five poems in the French language, although written in England, "dealing with the lives or the miracles of about fifty different saints or biblical characters." During the same period the writing of Latin legends was carried on with equal zeal. "At the end of the eleventh century the fluent GOSCELIN was perhaps the best known writer of Saints Lives in England. He prepared Legends of Augustine of Canterbury, of St. Swithin, St. Werburgh, of Mildred of Kent, Edith and Ives, "all of which enjoyed great and lasting renown."

The immense popularity of Saints Legends in the thirteenth century was due in large measure to JACOB of Voragine, 1230-1298, who issued a generous selection in The Lombardic History, or Legends of the Saints, a work universally known as The Golden Legend. It mirrors every aspect of the age-its mental conceits, childish superstitions, delight in the miraculous, theological pedantry, and literary taste. It represented the thirteenth century in the same way that The Ecclesiastical History of EUSEBIUS represented the fourth, and The Glory of the Martyrs by GREGORY of Tours, the sixth. "These three great collections mark well defined stages in the history of the legend, and each is worthy of praise according to its kind."s

Another excellent example of the work of the hagiographers is found in the writings of GONZALO de Berceo, 1198-1268, the first poet of Castile whose name reaches us. Nine of his poems and three of his Hymns survive. The subjects of the poems are, The Life of St. Oria, Virgin, The History of Senor St. Millan of Cogalla, The Life of St. Dominic of Silas, The Sacrifice of the Mass, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, The Praises of Our Lady, Signs visible before the Judgment, The Miracles of Our Lady, The Virgin's Lament on the Day of the Passion of Her Son Jesus Christ.

7 Gordon Hall Gerould, Saints Legends, pp. 131, 134-136, 140. 8 Ibid., p. 54.

"He was not

a great poet. But in his own way he was, if not an inventor, the chief of a school, and the necessary predecessor of such devout authors as LUIS DE LEON and ST. TERESA.'

Hookham Frere translated parts of the Life of St. Millan.

He walked those mountains wild, and lived within that nook

For forty years and more, nor ever comfort took

Of offer'd food or alms, or human speech or look;

No other saint in Spain did such a penance brook.

For many a painful year he passed the seasons there,
And many a night consumed in penitence and prayer-
In solitude and cold, with want and evil fare,

His thoughts to God resigned, and free from human care.

Oh! sacred is the place, the fountain and the hill
The rocks where he reposed, in meditation still
The solitary shades through which he roved at will:
His presence all that place with sanctity did fill.

About 1340 the industrious compiler JOHN of Tynemouth published a great collection entitled The Legends of the Saints of England, which was "the most complete collection of the lives of saints in any way connected with Great Britain and Ireland that had ever been attempted." The latter part of the fourteenth century saw the beginning of the most brilliant period of the work of English hagiographers. This period, which ended at the middle of the fifteenth century saw the production of CHAUCER'S Second Nun's Tale, the Christina of WILLIAM PARIS, the Vision of TUNDALE, the Life of St. Cuthbert, in verse, St. Robert of Knaresborough, and St. Alexis.

JOHN LYDGATE, 1370-1451, the most celebrated English legend writer of the fifteenth century, "is characteristically mediaeval-mediaeval in his prolixity, his platitude, his want of judgment and his want of taste; mediaeval also in his pessimism, his Mariolatry and his horror of death." His 9 J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Spanish Literature, p. 59.

most important Legend is The Life of Our Lady, 1410; other similar poems are St. George, St. Margaret, St. Edmund, St. Alban, 1439, and The Miracles of St. Edmund, 1444.

The Legends of the Saints gradually gave place to more dramatic works which soon escaped from the control of the Church. Religious festivals offered opportunities for the making of a Christian drama, for which biblical characters and lives of saints supplied the subjects, until, in the natural course of development, secular themes claimed notice, the plots became more elaborate, and the regular drama came to its own.

CHAPTER XXV

SCHOLASTICISM

The supreme aim of Christian thought during the mediaeval period was the effort to build a rational system of Catholic theology that should satisfy the demands of the intellect and at the same time be loyal to the traditions of the Church.

ANSELM, 1033-1109, marks the beginning of Scholasticism proper, although he had several heralds and forerunners. His working principle, "I believe in order that I may know," was as valuable as its counterpart, "I would know in order that I may believe." All his work bears witness to the sincerity of his religious life. His books were not "hard dogmatical treatises written in cold blood, to build up a system or to vanquish opponents. They were actual guides to the doubter; attempts, often made with much reluctant modesty, to untie knots which worthy men found to be interfering with their peace and with their practice."'1

His Sermons are certainly inferior to his theological writings; they are remarkable neither for eloquence nor for originality of thought. On Matthew xiv. 22, he says:

In this lection, according to its mystical interpretation, we have a summary description of the state of the Church from the coming of the Saviour to the end of the world. For the Lord constrained his disciples to get into a ship when he committed the church to the government of the apostles and their followers; and thus to go on before him unto the other side, that is, 1 Frederick Denison Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy (1870), p. 97.

to bear onward towards the haven of the celestial country, before he himself should entirely depart from this world.

It was by his theological and philosophical works that he won his place as "the Augustine of his age." At Bec he wrote three Dialogues on the ideas of Truth, Free Will, and Sin. In 1070 he met one of the problems of the day with The Monologue on the Essence of Divinity, in which he set forth his famous a priori proof of the existence of God, the proof that finds the idea of God implicit in human experience. The book answers the question:

seeing that there are innumerable good things, the great diversity of which we experience with the sense of our body and discern with the reasoning of our mind, are we to believe that there is some one thing, in virtue of which one all good things are good, or are they good, some for this cause, some for that?

This Soliloquy, as ANSELM called it because it is a man's discourse with himself about God, was followed by a companion work The Proslogion or Exhortation concerning the Existence of God which takes the form of a supplication to God to be a teacher concerning Himself. "The object of the reasoning is to show that the existence of God is in fact an immediately evident truth. Uncertainty about God's existence is possible only so long as we are unaware of the true meaning of the word Deus." By "God" ANSELM understood "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." The argument of the book is the first complete statement of what is known as the "ontological" argument.

A monk GAUNILO, d. 1083, criticised the book in his Apology for the Fool, and urged his well known plea that the idea of the lost Isle of the Blest does not prove that it exists or ever has existed. ANSELM replied with An Apolo2 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. XII.,

p. 267.