Note 31 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 2)

(p. 18). The fear of his vessels kept in security ... the merchants who traded between East and West.—This important detail has not been noticed sufficiently in lives of D. Henry. If Azurara really means that the Infant's fleet preserved the coasts of Spain from all fear of the piracy which then, as later, endangered the commerce of the Western Mediterranean, we can only regret that no further details have come down to us about this point. For such a task the Prince must have maintained a pretty large navy: though it is noticeable that piracy seems to have been worse on the so-called Christian side in the mediæval period; and not till after the fifteenth century, and the establishment of Turkish suzerainty, was it as bad on the Moslem side (see Mas Latrie, Relations de l'Afrique Septentrionale avec les Chrétiens au Moyen Age, passim, and especially pp. 4, 5, 61-2, 117, 128-30, 161-208, 340-5, 453, 469, 534). The forbearance of the Barbary States with Christian freebooting from the eleventh century to the sixteenth, their tolerance of Christian colonies in their midst, and the special favours constantly shown to individual Christians, would surprise those who think only of Algerine, Tunisian, or Maroccan piracy and "Salee rovers." Roger II of Sicily is a striking exception to this disgraceful rule. In the earlier Middle Ages, some of the Christian Republics of Italy even joined Moslems in slave-raiding upon other Christians (see Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 203-4).