Those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends are said to have
originated in the following circumstance.
Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools
were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the
life of some saint for a trial of their talent at _amplification_. The
students, at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these
wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to
collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the
miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their
own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was
not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of
rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these
miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period,
they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voragine, Peter
Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought
for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries; and, awakening
from the dust these manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an
invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous
absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all
imaginable simplicity, and as these are adorned by a number of cuts, the
miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tillemont, Fleury,
Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish; the
enviable title of _Golden Legend_, by which James de Voragine called his
work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly describe its
character.
When the world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks
gave a graver turn to their narratives; and became penurious of their
absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition
has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were
lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came
down in a most imperfect state.
Baronius has given the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of
a Saint _Xinoris_, whom he calls a martyr of Antioch; but it appears
that Baronius having read in Chrysostom this _word_, which signifies a
_couple_ or _pair_, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived
to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed![39]
The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it
is only fools who laugh! As a specimen of the happier inventions, one
is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon--
"Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to
distinguish the memorable fable of the _Seven Sleepers_; whose imaginary
date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the
conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the Emperor Decius persecuted
the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a
spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were
doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should
be firmly secured with a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a
deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the
powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years.
At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance
of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials
for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern,
and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they
thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and
resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to
the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if
we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recognise the once
familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by
the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal
gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the
baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin
of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure,
was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the
amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since
Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a Pagan tyrant.
The Bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it
is said, the Emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of
the Seven Sleepers; who bestowed their benediction, related their story,
and at the same instant peaceably expired.
"This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs
of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a _divine revelation_, into the
Koran."--The same story has been adopted and adorned by the nations,
from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.
The too curious reader may perhaps require other specimens of the more
unlucky inventions of this "Golden Legend;" as characteristic of a
certain class of minds, the philosopher will contemn these grotesque
fictions.
These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint's
filthiness. St. Ignatius, say they, delighted to appear abroad with old
dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but let his hair clot; and
religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such
piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches; which,
after his death, were hung up in public as an _incentive to imitation_.
St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devils were
frightened away by such kinds of breeches, but were animated by clean
clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes
declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this they
tell a story which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy.
Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious, on this principle;
indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a
brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile
of the monastery, provided the wind was at the due point. Once, when the
blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of
the honour of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of
St. Francis, provided an excellent bed, and the finest sheets. Brother
Juniper abhorred such luxury. And this too evidently appeared after his
sudden departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great
Juniper did this, says his biographer, having told us what he did, not
so much from his habitual inclinations, for which he was so justly
celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to
mortify worldly pride, and to show how a true saint despised clean
sheets.
In the life of St. Francis we find, among other grotesque miracles, that
he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense
audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out
their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a
holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds
in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during
the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so
companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to
babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their
sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual
of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the
wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint,
followed him through towns, and became half a Christian.
This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this
world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar
having placed in a window some money collected at the altar, he desired
him to take it in his mouth, and throw it on the dung of an ass! St.
Philip Nerius was such a _lover of poverty_, that he frequently prayed
that God would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny,
and find nobody that would give him one!
But St. Macaire was so shocked at having _killed a louse_, that he
endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a
forest. A circumstance which seems to have reached Molière, who gives
this stroke to the character of his Tartuffe:--
Il s'impute à péché la moindre bagatelle;
Jusques-là qu'il se vint, l'autre jour, s'accuser
D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa prière,
Et de l'avoir tuée avec trop de colère!
I give a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. The night of
the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they both retired into a
solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked
the other, "Why do you want two cushions, when I have only one?" The
other replied, "I would place it between us, for the child Jesus; as the
Evangelist says, where there are two or three persons assembled I am in
the midst of them."--This being done, they sat down, feeling a most
lively pleasure at their fancy; and there they remained, from the
Nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist; but this great interval
of time passed with these saintly maidens as two hours would appear to
others. The abbess and nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one
could give any account of them. In the eve of St. John, a cowherd,
passing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cushion between
this pair of runaway nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these
stray sheep; she came and beheld this lovely child playfully seated
between these nymphs; they, with blushing countenances, inquired if the
second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to
find our young devotees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus to
that of St. John. The abbess inquired about the child who sat between
them; they solemnly declared they saw no child between them! and
persisted in their story!
Such is one of these miracles of "the Golden Legend," which a wicked wit
might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The
two nuns might be missing between the Nativities, and be found at last
with a child seated between them.--They might not choose to account
either for their absence or their child--the only touch of miracle is
that, they asseverated, they _saw no child_--that I confess is a _little
(child) too much_.
The lives of the saints by Alban Butler is the most sensible history of
these legends; Ribadeneira's lives of the saints exhibit more of the
legendary spirit, for wanting judgment and not faith, he is more
voluminous in his details. The antiquary may collect much curious
philosophical information, concerning the manners of the times, from
these singular narratives.