Greater weight must be laid upon the independent evidence of the prophetical writings, and the objection that Palestine could not have produced the religious fervency of Haggai or Zechariah without an initial impulse from Babylonia begs the question.
The zeal of Ignatius (c. 115), who begs the Roman Church to do nothing to avert from him the martyr's death, was natural enough in a spiritual knight-errant, but with others in later days, especially in Phrygia and North Africa, the passion became artificial.
The begs and agas continued to exact their forced labour and one-third of their produce; the central government imposed a tithe which had become an eighth by 1875.
By the promise of loo million dinars to the expropriated Begs, he won over the Moslems of Bosnia, and by similar methods he detached the Slovene section of the newly founded Agricultural party (Zemljoradnici).
At the time he sent it to Grimald Walafrid had, as he himself tells us, hardly passed his eighteenth year, and he begs his correspondent to revise his verses, because, "as it is not lawful for a monk to hide anything from his abbot," he fears he may be beaten with deserved stripes.
