IMany of these legends, the production of monastics, were invented, especially in the Middle Ages, with a view to sers-c the interests of monasticism, particularly to exalt the character of the monastic orders, and to represent their voluntary austerities as purchasing the peculiar fjxvor of heaven. For this purpose they un- scrupulously ascribe to their patrons and founders the power of working miracles on the most trifiing occa- sions. Many of these miracles are blasphemous paro-
dies on those of our blessed Lord; not a few are bor- rowed from the pagan mythology ; but some are so ex- quisitely absurd that no one but a monk coulil have dreamed of imposing such nonsense on the most besotted of mankind. " It would be easy to accumulate proofs of the ready belief which the lower orders of Irish Ro- manists give to tales of miracles worked by their priests; but it is remarkable that in the earlier legends we very rarely find supernatural po\vers attributed to the secular ecclesiastics ; the heroes of most of the tales are monks and hermits, whose voluntary poverty seemed to bring them down to a level of sympathy with the lower or- ders. Indiscriminate alms, which have often been dem- onstrated to be the source of great evils, are always pop- ular with the uninstructed, and hence we find that many of the heroes of the legends are celebrated for the prod- igahty of their benevolence. .The miracles attributed to the Irish saints are even more extravagant than those in the Continental martyrologies. We find St. Patrick performing the miracle of raising the dead to life no less than seventeen times, and on one occasion he restores animation to thirty-four persons at once. Gerald, bish- op of Mayo, however, surpassed St. Patrick, for he not onlj' resuscitated the dead daughter of the king of Con- naught, but miraculously changed her sex, that she might inherit the crown of the province, in which the Salic law was then established. We find, also, in the ecclesiastical writers, many miracles specially worked to support individual doctrines, particularly the mystery of transubstantiation. Indeed, a miracle appears to have been no unusual resource of a puzzled controversialist. On one occasion the sanctitj' of the wafer is stated to have been proved by a mule's kneeling to worship it; at another time a pet lamb kneels down at the elevation of the host ; a spider, which St. Francis d'Ariano acci- dentally swallowed while receiving the sacrament, came out of his thigh ; and when St. Elmo Avas pining at be- ing too long excluded from a participation in the sacra- mental mysteries, the holy elements were bro; ^ht to him by a pigeon. But the principal legends devised for the general exaltation of the Eomish Church refer to the exercise of power over the devil. In the south of Ireland nothing is more common than to hear of Satan's appearance in proper person, his resistance to all the ef- forts of the Protestant minister, and his prompt obedi- ence to the exorcisms of the parish priest. In general, the localities of the stories are laid at some neighboring village ; yet, easy as this renders refutation, it is won- derful to find how generally such a tale is credited. From the archives of the Silesian Church, we find that some German Protestants seem to believe in the exor- cising powers of the Eomish priests. Next to the le- gends of miracles rank those of extraordinary austeri- ties, such as that St. Polycronus always took up a huge tree on his shoulders when he went to pray; that St. Barnadatus shut himself up in a narrow iron cage ; that St. Adhelm exposed himself to the most stimiUating temptations, and then defied the devil to make him yield; and that St. IMacarius undertook a penance for sin six months, because he had so far yielded to passion as to kill a tlca. It is unnecessarj' to dwell ujion tlnrse, because they are manifestly derived from the habits of the Oriental fanatics, and are evident exaggerations made without taste or judgment. See History of Pop- erij (Loud. 1838, 8 vo).
The most celebrated of these popular medi.fval fi'c^ tions is the Legemla Avrea, or Golden Legend, origi- nally written in Latin, in the 13th centurj-, by Jacob de Voragine (q. v.), a Dominican friar, who afterwards be- came archbishop of Genoa, and died in 1298. This work was the great text-book of legendary- lore cf the Mid- dle Ages. It was translated into French in the 14th century by Jean de Vigny, and in the 15th into Eng- lish by William Caxton, " It has lately been made more accessible by a new French translation : La Legende Doree, traduite dn Latin, par jM. G. B. (Par. 1850). There is a copy of the original, with the Gesta Longobardoruvi
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LEGEND
appendetl, in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, {)riiitL'd at Strasbiirg in 1-1'JG. Longt'ellow, in a note to his beautiful poem, says, " I have called this poem the (ioldeii Legend, because the story upon which it is foundetl seems to me to surpass all other legends in beau- tv and significance. It exhibits, amid the corruptions of the ^Middle Ages, the virtue of disinterestedness and selt-sacritice, and the power of Faith, Hope, and Charity sutlicient for all the exigencies of life and death." The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der Aue, a Minnesinger of the I'ith century. The orig- inal may be found in IMarlath's Alt-deiUsche Gtdichte, with a modern Cierman version. There is another in Marbach's Volksbucher, No. 3"2. We may mention also, among other productions, the Kaiserchronik (Imperial Chronicle), where the legendary element forms a very important part of the whole, and Werner's versified Marienlehen (Life of Mary), written in 1173, etc. The authors of these works were ecclesiastics, but in the fol- lowing age, when the mediasval poetry of Germany was in its richest bloom, and the fosterers of the poetic art were emperors and princes, the legend was employed by laymen on a grand scale, and formed the subject-matter of ejiic narratives. Thus Hartmann von der Aue work- ed up into a poem the religious legends about Gregory; Konrad von Fussesbrunnen those concerning the child- hood of .Jesus ; liudolph von Ems those about Barlaam and Josaphat ; and liimbat von Durne those about St. George. Letween the 14th and 16th centuries legends in prose began also to appear, such as Hermann von Fritz- lar's ]'oii (kni Ileilir/en Leben (written about 1343), and gradually supplanted the others.