st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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198 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
tainly in a style not unworthy of Damascenus and
;
when the narrative of the saint s life begins,
it is in
troduced with a tis said,"
which might be construed
as exempting the preacher from being held respon
sible .for the historical truth of the events he goes on
to relate. The question whether this is so or not,
would open up a discussion of some interest, were
this the proper place for it,
on a certain habit ot
mind, by no means unknown even at the present
day.
I mean that of those who are conscious of no
scruple, no shock to their sense of historical accuracy,
in reading, let us suppose, some of the lives of the
saints in the
While a scholar and
Legenda aurea."
theologian like Vives, the tutor to our Princess Mary
Tudor, could declare that such a collection deserved
than "aurea"
rather to be called "Legenda plumbea"
a Leaden, rather than a Golden, Legend there are
many who read and repeat and draw inferences from
the prodigious stories there met with, till it becomes
difficult to ascertain whether they ever think of the
literal occurrence or non-occurrence of what they
appear to accept as facts. In the minds of some
such persons
it would seem as if the moral truth, the
spiritual reality conveyed, had entirely obliterated, or
made, at any rate, to vanish into very dim outline,
the distinction between what was and what was not.
And thus it is quite possible that what is here
recorded of St. Barbara may to some minds present
no difficulty at all ;
and that, not because they either
consciously accept, or consciously deny, the literal
truth of the occurrences related, but because the
question of it does not occur to them at all, and