Much of this legendary rubbish was cleared away by Tillcmont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi, and Bollandus, but the faith in many of them still remains strong in the more ignorant minds of the Romish Church. The re- peated and still continued editions of the Acta /Sancto- rum (q. V.) afford sufficient evidence of this.
The most comprehensive and valuable work on the subject of the legends is that commenced by the Bollan- dists in the 17th century, /I cto Sanctorum, and still in process of publication. Legends are found not only in tlie IiLiman Catholic, but also in the Greek Church. They also found an entrance into the national literature of Christian nations. Among the Germans especially was this the case, particularly in the 12th century, al- though specimens of legendary poems are not altogether wanting at an earlier period. In Great Britain, also, the legends of Iving Arthur and his Round Table have sprung afresh into popular favor, after centuries of comparative obscurity, and have once more become the treasure-house from wliich poet and painter draw subjects for their pic- tures, and in which essayists, weary of the old heathen classics, seek for illustrations and allusions. The first of the recent poets, however, who clearly apprehended the poetic and spiritual elements of the old Christian legend was Herder, and his example has been followed by oth- er poets, for example, the romantic school in German}-, and IJiihver and Tennyson in England. The tendency to mytliic embellishment showed itself more particularly in regard to the Virgin Mary, the later saints, and holy men and women. Of all these, the most captivating, as an amiable weakness, was the devotion to the Virgin. The (ItMiial of the title "The Mother of God" bj- Nes- torins was that which sounded most offensive to the general ear; it was the intelligible, odious point in his heresy, and contributed, no doubt, to the passionate vio- lence with which that controversy was agitated ; and the favorable issue to those who might seem most zeal- ous for the Virgin's glory gave a strong impulse to the worsliip; for, from that time, the worship of tiie Virgin became in the East an integral part of Christianity. Among .Justinian's splendid edifices arose mqny church- es dedicated to the Alothcr of (Jod. The feast of the Annunciation was celebrated both under Justin and Jus- tinian. Heraclius had images of the Virgin on his masts when he sailed to Constantinople to overthrow Phocas;
and before the end of the century the Virgin is become the tutelar deity of that city, which is saved by her in- tercession from the Saracens. " The history of Chris- tianity," says dean Milman, "cannot be understood with- out pausing at stated periods to survey the progress and development of the Christian mythology, which, gradually growing up, and springing as it did from nat- ural anil universal instincts, took a more perfect and systematic form, and at length, at the height of the Mitldle Ages, was as much a part of Latin Christiani- tj' as the primal truths of the Gospel. This religion gradually moidded together all whicli arose out of the natural instincts of man, the undying reminiscences of all the older religions — the Jewish, the Pagan, and the Platonic — with the few and indistinct glimpses of the invisible world, and the future state of being in the New Testament, into a vast system, more sublime, perhaps, for its indefiniteness, which, being necessary in that condi- tion of mankind, could not but grow up out of the kin- dled imagination and religious faith of Christendom. The historian who should presume to condemn such a religion as a vast plan of fraud, or a philosopher who shoidd venture to disdain it as a fabric of folly only de- serving to be forgotten, would be equally unjust, equally blind to its real uses, assuredly ignorant of its importance and its significance in the history of man ; for on this, the popidar Christianity — popular, as comprehending the highest as well as the lowest in rank, and even in intellectual estimation — turns the whole history of man for many centuries. It is at once the cause and the con- sequence of the sacerd»tal dominion over mankind, the groundwork of authority at which the world trembled, which founded and overthrew kingdoms, bound togeth- er or set in antagonistic array nations, classes, ranks, orders of society. Of this, the parent, when the time ar- rived, of poetrj', of art, the Christian historian must watch the growth and mark the gradations by which it gathered into itself the whole activity of the human mind, and quickened that activity till at length the mind outgrew that which had been so long almost its sole oc- cupation. It endured till faith, with the schoolmen, led into the fathomless depths of metaphysics, began to aspire after higher truths; with the Reformers, attempt- ing to refine religion to its primary spiritual simplicity, this even yet prolific legendary Christianity, which had been the accessory and supplementary Bible, the author- itative and accepted, though often unwritten Gospel of centuries, was gradually dropped, or left but to the hum- blest and most ignorant, at least to the more imaginative and less practical part of mankind." "The influence that these works exerted on the medi;T>val mind," says Hardwick, "was deep and universal. Wliile they fed almost every stream of superstition, and excited an un- healthy craving for the marvellous and the romantic, they were nearly always tending, in their moral, to enlist the affections of the reader on the side of gentleness and virtue, more especially by setting forth the necessity of patience, and extolling the heroic energy of faith. One class of those biographies deserve a high amount of credit ; they are written by some friend or pupil of their subject; they are natural and life-like pictures of the times, preserving an instructive portrait of the mission- ar}-, the recluse, the bishop, or the man of business; yet most commonly the acts and sufferings of the mediaeval saint have no claim to a place in the sphere of history, or at best they have been so wantonly embellished by the fancy of the author that we can distinguish very few of the particles of truth from an interminable mass of fiction. As these ' Lives' were circulated freely in the language of the people, they would constitute important items in the fireside reading of the age; and so w^arm was the response they found in men of every grade, that, notwithstanding feeble efforts to reform them, or at least to eliminate a few of the more monstrous and abstu-d, they kept their hold on Christendom at large, and are subsisting even now in the creations of the medijeval artist" (Ch. Hist. Middle Ages),