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tents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fa- thers of that ace, whose simplicity was not infe- rior to their devotion, were so delighted with these powers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of the Buraculous composi- tions ; not imaffiniug that, at some distant pe- riod, they would become matteis of faith. Yet, when James de Voraigne, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Liva 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 as invaluable present to the world, hv laying before them these pious fictions with aU imaginable simplicity, and these are adorned by a number of cuts, the miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tillemont, Fleury, Baillet, Latmoi and Ibollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish ; the enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James de Voraigne 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 absttidlties. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved un- broken ; 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 apocrv- phal saints ; for instance, of a Saint Xtnons, whom he calls a martyr of Antioch ; but it ap- peals that Baronius having read in Chrysostum this yxrd, which signifies a couple at pair, be mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived to pve the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed ! The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh !
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 se- cond nuiss 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 chUd Jesus ; as the Evange- list 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 uom the Nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist ; but this g^eat interval of time passed with these saintly maidens as two hours would
Sipear to others. The abbess and her nuns were armed 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 chUd seated on a cushion between this pair of
- lo tbe yemr ISM, th« lewned ClMUto D'Bspcnee wu
otdised to mmke a paUic recanlatioa for cmlUng'ttae Lt' genda Auna, or OoMot Legatd, the Legenda Fema, or tbe IronLegCDil.
run-away nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray sheep, who saw this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs, who, with blushing countenances, inquired if^lhe second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devo- tees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus to that of St. John. The abbess asked alter the child who sat between them ; they solemnly de- clared that they saw no child between them, and presisted 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 the 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 the^ asseverated, they taw no child — that I confess is a little (child) too much. — If Israeli.
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 philosophers will not contemn these grotesque fictions.
The 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 imintuUion. St. Irancis disco- vered by certain experience that the devils were frightened away by such kind of breeches, but were animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers ; and one of their neroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies.
Another anecdote from the Golden Legend, of St. Macarius, which relates that it " happed on a tyme that he kylled a flee that bote him ; and whan he sawe the blode of this flee, he repented hym, and anoneunclothed hym, and wente naked in the deserle vi monethes, and suflred hymselfe to be byten of flyes." But the same authority exemplies tlie fact, that saints are not alike for- bearing; for the apostle of England, St. Austin, came to a certain town, inhabited by wicked people, who " refused hys doctryne and prech- yng uterly, and drove hym out of the towne, castyng on hym the tayles of thomback, or lyke fysshes ; where he besought Almyghty God to sliewe hys jugement on them ; and God sent to them a shamefull token ; for the chyldren that were born after in the place, had tayles, as it is sayd, lyll they had repented them. It is said comynly that this fyll at Strode in Kente ; but blyssed be Gode, at this daye is no such defor- myte."
A story from the English translation may en- tertain Uie reader. " Tnere was a man that had borrowed of a Jew a sum of money, and swore upon the altar of Saint Nicholas, that he would
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