470 HISTORY OF GREECE. the conditions of historical proof, but for the purpose of callin forth sympathy, emotion, or reverence. The type of the saintly character belongs to Christianity, being the history of Jesui Christ as described in the gospels, and that of the prophets in the Old Testament ; whilst the lives of holy men, who acquired a religious reputation from the fourth to the fourteenth century of the Christian rcra, were invested with attributes, and illustrated with ample details, tending to assimilate them to this revered model. The numerous miracles, the cure of diseases, the expul- sion of daemons, the temptations and sufferings, the teachings and commands, with which the biography of Catholic saints abounds, grew chiefly out of this pious feeling, common to the writer and to his readers. Many of the other incidents, recounted in the same performances, take their rise from misinterpreted al- legories, from ceremonies and customs of which it was pleasing to find a consecrated origin, or from the disposition to convert the etymology of a name into matter of history : many have also been suggested by local peculiarities, and by the desire of stimulating or justifying the devotional emotions of pilgrims who visited some consecrated chapel or image. The dove was connected, in the faith of the age, with the Holy Ghost, the serpent with Satan ; lions, wolves, stags, unicorns, etc. were the subjects of other em- blematic associations ; and such modes of belief found expression for themselves in many narratives which brought the saints into conflict or conjoint action with these various animals. Legends of this kind, so indefinitely multiplied and so preeminently pop- ular and affecting, in the Middle Ages, are not exaggerations of particular matters of fact, but emanations in detail of some cur- rent faith or feeling, which they served to satisfy, and by which they were in turn amply sustained and accredited. 1 1 The legends of the Saints have been touched upon by M. Guizot (Cours d'Histoire Modcrne, le<;on xvii.) and by M. Ampere (Histoirc'Littcraire de la France, t. ii. cap. 14, 15, 16) ; but a far more copious and elaborate account of them, coupled with much just criticism, is to be found in the valuable Essai sur les Le'gendes Pieuses du Moycn Age, par L. F. Alfred Maurr, Paris, 1843. M. Guizot scarcely adverts at all to the more or less of matter of fact con tained in these biographies : he regards them altogether as they grew out of
- nd answered to the predominant emotions and mental exigences of the age :
' Au milieu d'un celuge de faMcs absurdes, la morale delate avcc un grno^
