men) about him, and increasing his influence by marrying the daughters of Arab chiefs. In 1881 he proclaimed himself Mahdi, preaching universal equality, law, and religion, community of goods, and a "Holy War" against the Infidels. The oppressed Soudanese flocked to his standard; his emissaries were everywhere busy; his proclamations thrilled the Moslem world; his victories inflicted great loss upon Egypt and upon her British allies. A man of genius and of rare force and fervor, his name will live in the annals of the nineteeth century.
Note 6, page 32.
"In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Callixtus, he has inserted a description of the person of Mary which he declares to have been given by Epiphanius, who lived in the fourth century, and by him derived from a more ancient source. 'She was of middle stature; her face oval; her eyes brilliant and of an olive tint; . . . her complexion fair as wheat.'"
"The Empress Eudocia, when traveling in the Holy Land, sent home a picture of the Virgin holding the Child to her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who placed it in a church at Constantinople. It was at that time regarded as of very high antiquity, and was afterwards attributed to St. Luke. It is certain that a picture, traditionally said to be the same, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much venerated by the people that it was regarded as a sort of palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host when the emperor led the army in person. This relic is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged through the mire, but others deny this. . . . According to the Venetian legend it was taken by the blind old Dandolo when he besieged and took Constantinople in 1204, and brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been preserved, in the Church of St. Mark."—Mrs. Jameson's "Legends of the Madonna."
