SAINTS.
(Lives of.)

Cardinal Valerio, bishop of Verona, in his book intitled, “De Rhetorica Christiana,” informs us, that “one of the causes of the false legends of the martyrs was the custom formerly observed in several monasteries to exercise the young monks, by Latin exercises proposed to them on the martyrdom of some saint, which giving them the liberty of introducing the tyrants and the persecuted saints, as acting and speaking, in such a manner as appeared to them the most probable, at the same time gave them room to compose on these subjects a sort of histories, rather filled with ornaments and inventions than truth; but though they did not deserve much regard, yet those which seemed most ingenious and best composed were laid up. So that after a long series of years, they, together with other manuscripts, being found in the libraries of the monasteries, it was very difficult to distinguish these exercises of wit from the genuine histories of the saints there also preserved. It is to be confessed that those pious writers are very excusable, they having no other design than to exercise themselves on holy subjects, could not foresee the erroneous consequences, which, in process of time, proceeded from thence; so that if posterity be thereby deceived, it is rather owing to their own want of discernment, than a proof of the ill intentions of those writers. It would be hard to have the same regard for the famous Simeon Metaphrastes, a Greek author of the ninth century, who first gave us the lives of the saints for every day of the month through the whole year, since it is visible they were not written for that purpose, but in a very serious manner, though at

the same time amplified and stuffed with several imaginary events, as Bellarmin himself testifies, who plainly tells us, ‘ that Metaphrastes wrote several of the lives, as they might be, and not as they really were.’ But it is no wonder that such a thing should have been done by some ecclesiastical historians, through a pious zeal to honour the saints, and to render their lives agreeable to the people, commonly more inclined to admire those they reverence, than to imitate them; seeing this liberty crept into the very translation of some books of the Bible, as we are informed by St Jerome, in his Preface to that of Esther, that the vulgar edition of that book of Holy Writ, commonly read in his time, was stuffed with several additions, which I cannot better express than in the words of that father: ‘Quem librum,’ saith he, speaking of the book of Esther, ‘editio vulgata lacinosis hinc inde verborum finibus trahit, addens ea quæ ex tempore dici potuerant, et audiri, sicut solitum est scholaribus disciplinis sumpto themate, excogitare quibus verbis uti potuit qui injuriam passus, vel qui injuriam fecit.—Which book in the vulgar edition here and there is patched with forgeries, such things being inserted in it as might have been said and heard extempore, as it is usual when a theme is given in schools, to invent what might have been spoken by one that suffered or committed an injury.’”

Those who would see a vast number of curious and judicious observations on this head, need only read M. Baillet’s discourse on the lives of the saints.

Art. Valerius.