sions naturally made upon a heated fancy; and to put credit in tales which the distress of their situation prevented them from investigating, and their ignorance or credulity debarred from doubt. Hence, with the lives of the Fathers of the Church, they interwove prodigies of another land; and being further willing to address the prejudices of those they might hope to convert, adorned their martyrologies with fictitious incidents of oriental structure—even as, to conciliate the heathen, they introduced into their religious buildings the statues of pagan worship, dignifying them with novel names, and serving them with novel ceremonies. Not always, indeed, was this the process; nor the apotheosis always intentional. Succeeding times exhibited another mode of realizing fables, if I may so speak; and discovered another path to falsehood under the garb of truth. The monks were accustomed to exercise themselves with declaiming upon the merits of their patron saint. To give a new varnish to his fame, to excite yet more powerfully either the intellects or the devotion of the drowsy brotherhood, they added romantic fictions of their own; and invented familiar stories, derived from an infinite variety of sources. But because Eastern imaginations were more splendid and captivating—because Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre were in the East—because "an idle and lying horde of pilgrims and palmers" (as Mr. Dunlop expresses it) annually brought thither fresh subjects for credulity to feed upon, they were the most partial to oriental conceptions. The fables which they thus constructed were laid by, fairly transciibed, and beautifully illuminated; until, in due time, the monastery coffers were ransacked, and the gross and acknowledged inventions of earlier ascetics were imposed upon their later brethren, as the undoubted and veritable history of real Fathers and real saints.
It is well known that, in the earlier ages of Christianity, forged gospels were put forth in imitation of the true: while the tenets of the Persian magi were united with the doctrines of the Son of God.[1] If this prove nothing further, it proves the facility with which oriental dogmas were interwoven with those of the West. At a more advanced period, other legends written in Latin, and professing to be narratives of what actually occurred, were again transcribed, with manifold amplifications by those into whose hands the manuscripts might happen to fall. Metrical versions were then given; and their popularity soon induced the narrators to step oul of their immediate walk of martyrdom, to raise the standard of chivalry in the persons
- ↑ See Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. Cent. I. and III.
