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| The Saracens, under Mavia their Queen, embrace Christianity; and Moses, a Pious Monk, is consecrated their Bishop.
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Chapter XXXVI.—The
Saracens, under Mavia their Queen, embrace Christianity; and Moses, a
Pious Monk, is consecrated their Bishop.
No sooner had the emperor
departed from Antioch, than the Saracens,674
| 674The name Saracen (Σαρακηνός ,
perhaps from the Arabic Sharkeen ‘Orientals’) was
used vaguely at first; the Greek writers of the first centuries gave it
to the Bedouin Arabs of Eastern Arabia, while others used it to
designate the Arab races of Syria and Palestine, and others the Berber
of North Eastern Africa, who later conquered Spain and Sicily and
invaded France. The name became very familiar in Europe during the
period of the Crusades. On Saracens, consult the interesting fiftieth
chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.
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who had before been in alliance with the Romans, revolted from them,
being led by Mavia their queen, whose husband was then dead. All the
regions of the East therefore were at that time ravaged by the
Saracens: but a certain divine Providence repressed their fury in the
manner I am about to describe. A person named Moses, a Saracen by
birth, who led a monastic life in the desert, became exceedingly
eminent for his piety, faith, and miracles. Mavia the queen of the
Saracens was therefore desirous that this person should be constituted
bishop over her nation, and promised on the condition to terminate the
war. The Roman generals considering that a peace founded on such terms
would be extremely advantageous, gave immediate directions for its
ratification. Moses was accordingly seized, and brought from the desert
to Alexandria, in order that he might there be invested with the
bishopric: but on his presentation for that purpose to Lucius, who at
that time presided over the churches in that city, he refused to be
ordained by him, protesting against it in these words: ‘I account
myself indeed unworthy of the sacred office; but if the exigencies of
the state require my bearing it, it shall not be by Lucius laying his
hand on me, for it has been filled with blood.’ When Lucius told
him that it was his duty to learn from him the principles of religion,
and not to utter reproachful language, Moses replied, ‘Matters of
faith are not now in question: but your infamous practices against the
brethren sufficiently prove that your doctrines are not Christian. For
a Christian is “no striker, reviles not, does not fight”;
for “it becomes not a servant of the Lord to fight.”675
But your deeds cry out against you by those who have been sent into
exile, who have been exposed to the wild beasts, and who had been
delivered up to the flames. Those things which our own eyes have beheld
are far more convincing than what we receive from the report of
another.’ As Moses expressed these and other similar sentiments
his friends took him to the mountains, that he might receive ordination
from those bishops who lived in exile there. Moses having thus been
consecrated, the Saracen war was terminated; and so scrupulously did
Mavia observe the peace thus entered into with the Romans that she gave
her daughter in marriage to Victor the commander-in-chief of the Roman
army. Such were the transactions in relation to the Saracens.
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