(1848.)
This book was begun six years ago, in 1842. It has since been often
laid aside, and again resumed. In this long interval, many useful and
delightful works have been written on the same subject, but still
the particular ground I had chosen remained unoccupied; and, amid
many difficulties, and the consciousness of many deficiencies, I was
encouraged to proceed, partly by the pleasure I took in a task so
congenial—partly by the conviction that such a work has long been
wanted by those who are not contented with a mere manual of reference,
or a mere catalogue of names. This book is intended not only to be
consulted, but to be read—if it be found worth reading. It has been
written for those who are, like myself, unlearned; yet less, certainly,
with the idea of instructing, than from a wish to share with others
those pleasurable associations, those ever new and ever various aspects
of character and sentiment, as exhibited in Art, which have been a
source of such vivid enjoyment to myself.
This is the utmost limit of my ambition; and, knowing that I cannot
escape criticism, I am at least anxious that there should be no mistake
as to purpose and intention. I hope it will be clearly understood that
I have taken throughout the æsthetic and not the religious view of
those productions of Art which, in as far as they are informed with a
true and earnest feeling, and steeped in that beauty which emanates
from genius inspired by faith, may cease to be Religion, but cannot
cease to be Poetry; and as poetry only I have considered them.
The difficulty of selection and compression has been the greatest of
all my difficulties; there is not a chapter in this book which might
not have been more easily extended to a volume than compressed into a
few pages. Every reader, however, who is interested in the subject,
may supply the omissions, follow out the suggestions, and enjoy the
pleasure of discovering new exceptions, new analogies, for himself.
With regard to the arrangement, I am afraid it will be found liable
to objections; but it is the best that, after long consideration and
many changes, I could fix upon. It is not formal, nor technical, like
that of a catalogue or a calendar, but intended to lead the fancy
naturally from subject to subject as one opened upon another, with
just sufficient order to keep the mind unperplexed and the attention
unfatigued amid a great diversity of objects, scenes, stories, and
characters.
The authorities for the legends have been the _Legenda Aurea_ of
Voragine, in the old French and English translations; the _Flos
Sanctorum_ of Ribadeneira, in the old French translation; the _Perfetto
Legendario_, editions of Rome and Venice; the _Legende delle Sante
Vergini_, Florence and Venice; the large work of Baillet, _Les Vies
des Saints_, in thirty-two volumes, most useful for the historical
authorities; and Alban Butler’s _Lives of the Saints_. All these have
been consulted for such particulars of circumstance and character as
might illustrate the various representations, and then compressed into
a narrative as clear as I could render it. Where one authority only has
been followed, it is usually placed in the margin.
The First Part contains the legends of the scriptural personages and
the primitive fathers.
The Second Part contains those sainted personages who lived, or are
supposed to have lived, in the first ages of Christianity, and whose
real history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so disguised by
poetical embroidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal
beings. As I could not undertake to go through the whole calendar,
nor yet to make my book a catalogue of pictures and statues, I have
confined myself to the saints most interesting and important, and (with
very few exceptions) to those works of Art of which I could speak from
my own knowledge.
The legends of the monastic orders, and the history of the Franciscans
and Dominicans, considered merely in their connexion with the revival
and development of the Fine Arts in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, open so wide a range of speculation,—the characteristics of
these religious enthusiasts of both sexes are so full of interest and
beauty as artistic conceptions, and as psychological and philosophical
studies so extraordinary, that I could not, in conscience, compress
them into a few pages: they form a volume complete in itself, entitled
‘Legends of the Monastic Orders.’
The little sketches and woodcuts are trifling as illustrations, and
can only assist the memory and the fancy of the reader but I regret
this the less, inasmuch as those who take an interest in the subject
can easily illustrate the book for themselves. To collect a portfolio
of prints, including those works of art which are cited under each
head as examples, with a selection from the hundreds of others which
are not cited, and arrange them in the same order—with reference, not
to schools, or styles, or dates, but to subject merely—would be an
amusing, and I think not a profitless, occupation. It could not be
done in the right spirit without leading the mind far beyond the mere
pleasure of comparison and criticism, to ‘thoughts more elevate and
reasonings high’ of things celestial and terrestrial, as shadowed forth
in form by the wit and the hand of man.
[Illustration: An Angel]