catechize, Mt 11:25-27, St Frederick, Hagiography
Good Day Bloggers!
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Something Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7..
We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift knowledge and free will as well,
make the most of it. Life on earth is a stepping to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
Today's Word: catechize cat·e·chize [v. kat-i-kahyz]
Origin: 1375–1425; late Middle English < Late Latin catēchizāre < Greek katēchízein to make (someone) learn by teaching orally, equivalent to katēch ( eîn ) to teach orally ( see catechist) + -izein -ize
verb (used with object)
1. to instruct orally by means of questions and answers, especially in Christian doctrine.
2. to question with reference to belief.
3. to question closelyy.
Today's Gospel Reading - Matthew 11: 25-27
 | |
| The Holy Trinity |
Gospel - Matthew 11,25-27
At that time Jesus exclaimed, 'I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
~Reflection
• Context. The liturgical passage of Mt 11, 25-27 represents a turning point in the Gospel of Matthew: Jesus is asked the first questions regarding the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. The first one to ask the first questions on the identity of Jesus is John the Baptist, who through his disciples asks him a concrete question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?” (11, 3). Instead, the Pharisees, together with the Scribes, address words of reproach and judgment to Jesus: “Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the Sabbath” (12, 2). Up until now in chapter 1 to 10, the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven in the person of Jesus did not seem to find any obstacles, but beginning with chapter 11, we find some concrete difficulties. Or rather many begin to take a stand before Jesus: sometimes he is “the object of scandal”, of fall (11, 6); “this generation“, in the sense of this human descent, does not have an attitude of acceptance regarding the Kingdom that is to arrive; the cities along the lake are not converted (11, 20); concerning the behaviour of Jesus a true and proper controversy springs up (chapter 12), and thus they begin to think how to lead him to death (12, 14). This is the climate of mistrust and of protest in which Matthew inserts this passage. Now the moment has arrived in which to question oneself about the activity of Jesus: how to interpret the “works of Christ” (11, 2.19)? How can these thaumaturgic actions be explained (11, 20. 21.23)? Such questions concern the crucial question of Messiah ship of Jesus, and judge not only “this generation” but also the cities around the lake which have not converted as the Kingdom of Heaven gets closer in the person of Jesus.
• To becomes small. The most efficacious itinerary to carry out this conversion is to become “small”. Jesus communicates this strategy of “smallness” in a prayer of thanksgiving (11, 27) which has a wonderful parallel in the witness rendered to the Father on the occasion of the Baptism (11, 27). Experts love to call this prayer a “hymn of rejoicing, exultation”. The rhythm of the prayer of Jesus begins with a confession: “I praise you”, “I confess to you”. Such expressions of introduction render Jesus’ words quite solemn. The prayer of praise that Jesus says presents the characteristics of an answer addressed to the reader. Jesus addresses himself to the God with the expression “Lord, of Heaven and earth”, that is, to God as Creator and guardian of the world. In Judaism, instead, it was the custom to address God with the invocation “Lord of the world”, but did not add the term “Father“, a distinctive characteristic of the prayer of Jesus. The reason for the praise and the disclosing of God: because you have hidden..., revealed. The hiding referred to the “wise and intelligent” concerns the Scribes and the Pharisees completely closed up and hostile to the coming of the Kingdom (3, 7 ff; 7, 29; 9, 3.11. 34). The revelation to the little ones, the Greek term says “infants”, those who cannot speak as yet. Thus, Jesus indicates the privileged audience of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven as those who are not experts of the Law, and are not instructed.
Which are “these things” that are hidden or revealed? The content of this revelation or hiding is Jesus, the Son of God, the one who reveals the Father. It is evident for the reader that the revelation of God is linked indissolubly to the person of Jesus, to his Word, to his Messianic actions. He is the one who allows the revelation of God and not the Law or the premonitory events of the end of time.
• The revelation of God from the Father to the Son. In the last part of the discourse Jesus makes a presentation of self as the one to whom every thing has been communicated by the Father. In the context of the coming of the Kingdom, Jesus has the role and the mission to reveal the Heavenly Father in everything. In such a task and role he receives the totality of power, of knowledge and of the authority to judge. In order to confirm this role which is so committed, Jesus appeals to the witness of the Father, the only one who possesses a real knowledge of Jesus: “Nobody knows the Son but the Father”, and vice-versa “and nobody knows the Father but the Son”. The witness of the Father is irreplaceable so that the unique dignity of Jesus as Son may be understood by his disciples. Besides, the unicity or uniqueness of Jesus is affirmed in the revelation of the Father; the Gospel of John had already affirmed this: “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known” (1, 18). To summarize, the Evangelist makes his readers understand that the revelation of the Father takes place through the Son. Even more: the Son reveals the Father to whom he wants.
~Personal questions
In your prayer do you feel the need to express all your gratitude to the Father for the gifts that he has given you in life? Does it happen to you to confess publicly, to exult in the Lord because of the wonderful works that he accomplishes in the world; in the Church, and in your life?
• In your search for God do you rely on your wisdom and intelligence or do you allow yourself to be guided by the wisdom of God? How attentive are you to your relationship with Jesus? Do you listen to his word? Do you assume his sentiments in order to discover his physiognomy of Son of the Heavenly Father?
In your prayer do you feel the need to express all your gratitude to the Father for the gifts that he has given you in life? Does it happen to you to confess publicly, to exult in the Lord because of the wonderful works that he accomplishes in the world; in the Church, and in your life?
• In your search for God do you rely on your wisdom and intelligence or do you allow yourself to be guided by the wisdom of God? How attentive are you to your relationship with Jesus? Do you listen to his word? Do you assume his sentiments in order to discover his physiognomy of Son of the Heavenly Father?
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.
Feast Day: July 18
Died: 1794
Patron Saint of : Hearing Impaired
HISTORY
Frederick I was Bishop of Utrecht between 815/816 and 834/838, and a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Frederick was born around 780 in Friesland and was a grandson of the Frisian King Radboud. According to the Catholic Church, he died on July 18, 838, but other sources give dates between 834 and 838. In any case it is certain that he was murdered.
At a young age he was taught at Utrecht by the clergy, including Bishop Ricfried. After completing his studies he was ordained priest and put in charge of converting the remaining heathens in the northern areas of the diocese, but also in areas outside of the diocese. It is known that he preached at Walcheren and together with St. Odulfus in Stavoren and its surroundings.
After the death of Ricfried in 815/816, Frederick was chosen as bishop of Utrecht. He was known for his piety and erudition. He maintained a correspondence with Rabanus Maurus. He was praised for his knowledge and understanding during the synod of Mainz in 829. The hagiographyVita S. Bonifacii has been attributed to him.
It is unclear exactly how Frederick came to an end. It has been established that he was murdered, but by whom and why is unclear. legend tells that he was stabbed by two men after the offering of the Mass on July 18 838. According to the 11th and 12th century writers Bishop Otbert of Liège (PassioFriderici) and William of Malmesbury, the killers were hired by Empress Judith, because of Frederiks regular criticism of her dissolute way of life. Later writers like Cesare Baronio and Jean Mabillon write that the inhabitants of Walcheren, who were hostile to Christianity, sent them, as a response to Frederick's preaching there.
The latter seems the most plausible. There are no sources of writers of the time showing that the empress was unchaste or immoral, or that Frederick had made that allegation. Moreover Walcheren was quite hostile to the missionaries from Utrecht.
Shortly after his death, Frederick was Canonized. His feast day is July 18 and he is patron saint against deafness. He was buried in St. Salvator's Church in Utrecht.
Featured Items Panel from Litany Lane
Hagiography is the study of saints.
From the Greek (h)ağios (ἅγιος, "holy" or "saint") and graphēin (γράφειν, "to write"), it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common. This latter term, in fact, follows original Greek practice, where ἁγιογραφία refers to visual images of the saints, while their written lives (βίοι or vitæ) or the study thereof are known as ἁγιολογία.
Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles of men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Church of the East. Other religions such as Buddhism and Islam also create and maintain hagiographical texts concerning saints and other individuals believed to be imbued with the sacred.
The term "hagiographic" has also been used as a pejorative reference to the works of biographers and historians perceived to be uncritical or "reverential" to their subject. Nonetheless, hagiographic works, particularly those of the Middle Ages, can often incorporate a valuable record of institutional and local history, and evidence of popular cults, customs and traditions.
After the 13th century, the word legenda was regarded as the equivalent of vita (Life) and passio (suffering), and, in the 15th century, the liber lectionarius is comprised under what is known as "legend". Thus, historically considered, legend is the received story of the saints
The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies. In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints:
The Bollandist Society continues the study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints. (See Acta Sanctorum.)
The 7th century sees the literary form of legend domiciled in the West. Bede's "Martyrology" and Aldhelm of Malmesbury (d. 709) indicate a wide knowledge of this foreign literature.The legends of the "saviour" make their appearance in the Merovingian 7th century up to the middle of the 8th;.
In Anglo-Saxon and mediæval England, Hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of a largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with the classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to defend the truth of their scriptures. Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the dialect of Anglo-Norman.
Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham. His work The Lives of the Saints (MS Cotton Julius E.7) comprises a set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by the English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one in Old English, and 39 lives beginning on December 25 with the nativity of Christ and ending with three texts to which no saints' days are attached. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, both English and continental, and hearkens back to some of the earliest saints of the early church.
Imitation of the life of Christ then was the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself.
There are two known instances where saint's lives were adapted into vernacular plays in Britain. These are the Cornish-language works Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke, about the lives of Saints Meriasek and Kea, respectively.
In the 10th century, a Byzantine monk Simeon the Metaphrastes was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing and panegyrical character. His catalog of lives of the saints became the standard for all of the Western and Eastern
hagiographers, who would create relative biographies and images of the
ideal saints by gradually departing from the real facts of their lives.
Over the years, the genre of lives of the saints had absorbed a number
of narrative plots and poetic images (often, of pre-Christian origin,
such as dragon fighting etc.), mediaeval parables, short stories and anecdotes.
The genre of lives of the saints was brought to Kievan Rus' by the South Slavs together with writing and also in translations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, the Rus' began to compile the original life stories of the first Rus'ian saints, e.g. Boris and Gleb, Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Rus'ian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so called Velikiye chet’yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or Great Menaion Reader), consisting of 12 volumes in accordance with each month of the year. They were revised and expanded by St. Dimitry of Rostov in 1684-1705.
There are only variations of the old concepts of transformation and apparitions, as in the innumerable stories which now circulated of visible incarnation of the Divine Child or of the Crucified One, or of the monstrance being suspended in the air. But the continuity of the concepts is quite evident in the case of the legend of Mary. If Mary considers herself as betrothed to the priest who serves her, the meaning of this is not far to seek; but nevertheless Callimachus (3rd century BC) had also treated this idea in a legend of Artemis, and Antoninus Liberalis and the Talmud have variations of it. And if, in this legend of Mary, the Blessed Virgin put a ring on the hand of her betrothed under quite characteristic circumstances, that is nothing else than the Roman local legend of the betrothal of Venus, as it has been preserved by William of Malmesbury and the "Deutsche Kaiserchronik" of the 12th century.
Rosweyde wished merely to correct the old collections; his idea was to treat the martyrologies, beginning with the most ancient, from the philological standpoint. But his scheme was taken up by other Jesuits, and after his death (1629) was carried out on a large scale. This was with an eye also to sectarian opponents, and in defense of the continuity of Catholic teaching and Catholic life. The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists became foundational for investigation in hagiography and legend.
The belief in miracles, considered as such, does not affect the historian, who has only to gather the original authorities together and to say: This is what happened, so far as historical science can determine. If this presentation of the facts be correct, then no objection can be raised against the results
Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane
Saint of the Day: St. Frederick, Bishop of Utrecht
Died: 1794
Patron Saint of : Hearing Impaired
 |
| St Frederick of Utrecht 1630 |
St. Frederick, Bishop of Utrecht, Martyr
Frederick was trained in piety and sacred learning among the clergy of
the Church of Utrecht. Being ordained priest, he was charged by Bishop Ricfried with the care of instructing converts, and about 825 he was chosen to succeed him as bishop of Utrecht. The new bishop at once began to establish order everywhere, and sent St. Odulf and other zealous and virtuous laborers into the northern parts to dispel the paganism which still subsisted there.
According to tradition St. Frederick
became involved in the difficulties between the sons of the emperor,
Louis the Debonair, and their father and step-mother. During these
disturbances the party of the young princes charged the Empress Judith with numerous immoralities. Whatever may have been the truth of these stories, St. Frederick
is said to have admonished her of them, with charity but with the
effect of drawing upon himself the fury and resentment of the empress.
He also got himself disliked elsewhere. The inhabitants of Walcheren
were barbarous and most averse from the Gospel. On which account, St.
Frederick, when he sent priests in the northern part of his diocese,
took this most dangerous and difficult part chiefly to himself; and
nothing gave him more trouble than marriages contracted within the
forbidden decrees and the separation of the parties (that the union of
Louis and Judith was itself incestuous was an afterthought of hagiographers).
The story goes on that, on July 18, 838, after St. Frederick had celebrated Mass
and was about to make his thanksgiving, he was stabbed by two
assassins. He died in a few minutes, reciting that verse of Psalm 144,
"I will praise the Lord in the land of the living". The eleventh century author of his life
says that these assassins were employed by the Empress Judith, who
could not pardon the liberty he had taken to reprove her sins, and was
incited thereto by her husband. William of Malmesbury
and others repeat the same; but later writers, such as Baronius and
Mabillon, think that they were rather sent by some of the inhabitants of
Walcheren. And this seems the more likely opinion: for no contemporary
makes the charge against Judith and it is not at all in consonance with the attitude of Louis towards episcopal authority and Christian conduct. St. Frederick composed a prayer to the Blessed Trinity which for many ages was used in the Netherlands. The reputation of his sanctity appears from a poem of Rabanus Maurus, his contemporary, in praise of his virtues.
Frederick I was Bishop of Utrecht between 815/816 and 834/838, and a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Frederick was born around 780 in Friesland and was a grandson of the Frisian King Radboud. According to the Catholic Church, he died on July 18, 838, but other sources give dates between 834 and 838. In any case it is certain that he was murdered.
At a young age he was taught at Utrecht by the clergy, including Bishop Ricfried. After completing his studies he was ordained priest and put in charge of converting the remaining heathens in the northern areas of the diocese, but also in areas outside of the diocese. It is known that he preached at Walcheren and together with St. Odulfus in Stavoren and its surroundings.
After the death of Ricfried in 815/816, Frederick was chosen as bishop of Utrecht. He was known for his piety and erudition. He maintained a correspondence with Rabanus Maurus. He was praised for his knowledge and understanding during the synod of Mainz in 829. The hagiographyVita S. Bonifacii has been attributed to him.
It is unclear exactly how Frederick came to an end. It has been established that he was murdered, but by whom and why is unclear. legend tells that he was stabbed by two men after the offering of the Mass on July 18 838. According to the 11th and 12th century writers Bishop Otbert of Liège (PassioFriderici) and William of Malmesbury, the killers were hired by Empress Judith, because of Frederiks regular criticism of her dissolute way of life. Later writers like Cesare Baronio and Jean Mabillon write that the inhabitants of Walcheren, who were hostile to Christianity, sent them, as a response to Frederick's preaching there.
The latter seems the most plausible. There are no sources of writers of the time showing that the empress was unchaste or immoral, or that Frederick had made that allegation. Moreover Walcheren was quite hostile to the missionaries from Utrecht.
Shortly after his death, Frederick was Canonized. His feast day is July 18 and he is patron saint against deafness. He was buried in St. Salvator's Church in Utrecht.
References: Courtesy of the Catholic Online, catholic.org and Courtesy of Wikipedia, wikipedia.org
Today's Snippet: Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.
From the Greek (h)ağios (ἅγιος, "holy" or "saint") and graphēin (γράφειν, "to write"), it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common. This latter term, in fact, follows original Greek practice, where ἁγιογραφία refers to visual images of the saints, while their written lives (βίοι or vitæ) or the study thereof are known as ἁγιολογία.
Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles of men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Church of the East. Other religions such as Buddhism and Islam also create and maintain hagiographical texts concerning saints and other individuals believed to be imbued with the sacred.
The term "hagiographic" has also been used as a pejorative reference to the works of biographers and historians perceived to be uncritical or "reverential" to their subject. Nonetheless, hagiographic works, particularly those of the Middle Ages, can often incorporate a valuable record of institutional and local history, and evidence of popular cults, customs and traditions.
Terminology
The legenda (literally, that which is for reading) included facts which were historically genuine, as well as narrative which Christians now class as unhistorical legend. The term is a creation of the Middle Ages, and has its source in the reading of the prayers used in religious services. Since the days of the martyrs, the Catholic Church recalled to mind her famous dead in the prayers of the Mass and in the Office, by commemorating the names noted in the martyrologies and making mention of incidents in their lives and martyrdom. When the lectio became a matter of precept, the reading matter in the office for the day became in a precise sense legenda (that which must be read).After the 13th century, the word legenda was regarded as the equivalent of vita (Life) and passio (suffering), and, in the 15th century, the liber lectionarius is comprised under what is known as "legend". Thus, historically considered, legend is the received story of the saints
Development
Hagiography constituted an important literary genre in the early Christian church, providing some informational history along with the more inspirational stories and legend. A hagiographic account of an individual saint can constitute a vita or biography, a description of the saint's deeds and/or miracles, or an account of the saint's martyrdom (a passio) - or be a combination of these.The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies. In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints:
- annual calendar catalogue, or menaion (in Greek, menaios means "month") (biographies of the saints to be read at sermons);
- synaxarion, or a short version of lives of the saints, arranged by dates;
- paterikon (in Latin, pater means "father"), or biography of the specific saints, chosen by the catalog compiler.
The Bollandist Society continues the study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints. (See Acta Sanctorum.)
Early medieval embellishment
Gregory of Tours (d. 594) was acquainted with the apocryphal lives of the Apostles. At the beginning of the 7th century we already find related in Gaul (in the "Passio Tergeminorum" of Warnahar of Langres), as an incident in the local history of Langres, a story of martyrdom originating in Cappadocia.The 7th century sees the literary form of legend domiciled in the West. Bede's "Martyrology" and Aldhelm of Malmesbury (d. 709) indicate a wide knowledge of this foreign literature.The legends of the "saviour" make their appearance in the Merovingian 7th century up to the middle of the 8th;.
Medieval England
With the introduction of Latin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. It is not surprising that such a genre would become popular in England. When one contrasts it to the popular heroic poem, such as Beowulf, one finds that they share certain common features. In Beowulf, the titular character battles against Grendel and his mother, while the saint, such as Athanasius’ Anthony (one of the original sources for the hagiographic motif) or the character of Guthlac, battles against figures no less substantial in a spiritual sense. Both genres then focus on the hero-warrior figure, but with the distinction that the saint is of a spiritual sort.In Anglo-Saxon and mediæval England, Hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of a largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with the classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to defend the truth of their scriptures. Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the dialect of Anglo-Norman.
Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham. His work The Lives of the Saints (MS Cotton Julius E.7) comprises a set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by the English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one in Old English, and 39 lives beginning on December 25 with the nativity of Christ and ending with three texts to which no saints' days are attached. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, both English and continental, and hearkens back to some of the earliest saints of the early church.
Imitation of the life of Christ then was the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself.
There are two known instances where saint's lives were adapted into vernacular plays in Britain. These are the Cornish-language works Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke, about the lives of Saints Meriasek and Kea, respectively.
Medieval Ireland
Ireland is notable in its rich hagiographical tradition, and for the large amount of material which was produced during the mediæval period. Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in Latin while some of the later saint's lives were written in the hagiographer's native vernacular Irish. Of particular note are the lives of St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Brigit—Ireland's three patron saints |
| St Symeon the Metaphrastes, Byzantine |
The genre of lives of the saints was brought to Kievan Rus' by the South Slavs together with writing and also in translations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, the Rus' began to compile the original life stories of the first Rus'ian saints, e.g. Boris and Gleb, Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Rus'ian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so called Velikiye chet’yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or Great Menaion Reader), consisting of 12 volumes in accordance with each month of the year. They were revised and expanded by St. Dimitry of Rostov in 1684-1705.
High Middle Ages
During the millenarian 10th century, the era of the Cluniacs and mysticism make the biographies of the saints subjective. The 12th century brings with the new religious orders the contemplative legends of Mary. The thirteenth sees the development of the cities and the citizens, hand in hand with which goes the popularization of the legend by means of collections compiled for the purposes of sermons, vit sanctorum, exempla, or merely to give entertainment (Vincent of Beauvais, Cæsarius of Heisterbach, James of Vitry, Thomas of Chantimpré, "Legenda Aurea"); in this century also arise the legends of Mary and, in connexion with the new feast of Corpus Christi (1264), a strong interest in tales of miracles relating to the Host.There are only variations of the old concepts of transformation and apparitions, as in the innumerable stories which now circulated of visible incarnation of the Divine Child or of the Crucified One, or of the monstrance being suspended in the air. But the continuity of the concepts is quite evident in the case of the legend of Mary. If Mary considers herself as betrothed to the priest who serves her, the meaning of this is not far to seek; but nevertheless Callimachus (3rd century BC) had also treated this idea in a legend of Artemis, and Antoninus Liberalis and the Talmud have variations of it. And if, in this legend of Mary, the Blessed Virgin put a ring on the hand of her betrothed under quite characteristic circumstances, that is nothing else than the Roman local legend of the betrothal of Venus, as it has been preserved by William of Malmesbury and the "Deutsche Kaiserchronik" of the 12th century.
Eastern Orthodoxy
This literary genre was often used as ecclesiastic and political propaganda. Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and aesthetic concepts of the past.Catholic continuities
In the usage of the Catholic Church, the legend plays the same part to-day as in the Middle Ages, but it was felt that not all the legends we possess were of equal value, and especially that the editions of the lives of the saints were entirely unsatisfactory. It was the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde of Utrecht who, at the beginning of the 17th century, undertook to remedy matters by referring to the most ancient texts, and by pointing out how the tales developed.Rosweyde wished merely to correct the old collections; his idea was to treat the martyrologies, beginning with the most ancient, from the philological standpoint. But his scheme was taken up by other Jesuits, and after his death (1629) was carried out on a large scale. This was with an eye also to sectarian opponents, and in defense of the continuity of Catholic teaching and Catholic life. The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists became foundational for investigation in hagiography and legend.
Contemporary attitudes
The Roman Breviary officially designates the lesson for the day as lectio, and the Catholic Church now may recognize the legend rather as a popular story or a fictitious religious tale. Hagiography is to-day the province of the historian, who must test the value of the sources of the reports.The belief in miracles, considered as such, does not affect the historian, who has only to gather the original authorities together and to say: This is what happened, so far as historical science can determine. If this presentation of the facts be correct, then no objection can be raised against the results
References:
- Davies, S. (2008). Archive and manuscripts: contents and use: using the sources (3rd ed.). Aberystwyth, UK: Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University. p. 5.20. ISBN 978-1-906214-15-9
- Koch, John T. (2006). Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 203–205. ISBN 1-85109-440-7. Retrieved November 23, 2009.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Legends of the Saints". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
