightway sent
Augustine (whom they had chosen for their bishop if their doctrines
should be received) to the Pope, that he might humbly intercede for
them, that they might not need to go upon a journey so perilous and so
toilsome, and a pilgrimage so unknown.

Then St. Gregory sent a letter to them, and exhorted and advised them in
that letter: that they should humbly go into the work of God's word, and
trust in God's help; and that they should not fear the toil of the
journey, nor dread the tongues of evil-speaking men; but that, with all
earnestness, and with the love of God, they should perform the good
things which they by God's help had begun to do; and that they should
know that the great toil would be followed by the greater glory of
everlasting life; and he prayed Almighty God that he would shield them
by his grace; and that he would grant to himself that he might see the
fruit of their labor in the heavenly kingdom's glory, because he was
ready to be in the same labor with them, if leave had been given him.

Then Augustine was strengthened by the exhortation of the blessed father
Gregory, and with Christ's servants who were with him returned to the
work of God's word, and came into Britain. Then was at that time
Ethelbert king in Kent, and a mighty one, who had rule as far as the
boundary of the river Humber, which sheds asunder the south folk of the
English nation and the north folk. Then [there] is on the eastward of
Kent a great island [Thanet by name], which is six hundred hides large,
after the English nation's reckoning. The isle is shed away from the
continuous land by the stream Wantsum, which is three furlongs broad,
and in two places is fordable, and either end lies in the sea. On this
isle came up Christ's servant Augustine and his fellows--he was one of
forty. They likewise took with them interpreters from Frankland
[France], as St. Gregory bade them; and he sent messengers to Ethelbert,
and let him know that he came from Rome, and brought the best errand,
and whosoever would be obedient to him, he promised him everlasting
gladness in heaven, and a kingdom hereafter without end, with the true
and living God.

When [he then] the King heard these words, then ordered he them to abide
in the isle on which they had come up; and their necessaries to be there
given them until he should see what he would do to them. Likewise before
that a report of the Christian religion had come to him, for he had a
Christian wife, who was given to him from the royal kin of the
Franks--Bertha was her name; which woman he received from her parents on
condition that she should have his leave that she might hold the manner
of the Christian belief, and of her religion, unspotted, with the bishop
whom they gave her for the help of that faith; whose name was Luidhard.

Then [it] was after many days that the King came to the isle, and
ordered to make a seat for him out [of doors], and ordered Augustine
with his fellows to come to his speech (a _conference_). He guarded
himself lest they should go into any house to him; he used the old
greeting, in case they had any magic whereby they should overcome and
deceive him. But they came endowed--not with devil-craft, but with
divine might. They bore Christ's rood-token--a silvern cross of Christ
and a likeness of the Lord Jesus colored and delineated on a board; and
were crying the names of holy men; and singing prayers together, made
supplication to the Lord for the everlasting health of themselves and of
those to whom they come.

Then the King bade them sit, and they did so; and they soon preached and
taught the word of life to him, together with all his peers who were
there present. Then answered the King, and thus said: Fair words and
promises are these which ye have brought and say to us; but because they
are new and unknown, we cannot yet agree that we should forsake the
things which we for a long time, with all the English nation, have held.

But because ye have come hither as pilgrims from afar, and since it
seems and is evident to me that ye wished to communicate to us also the
things which ye believed true and best, we will not therefore be heavy
to you, but will kindly receive you in hospitality, and give you a
livelihood, and supply your needs. Nor will we hinder you from joining
and adding to the religion of your belief all whom you can through your
lore.

Then the King gave them a dwelling and a place in Canterbury, which was
the chief city of all his kingdom, and as he had promised to give them a
livelihood and their worldly needs, he likewise gave them leave that
they might preach and teach the Christian faith. It is said that when
they went and drew nigh to the city, as their custom was, with Christ's
holy cross, and with the likeness of the great King our Lord Jesus
Christ, they sung with a harmonious voice this Litany and Antiphony:
_Deprecamur te_, etc. "We beseech thee, Lord, in all thy mercy, that thy
fury and thy wrath be taken off from this city and [from] thy holy
house, because we have sinned. Alleluia."

Then it was soon after they had entered into the dwelling place which
had been granted to them in the royal city, when they began to imitate
the apostolic life of the primitive church--that is, served the Lord in
constant prayers, and waking and fasting, and preached and taught God's
word to whom they might, and slighted all things of this world as
foreign; but those things only which were seen [to be] needful for their
livelihood they received from those whom they taught; according to that
which they taught, they [themselves] through everything lived; and they
had a ready mind to suffer adversity, yea likewise death [it] self, for
the truth which they preached and taught. Then was no delay that many
believed and were baptized. They also wondered at the simplicity of
[their] harmless life and the sweetness of their heavenly lore.

There was by east well-nigh the city a church built in honor of St.
Martin long ago, while the Romans yet dwelt in Britain [in which church
the Queen (was) wont to pray, of whom we said before that she was a
Christian]. In this church at first the holy teachers began to meet and
sing and pray, and do mass-song, and teach men and baptize, until the
King was converted to the faith, and they obtained more leave to teach
everywhere, and to build and repair churches.

Then came it about through the grace of God that the King likewise among
others began to delight in the cleanest life of holy [men] and their
sweetest promises, and they also gave confirmation that those were true
by the showing of many wonders; and he then, being glad, was baptized.
Then began many daily to hasten and flock together to hear God's word,
and to forsake the manner of heathenism, and joined themselves, through
belief, to the oneness of Christ's holy Church. Of their belief and
conversion [it] is said that the King was so evenly glad that he,
however, forced none to the Christian manner [of worship], but that
those who turned to belief and to baptism he more inwardly loved, as
they were fellow-citizens of the heavenly kingdom. For he had learnt
from his teachers and from the authors of his health that Christ's
service should be of good will, not of compulsion. And he then, the
King, gave and granted to his teachers a place and settlement suitable
to their condition, in his chief city, and thereto gave their needful
supplies in various possessions.

During these things the holy man Augustine fared over sea, and came to
the city Arles, and by Ætherius, archbishop of the said city, according
to the behest and commandment of the blessed father St. Gregory, was
hallowed archbishop of the English people, and returned and fared into
Britain, and soon sent messengers to Rome, that was Laurence a
mass-priest and Peter a monk, that they should say and make known to the
blessed St. Gregory that the English nation had received Christ's
belief, and that he had been consecrated as bishop. He likewise
requested his advice about many causes and questions which were seen by
him [to be] needful; and he soon sent suitable answers of them.

Asked by St. Augustine, bishop of the church of Canterbury: First, of
bishops, how they shall behave and live with their fellows. Next, on the
gifts of the faithful which they bring to holy tables and to God's
churches--how many doles of them shall be?

Answered by Pope St. Gregory: Holy writ makes it known, quoth he, which
I have no doubt thou knowest, and sunderly the blessed Paul's epistle,
which he wrote to Timothy, in which he earnestly trained and taught him
how he should behave and do in God's house. For it is the manner of the
apostolic seat, when they hallow bishops, that they give them
commandments, and that of all the livelihood which comes in to them
there shall be four doles. One, in the first place, to the bishop and
his family for food, and entertainment of guests and comers; a second
dole to God's servants; a third to the needy; the fourth to renewing and
repair of God's church. But because thy brotherliness has been trained
and taught in monastic rules, thou shalt not, however, be asunder from
thy fellows in the English church, which now yet is newly come and led
to the faith of God. This behavior and this life thou shalt set up,
which our fathers had in the beginning of the new-born church, when none
of them said aught of that which they owned was his in sunder; but they
all had all things common. If, then, any priests or God's servants are
settled without holy orders, let those who cannot withhold themselves
from women take them wives, and receive their livelihood outside. For of
the same fathers, of whom we spoke before, [it] is written that they
dealt their worldly goods to sundry men as every [one] had need.

Likewise concerning their livelihood it is to be thought and foreseen
(_i.e., provided_) that they live in good manners under ecclesiastical
rules, and sing psalms and keep wakes and hold their hearts and tongues
and bodies clean from all forbidden [things] to Almighty God. But, as to
those living in common life, what have we to say how they deal their
alms, or exercise hospitality, and fulfil mercy? since all that is left
over in their worldly substance is to be reached and given to the pious
and good, as the master of all, our Lord Christ, taught and said: _Quod
superest_, etc. "What is over and left, give alms, and to you are all
[things] clean."

Asked by St. Augustine: Since there is one faith, and are various
customs of churches, there is one custom of mass-song in the holy Roman
Church, and another is had in the kingdom of Gaul.

Answered by Pope St. Gregory: Thou thyself knowest the manner and custom
of the Roman Church, in which thou wert reared; but now it seems good,
and is more agreeable to me, that whatsoever thou hast found either in
the Roman Church or in Gaul, or in any other [church], that was more
pleasing to Almighty God, thou should carefully choose that, and set it
to be held fast in the Church of the English nation, which now yet is
new in the faith. For the things are not to be loved for places; but the
places for good things. Therefore what things thou choosest as pious,
good, and right from each of sundry churches, these gather thou
together, and settle into a custom in the mind of the English nation.

Asked by Augustine: I pray thee, what punishment shall he
suffer--whosoever takes away anything by stealth from a church?

Answered by Gregory: This may thy brotherliness determine from the
thief's condition, how he may be corrected. For there are some who have
worldly wealth, and yet commit theft; there are some who are in this
wise guilty through poverty. Therefore need is that some be corrected by
waning of their worldly goods, some by stripes; some more sternly, some
more mildly. And though the punishment be inflicted a little harder or
sterner, yet it is to be done of love, not of wrath nor of fury; because
through the throes of this is procured to the man that he be not given
to the everlasting fires of hell-torments. For in this manner we ought
to punish men, as the good fathers are wont [to do] their fleshly
children, whom they chide and swinge for their sins; and yet those same
whom they chide and chastise by these pains they also love, and wish to
have for their heirs, and for them hold their worldly goods which they
possess, whom they seem in anger to persecute and torment. For love is
ever to be held in the mind, and it dictates and determines the measure
of the chastisement, so that the mind does nothing at all beside the
right rule. Thou likewise addest in thy inquiry, how those things should
be compensated which have been taken away from a church by theft. But,
oh! far be it that God's Church should receive with increase what she
seems to let alone of earthly things, and seek worldly gain by vain
things.

Asked by Bishop St. Augustine: At what generation shall Christian people
be joined among themselves in marriage with their kinsfolk?... Answered
by St. Gregory: ... But because there are many in the English nation
[who], while they were then yet in unbelief, are said to have been
joined together in this sinful marriage,[44] now they are to be
admonished, since they have come to the faith, that they hold themselves
off from such iniquities, and understand that it is a heavy sin, and
dread the awful doom of God, lest they for fleshly love receive the
torments of everlasting death. They are not, however, for this cause to
be deprived of the communion of Christ's body and blood, lest this thing
may seem to be revenged on them, in which they through unwittingness
sinned before the bath of baptism. For at this time the Holy Church
corrects some things through zeal, bears with some through mildness,
overlooks some through consideration, and so bears and overlooks that
often by bearing and overlooking she checks the opposing evil. All those
who come to the faith of Christ are to be reminded that they may not
dare to commit any such thing. But, if any shall commit them, then are
they to be deprived of Christ's body and blood; for, as some little is
to be borne with in regard to those men who through unwittingness
commit sin, so on the other hand it is to be strongly pursued in those
who dread not to sin wittingly.

Asked by Bishop St. Augustine: If a great distance of journey lies
between, so that bishops may not easily come, whether may a bishop be
hallowed without the presence of other bishops.

Answered by Gregory: In the English Church, indeed, in which thou alone
as yet art found a bishop, thou canst not hallow a bishop otherwise than
without other bishops; but bishops must come to thee out of the kingdom
of Gaul, that they may stand as witness at the bishop's hallowing, for
the hallowing of bishops must not be otherwise than in the assembling
and witnessing of three or four bishops, that they may send [up] and
pour [forth] their petitions and prayers to the Almighty God for his
favor.

Asked by Augustine: How must we do with the bishops of Gaul and Britain?

Answered by Pope Gregory: Over the bishops of Gaul we give thee no
authority, because from the earlier times of my predecessors the bishop
of the city Arles received the pallium, whom we ought not to degrade nor
to deprive of the received authority. But, if thou happen to go into the
province of Gaul, have thou a conference and consultation with the said
bishop what is to be done, or, if any vices are found in bishops, how
they shall be corrected and reformed; and if there be a supposition that
he is too lukewarm in the vigor of his discipline and chastisement, then
is he to be inflamed and abetted by thy brotherliness's love,[45] that
he may ward off those things which are contrary to the behest and
commands of our Maker, from the manners of the bishops. Thou mayest not
judge the bishops of Gaul without their own authority; but thou shalt
mildly admonish them, and show them the imitation of thy good works. All
the bishops of Britain we commend to thy brotherliness, in order that
the unlearned may be taught, the weak strengthened by thy exhortation,
and the perverse corrected by thy authority.[46]

Augustine likewise bade [his messengers] acquaint him that a great
harvest was here present and few workmen. And he then sent with the
aforesaid messengers more help to him for divine learning, among whom
the first and greatest were Mellitus and Justus and Paulinus and
Rufinianus, and by them generally all those things which were needful
for the worship and service of the Church--communion vessels,
altar-cloth, and church ornaments, and bishops' robes, and deacons'
robes, as also reliques of the apostles and holy martyrs, and many
books. He likewise sent to Augustine the bishop a pallium, and a letter
in which he intimated how he should hallow other bishops, and in what
places [he should] set them in Britain.

The blessed Pope Gregory likewise at the same time sent a letter to King
Ethelbert, and along with it many worldly gifts of diverse sorts. He
wished likewise by these temporal honors to glorify the King, to whom he
had, by his labor and by his diligence in teaching, opened and made
known the glory of the heavenly kingdom.

And then St. Augustine, as soon as he received the bishop-seat in the
royal city, renewed and wrought, with the King's help, the church which
he had learnt was wrought long before by old Roman work, and hallowed it
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he there set a dwelling-place
for himself and all his after-followers. He likewise built a monastery
by east of the city, in which Ethelbert the King, by his exhortation and
advice, ordered to build a church worthy of the blessed apostles Peter
and Paul, and he enriched it with various gifts, in which church the
body of Augustine, and of all the Canterbury bishops together, and of
their kings, might be laid. The church, however, not Augustine, but
Bishop Laurentius, his after-follower, hallowed.

The first abbot at the same monastery was a mass-priest named Peter, who
was sent back as a messenger into the kingdom of Gaul, and then was
drowned in a bay of the sea, which was called Amfleet, and was laid in
an unbecoming grave by the inhabitants of the place. But the Almighty
God would show of what merit the holy man was, and every night a
heavenly light was made to shine over his grave, until the neighbors,
who saw it, understood that it was a great and holy man who was buried
there; and they then asked who and whence he was: they then took his
body, and laid and buried it in a church in the city of Boulogne, with
the honor befitting so great and so holy a man.

Then it was that Augustine, with the help of King Ethelbert, invited to
his speech the bishops and teachers of the Britons, in the place which
is yet named Augustine's Oak, on the borders of the Hwiccii and West
Saxons. And he then began, with brotherly love, to advise and teach
them, that they should have right love and peace between them, and
undertake, for the Lord, the common labor of teaching divine lore in the
English nation. And they would not hear him, nor keep Easter at its
right tide, and also had many other things unlike and contrary to
ecclesiastical unity. When they had held a long conference and strife
about those things, and they would not yield any things to Augustine's
instructions, nor to his prayers, nor to his threats, and [those] of his
companions, but thought their own customs and institutions better than
[that] they should agree with all Christ's churches throughout the
world; then the holy father Augustine put an end to this troublesome
strife, and thus spoke:

"Let us pray Almighty God, who makes the one-minded to dwell in his
Father's house, that he vouchsafe to signify to us by heavenly wonders
which institution we ought to follow, by what ways to hasten to the
entrance of his kingdom. Let an infirm man be brought hither to us, and,
through whose prayer soever he be healed, let his belief and practice be
believed acceptable to God, and to be followed by all."

When his adversaries had hardly granted that, a blind man of English kin
was led forth: he was first led to the bishops of the Britons, and he
received no health nor comfort through their ministry. Then at last
Augustine was constrained by righteous need, arose and bowed his knees,
[and] prayed God the Almighty Father that he would give sight to the
blind man, that he through one man's bodily enlightening might kindle
the gift of ghostly light in the hearts of many faithful Then soon,
without delay, the blind man was enlightened, and received sight; and
the true preacher of the heavenly light, Augustine, was proclaimed and
praised by all. Then the Britons also acknowledged with shame that they
understood that it was the way of truth which Augustine preached; they
said, however, that they could not, without consent and leave of their
people, shun and forsake their old customs. They begged that again
another synod should be [assembled], and they then would attend it with
more counsellors.

When that accordingly was set, seven bishops of the Britons came, and
all the most learned men, who were chiefly from the city Bangor: at that
time the abbot of that monastery was named Dinoth. When they then were
going to the meeting, they first came to a [certain] hermit, who was
with them holy and wise. They interrogated and asked him whether they
should for Augustine's lore forsake their own institutions and customs.
Then answered he them, "If he be a man of God, follow him." Quoth they
to him, "How may we know whether he be so?" Quoth he: "[Our] Lord
himself hath said in his gospel, Take ye my yoke upon you, and learn
from me that I am mild and of lowly heart. And now if Augustine is mild
and of lowly heart, then it is [to be] believed that he bears Christ's
yoke and teaches you to bear it. If he then is unmild and haughty, then
it is known that he is not from God, nor [should] ye mind his words."
Quoth they again, "How may we know that distinctly?" Quoth he, "See ye
that he come first to the synod with his fellows, and sit; and, if he
rises toward you when ye come, then wit ye that he is Christ's servant,
and ye shall humbly hear his words and his lore. But if he despise you,
and will not rise toward you since there are more of you, be he then
despised by you." Well, they did so as he said.

When they had come to the synod-place, the archbishop Augustine was
sitting on his seat. When they saw that he rose not for them, they
quickly became angry, and upbraided him [as being] haughty, and gainsaid
and withstood all his words. The archbishop said to them: "In many
things ye are contrary to our customs and so to [those] of all God's
churches; and yet if ye will be obedient to me in these three
things--that first ye celebrate Easter at the right tide; that ye fulfil
the ministry of baptism, through which we are born as God's children,
after the manner of the holy Roman and apostolic Church; and that,
thirdly, ye preach the word of the Lord to the English people together
with us--we will patiently bear with all other things which ye do that
are contrary to our customs." They said that they would do none of these
things, nor would have him for an archbishop; they said among
themselves, "If he would not now rise for us, much more, if we shall be
subjected to him, will he contemn us for naught." It is said that the
man of God, St. Augustine, in a threatening manner foretold, "if they
would not receive peace with men of God, that they should receive
unpeace and war from their foes; and, if they would not preach among the
English race the word of life, they should through their hands suffer
the vengeance of death."

And through everything, as the man of God had foretold, by the righteous
doom of God it came to pass; and very soon after this Ethelfrith, king
of the English, collected a great army, and led it to Legcaster, and
there fought against the Britons, and made the greatest slaughter of the
faithless people. While he was beginning the battle, King Ethelfrith saw
their priests and bishops and monks standing aloof in a safer place,
that they should pray and make intercession to God for their warriors:
he inquired and asked what that host was, and what they were doing
there. When he understood the cause of their coming, then said he, "So!
I wot if they cry to their God against us, though they bear not a
weapon, they fight against us, for they pursue us with their hostile
prayers and curses." He then straightway ordered to turn upon them
first, and slay them. Men say that there were twelve hundred of this
host, and fifty of them escaped by flight; and he so then destroyed and
blotted out the other host of the sinful nation, not without great
waning of his [own] host; and so was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy
bishop Augustine, that they should for their trowlessness suffer the
vengeance of temporal perdition, because they despised the skilful
counsel of their eternal salvation.

After these things Augustine, bishop [of Britain], hallowed two bishops:
the one was named Mellitus, the other Justus. Mellitus he sent to preach
divine lore to the East Saxons, who are shed off from Kentland by the
river Thames, and joined to the east sea. Their chief city is called
Lundencaster (_now London_), standing on the bank of the foresaid
river; and it is the market-place of land and sea comers. The King in
the nation at that time was Seabright (_or Sabert_), Ethelbert's
sister-son, and his vassal. Then he and the nation of the East Saxons
received the word of truth and the faith of Christ through Mellitus, the
bishop's lore. Then King Ethelbert ordered to build a church in London,
and to hallow it to St. Paul the apostle, that he and his
after-followers might have their bishop-seat in that place. Justus he
hallowed as bishop in Kent itself at Rochester, which is four-and-twenty
miles right west from Canterbury, in which city likewise King Ethelbert
ordered to build a church, and to hallow it to St. Andrew the apostle;
and to each of these bishops the King gave his gifts and bookland and
possessions for them to brook with their fellows.

After these things, then, Father Augustine, beloved of God, departed
[this life], and his body was buried without [doors], nigh the church of
the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which we mentioned before, because
it was not then yet fully built nor hallowed. As soon as it was
hallowed, then his body was put into it, and becomingly buried in the
north porch of the church, in which likewise the bodies of all the
after-following archbishops are buried but two; that is, Theodorus and
Berhtwald, whose bodies are laid in the church itself, because no more
might [be so] in the foresaid porch. Well-nigh in the middle of the
church is an altar set and hallowed in name of St. Gregory, on which
every Saturday their memory and decease are celebrated with mass-song by
the mass-priest of that place. On St. Augustine's tomb is written an
inscription of this sort: Here resteth Sir[47] Augustine, the first
archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by the blessed
Gregory, bishop of the Roman city; and was upheld by God with working of
wonders. King Ethelbert and his people he led from the worship of idols
to the faith of Christ, and, having fulfilled the days of his ministry
in peace, departed on the 26th day of May in the same King's reign.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Years had passed by since Gregory pitied the English slaves in the
market-place of Rome. As bishop of the imperial city he at last found
himself in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to the
faith, and an opening was given him by Ethelbert's marriage with Bertha,
a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert of Paris. Bertha, like her
Frankish kindred, was a Christian; a Christian bishop accompanied her
from Gaul; and a ruined Christian church, the church of St. Martin
beside the royal city of Canterbury, was given them for their worship.

The King himself remained true to the gods of his fathers; but his
marriage no doubt encouraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine,
at the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel, to the English
people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the
spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert
received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster
where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower
of Canterbury.

The King listened patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the
interpreters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered it in the
English tongue. "Your words are fair," Ethelbert replied at last with
English good sense, "but they are new and of doubtful meaning." For
himself, he said, he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but
with the usual religious tolerance of his race he promised shelter and
protection to the strangers.

The band of monks entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross
with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the strains of the
litany of their church. "Turn from this city, O Lord," they sang, "thine
anger and wrath, and turn it from thy holy house, for we have sinned."
And then in strange contrast came the jubilant cry of the older Hebrew
worship, the cry which Gregory had wrested in prophetic earnestness from
the name of the Yorkshire king in the Roman market-place,
"Alleluia!"[48]

It was thus that the spot which witnessed the landing of Hengist became
yet better known as the landing-place of Augustine. But the second
landing at Ebbsfleet was in no small measure a reversal and undoing of
the first. "Strangers from Rome" was the title with which the
missionaries first fronted the English King. The march of the monks as
they chanted their solemn litany was in one sense a return of the Roman
legions who withdrew at the trumpet-call of Alaric. It was to the tongue
and the thought not of Gregory only, but of the men whom his Jutish
fathers had slaughtered or driven out that Ethelbert listened in the
preaching of Augustine.

Canterbury, the earliest royal city of German England, became a centre
of Latin influence. The Roman tongue became again one of the tongues of
Britain, the language of its worship, its correspondence, its
literature. But more than the tongue of Rome returned with Augustine.
Practically his landing renewed that union with the western world which
the landing of Hengist had destroyed. The new England was admitted into
the older commonwealth of nations. The civilization, art, letters, which
had fled before the sword of the English conquerors returned with the
Christian faith. The great fabric of the Roman law indeed never took
root in England, but it is impossible not to recognize the result of the
influence of the Roman missionaries in the fact that codes of the
customary English law began to be put in writing soon after their
arrival.

A year passed before Ethelbert yielded to the preaching of Augustine.
But from the moment of his conversion the new faith advanced rapidly and
the Kentish men crowded to baptism in the train of their King. The new
religion was carried beyond the bounds of Kent by the supremacy which
Ethelbert wielded over the neighboring kingdoms. Sebert, king of the
East Saxons, received a bishop sent from Kent, and suffered him to build
up again a Christian church in what was now his subject city of London,
while the East Anglian king Redwald resolved to serve Christ and the
older gods together.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Translated by King Alfred the Great.

[44] That is, with their near kinsfolk.

[45] A brother is here styled "his brotherliness," as a pope "his
holiness."

[46] The remainder of this is not translated here.

[47] "Sir" in English (_Schir_, Scottish) equal to _Dominus_, Latin, was
five or six centuries ago prefixed to the name of every ordained priest.

[48] See introduction to _Augustine's Missionary Work in England_.

THE HEGIRA

CAREER OF MAHOMET: THE KORAN: AND MAHOMETAN CREED

A.D. 622

IRVING OCKLEY

     The flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina occurred June 20, 622,
     and was called the _hegira_, or departure of the prophet. That
     event marks the commencement of the Mahometan era, which is called
     there-from the _Hegira_. According to the civil calculation it is
     fixed at Friday, July 16th, the date of the Mahometans, although
     astronomers and some historians assign it to the day preceding.
     While primarily referring to the flight of Mahomet, the term is
     applied also to the emigration to Medina, prior to the capture of
     Mecca (630) of those of Mahomet's disciples, who henceforth were
     known as Mohajerins--Emigrants or Refugees--which became a title of
     honor.

     A scion of the family of Hashem and of the tribe of Koreish, the
     noblest race in Arabia, and the guardians of the ancient temple and
     idols of the Kaaba, Mahomet was born at Mecca, August 20, A.D. 570.
     He acquired wealth and influence by his marriage with Kadijah, a
     rich widow, but, about his fortieth year, by announcing himself as
     an apostle of God, sent to extirpate idolatry and to restore the
     true faith of the prophets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, he and his
     converts were exposed to contumely and persecution.

     It was, as Irving's recital shows, necessary for the preservation
     of his life--which was threatened by his own tribe, the
     Koreishites--that Mahomet should leave Mecca, and he escaped none
     too soon. It must also be observed that by this going out he found
     ampler means for the spread of his doctrine and the increase of his
     followers. His very presence among strangers drew multitudes to the
     support of his cause, and the enthusiasm aroused by the prophet at
     Medina made that city the centre of his first great propaganda.
     There Mahomet died; in the Great Mosque is his tomb, and Medina is
     sometimes called the "City of the Prophet." From this centre began
     the development and spread of Islam into a world-religion, which
     has flourished to the present day, when its followers are estimated
     at nearly two hundred millions, having large empire and still wider
     influence among some of the most important races of the East.

WASHINGTON IRVING

The fortunes of Mahomet were becoming darker and darker in his native
place. Kadijah, his original benefactress, the devoted companion of his
solitude and seclusion, the zealous believer in his doctrines, was in
her grave; so also was Abu-Taleb, once his faithful and efficient
protector. Deprived of the sheltering influence of the latter, Mahomet
had become, in a manner, an outlaw in Mecca; obliged to conceal himself,
and remain a burden on the hospitality of those whom his own doctrines
had involved in persecution. If worldly advantage had been his object,
how had it been attained? Upward of ten years had elapsed since first he
announced his prophetic mission; ten long years of enmity, trouble, and
misfortune. Still he persevered, and now, at a period of life when men
seek to enjoy in repose the fruition of the past, rather than risk all
in new schemes for the future, we find him, after having sacrificed
ease, fortune, and friends, prepared to give up home and country also,
rather than his religious creed.

As soon as the privileged time of pilgrimage arrived, he emerged once
more from his concealment, and mingled with the multitude assembled from
all parts of Arabia. His earnest desire was to find some powerful tribe,
or the inhabitants of some important city, capable and willing to
receive him as a guest, and protect him in the enjoyment and propagation
of his faith.

His quest was for a time unsuccessful. Those who had come to worship at
the Kaaba[49] drew back from a man stigmatized as an apostate; and the
worldly-minded were unwilling to befriend one proscribed by the powerful
of his native place.

At length, as he was one day preaching on the hill Al Akaba, a little to
the north of Mecca, he drew the attention of certain pilgrims from the
city of Yathreb. This city, since called Medina, was about two hundred
and seventy miles north of Mecca. Many of its inhabitants were Jews and
heretical Christians. The pilgrims in question were pure Arabs of the
ancient and powerful tribe of Khazradites, and in habits of friendly
intercourse with the Keneedites and Naderites, two Jewish tribes
inhabiting Mecca, who claimed to be of the sacerdotal line of Aaron. The
pilgrims had often heard their Jewish friends explain the mysteries of
their faith and talk of an expected messiah. They were moved by the
eloquence of Mahomet, and struck with the resemblance of his doctrines
to those of the Jewish law; insomuch that when they heard him proclaim
himself a prophet, sent by heaven to restore the ancient faith, they
said, one to another, "Surely this must be the promised messiah of which
we have been told." The more they listened, the stronger became their
persuasion of the fact, until in the end they avowed their conviction,
and made a final profession of their faith.

As the Khazradites belonged to one of the most powerful tribes of
Yathreb, Mahomet sought to secure their protection, and proposed to
accompany them on their return; but they informed him that they were at
deadly feud with the Awsites, another powerful tribe of that city, and
advised him to defer his coming until they should be at peace. He
consented; but on the return home of the pilgrims, he sent with them
Musab Ibn Omeir, one of the most learned and able of his disciples, with
instructions to strengthen them in the faith, and to preach it to their
townsmen.

Thus were the seeds of Islamism first sown in the city of Medina. For a
time they thrived but slowly. Musab was opposed by the idolaters, and
his life threatened; but he persisted in his exertions and gradually
made converts among the principal inhabitants. Among these were Saad Ibn
Maads, a prince or chief of the Awsites, and Osaid Ibn Hodheir, a man
of great authority in the city. Numbers of the Moslems of Mecca also,
driven away by persecution, took refuge in Medina, and aided in
propagating the new faith among its inhabitants, until it found its way
into almost every household.

Feeling now assured of being able to give Mahomet an asylum in the city,
upward of seventy of the converts of Medina, led by Musab Ibn Omeir,
repaired to Mecca with the pilgrims in the holy month of the thirteenth
year of "the mission," to invite him to take up his abode in their city.
Mahomet gave them a midnight meeting on the hill Al Akaba. His uncle Al
Abbas, who, like the deceased Abu-Taleb, took an affectionate interest
in his welfare, though no convert to his doctrines, accompanied him to
this secret conference, which he feared might lead him into danger. He
entreated the pilgrims from Medina not to entice his nephew to their
city until more able to protect him; warning them that their open
adoption of the new faith would bring all Arabia in arms against them.

His warnings and entreaties were in vain; a solemn compact was made
between the parties. Mahomet demanded that they should abjure idolatry,
and worship the one true God openly and fearlessly. For himself he
exacted obedience in weal and woe; and for the disciples who might
accompany him, protection; even such as they would render to their own
wives and children. On these terms he offered to bind himself to remain
among them, to be the friend of their friends, the enemy of their
enemies.

"But, should we perish in your cause," asked they, "what will be our
reward?"

"Paradise," replied the prophet.

The terms were accepted; the emissaries from Medina placed their hands
in the hands of Mahomet, and swore to abide by their compact. The latter
then singled out twelve from among them, whom he designated as his
apostles; in imitation, it is supposed, of the example of our Saviour.
Just then a voice was heard from the summit of the hill, denouncing them
as apostates and menacing them with punishment. The sound of this voice,
heard in the darkness of the night, inspired temporary dismay. "It is
the voice of the fiend Iblis," said Mahomet scornfully; "he is the foe
of God; fear him not." It was probably the voice of some spy or
eavesdropper of the Koreishites; for the very next morning they
manifested a knowledge of what had taken place in the night, and treated
the new confederates with great harshness as they were departing from
the city.

It was this early accession to the faith, and this timely aid proffered
and subsequently afforded to Mahomet and his disciples, which procured
for the Moslems of Medina the appellation of Ansarians, or auxiliaries,
by which they were afterward distinguished.

After the departure of the Ansarians, and the expiration of the holy
month, the persecutions of the Moslems were resumed with increased
virulence, insomuch that Mahomet, seeing a crisis was at hand, and being
resolved to leave the city, advised his adherents generally to provide
for their safety. For himself he still lingered in Mecca with a few
devoted followers.

Abu Sofian, his implacable foe, was at this time governor of the city.
He was both incensed and alarmed at the spreading growth of the new
faith, and held a meeting of the chief of the Koreishites to devise some
means of effectually putting a stop to it. Some advised that Mahomet
should be banished the city; but it was objected that he might gain
other tribes to his interest, or perhaps the people of Medina, and
return at their head to take his revenge. Others proposed to wall him up
in a dungeon, and supply him with food until he died; but it was
surmised that his friends might effect his escape. All these objections
were raised by a violent and pragmatical old man, a stranger from the
province of Nedja, who, say the Moslem writers, was no other than the
devil in disguise, breathing his malignant spirit into those present.

At length it was declared by Abu-Jahl that the only effectual check on
the growing evil was to put Mahomet to death. To this all agreed, and as
a means of sharing the odium of the deed, and withstanding the vengeance
it might awaken among the relatives of the victim, it was arranged that
a member of each family should plunge his sword into the body of
Mahomet.

It is to this conspiracy that allusion is made in the eighth chapter of
the _Koran_:

"And call to mind how the unbelievers plotted against thee, that they
might either detain thee in bonds, or put thee to death, or expel thee
the city; but God laid a plot against them; and God is the best layer of
plots."

In fact, by the time the murderers arrived before the dwelling of
Mahomet, he was apprised of the impending danger. As usual, the warning
is attributed to the angel Gabriel, but it is probable it was given by
some Koreishite, less bloody-minded than his confederates. It came just
in time to save Mahomet from the hands of his enemies. They paused at
his door, but hesitated to enter. Looking through a crevice they beheld,
as they thought, Mahomet wrapped in his green mantle, and lying asleep
on his couch. They waited for a while, consulting whether to fall on him
while sleeping or wait until he should go forth. At length they burst
open the door and rushed toward the couch. The sleeper started up; but,
instead of Mahomet, Ali stood before them. Amazed and confounded they
demanded, "Where is Mahomet?" "I know not," replied Ali sternly, and
walked forth; nor did anyone venture to molest him. Enraged at the
escape of their victim, however, the Koreishites proclaimed a reward of
a hundred camels to anyone who should bring them Mahomet alive or dead.

Divers accounts are given of the mode in which Mahomet made his escape
from the house after the faithful Ali had wrapped himself in his mantle
and taken his place upon the couch. The most miraculous account is, that
he opened the door silently, as the Koreishites stood before it, and,
scattering a handful of dust in the air, cast such blindness upon them
that he walked through the midst of them without being perceived. This,
it is added, is confirmed by the verse of the thirtieth chapter of the
_Koran_: "We have thrown blindness upon them, that they shall not see."
The most probable account is that he clambered over the wall in the rear
of the house, by the help of a servant, who bent his back for him to
step upon it.[50]

He repaired immediately to the house of Abu-Bekr, and they arranged for
instant flight. It was agreed that they should take refuge in a cave in
Mount Thor, about an hour's distance from Mecca, and wait there until
they could proceed safely to Medina; and in the mean time the children
of Abu-Bekr should secretly bring them food. They left Mecca while it
was yet dark, making their way on foot by the light of the stars, and
the day dawned as they found themselves at the foot of Mount Thor.
Scarce were they within the cave when they heard the sound of pursuit.
Abu-Bekr, though a brave man, quaked with fear.

"Our pursuers," said he, "are many, and we are but two."

"Nay," replied Mahomet, "there is a third; God is with us!"

And here the Moslem writers relate a miracle, dear to the minds of all
true believers. By the time, say they, that the Koreishites reached the
mouth of the cavern, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it, in the
spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest and laid its
eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When the
Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that
no one could recently have entered the cavern; so they turned away, and
pursued their search in another direction.

Whether protected by miracle or not, the fugitives remained for three
days undiscovered in the cave, and Asama, the daughter of Abu-Bekr,
brought them food in the dusk of the evenings.

On the fourth day, when they presumed the ardor of pursuit had abated,
the fugitives ventured forth, and set out for Medina, on camels which a
servant of Abu-Bekr had brought in the night for them. Avoiding the main
road usually taken by the caravans, they bent their course nearer to the
coast of the Red Sea. They had not proceeded far, however, before they
were overtaken by a troop of horse headed by Soraka Ibn Malec. Abu-Bekr
was again dismayed by the number of their pursuers; but Mahomet repeated
the assurance, "Be not troubled; Allah is with us." Soraka was a grim
warrior, with shagged iron-gray locks and naked sinewy arms rough with
hair. As he overtook Mahomet, his horse reared and fell with him. His
superstitious mind was struck with it as an evil sign. Mahomet perceived
the state of his feeling, and by an eloquent appeal wrought upon him to
such a degree that Soraka, filled with awe, entreated his forgiveness,
and turning back with his troop suffered him to proceed on his way
unmolested.

The fugitives continued their journey without further interruption,
until they arrived at Kobe, a hill about two miles from Medina. It was a
favorite resort of the inhabitants of the city, and a place to which
they sent their sick and infirm, for the air was pure and salubrious.
Hence, too, the city was supplied with fruit; the hill and its environs
being covered with vineyards and with groves of the date and lotus; with
gardens producing citrons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, peaches, and
apricots, and being irrigated with limpid streams.

On arriving at this fruitful spot Al Kaswa, the camel of Mahomet,
crouched on her knees, and would go no farther. The prophet interpreted
it as a favorable sign, and determined to remain at Koba, and prepare
for entering the city. The place where his camel knelt is still pointed
out by pious Moslems, a mosque named Al Takwa having been built there to
commemorate the circumstance. Some affirm that it was actually founded
by the prophet. A deep well[51] is also shown in the vicinity, beside
which Mahomet reposed under the shade of the trees, and into which he
dropped his seal ring. It is believed still to remain there, and has
given sanctity to the well, the waters of which are conducted by
subterraneous conduits to Medina. At Koba he remained four days,
residing in the house of an Awsite named Colthum Ibn Hadem. While at
this village he was joined by a distinguished chief, Boreida Ibn al
Hoseib, with seventy followers, all of the tribe of Saham. These made
profession of faith between the hands of Mahomet.

Another renowned proselyte who repaired to the prophet at this village
was Salman al Parsi--or the Persian. He is said to have been a native of
a small place near Ispahan, and that, on passing one day by a Christian
church, he was so much struck by the devotion of the people, and the
solemnity of the worship, that he became disgusted with the idolatrous
faith in which he had been brought up. He afterward wandered about the
East, from city to city and convent to convent, in quest of a religion,
until an ancient monk, full of years and infirmities, told him of a
prophet who had arisen in Arabia to restore the pure faith of Abraham.

This Salman rose to power in after years, and was reputed by the
unbelievers of Mecca to have assisted Mahomet in compiling his doctrine.
This is alluded to in the sixteenth chapter of the _Koran_: "Verily, the
idolaters say, that a certain man assisted to compose the _Koran_; but
the language of this man is Ajami--or Persian--and the _Koran_ is
indited in the pure Arabian tongue."

The Moslems of Mecca, who had taken refuge some time before in Medina,
hearing that Mahomet was at hand, came forth to meet him at Koba; among
these were the early convert Talha, and Zobeir, the nephew of Kadijah.
These, seeing the travel-stained garments of Mahomet and Abu-Bekr, gave
them white mantles, with which to make their entrance into Medina.
Numbers of the Ansarians, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who had made their
compact with Mahomet in the preceding year, now hastened to renew their
vow of fidelity.

Learning from them that the number of proselytes in the city was rapidly
augmenting, and that there was a general disposition to receive him
favorably, he appointed Friday, the Moslem Sabbath,[52] the sixteenth
day of the month Rabi, for his public entrance.

Accordingly on the morning of that day he assembled all his followers to
prayer; and after a sermon, in which he expounded the main principles of
his faith, he mounted his camel Al Kaswa, and set forth for that city,
which was to become renowned in after ages as his city of refuge.

Boreida Ibn al Hoseib, with his seventy horsemen of the tribe of Saham,
accompanied him as a guard. Some of the disciples took turns to hold a
canopy of palm leaves over his head, and by his side rode Abu-Bekr. "O
apostle of God!" cried Boreida, "thou shalt not enter Medina without a
standard"; so saying, he unfolded his turban, and tying one end of it to
the point of his lance, bore it aloft before the prophet.

The city of Medina was fair to approach, being extolled for beauty of
situation, salubrity of climate, and fertility of soil; for the
luxuriance of its palm-trees, and the fragrance of its shrubs and
flowers. At a short distance from the city a crowd of new proselytes to
the faith came forth in sun and dust to meet the cavalcade. Most of them
had never seen Mahomet, and paid reverence to Abu-Bekr through mistake;
but the latter put aside the screen of palm leaves, and pointed out the
real object of homage, who was greeted with loud acclamations.

In this way did Mahomet, so recently a fugitive from his native city,
with a price upon his head, enter Medina, more as a conqueror in triumph
than an exile seeking an asylum. He alighted at the house of a
Khazradite, named Abu-Ayub, a devout Moslem, to whom moreover he was
distantly related; here he was hospitably received, and took up his
abode in the basement story.

Shortly after his arrival he was joined by the faithful Ali,[53] who had
fled from Mecca, and journeyed on foot, hiding himself in the day and
travelling only at night, lest he should fall into the hands of the
Koreishites. He arrived weary and way-worn, his feet bleeding with the
roughness of the journey.

Within a few days more came Ayesha, and the rest of Abu-Bekr's
household, together with the family of Mahomet, conducted by his
faithful freedman Zeid, and by Abu-Bekr's servant Abdallah.

SIMON OCKLEY

Mahomet had hitherto propagated his religion by fair means only. During
his stay at Mecca he had declared his business was only to preach and
admonish; and that whether people believed or not was none of his
concern. He had hitherto confined himself to the arts of persuasion,
promising, on the one hand, the joys of paradise to all who should
believe in him, and who should, for the hopes of them, disregard the
things of this world, and even bear persecution with patience and
resignation; and, on the other, deterring his hearers from what he
called infidelity, by setting before them both the punishments inflicted
in this world upon Pharaoh and others, who despised the warnings of the
prophets sent to reclaim them; and also the torments of hell, which
would be their portion in the world to come. Now, however, when he had
got a considerable town at his command, and a good number of followers
firmly attached to him, he began to sing another note. Gabriel now
brings him messages from heaven to the effect that, whereas other
prophets had come with miracles and been rejected, he was to take
different measures, and propagate Islamism by the sword. And
accordingly, within a year after his arrival at Medina he began what was
called the holy war. For this purpose he first of all instituted a
brotherhood, joining his Ansars or helpers, and his Mohajerins or
refugees together in pairs; he himself taking Ali for his brother. It
was in allusion to this that Ali, afterward when preaching at Cufa,
said, "I am the servant of God, and brother to his apostle."

In the second year of the Hegira, Mahomet changed the Kebla of the
Mussulman, which before this time had been toward Jerusalem, ordering
them henceforth to turn toward Mecca when they prayed. In the same year
he also appointed the fast of the month Ramadan.

Mahomet having now a pretty large congregation at Medina found it
necessary to have some means of calling them to prayers; for this
purpose he was thinking of employing a horn, or some instrument of wood,
which should be made to emit a loud sound by being struck upon. But his
doubts were settled this year by a dream of one of his disciples, in
which a man appearing to him in a green vest recommended as a better
way, that the people should be summoned to prayers by a crier calling
out, "Allah acbar, Allah acbar," etc.; "God is great, God is great,
there is but one God, Mahomet is his prophet;[54] come to prayers, come
to prayers." Mahomet approved of the scheme, and this is the very form
in use to this day among the Mussulmans; who, however, in the call to
morning prayers, add the words, "Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is
better than sleep"--a sentiment not unworthy the consideration of those
who are professors of a better religion.

The same year the apostle sent some of his people to plunder a caravan
going to Mecca; which they did, and brought back two prisoners to
Medina. This was the first act of hostility committed by the Mussulmans
against the idolaters. The second was the battle of Beder. The history
of the battle is thus given by Abulfeda: "The apostle, hearing that a
caravan of the Meccans was coming home from Syria, escorted by Abu
Sofian at the head of thirty men, placed a number of soldiers in
ambuscade to intercept it. Abu Sofian, being informed thereof by his
spies, sent word immediately to Mecca, whereupon all the principal men
except Abu Laheb--who, however, sent Al Asum son of Hesham in his
stead--marched out to his assistance, making in all nine hundred and
fifty men, whereof two hundred were cavalry. The apostle of God went out
against them with three hundred and thirteen men, of whom seventy-seven
were refugees from Mecca, the rest being helpers from Medina; they had
with them only two horses and seventy camels, upon which they rode by
turns. The apostle encamped near a well called Beder, from the name of
the person who was owner of it, and had a hut made where he and Abu-Bekr
sat. As soon as the armies were in sight of each other, three champions
came out from among the idolaters, Otha son of Rabia, his brother
Shaiba, and Al Walid son of Otha; against the first of these, the
prophet sent Obeidah son of Hareth, Hamza against the second, and Ali
against the third: Hamza and Ali slew each his man and then went to the
assistance of Obeidah, and having killed his adversary, brought off
Obeidah, who, however, soon after died of a wound in his foot.

"All this while the apostle continued in his hut in prayer, beating his
breast so violently that his cloak fell off his shoulders, and he was
suddenly taken with a palpitation of the heart; soon recovering,
however, he comforted Abu-Bekr, telling him God's help was come. Having
uttered these words, he forthwith ran out of his hut and encouraged his
men, and taking a handful of dust threw it toward the Koreishites, and
said, 'May their faces be confounded,' and immediately they fled. After
the battle, Abdallah, the son of Masud, brought the head of Abu Jehel to
the apostle, who gave thanks to God; Al As, brother to Abu Jehel, was
also killed; Al Abbas also, the prophet's uncle, and Ocail son of Abu
Taleb, were taken prisoners. Upon the news of this defeat Abu Laheb died
of grief within a week."

Of the Mussulmans died fourteen martyrs (for so they call all such as
die fighting for Islamism). The number of idolaters slain was seventy;
among whom my author names some of chief note, Hantala son of Abu
Sofian, and Nawfal, brother to Kadijah. Ali slew six of the enemy with
his own hand.

The prophet ordered the dead bodies of the enemy to be thrown into a
pit, and remained three days upon the field of battle dividing the
spoil; on occasion of which a quarrel arose between the helpers and the
refugees, and to quiet them the eighth chapter of the _Koran_ was
brought from heaven. It begins thus, "They will ask thee concerning the
spoils: say, The spoils belong to God and his apostle": and again in the
same chapter, "And know that whenever ye gain any, a fifth part
belongeth to God, and to the apostle, and his kindred, and the orphans,
and the poor." The other four-fifths are to be divided among those who
are present at the action. The apostle, when he returned to Safra in his
way to Medina, ordered Ali to behead two of his prisoners.

The victory at Beder was of great importance to Mahomet; to encourage
his men, and to increase the number of his followers, he pretended that
two miracles were wrought in his favor, in this, as also in several
subsequent battles: first, that God sent his angels to fight on his
side; and second, made his army appear to the enemy much greater than it
really was. Both these miracles are mentioned in the _Koran_, chapter
viii. Al Abbas said he was taken prisoner by a man of a prodigious size
(an angel, of course); no wonder, then, he became a convert.

As soon as the Mussulmans returned to Medina the Koreishites sent to
offer a ransom for their prisoners, which was accepted, and distributed
among those who had taken them, according to the quality of the
prisoners. Some had one thousand drachms for their share. Those who had
only a small or no part of the ransom Mahomet rewarded with donations,
so as to content them all.

The Jews had many a treaty with Mahomet, and lived peaceably at Medina;
till a Jew, having affronted an Arabian milk-woman, was killed by a
Mussulman. In revenge for this the Jews killed the Mussulman, whereupon
a general quarrel ensued. The Jews fled to their castles; but after a
siege of fifteen days were forced to surrender at discretion. Mahomet
ordered their hands to be tied behind them, determined to put them all
to the sword, and was with great difficulty prevailed upon to spare
their lives and take all their property. Kaab, son of Ashraf, was one of
the most violent among the Jews against Mahomet. He had been at Mecca,
and, with some pathetic verses upon the unhappy fate of those who had
fallen at Beder, excited the Meccans to take up arms. Upon his return to
Medina he rehearsed the same verses among the lower sort of people and
the women. Mahomet, being told of these underhand practices, said, one
day, "Who will rid me of the son of Ashraf?" when Mahomet, son of
Mosalama, one of the helpers, answered, "I am the man, O apostle of God,
that will do it," and immediately took with him Salcan son of Salama,
and some other Moslems, who were to lie in ambush. In order to decoy
Kaab out of his castle, which was a very strong one, Salcan, his
foster-brother, went alone to visit him in the dusk of the evening; and,
entering into conversation, told him some little stories of Mahomet,
which he knew would please him. When he got up to take his leave, Kaab,
as he expected, attended him to the gate; and, continuing the
conversation, went on with him till he came near the ambuscade, where
Mahomet and his companions fell upon him and stabbed him.

Abu Sofian, meditating revenge for the defeat at Beder, swore he would
neither anoint himself nor come near his women till he was even with
Mahomet. Setting out toward Medina with two hundred horse, he posted a
party of them near the town, where one of the helpers fell into their
hands and was killed. Mahomet, being informed of it, went out against
them, but they all fled; and, for the greater expedition, threw away
some sacks of meal, part of their provision. From which circumstance
this was called the meal-war.

Abu Sofian, resolving to make another and more effectual effort, got
together a body of three thousand men, whereof seven hundred were
cuirassiers and two hundred cavalry; his wife Henda, with a number of
women, followed in the rear, beating drums, and lamenting the fate of
those slain at Beder, and exciting the idolaters to fight courageously.
The apostle would have waited for them in the town, but as his people
were eager to advance against the enemy, he set out at once with one
thousand men; but of these one hundred turned back, disheartened by the
superior numbers of the enemy. He encamped at the foot of Mount Ohud,
having the mountain in his rear. Of his nine hundred men only one
hundred had armor on; and as for horses, there was only one besides that
on which he himself rode. Mosaab carried the prophet's standard; Kaled,
son of Al Walid, led the right wing of the idolaters; Acrema, son of Abu
Jehel, the left; the women kept in the rear, beating their drums. Henda
cried out to them: "Courage, ye sons of Abdal Dari; courage! smite with
all your swords."

Mahomet placed fifty archers in his rear, and ordered them to keep their
post. Then Hamza fought stoutly, and killed Arta, the standard-bearer of
the idolaters; and as Seba, son of Abdal Uzza, came near him, Hamza
struck off his head also; but was himself immediately after run through
with a spear by Wabsha, a slave, who lurked behind a rock with that
intent. Then Ebn Kamia slew Mosaab, the apostle's standard-bearer; and
taking him for the prophet cried out, "I have killed Mahomet!" When
Mosaab was slain the standard was given to Ali.

At the beginning of the action the Mussulmans attacked the idolaters so
furiously that they gave ground, fell back upon their rear, and threw it
into disorder. The archers seeing this, and expecting a complete
victory, left their posts, contrary to the express orders that had been
given them, and came forward from fear of losing their share of the
plunder. In the mean time Kaled, advancing with his cavalry, fell
furiously upon the rear of the Mussulmans, crying aloud at the same time
that Mahomet was slain. This cry, and the finding themselves attacked on
all sides, threw the Mussulmans into such consternation that the
idolaters made great havoc among them, and were able to press on so near
the apostle as to beat him down with a shower of stones and arrows. He
was wounded in the lip, and two arrow-heads stuck in his face. Abu
Obeidah pulled out first one and then the other; at each operation one
of the apostle's teeth came out. As Sonan Abu Said wiped the blood from
off his face, the apostle exclaimed, "He that touches my blood, and
handles it tenderly, shall not have his blood spilt in the fire" (of
hell). In this action, it is said, Telhah, while he was putting a
breast-plate upon Mahomet, received a wound upon his hand, which maimed
it forever. Omar and Abu-Bekr were also wounded. When the Mussulmans saw
Mahomet fall, they concluded he was killed and took to flight; and even
Othman was hurried along by the press of those that fled. In a little
time, however, finding Mahomet was alive, a great number of his men
returned to the field; and, after a very obstinate fight, brought him
off, and carried him to a neighboring village. The Mussulmans had
seventy men killed, the idolaters lost only twenty-two.

The Koreishites had no other fruit of their victory but the
gratification of a poor spirit of revenge. Henda, and the women who had
fled with her upon the first disorder of the idolaters, now returned,
and committed great barbarities upon the dead bodies of the apostle's
friends. They cut off their ears and noses, and made bracelets and
necklaces of them; Henda pulled Hamza's liver out of his body, and
chewed and swallowed some of it. Abu Sofian, having cut pieces off the
cheeks of Hamza, put them upon the end of his spear, and cried out
aloud, "The success of war is uncertain; after the battle of Beder comes
the battle of Ohud; now, Hobal,[55] thy religion is victorious!"
Notwithstanding this boasting, he decamped the same day. Jannabi
ascribes his retreat to a panic; however that may have been, Abu Sofian
sent to propose a truce for a year, which was agreed to.

When the enemy were retreated toward Mecca, Mahomet went to the field
of battle to look for the body of Hamza. Finding it shamefully mangled,
in the manner already related, he ordered it to be wrapped in a black
cloak, and then prayed over it, repeating seven times, "Allah acbar,"
etc. ("God is great," etc.). In the same manner he prayed over every one
of the martyrs, naming Hamza again with every one of them; so that Hamza
had the prayers said over him seventy-two times. But, as if this were
not enough, he declared that Gabriel had told him he had been received
into the seventh heaven, and welcomed with this eulogium, "Hamza, the
lion of God, and the lion of his prophet."

The Mussulmans were much chagrined at this defeat. Some expressed a
doubt of the prophet being as high in the divine favor as he pretended,