18 THE DECLINE AND FALL
and his valiant race. It might have been expected that the saviour of Christendom would have been canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy, who are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in the public distress the mayor of the palace had been compelled to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned ; that on the opening of his tomb the spectators were affrighted by a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon ; and that a saint of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of hell.
The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was less painful to the court of Damascus than the rise and progress of a domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs of the house of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public favour. The life of Mahomet recorded their perseverance in idolatry and rebellion ; their conversion had been reluctant, their elevation irregular and factious, and their throne was cemented with the most holy and noble blood of Arabia. The best of their race, the pious Omar was dissatisfied with his own title : their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure from the order of succession ; and the eyes and wishes of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem and the kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either rash or pusillanimous ; but the descendants of Abbas cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes ot their rising fortunes. From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly dispatched their agents and missionaries, who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible right ; and Mo-
•^ Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered by Pepin, the son oi Charles Martel, A.D. 755 (Pagi, Critica, torn. iii. p. 300). Thirty-seven years afterwards it was pillaged by a sudden inroad of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the construction of the mosque of Cordova (de Guignes, Hist, des Huns, tom. i. p. 354). ■^This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheinis and Rouen (Baronius, Anna). Eccles. ..D. 741 ; F'leury, Hist. Eccl^s. torn. x. p. 514- 516). Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics^ reject with contempt this episcopal fiction.
