The Islamic presence in the Iberian Peninsula was something remarkable, and its legacy is still visible today. However, just over a century after the beginning of the Islamic conquest, there was an episode that cabe to be known in history as the “Martyrs of Cordoba”.

When it comes to the Martyrs of Cordoba, it refers to the almost 50 Christians who were killed during the Umayyad caliphate, which according to the story of the time for the most varied reasons, but in general was related to the fact that they were simply Christians or apostatized from Islam to Christianity.

Many historians recognize the generally peaceful coexistence of the three Abrahamic faiths1 during the Islamic governments of al-Andalus2. Not only, but Cordoba was a cultural and intellectual center for a period of time in Europe, with Christians and Jews and working together at different times for cultural and intellectual purposes. However, a very famous episode that ends up going against the one presented above was the execution of almost 50 Christians.

The martyrdoms occurred between 851-859, as reported by the only contemporary source: Eulogius of Cordoba, later canonized. According to some scholars, such as Wheatcroft (2003), the Islamic population of al-Andalus grew exponentially during the first two centuries after the Muslim conquest. Until then there was a small and isolated community of muslims, often composed by immigrants, interfaith marriages with the local population began to occur, thus increasing the birth rate of new muslims. However, the most expressive part of the growth of Islam in the region is not due to immigrants from North Africa or the children they had with the Iberian natives, but rather Christian converts to Islam.

Still according to Wheatcroft, there were conversions from both isolated individuals and whole families, as well as possibly even from cities and districts, with no pressure or forced conversions for this to happen, not least because there was a tax paid for Christians to remain Christians (jizya), generating an influx of cash for the state, which would not be wanted the conversion of such individuals.

Despite the permissibility of Christians and Jews to practice their faiths, they still suffered some limitations, which were also sometimes relativized by Muslim rulers. Of course, many Christians and Jews ended up reaching high positions in Ibero-Islamic society in the medieval period, but some benefits could only be obtained through conversion to Islam, thus becoming part of a distinct corpus, which in turn was the one that dominated the government institutions at the time.

Conversions in the medieval period and in the ancient world were relative, often immense masses were converted to some creed by the fact that a king or emperor adhered to that new religion. However, despite this, many more zealous adherents of the old religions of certain localities refused to convert to the new faith, often generating movements of opposition to both apostates and the new religion. In the case of the Martyrs of Cordoba it was, in general, something in this sense: a movement of more zealous Christians that would eventually generate what literary critics call topos, a historical incident that would expand in proportions to assume a legendary and mythical character.

In this sense, the case of the Martyrs of Cordoba naturally were used to generate opposition to the rulers of the alien faith who settled there, trying to demonstrate a natural opposition between the different faiths and cultures that shared the territory. Thus, as times went by, such stories of martyrdom were transmuted into a subliminal aspect of a foreign power that was dangerous and frightening, an image built on the basis of biblical prophecies, giving an “Antichrist” character to the Islamic rulers. This type of attitude proved to be a ruse used by societies in decline, being a historical phenomenon that has been repeated (and still is repeated) several times in history.

According to Fletcher (2015), when analyzing whether such an Islamic threat was in fact real or not, he observes that Eulogius brings a certain light to better understanding how social relations between Christians and Muslims were in medieval Islamic Iberia. Thus, the Cordoban author demonstrates fluid and apparently peaceful relationships, with an amazing number of mixed marriages. Going further, he describes cases of Christians who converted to Islam and later apostatized from the Islamic faith or other similar cases involving different faiths in the same family or also apostasy. Naturally, Eulogius cites such cases simply because they ended in disaster, still according to Fletcher’s observation, the author assumes that the number of analogous cases in which no punishment occurred was significant.

However, the problem of most of the so-called Martyrs of Cordoba is opposite to the concept of martyrdom in traditional Christian theology, since they did not die by faith in a spontaneous way, but rather provoked and intentional one. Because of this, we see in these cases Christians who insisted on insulting the Prophet Muhammad or the Islamic religion so that they could be arrested or punished in some other way, as with death, thus encountering the so wished “martyrdom”.

Such a movement was neither genuine nor new. The same had already happened in Rome when the Christians were still a religious minority (ROPS, 1988), being denounced by the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, since the “pseudo-martyrs” used to provoke the Roman authorities, denouncing themselves. The problems in ancient Rome were not only related to the lack of spontaneity of martyrdom, contrary to Christian doctrine, but also to the fact that many gave up martyrdom when confronting Roman judges, thus apostatizing the christian faith3.

What was described above also occurred in a similar way in Islamic Spain in the case of the Cordoba martyrs, as they were mostly concerned with insulting the Islamic religion and the Prophet, knowing that such an attitude could not go unpunished for long. In this way, one martyrdom influeced another, to the point that it was even condemned by Bishop Reccafred of Seville. However, it was due to the condemnation of the aforementioned bishop that brought up the work of Eulogius, which was not only descriptive in character but also apologetic.

For Fletcher, such detailed descriptions are grounds for suspicion in historiography. Wheatcroft, on the other hand, regardless of whether it was reported to be real or not, they had a propagandistic character, being applied in a generic way later. Thus, the symbolic acts of legendary and mythological character of the martyrs of Cordoba would generate effects long after the dates attributed to the event, being sometimes cited today to support a narrative of Islamic persecution against Christians or Christianity in an attempt to demonize both Islam as well as the Muslims, making them a constant threat to the security and life of non-Muslims.

It is worth remembering that it was not only Bishop Reccafred of Seville who condemned the attitude of the “martyrs” of Cordoba, but were denounced as heretics in 854 to the Qadi (Muslim judge) by a group of Christian leaders, involving bishops, abbots, priests and even noble Christians, all this in an attempt to avoid possible oppressions that the Christian community in general could come to suffer because of such “hooligans”. But an interesting fact that is also somewhat similar to what happened in Rome with the pseudo-martyrs, is that the qadis would also try to persuade the so called martyrs not to have such attitudes. We see this desire over martyrdom in about 60 years after what happened in Cordoba in an account by al-Kushani, when a man came to the Muslim qadi and begged for martyrdom in 920.

Death is what they wanted. With Iberian Christian culture in a dizzying decline, creating schism among Christians to be converted religiously or culturally and Muslims was the most effective way to stop it. If the Islamic emirs started to kill Christians or “martyrize them”, Christians living in their dominions would cry out for “liberation”, and would not integrate with that culture which was already making them disappear. The martyrs were condemned even by the Mozarab Christian authorities in the caliphate, who tried to dissuade them. But they knew that if the act was done in public, usually in bazaars, mosques or crowded environments, the ruler who refused to execute them would be calling into question the very legitimacy of his power as a maintainer of the faith. It was not an Islamic persecution, but a political tool.

It is not necessary to go that far, because during the period of martyrdom in Cordoba the same also happened, as is the case with Isaac, a monk from a wealthy family, who once reached the qadi and said he would like to convert to Islam. While the Muslim judge was instructing Isaac in the new faith, the monk began to insult the Prophet, which ended up resulting in a slap in the face of the Christian. However, the qadi would be calmed by his advisers, even going so far as to say that Isaac would be drunk, which was contested by the monk who would continue to utter his insults against the prophet of Islam, literally begging the qadi to be put to death (WHEATCROFT, 2003). Despite the attempts, the judge was forced to sentence him to capital punishment as it was required, and two days after the execution of Isaac, a man named Sancho would take the same actions and suffer the same fate; later a group of six monks including Isaac’s uncle would do the same, and then others would follow the example, resulting in 11 “martyrs” in 2 months.

Despite the propagandistic tactic to try to avoid the decline of Spanish Christianity and prevent new conversions to a religion that seemed more attractive to many, several Christians were assimilated with the Arab-Muslim culture not only in the sense of conversion, but as Christians living in the territory whose domain was not the same as their religion, and whose cultural and religious aspects sometimes attracted them.

In this way it can be seen that most Christians recognized the power of Islam and the culture brought with them, thus seeking to benefit from it. It is notable, for example, the substitution of Latin for Arabic as the cultured language, or Christians reading and enjoying Arabic poems and novels. However, as in any place where there there is a majority, there is also a minority: some more “zealous” Christians, who would not allow themselves to be assimilated by the Arab-Islamic alien culture became “dissidents”, “revolutionaries” (WHEATCROFT, 2003).

Thus, as revolutionaries and dissidents, they were left to create a myth about their enemies to better base their resistance, using symbolic elements and propaganda; a “propaganda by the deed”, which would be the martyrdom. In this way, Muslims were usually portrayed as violent barbarians and adherents of a sexually degenerate religion. Not only, but comparisons between Christ and Muhammad were made tirelessly in Islamic Spain by some Christians, Jesus being someone who had preached peace, while Muhammad was a degenerate, incestuous person who taught how to take up in arms. Based on what was mentioned above about Christian assimilation and also the decay of the once dominant culture, Alvarus of Cordoba, a biographer from Eulogius said that:

My fellow Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the works of Mohammadan theologians and philosophers not in order to refute them, but to acquire correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin Commentaries on Holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the prophets, the Apostles? Alas, the young Christians who are most conspicuous for their talents have no knowledge of any literature or language save the Arabic … The pity of it! Christians have forgotten their own tongue, and scarce one in a thousand can be found to be able to compose in fair Latin to a friend.

As can be seen in the above report, the use of blasphemy against a dominant culture by a dominated one is an effective political weapon, and it is still used today. It provokes a violent view of the rising culture to frighten possible adherents, aiming to provoke the cultural longevity of the one in decay or to delay its decline.

NOTES

[1] Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

[2] There are, of course, contrary thesis, while others try to explain the reasons for such coexistence to have occurred in a more peaceful way than elsewhere in Europe;

[3] For an accused Christian to have his life spared in ancient Rome, he must deny Christ and offer sacrifice to the idols.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FLETCHER, Richard. Moorish Spain. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2015.

IHNAT, Kati. The Martyrs of Córdoba: Debates around a curious case of medieval martyrdom. History Compass. 2020.

KUNG, Hans. Islam: Past, Present and Future. Oneworld Publications. 2007.

MENOCAL, Maria Rosa. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. Back Bay Books. 2003.

ROPS, Daniel. A Igreja dos Apóstolos e dos Mártires. São Paulo: Quadrante, 1988.

WHEATCROFT, Andrew. Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam. Random House Publishing Group. 2003.