Saints, During The Middle Ages.
A collection of the lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar has
been accomplished by the Jesuits, and is well known as that of the
Bollandists, from the name of its first originator Bollandus. It extends
to fifty-three huge folios, though it has reached only to the middle of
October,(69) each day having a number of saints assigned to it for
commemoration. It contains, among a mass of the greatest absurdities, a
good deal of valuable information relating to the history of the middle
ages, particularly in respect to the customs and prevailing ideas of that
period. A great, if not the greatest part of the saints whose lives are
described in that collection have never existed, except in the imagination
of their biographers; and the best proof of this is that the learned
Benedictine monk, Dom Ruinart, an intimate friend and collaborator of the
celebrated Mabillon, has reduced the acts of martyrs, whom he considers as
true, to one moderate quarto, though the same work contains a refutation
of the Protestant Dodwell, who maintained that the number of the primitive
martyrs had been greatly exaggerated by their historians.(70)
The Christian church was already, at an early period of her existence,
disturbed by a great number of forgeries, relating to the history and
doctrine of our Lord and his disciples;(71) but the spirit in which they
were written, so contrary to that of the true Gospel, and the gross
absurdities which they contain, were convincing proofs of the apocryphal
character of those writings, which, consequently, were rejected as such
from the canon of Scripture. If the church could not escape such abuses at
a time when she was not yet infected by Pagan ideas and practices, she
became still more exposed to them after the abovementioned corruptions,
and when, as has already been said, p. 20, the Christian society was
invaded by whole populations, who, notwithstanding their abjuration of
heathenism, were Pagans in their manners, their tastes, their prejudices,
and their ignorance. There were, moreover, very great difficulties in
obtaining authentic information about the lives of the martyrs. I have
said, p. 3, that their memory was usually preserved in the churches to
which they had belonged. This was, however, entirely a local affair, and
though the report of such events had undoubtedly circulated amongst other
Christian congregations, there was no general register of martyrs
preserved by the whole church, which had no central point of union. The
means of communication between various places were, moreover, at that time
very imperfect, and this difficulty was increased by the persecutions to
which the primitive churches were often exposed. These persecutions
dispersed many churches, destroying their registers and other documents
belonging to them, whilst even a much greater number of them experienced a
similar calamity from the barbarian nations who successively invaded the
Roman empire. The accounts of the sufferings and death of the martyrs
rest, therefore, with the exception of some comparatively few
well-authenticated cases, upon the authority of vague and uncertain
traditions. These traditions were generally collected and put in writing
only centuries after the time when the event to which they relate had, or
is supposed to have taken place. It was therefore no wonder that the
subjects of many such accounts are purely imaginary. The nature of the
generality of these legends, or lives of martyrs and other saints, may be
judged of best from the following opinion expressed on this subject by a
Roman Catholic clergyman of unsuspected orthodoxy:—
“What shall I say of those saints of whose life we don’t know either the
beginning or the progress,—of those saints to whom so many praises are
given, though nobody knows anything about their end? Who may pray to them
to intercede for him, when it is impossible to know what degree of credit
they enjoy with God? We shall be obliged, indeed, to consider the most
part of the acts of martyrs, which are now produced with so much
confidence, as so many fables, and reject them as nothing better than
romances. It is true that their lives are written, like that of St
Ovidius, St Felicissimus, and St Victor! But, O God! what lives! what
libels! lives deserving a place in the Index of the Prohibited Books,
since they are filled with falsehoods, vain conjectures, or, to say the
least, are ascribing to unknown and apocryphal saints the true acts of the
most illustrious martyrs. Such things cannot but bring about a great
confusion in the history of the church, not to say in religion itself. It
is in this manner that the actions of St Felicissimus, who is generally
believed to have been a deacon to St Sixtus, are ascribed to a new
Felicissimus; and the virtues of St Victor of Milan are now given to a new
Victor, who has been recently brought to Paris. As regards the life of St
Ovidius, is there anything in it more than words and words? and can we
find in it anything solid? This little book speaks of a leaden plate upon
which the senatorial dignity and the year of this saint’s martyrdom are
inscribed. Why is not this inscription given? Why is not at least the
precise date of his martyrdom named? It is said that St Ovidius suffered
towards the end of the second century; is this the manner of fixing the
year of his death? No, no; the ancients did not mark the time in such a
manner; they did not take an uncertain century for the certain epoch of a
year. I am much afraid that this inscription is by no means so authentic
as people wish to persuade us. But there was found in his grave a little
glass vessel; a palm is engraved upon his sepulchre; and his skull has the
appearance of being pierced with a lance. Well, these marks may prove that
St Ovidius was a martyr; but are they sufficient to establish the truth of
his life, such as it has been published?”(72)
I would, however, observe, that many writers of the lives of saints,
without excepting those who are considered legitimate, have rendered
themselves guilty of something worse than the plagiarism of which the
learned Mabillon complains in the passage given above. They may be accused
of having blasphemously parodied the Scriptures, and particularly the
Gospels, by ascribing many of the miracles recorded in the Bible to the
subjects of their biographies. M. Maury, the French savant whom I have
already quoted (p. 11), has traced a great number of miracles ascribed to
various saints, which are nothing but imitations of this kind. This
sacrilegious plagiarism is not confined to the middle ages, but has been
practised in modern times, as is evident from the two following miracles
ascribed to the celebrated Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier, who died in 1552.
It is said that during his residence in Japan a woman of his acquaintance
lost her daughter, after having sought in vain during her illness for St
Francis, who was absent on some journey. At his return the bereaved mother
fell at his feet, and said, weeping, like Martha to our Saviour, “Lord, if
thou hadst been here, my daughter had not died,”—(John xi. 21.) The saint,
moved by the entreaties of the mother, ordered her to open the grave of
her daughter, and restored her to life. Another time the same saint said
to a father whose daughter had died, in the same manner as Jesus Christ
said to the centurion whose servant was sick, “Go thy way; thy daughter is
healed.”(73)
Had these miracles been performed in our part of the world, they would
have converted crowds of Protestants, and thus greatly advanced the
principal object of the order to which St Francis Xavier belonged; but the
air of Europe seems to have been unfavourable for such wonderful
experiments, since the good saint was obliged to betake himself to Japan
in order successfully to perform them.
It is true that the legend writers make no attempt at concealing these
imitations, but, on the contrary, insist upon the likeness of the miracles
performed by their saint to those of our Saviour, as a proof of the high
degree of sanctity attained by the former. No saint, however, of the Roman
Catholic or Græco-Russian calendar had so many miracles ascribed to him,
particularly of the kind mentioned above, as St Francis of Assisi, the
celebrated founder of the mendicant monks, and who, considering the
immense influence which his disciples have exercised on the Catholic
world, was perhaps one of the most extraordinary characters which the
middle ages produced.
It has been frequently observed, that genius is akin to madness, and that
the partition by which the two are separated is so thin that it
occasionally becomes quite imperceptible. Such a condition of the human
mind has perhaps never been exemplified in a more striking manner than by
the life of this famous saint, which presents a strange mixture of the
noblest acts of charity and self-devotion, the wildest freaks of a madman,
and of genial conceptions worthy of the most eminent statesman and
philosopher. The best proof of his genius is the great influence which the
order instituted by him has exercised during several centuries in many
countries, and which even now has not yet lost its vitality. It must also
be admitted, that neither St Francis nor his disciples can be charged with
any of those atrocities by which the life of his contemporary St Dominic,
of bloody memory, the founder of the inquisition, and the preacher of the
crusade against the Albigenses, as well as the annals of his order, are
stained. Neither can it be denied that Francis, as well as his followers,
have on many occasions mitigated the barbarity of their age. His immense
popularity is, however, as I think, chiefly due to the circumstance that
his order, principally destined to act upon the lower classes, was
recruited from the most numerous and most ignorant part of the population;
and is it necessary to observe that the less men are educated, the more
they are prone to credulity and exaggeration? Much learning was not
required for the admission to this democratic order, and its ranks were
increased by the creation of a class whose members remained in the world,
binding themselves only to the observation of some devotional practices
and moral precepts. All this contributed to spread the order of St
Francis, to which both sexes are admitted, with a marvellous rapidity over
many countries; at the same time its members were extolling the virtues
and supposed miracles of their founder in the most exaggerated and often
ludicrous manner, of which the following anecdote may serve as a
specimen:—A Franciscan monk, who was one day preaching about the merits of
the founder of his order, began his sermon in the following manner: “Where
shall I place the great St Francis? Amongst the saints? This is not enough
for his merits. Amongst the angels? no, ’tis not enough. Amongst the
archangels? ’tis not enough. Amongst the seraphims? ’tis not enough.
Amongst the cherubims? ’tis not enough.” He was, however, on a sudden
released, by one of his hearers, from his perplexity about a proper
location for his saint, who, rising from his seat, said, “Reverend father,
as I see that you cannot find for St Francis a proper place in heaven, I
shall give up to him mine on this bench;” which having said, he left the
church.
The story does not say whether this good monk was satisfied with the place
so unexpectedly offered to his saint, or where he would have stopped
without this timely interruption; but we know, from many other cases, that
St Francis was compared by his disciples to our Saviour. Thus, in a work
published by the Father Bartholomeus of Pisa, and entitled “The Golden
Book of the Conformities of the Life of St Francis with that of Jesus
Christ,”(74) the author maintains that the birth of St Francis was
announced by prophets; that he had twelve disciples, one of whom, called
John Capella, was rejected by him, like Judas Iscariot by our Lord; that
he had been tempted by the devil, but without success; that he was
transfigured; that he had suffered the same passion as our Saviour, though
he never was subject to any persecution or ill-usage, but died quietly, in
1218, amidst his devoted admirers. Other writers pushed even farther the
blasphemous comparison, boasting that St Francis had performed many more
miracles than our Lord, because Christ changed water into wine but once,
whilst St Francis did it thrice; and that instead of the few miraculous
cures mentioned in the Gospels, St Francis and his disciples had opened
the eyes of more than a thousand blind, cured more than a thousand lame,
and restored to life more than a thousand dead.
The greatest miracle, however, that has ever been wrought by St Francis
has taken place in our own days, and its authenticity admits of no doubt
whatever. It is a life of this famous saint, published by M. Chavin de
Malan; and my readers may form an adequate idea of its contents by the
following extract from an admirable article in the “Edinburgh Review” for
July 1847:—“Though amongst the most passionate and uncompromising devotees
of the Church of Rome, M. Chavin de Malan also is in one sense a
Protestant. He protests against any exercise of human reason in examining
any dogma which that church inculcates, or any fact which she alleges. The
most merciless of her cruelties affect him with no indignation, the
silliest of her prodigies with no shame, the basest of her superstitions
with no contempt. Her veriest dotage is venerable in his eyes. Even the
atrocities of Innocent III. seem to this all-extolling eulogist but to
augment the triumph and the glories of his reign. If the soul of the
confessor of Simon de Montfort, retaining all the passions and all the
prejudices of that era, should transmigrate into a doctor of the Sorbonne,
conversant with the arts and literature of our own times, the result might
be the production of such an ecclesiastical history as that of which we
have here a specimen,—elaborate in research, glowing in style, vivid in
portraiture, utterly reckless and indiscriminate in belief, extravagant up
to the very verge of idolatry in applause, and familiar far beyond the
verge of indecorum with the most awful topics and objects of the Christian
faith.”—(Pp. 1, 2.)(75)
Now, I ask my reader whether the publication of such a work, in the year
of grace 1845, at Paris, is not a perfect miracle, and undoubtedly much
more genuine than all those which it describes?
We live indeed in an age of wonders, physical as well as moral, and
neither of them have escaped the all-powerful influence of the great
moving spring of our time, and the principal cause of its rapid
advance,—_i.e._, competition. England, which is foremost in many, and not
behind in any, inventions and discoveries of the day, has maintained her
rank, and even perhaps gone ahead, in the production of such moral
miracles as that of which I have given a specimen above. And, indeed, the
lives of the English saints, published in the years 1844 and 1845, in the
capital of this Protestant country, may fearlessly challenge a comparison
with the work of M. Chavin de Malan. They are, moreover, ascribed to a
clergyman of the Church of England, who, though he has since gone over to
Rome, was at that time receiving the wages of the Protestant Establishment
of this country as one of its servants and defenders.(76) The few
following extracts from this curious work will enable my readers to judge
whether I have over-estimated the capabilities of this work for a
successful competition with its French rival:—
“Many of these (legends) are so well fitted to illustrate certain
principles which should be borne in mind in considering mediæval miracles,
that they deserve some attention. Not that any thing here said is intended
to _prove_ that the stories of miracles, said to be wrought in the middle
ages, are true. Men will always believe or disbelieve their truth, in
proportion as they are disposed to admit or reject the antecedent
probability of the existence of a perpetual church, endowed with unfailing
divine powers. And the reason of this is plain. Ecclesiastical miracles
presuppose Catholic faith, just as Scripture miracles, and Scripture
itself, presuppose the existence of God. Men, therefore, who disbelieve
the faith, will of course disbelieve the story of the miracles, which, if
it is not appealed to as a proof of the faith, at least takes it for
granted. For instance, the real reason for rejecting the account of the
vision which appeared to St Waltheof in the holy Eucharist, must be
disbelief of the Catholic doctrine.”(77)
The miracle alluded to above, and which cannot be rejected without
disbelief in the Catholic doctrine, is as follows:—“On Christmas-day, when
the convent was celebrating the nativity of our Lord, as the friar was
elevating the host, in the blessed sacrifice of the mass, he saw in his
hand a child fairer than the children of men, having on his head a crown
of gold studded with jewels. His eyes beamed with light, and his face was
more radiant than the whitest snow; and so ineffably sweet was his
countenance, that the friar kissed the feet and the hands of the heavenly
child. After this the divine vision disappeared, and Waltheof found in his
hands the consecrated water.”(78)
The whole collection is full of similar stories, some of which are really
outrageous; as, for instance, that which it relates about St Augustine,
the great apostle of England.
This saint was, during his peregrinations about the country, received with
great honours in the north of England; “but,” says the work in question,
“very different from this are the accounts of his travels in Dorsetshire.
While there, we hear of his having come to one village, where he was
received with every species of insult. The wretched people, not content
with heaping abusive words upon the holy visitors, assailed them with
missiles, in which work, the place being probably a sea-port, the sellers
of fish are related to have been peculiarly active. Hands, too, were laid
upon the archbishop and his company. Finding all efforts useless, the
godly company shook the dust from their feet, and withdrew. The
inhabitants are said to have suffered the penalty of their impieties, even
to distant generations. All the children born from that time bore and
transmitted the traces of their parents’ sins in the shape of a loathsome
deformity.”(79)
The writer who relates this story had not the courage or the honesty of M.
Chavin de Malan to tell that the insult offered to the holy visitors
consisted in attaching tails of fish to their robes, and that the
loathsome deformity, with which the children of the perpetrators of that
insult were born during many generations, was a tail.
Absurd as this monkish story is, it is nevertheless characteristic of the
spirit of the sacerdotal pride and vindictiveness which would punish a
silly joke, by which the dignity of the priestly order was offended, with
a heavy calamity, entailed upon the innocent descendants of its
perpetrators through many generations; and yet the fables of this modern
mythology cannot be, according to our author, rejected _without disbelief
of the Catholic doctrine_. This is not, however, his personal opinion; and
he has only asserted, in a more decisive manner than it has been done for
a considerable time, a principle which the Roman Catholic Church cannot
disavow, though it may place her in an embarrassing position; and as an
illustration of this, I shall give the following anecdote:—
Under the reign of Frederic II., a Prussian soldier stole a costly
ornament from an image of the Virgin, which enjoyed a great reputation for
its miraculous powers. The theft being discovered, the culprit pleaded in
his defence that, having addressed a fervent prayer to the above-mentioned
image for help in his poverty, it gave him this ornament to relieve him
from his distress. This affair was reported to the king, who, being much
amused by the soldier’s device, required the Roman Catholic bishop in
whose diocese this theft was committed to give a positive opinion whether
the image in question could work miracles of this kind or not? The bishop
could not, without showing _disbelief in the Catholic doctrine_, deny the
possibility of the miracle, and was therefore obliged to give an
affirmative reply. The king, therefore, pardoned the soldier, on condition
of never accepting presents from this or any other image or saint
whatever.
The author of this essay, though a firm believer in the existence of God
and the truth of the Scriptures, has not the advantage of being inspired
with faith in the Catholic doctrine; he therefore will continue his
researches in the same manner as before.
Many legends originated from misunderstanding the emblematic character of
some pictures. Thus the celebrated Spanish lady saint and authoress, St
Theresa, was, on account of her eloquent and impassioned effusions of love
addressed to the Deity, painted by a Spanish artist having her heart
pierced with an arrow, in allusion to the words of the Psalmist, “For
thine arrows stick fast in me,” &c.—(Ps. xxxviii. 2.) She died quietly in
her convent towards the end of the sixteenth century, and though the
particulars of her life and death are generally known, there were some
legend writers who related that she died a martyr, pierced by an arrow. If
such confusion of ideas could happen in a time when literature and science
had made considerable progress, and when the art of printing was already
universally known, how much more frequently such things must have occurred
during the prevailing ignorance of the middle ages! And, indeed, there are
many wild legends which have originated from a similar source, and of
which the most celebrated is that of St Denis, which has been also related
of other saints. This martyr, supposed to have been beheaded, was
represented holding his head in his hand, as an emblem of the manner of
his death. The writer of his legend took this emblem for the
representation of a real fact, and loosening the reins of his imagination,
related that the saint, after having been beheaded, took up his head,
kissed it, and walked away with it.(80)
It is a general tendency of a gross and unenlightened mind to materialise
the most abstract and spiritual ideas, and then what is simply an allegory
becomes with him a reality. It was this tendency which, during the
mediæval ignorance, gave often a literal sense to what is only typical,
and it was carried so far that even the parables of our Lord were
constructed into real stories. Thus, Lazarus was a poor saint who lived in
great want, and was made after his death the patron of beggars and lepers.
The parable of the prodigal son has furnished materials for many a legend;
and to crown all these pious parodies, a monk has shown to the well-known
Eastern traveller Hasselquist, the very spot upon which the good Samaritan
assisted the wounded man, who had been left unheeded by the priest and the
Levite. Future rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, were also
represented in a grossly material manner, that gave rise to many absurd
legends, generally invented with the object of supporting the pretensions
of the church, to have the power of sending at pleasure the souls of the
departed to either of these places.(81)
I have already spoken of the effects which the solitary and ascetic life
of the early monks produced upon their imagination. The same thing took
place amongst the recluses of the convents, but particularly nunneries.
“The imaginations of women,” says a celebrated author whom I have already
quoted, “as their feelings are more keen and exquisite, are more
susceptible and ungovernable than those of men; more obnoxious to the
injurious influence of solitude; more easily won upon by the arts of
delusion, and inflamed by the contagion of the passions.” Hence we may
account for the rapidity with which in orphan houses, cloisters, and other
institutions, where numbers of the sex are intimately connected with each
other, the sickness, humour, habits, of one, if conspicuous and
distinguished, become those of all. I remember to have read in a medical
writer of considerable merit, that in a French convent of nuns, of more
than common magnitude, one of the sisters was seized with a strange
impulse to mew like a cat, in which singular propensity she was shortly
imitated by several other sisters, and finally, without a solitary
exception, by the whole convent, who all joined at regular periods in a
general mew that lasted several hours. The neighbourhood heard, with more
astonishment than edification, the daily return of this celestial
symphony, which was silenced, after many ineffectual measures, by
terrifying the modesty of the sex with the menace, that, on any future
repetition of their concert, a body of soldiers, pretended to be stationed
at the gates of the monastery, would be called in to inflict upon them a
discipline at once shameful and severe.
“Among all the epidemic fancies of the sex I have found upon record, none
equals that related by Cardan to have displayed itself in the fifteenth
century,—which forcibly illustrates what has been remarked of the
intuitive contagion by which fantastic affection is propagated among
women. A nun in a certain German convent was urged by an unaccountable
impulse to bite all her companions; and her strange caprice gradually
spread to others, till the whole body was infected by the same fury. Nor
did the evil confine itself within these limits: the report of this
strange mania travelled from one province to another, and every where
conveyed with it the infectious folly, from cloister to cloister, through
the German empire; from thence extending itself on each side to Holland
and Italy, the nuns at length worried one another from Rome to Amsterdam.
“Numberless instances might be quoted to demonstrate the force with which
the strangest and most wild propensities fasten themselves on the
imagination, and conquer and tyrannise over the will, when the soul is
debarred from a free intercourse with its species, and left too
uninterruptedly to its own unbridled musings. But those which we have
related may be sufficient to show the danger into which he runs who
delivers himself unconditionally to the custody of solitude, and does not
arm himself against its faithless hospitality. Shut up in a barren and
monotonous leisure, without studies to occupy curiosity, without objects
to amuse the senses, or to interest and to attract the affections to any
thing human, fancy will escape into the worlds of chimerical existence,
there to seek amusement and exercise. How fondly does it then embrace and
cherish angelical visions, or infernal phantoms, prodigies, or miracles!
or should its reveries take another direction, with what increasing
eagerness and confidence do its hopes hunt after the delusions of alchemy,
the fictions of philosophy, and the delirium of metaphysics! In cases
where the mind is less capacious, and its stores less copious, it will
attach itself to some absurd notion, the child of its languid and
exhausted powers; and bestowing its fondest confidence on this darling of
its dotage, will abandon reason and outrage common sense.”(82)
I have given this lengthened extract from Zimmerman, because I think it
satisfactorily explains those mystic _visions_ as well as _infernal
phantoms_, with which the mediæval legends and chronicles, generally
composed by monks, abound, and which are often unjustly ascribed to fraud
and wilful deception. Medical science, as well as all the branches of
natural philosophy, being then in a very imperfect condition, such
phenomena as those of nuns mewing like cats or biting like dogs, which are
mentioned by Zimmerman, were not explained as nervous diseases, but
ascribed to the possession of evil spirits; and I frankly confess that I
am by no means sure, that if cases like those mentioned above were to
happen in our enlightened age, there would not be found many good folks
ascribing them to a similar agency. It must be also remembered that, if
notwithstanding the extreme rapidity and regularity of communications in
our own time, reports of various events are often exaggerated and even
completely altered in passing from one place to another; how much more
must it have been the case during the time of such defective communication
as existed previous to the invention of printing and the introduction of
the post! It was therefore no wonder if occurrences of such an
extraordinary nature as those alluded to were immensely magnified by
report, and if it had, at least in many places, converted the mewing and
biting nuns into as many cats and dogs. It is, moreover, now generally
admitted that what is called mesmerism, but whose real nature science has
not yet explained, was known and practised during the middle ages, as well
as in remote antiquity, and that many thaumaturgic operations, described
by the mediæval legends, as well as by ancient writers, were produced by
means of this still mysterious agency.
I have dwelt perhaps too long on this subject, because I am afraid that
the observations relating to it are not confined to a distant period, but
may become but too often applicable to our own times. And, indeed, when we
reflect on the rapid increase of convents and nunneries, particularly in
this country, and that notwithstanding the present state of civilization
these establishments must be filled chiefly by individuals whose
imaginations are stronger than their reasoning powers, there can be little
doubt that they may again become the stage of those extraordinary
manifestations, the cause of which had been too exclusively ascribed to
mediæval darkness. It cannot be doubted, that designing individuals of
both sexes, possessed of superior talents and knowledge, but particularly
endowed with a strong will, may exercise not only an undue influence, but
even an absolute power over the inmates of the above-mentioned monastic
establishments; and that a skilful application of mesmerism may
efficiently promote such unlawful ends.
Many local superstitious remains of Paganism,—as, for instance, miraculous
powers ascribed to certain wells, stones, caverns,—stories about various
kinds of fairies, &c.—have furnished ample materials to the mediæval
legend writers, who arranged them according to their own views. They
generally retained the miraculous part of the story, frequently
embellishing it by their own additions, but substituting the agency of the
Christian saint, the hero of their tale, for that of the Pagan deity, to
whom it had originally been ascribed. It was thus that the localities
considered by the Pagans as possessed of some supernatural properties, and
resorted to by them on this account, were converted into places of
Christian pilgrimages, with the only difference that the Pagan _genius
loci_ was baptised with the name of a Christian saint, whose existence can
often be no more proved than that of his heathen predecessor. Many
hagiographers seem to have indulged their humour as much as their fancy in
composing these legends, which appears from such ludicrous stories as, for
instance, that of St Fechin, whose piety was so fervent that when he was
bathing in cold water it became almost boiling hot. This warm-hearted or
hot-headed saint is said to have belonged to the Emerald isle, though,
considering that his ardent piety was so very much like a manifestation of
the _perfervidum Scotorum ingenium_, in a somewhat exaggerated form, I am
much inclined to believe him a native of the north country. There are many
instances of such humorous miracles, but I shall quote only that of
Laurenthios, a famous Greek saint, and worker of miracles. Having one day
some business with the Patriarch of Constantinople, he was kept waiting in
the prelate’s ante-chamber, and feeling very warm he wanted to take off
his cloak. But as there was not any piece of furniture in the room, nor
even a peg on its walls, St Laurenthios, embarrassed what to do with his
cloak, threw it upon a ray of the sun, which was entering the room through
a hole in the shutter, and which immediately acquired the firmness of a
rope, so that the saint’s cloak remained hanging upon it. It must not,
however, be believed that the hot sun and fervid imagination of Greece
were absolutely requisite for the performance of such wonderful tricks;
for we have sufficient legendary evidence to prove that they were
successfully reproduced under the less brilliant sky of Germany and
France, because St Goar of Treves suspended his cap, and St Aicadrus,
abbot of Jumieges, his gloves upon the same piece of furniture that had
been used by St Laurenthios to hang his cloak, though probably,
considering that the sun is not so powerful in those countries as it is at
Constantinople, the western saints did not venture to try its rays with
such a heavy load, as had been successfully done by their eastern
colleague.
Some miracles were invented in order to inculcate implicit obedience to
the ecclesiastical authorities, which is considered by the Roman Catholic
Church as one of, if not the most important virtue to be practised by her
children. Thus it is related that when the Spanish Dominican monk, St
Vincent Ferrerius, celebrated for the great number of his miracles, was
one day walking along a street in Barcelona, a mason, falling from a high
roof, called for his assistance. The saint answered that he could not
perform a miracle without the permission of his superior, but that he
would go and ask for it. The mason remained, therefore, suspended in the
air until St Vincent, returning with the permission, got him safely down
on the ground.
It must be admitted, that many saints, whose lives are disfigured by
absurd stories of their miracles, were men of great piety, adorned with
the noblest virtues, and who gave proofs of the most exalted charity and
self-devotion. Unfortunately the honours of saintship have been often
bestowed upon such sanguinary monsters as St Dominic, whose shrine would
be the most appropriately placed in a temple where human sacrifices are
offered, or upon madmen who have outraged every feeling of humanity. Thus
it is related that St Alexius left his home on the day of his wedding,
and, having exchanged his clothes for the rags of a beggar, adopted his
mode of life. After some time, when his appearance had become so wretched
that he could no longer be recognised by his friends, he returned to his
parental house, asking for shelter. He obtained a place under the
staircase, and lived there by alms for seventeen years, continually
witnessing the distress and lamentations of his wife, mother, and aged
father about his loss, and was recognised only after his death by a book
of prayers which had been given him by his mother. And it was for this
unfeeling and even cruel treatment of his own family that he was
canonised! It is supposed, however, that all this story is but a fiction,
and, for the sake of humanity, I sincerely hope that it is so.
The limits of this essay allow me not farther to extend my researches
about the legends of mediæval saints, and their miracles; and I shall try
to give in my next chapter a short analysis of several practices which the
Roman Catholic as well as the Græco-Russian Church have retained from
Paganism.