Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/244

226 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. and impress the mind, the first accounts relate to facts most vitally affecting those concerned. Whatever lies beyond the central story may be actually forgotten, leaving a fair field for the imaginations of succeeding generations. The four canonical Gospels were properly a emyyeXiov, a good tidings, the announcement and account of the salvation offered to man through Christ. It was left to the affectionate and creative curiosity of the next decades and centuries to supplement the facts of the Gospel story with matter satisfactory to the imagination. Thus the apocryphal Acts fill out the details of the careers of the apostles, regarding whom the Church preserved the scantiest informa- tion; and the apocryphal Gospels represent the ex- pansion of tradition, or rather the growth of legend, concerning the portions of Christ's life in regard to which the Four Gospels are silent.^ There was also need to construct a story of Mary's parentage, child- hood, and decease, comporting with the divine dignity of the Blessed Virgin. The Christian apocrypha tells the story of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, a story sug- gested by narratives of hardly hoped for children, late-bom to Sarah in the Old Testament and to Elizabeth in the New, monkish ascetic fancy adding some curious features. It also tells of Mary's girl- 1 Such a writing as the Gospel of Peter does not come in this general category. That contained topics covered by the Four Gos- pels, and, with knowledge of their narrative, changed the same to accord with Docetic doctrines. It was written with the purpose not to supplement, but to modify, the canonical accounts; and the ex- tant fragment preserves the distinctly Docetic characteristics of the writing.