LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Accession Class 
 
GKEEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
ILCHESTER LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE 
 
 AND ITS RELATION TO 
 
 THE FOLK-LORE OF EUROPE DURING THE 
 MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 THUftb two Bppen&fces anfc plates. 
 
 M. GASTEK, PH.D. 
 
 v-v^ 
 
 OF TMR 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1887. 
 
 [ All rights reserved. ] 
 
PY AUUtU 
 
 IGINALTOBE 
 
 FAINED 
 
 (251994 
 
 BALI.ANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 tmNBURGH AND LONDON 
 
TO 
 
 PROFESSOR G. I. ASCOLI 
 
 AND 
 
 PROFESSOR F. MIKLOSICH 
 
 this Bool? 
 
 IS 
 
 GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. 
 
 84281 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE purpose of these Hchester Lectures, delivered 
 at Oxford in the spring of 1886, is to show, on a 
 small scale, the importance of the Slavonic lite- 
 rature in the literary history of modern Europe, 
 and likewise to call attention to the vast materials, 
 hitherto untouched, which are preserved in the 
 literature and folk-lore of the Slavonic nations. 
 
 In treating of the religious and popular litera- 
 ture, I confined myself to the most important texts 
 and immediate sources. My references to autho- 
 rities it would be very easy greatly to increase. 
 
 In another work, however, I contemplate the 
 publication of all the Slavonic texts belonging 
 to the apocryphal literature, in the form of an 
 English translation, with copious notes and 
 introductions. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 In two appendices I have traced both the 
 origin and history of the "Bible Historiale" and 
 of the Glagolitic Alphabet from a wholly new 
 point of view. 
 
 Finally, I take great pleasure in expressing my 
 heartiest thanks to the Trustees of the Hchester 
 Fund for honouring me with the invitation to 
 deliver these lectures at the far-famed University 
 of Oxford. I value the honour all the more, as 
 I had just arrived in England, an exile, banished 
 by the Government from my native country of 
 Roumania. 
 
 I wish also especially to thank Mr. I. Abrahams, 
 who kindly assisted me in reading the proofs. 
 
 M. GASTER. 
 
 London, March 1887. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 INTRODUCTION : VARIOUS THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF FOLK- 
 LORE THE GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE ... I 
 
 II. 
 
 THE BOGOMILISM : ITS SPREAD AND INFLUENCE THE APO- 
 CRYPHA OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 
 
 III. 
 
 THE APOCRYPHA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ANTICHRIST 
 LIVES OF THE SAINTS THE LETTER FROM HEAVEN AND 
 THE FLAGELLANTS THE " GOLUBINAYA KNIGA " . . 45 
 
 IV. 
 
 EXORCISMS AND SPELLS 75 
 
 V. 
 
 ROMANTIC LITERATURE FOURTH CRUSADE ALEXANDER 
 
 TROJAN WAR DIGENIS 89 
 
 VI. 
 
 APOLOGUES AND FABLES BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT THE 
 
 WISE AKIR AND SYNTIPAS 1 09 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE SLAVONIC PEOPLES IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA ORIGIN 
 
 OF THE SLAVONIC LITERATURE CYRILL AND METHOD . 125 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE BIBLE HISTORIALE AND THE BIBLE OF THE POOR . 147 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET . . . 209 
 
I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION: VARIOUS THEORIES OF THE 
 ORIGIN OF FOLK-LORE. THE GREEKO- 
 SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
To watch the rise of new nationalities or of new 
 literatures is, without doubt, one of the most 
 interesting spectacles ; it is to see before one's eyes 
 scattered elements being built up into a living 
 organism, with all the marks of a characteristic 
 individuality. Such a process of development is 
 often presented to our gaze, though at a distance, 
 when we seek to follow out the progress which one 
 or other branch of culture has made in order to 
 arrive at the form in which we at present have 
 them, as, for example, the origin of language, of 
 writing, of civilisation. The same problem which 
 such questions offer is likewise presented to us by 
 the rise of any literature, in so far as it throws light 
 on the modern poetic constructions of civilised 
 nations. The question whether it is mechanical 
 mixture or organic assimilation meets us at the 
 very outset. Hence the investigation of sources is 
 a characteristic of our critical age. We are chiefly 
 interested in finding out what are the elements 
 which the literary artist finds given to him, and 
 which he proceeds to organise into a higher unity. 
 
 84281 
 
4 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 "What is the part played by the unconscious poetic 
 activity of the people \ what that, of the con- 
 scious art of the poet ? Nay, we must proceed 
 farther, and raise the question, which has hitherto 
 been considered unnecessary : How far have the 
 people any creative imaginative power ? Do the 
 peoples create independently of one another poetic 
 products derived immediately from the influence 
 of surrounding Nature ? And how far can we 
 assume this creative impulse iii modern times 1 
 
 The investigations which we include under the 
 name of Folk-lore have had their beginning quite 
 recently, and have, therefore, undergone consider- 
 able modifications and changes. It is the merit 
 of the Romantic school in Germany, which arose at 
 the end of the preceding century, to have directed 
 attention to the hitherto neglected literature of the 
 common people. Herder was the first to collect 
 the folk-songs of many nations. Clemens and Bren- 
 tano made collections of the German folk-songs, as 
 Bishop Percy had done in his " Eeliques of Ancient- 
 English Poetry." Thence they turned to other pro- 
 ducts of the popular imagination, especially to the 
 fairy tales, then the sagas and legends, proverbs, 
 riddles, and superstitions. First in these inves- 
 tigations, both in time and importance, were the 
 brothers Grimm, to whom Germany owes so much. 
 Hand in hand with the collection went the explora- 
 tion of the popular literature, which had thus passed 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 from the nursery and the chimney-corner into the 
 study of the scholar. Grimm, the creator of 
 German mythology, is likewise the founder of 
 the school which we may term the Mythological. 
 According to this school, traces of the archaic 
 Northern mythology have been preserved in the 
 fairy tales and in the whole of folk-lore. The old 
 gods and goddesses, dislodged from their thrones, 
 have still survived in the form of demons, ghosts, 
 elves, dwarfs, &c. ; and the remarkable similarity of 
 the fairy tales of all nations is explained on the 
 assumption that their mythologies were originally 
 identical. 
 
 By means of investigations into the Vedas, espe- 
 cially at the hands of Kuhu, a view of the ancient 
 mythology was taken up which regards it as an 
 incorporation of natural phenomena. The names 
 of these phenomena, Dyaus, Varuna, &c., were 
 accepted as gods and worshipped. Thus many 
 mythological words have been shown to be meta- 
 phorical expressions for the sun, the moon, the 
 clouds, and the rain. This having been shown for 
 Hindu mythology, the method was then applied to 
 Greek and Northern mythology, although the cir- 
 cumstances were here quite different ; for amoug 
 the Greek divinities were to be found many not 
 of Aryan origin, as Aphrodite the Syrian Militta 
 ( = Moledta, the generatrix), or Herakles the 
 Phoenician Mdkart. The problem is still more 
 
6 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 difficult in the case of the Northern mythology, 
 which is of comparatively much later date, at 
 any rate as regards its appearance in a written 
 form. The fairy tales being now only obscure 
 relics of the mythology, they must be explicable 
 in the same manner, and must likewise be ex- 
 plained as SUD, moon, and cloud myths. So, too, 
 all the superstitions, customs, and generally the 
 whole popular thought in all its manifold mani- 
 festations. All these, so far as they could not 
 be connected with the dogmatical religion, were 
 referred to the same mythological origin. Then, 
 according to this view, the poets absorbed it from 
 the people and developed it. This is the most 
 wide-spread and most popular view of the origin 
 of folk-lore, especially that of Europe. 
 
 To this I append another theory, which, from 
 a chronological point of view, is the latest, but the 
 principle of which is closely connected with the 
 former. The most outspoken representative of 
 this theory is Mr. A. Lang. He also considers 
 fairy tales and customs as an ancient inheritance 
 of every nation, further maintaining that they 
 are nearly related to the mythology. So far this 
 theory goes hand in hand with the Mythological ; 
 but the difference between the two is, that, accord- 
 ing to this view, which I term Prehistorical, both 
 myths and fairy tales as well as customs, are not 
 the outcome of etymological speculations and the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 
 
 embodiment of natural phenomena, but the relics 
 of a primitive state of savagery. 
 
 The proofs adduced in support of this Prehis- 
 torical theory are analogies and comparisons with 
 similar, or what are presumed to be similar, tales 
 and beliefs current among primitive tribes and 
 uncultured nations of the far East. This analogy 
 between them is thus explained as the result of 
 a similar intellectual development, where the one 
 retained the primitive form better and clearer than 
 the other, and these tales are only like the flint- 
 stone chips covered by a later stratum of culture. 
 
 But in the same way as our modern philology 
 does not allow us to compare directly French or 
 English with Sanskrit or Zend, but retraces step 
 by step the history of their evolution, in the same 
 way can we not compare our tales and customs 
 directly with those belonging to a tribe far distant 
 in time and in space, of which we neither know 
 the age nor the connection, where many links in 
 the chain are missing, if there is a chain at all. 
 
 This theory rests, then, like the Mythological, 
 upon the presumption that all that we call now-a- 
 days folk-lore is of hoar antiquity, and the genuine 
 property of every nation. Both will be, therefore, 
 shaken to their foundations if we succeed by a 
 closer inquiry to prove that it is often the result 
 of a long development ; that it is relatively modern, 
 and that the similarity between the European and 
 
8 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 the primitive and tribal folk-lore is a deceptive 
 one, or ought to be explained in quite another 
 way. 
 
 Indeed, the Mythological theory, and in this way 
 the Prehistorical too, received a severe blow from 
 another, which I term the Theory of Migration. 
 
 Benfey, in his celebrated introduction to the 
 Pantchatantra, applied first this theory to the 
 greatest part of European folk-tales, tracing them 
 to their Oriental origin and proving their compara- 
 tively recent date. They passed, as he shows, from 
 nation to nation, very often in written form, and 
 from this passed to the people, among whom they 
 were assimilated more and more to the peculiari- 
 ties of each nation. The same contents received a 
 different and a national form/"" 
 
 The folk-tales have now no longer claim to be 
 considered as mythological, and the influence to 
 which they owed their origin was quite the opposite 
 of this. For the most part, they became the common 
 property of the European nations through literary 
 transmission. This has been proved, farther, for 
 many modern fairy tales. Thus Boccaccio's tale 
 of " Griseldis " has been followed till it became a 
 fairy tale. Thus, too, the story of Genevieve, ori- 
 
 * In a remarkable essay Professor Max Miiller has carried out the same 
 line of thought, and has shown the travels of an Eastern tale through a 
 number of literatures, till it reached Lafontaine, and followed its traces 
 step by step till the story becomes more and more Europeanised and 
 nationalised. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 ginally a miracle of the Holy Virgin, has likewise 
 become a fairy tale. Examples of this might be 
 easily multiplied, showing clearly the influence of 
 written literature on oral tradition. 
 
 Proceeding a step farther, we may apply this 
 theory of migration, or better, this Historical theory, 
 not only to the fairy tales to which it was confined, 
 but also to the other branches of popular literature, 
 like sagas, legends, adventures, and superstitions, 
 and finally to the Northern mythology itself. Can- 
 not the foreign and literary origin of this be proved? 
 Are all those marvellous tales and fabulous beings 
 originally European ? Is the naive poetic world of 
 the common folk filled with, superstitions, creeds, 
 and legends regarding the most unnatural and un- 
 expected events as the most ordinary things in 
 the world, the remainder and residue of an old, 
 forgotten mythology, and of a more ancient state of 
 savagery ? or have they been brought on the crest 
 of a mighty wave of culture to the furthermost 
 shores of Europe, and thus form one stratum in all 
 the peoples of Europe ? Can we not in this way 
 explain their similarity to one another ? 
 
 The very advance of our spiritual and imagina- 
 tive life hides from us any direct vision of this 
 development. Much has been destroyed, and we 
 must deal with the remainder as with a palimpsest. 
 We have to take in hand some decomposing prin- 
 ciple which shall remove the more recent writing 
 
io GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 and enable us to decipher the faded relics of the 
 older signs. But that which eludes our grasp in 
 the West of Europe is offered to us in rich pro- 
 fusion by the East, especially the South-East, with 
 its own peculiar culture. The Greeko-Slavic world 
 has remained in nearly- the same condition as 
 Europe was when it was ruled solely by Chris- 
 tian thought and by Christian civilisation alone. 
 While the West has advanced farther, the Greeko- 
 Slavic world has remained at this point, and accord- 
 ingly its literature is to us of peculiar interest, as 
 it enables us to observe accurately the process 
 by which a written literature, generally of foreign 
 origin, influences oral fo]k-literature. We see the 
 alien element accepted and assimilated, the popular 
 imagination gradually enriched. We can then ob- 
 serve the reaction of this latter on poetic genius, 
 which takes in the feelings and thoughts of the 
 people, and expresses them in elevated and elevat- 
 ing artistic form. 
 
 I term the body of literature with which I con- 
 template dealing the GreeJco- Slavonic, because it 
 is confined to works translated from the Greek into 
 Slavic tongues, and where we have, therefore, the 
 literary sources beyond any doubt. 
 
 Bulgaria, as we shall see in the short historical 
 sketch with which I conclude this work, was, after a 
 struggle for centuries, incorporated into Byzantium, 
 and the influence of Greek, already great, became 
 
INTRODUCTION. n 
 
 the sole influence for two centuries. The whole 
 literature was modelled after the Greek, and even 
 later, after independence had been secured under the 
 Asenides, Greek retained much of its power. Thus 
 arose the literature which we term for this reason 
 Greeko-Slavonic. 
 
 This literature is not only that of the Bulgarians, 
 but is also the Church literature of the Servians, 
 Croatians, Roumanians, and Russians ; and it began 
 early to spread over these lands. The Old Slavonian 
 tongue in which it is written has remained the holy 
 or Church language of these lands up to the present 
 day, except in Roumania, where it was superseded 
 in the seventeenth century by the vernacular. 
 Thus this literature, together with the Greek, 
 offers the counterpart of the Latin civilisation, 
 favoured in a far higher degree, as this was, by 
 social and political circumstances. 
 
 Besides the interest which this literature affords 
 us, as I have sketched out above, as regards folk- 
 lore and the history of civilisation, it also gives 
 material of no small critical worth for dealing with 
 Greek, and especially Middle Greek literature. 
 Many a work of the Byzantine period has been 
 preserved for us in an improved form because it 
 was early translated into Slavonic. Modern science, 
 both in profane and in ecclesiastical history, has 
 begun to make use of these Slavonic texts for critical 
 purposes as yet only in a sporadic manner, as 
 
1 2 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 both the extent of this literature and its language 
 have prevented access to foreign investigators. 
 
 I select from the whole field of Greeko-Slavonic 
 literature, not the dogmatical, but rather that por- 
 tion which shows a living course of development, 
 and brings before our eyes an example of the pro- 
 cess by which the spiritual wealth of a people is 
 increased. By tins means the clue will be given us 
 to many an imaginative product which we meet 
 with in folk-lore, and which we have hitherto re- 
 garded as the peculiar property of the people, or as 
 the survival of earlier mythological conceptions. 
 Investigation into these matters is only in its 
 infancy, and we have first to settle the facts, if we 
 do not wish to lose ourselves in the field of vague 
 hypotheses. It is, therefore, the heretical and 
 poetical literature that will engage our attention, 
 likewise derived from the Greek, yet powerfully 
 influencing not alone the Bulgarians, but also all 
 the other nations who came in contact^ with the 
 Old Slavonian language and literature. Many 
 traces will be seen in the mediaeval literature of 
 Western Europe, and I hope to be able to prove 
 that the religious literature was the most important 
 factor in this branch of the development of Euro- 
 pean civilisation, and that the influence of the Old 
 Slavonian literature was just as important and deci- 
 sive towards the West as it was towards the East. 
 The results at which we shall arrive will accordingly 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 permit of an application to the whole literature of 
 the Middle Ages, in which many points will appear 
 under an entirely new light. 
 
 The fantastic and imaginative apocryphal litera- 
 ture, the romances and epics, the didactic fables, 
 were touched by wide religious movements in 
 Bulgaria, and have exercised a deep influence on 
 the imagination of the nations. Folk-lore arose 
 out of a written literature, whose traces we meet 
 with in saga and romance, in religious and epic 
 poems, in riddles and tales, and even in popular 
 beliefs, customs, and habits. In the following pages 
 I shall attempt to sketch this literature in a brief 
 outline, devoting the greatest attention to the most 
 conspicuous points, as well as to those least known 
 in Western Europe. Within the circle of our inves- 
 tigations we shall thus include the Apocrypha of 
 the Old and New Testament, the literature of 
 history, legend, and amulets, and lastly, the litera- 
 ture of the fable, as it was transformed from litera- 
 ture into folk-lore. 
 
II. 
 
 THE BOGOMILISM; ITS SPREAD AND INFLU- 
 ENCE. THE APOCRYPHA OF THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
IT. 
 
 AT the same time with the culmination of the Bul- 
 garian power and the Bulgarian literature (which 
 I shall portray at the end of these lectures) began 
 a powerful religious movement, which was accom- 
 panied by results of far-reaching consequence. I 
 refer to the heretical movement known under the 
 name of Bogomilism, which ruled Bulgaria for not 
 less than five centuries, and left indelible traces in 
 the spiritual life of the Slavonic nations. 
 
 A more thorough - going investigation of this 
 movement in its spread throughout Europe leads 
 us to still more astonishing results. "We come 
 across traces of it everywhere, and a good part 
 of the religious literature which later on became 
 folk-literature may be traced back to the influ- 
 ence of these heretical sects. Even the romances 
 of chivalry, when divested of their trappings, show 
 themselves as Oriental tales that have found their 
 way (always a long way, and often a dark one) 
 through many intermediaries to the place where 
 they are now found. 
 
 As this view of mine is more or less novel, I will 
 permit myself to enter into it in some detail. This 
 
i8 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 is the more permissible as we are dealing at the 
 same time with the earliest and least altered literary 
 remains of the Slavonic literature upon which I am 
 called to lecture, and these form besides the greater 
 part of it. 
 
 At the time of the conversion of the Bulgarians to 
 Christianity, there were to be found at the Bulgarian 
 court ambassadors or missionaries from the Pauli- 
 cians or Manichaeans of Asia Minor. In addition 
 to these there were a number of Jews, who bad also 
 come to convert the people to their belief, while 
 they were still hesitating about Christianity. The 
 Paulicians had settled in Thrace at an earlier date. 
 The Emperor Constantine Copronymos transported 
 a large number of them in the eighth century from 
 Asia Minor, and thus at the same time transplanted 
 the seed of Manichseism in the modified form intro- 
 duced by Constantine of Samosata. The success of 
 these Paulicians, as they termed themselves, was 
 very great, and in the tenth century they had there 
 six churches. This religious movement attained 
 to particular importance through the appearance of 
 the priest (Popa) Jeremiah (c. 940), who called him- 
 self Bogo-mil, i.e., Theo-philus, like the disciple of 
 St. Paul. After him his followers termed them- 
 selves Bogomili, and Bogomilism kept a foremost 
 place in the history of the Balkan peninsula for 
 many centuries. In Bulgaria itself it became so 
 powerful in a short time, that councils were fre- 
 
BOGOMILISM. 19 
 
 quently assembled at Sofia to oppose its heresies. 
 But all these efforts were in vain. Bogomilism had 
 taken too deep a root in the heart of the people ; 
 its power could not be destroyed. This movement 
 spread even farther. Thrace became the cradle of 
 an analogous movement throughout Europe. The 
 apostles of Bogomilism carried their creed first to 
 the coast of the Adriatic, then to Italy, whence the 
 movement spread to Germany and Southern France, 
 and even as far as England, where at Oxford in the 
 twelfth century a council was summoned by Henry 
 II. to take steps to eradicate a new kind of heresy 
 which had made its appearance in London and 
 York. Under different names we find practically 
 the same heretical sects from the tenth to the thir- 
 teenth century in the following places : In Bul- 
 garia, Macedonia, and even on the Black Sea, and 
 in Russia towards the east : in the West, in Italy, 
 especially in Lombardy, Mantua, Verona, Treviso, 
 Bergamo, Milan, Piacenza,Ferrara, Bologna, Faenza, 
 and Orvieto ; in France, throughout the south, but 
 also in Paris, Orleans, Rheims, and Brittany ; and 
 in Belgium and Holland, and over the whole basin 
 of the Rhine Metz, Strassburg, Cologne, Bonn, 
 Triers, and Goslar. We have already referred to 
 England.* It is clear that this movement was a 
 lasting one, and could not have been without en- 
 during influence. 
 
 * Wesselofsky, Solomon i Kitovras, St, Petersburg, 1872, p. 142 seq. 
 
20 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 These sectarians called themselves simply " Good 
 People," "Good Christians," "Christian Poor;" by 
 others they were named Bogomils, Manicliceans, 
 Paulicians, Patarenes in Italy, Kaihars in France 
 and Germany (whence the German Ketzer), and 
 likewise Bulgarians (whence the French Boulgres, 
 Bougre}. All this shows that they everywhere 
 retained relations with their spiritual fatherland, 
 and that the leaders of the movement in Bulgaria 
 were recognised by them as authorities. Thus, in 
 the year 1167, Nikita, the bishop of the Bogomils 
 of Constantinople, issued a summons for a council 
 of the French Kathars to be held in Toulouse. 
 
 A survey of their doctrines also shows the same 
 unity of belief among them. Their fundamental 
 principle was Oriental dualism as developed by 
 Mani. It is still undecided whether and how far 
 Buddhist influences were also at work. This world 
 they regarded as the work of Satanael, i.e., of 
 Satan-God, who is a fallen angel. The misery of 
 this world is therefore his work, as he fights 
 against the good and tries to destroy everything. 
 But redemption had come with Christ ; the Old 
 Covenant, which Adam had made with Satanael, 
 had been broken by Christ. But only the Bogo- 
 mils or Kathars (i.e., Pure Ones) are the true 
 followers of His teaching, and man could only 
 attain to holiness by entering their communion, 
 and by this means he could save his soul from 
 
BOGOMJLISM. 21 
 
 farther transmigration through human bodies ; 
 for metempsychosis formed part of their belief. 
 They therefore laid upon themselves all kinds of 
 mortifications, and their leaders and old men lived 
 as ascetics. On the other hand, they threw over 
 the doctrines of the dominant Church, based their 
 faith more upon the Holy Writ, excluded the 
 cross from their religious symbols, and advocated 
 freedom from the domination of the Catholic 
 Church and of the nobility. Eschatology formed 
 also a favourite topic of theirs the theory of the 
 Last Things. Thus the two extremes of creation 
 and destruction, beginning and end, cosmogony 
 and eschatology, the fall and the redemption, 
 formed the chief subjects of their thought, and 
 likewise the chief contents of their preaching. 
 
 Their views about an evil principle found ready 
 acceptance among the serfs, while their antagonis- 
 tic attitude towards the Church and the nobility 
 made them acceptable to the opponents of both 
 institutions. If we add that they propagated their 
 doctrines chiefly and solely in the vernacular lan- 
 guages, and that they clothed their views in the 
 guise of fantastic and poetic tales, we can then 
 form some idea of the deep impression their doc- 
 trines must have made. This is confirmed by 
 history when it speaks of a crusade against the 
 Albigenses and of one against the Bosnian heretics, 
 to which the whole of Christendom had to be 
 
22 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 summoned by the Pope. And yet it was not 
 completely stamped out ; we find an echo of the 
 movement in the Flagellants and the Hussites. 
 Europe had been shaken to its very depths by the 
 Crusades just before, and by this means the soil 
 had been prepared for this new heretical move- 
 ment. 
 
 Now in the literature of this period we notice 
 a remarkable transformation. The old epic songs 
 of the cycle of Charlemagne gave way to new 
 poems filled with adventure and imagination; songs 
 and sagas free from the fetters of space and time 
 make their appearance ; a whole cycle of popular 
 religious literature arises. Can all this be acci- 
 dental and without any relation to the heretical 
 movement ? Hitherto investigators, with but few 
 exceptions, have not thought of any connection 
 between the two. 
 
 But a careful examination of the chief elements 
 of their origin shows us that in most of them we 
 
 o 
 
 have only the disguised figures of other well- 
 known pieces. Merlin and Arthur, as well as 
 Marculph and Saturn, are no other than Solomon 
 and Asmodeus. In the saga of the Holy Grail we 
 have echoes of Oriental tales. And more ; the same 
 influence is found in folk-songs and in popular 
 manners and customs. The mediaeval belief in 
 Satan, with its outcome, witchcraft, as we shudder 
 to see it in the protocols of the Inquisition, is the 
 
BOGOMILISM. 23 
 
 child of the dualism of the Kathars and Bogomils. 
 Here we find the rule of Satanael on earth as a 
 kind of counterpart of the rule of God in heaven. 
 It was but a short step to worship him, so as to 
 obtain favour with him, or, on the other hand, to 
 make amulets as a protection against his power. 
 
 The literary activity of the Bogomils was indeed 
 by no means slight. Popa Jeremiah himself is said 
 to have written much, e.g., the "Legend of the 
 Cross," " How Christ became Pope," &c. But the 
 chief use was made of the Apocryphal writings, 
 which were translated from the Greek, or rather 
 revised in a sense corresponding to their wishes. 
 
 They were even very well read in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and at one time their bishop in Bul- 
 garia boasted that there was not a single one 
 among his 4000 disciples who did not know the 
 Scriptures by heart. Now it is a very remarkable 
 fact that the earliest translations of the Bible into 
 the vernacular languages, especially into French 
 and Italian, were not made from the Latin Vulgate, 
 but without doubt from the Greek, or from one of 
 the translations derived from it. In all probability 
 they came from the Kathars, and were possibly 
 translated from the Slavonian. And, in fact, we 
 can easily explain this ; for every religious reform 
 begins with the study of the Bible ; and again, 
 these sects could only influence the common people 
 by means of the vernacular. We may now go a 
 
24 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 step farther, and ask what kind of Bible was it 
 which they used ? Did they confine themselves 
 to the simple translation of the text, or did they 
 rather adorn and amplify it so as to suit their 
 views and to make it more pleasant and accessible 
 to the people whom they wished to convert ? 
 
 From the earliest times, as soon as the Bible bad 
 become the Book, /car e^o^rjv, the source of all faith 
 and knowledge, the naive readers could not remain 
 satisfied with its plain contents, often incomplete, 
 and at times seemingly contradictory. Many of 
 its stories were too short, many names merely 
 mentioned in the Bible : on these points pious 
 curiosity needed to be satisfied. The reader would 
 ask : How did Adam plough the earth, for he 
 could have no knowledge of that art ? How did 
 Cain know about death, and how did his parents 
 bury Abel, for previously there had been neither 
 death nor burial ? Again, what is meant by saying 
 that God took Enoch ? What was the punishment 
 of Cain ? Who was Melchisedek, and why was he 
 called a priest ? Such questions could be asked 
 ad infinitum. As a consequence, a number of 
 legends arose already in earliest times, intended to 
 fill these lacunae and find answers to all these ques- 
 tions. These form the Apocryphal Literature, 
 which only became of practical importance when 
 it was adapted by heretical sects to their own 
 needs. These tales were often of a poetic cast, 
 
BIBLE-HISTORIALE. 25 
 
 derived from the popular taste and glowing imagi- 
 nation, which made them most suitable for a wide 
 circulation among the people. The heretics altered 
 various points in them in agreement with the 
 views which they professed. And since these 
 Apocrypha were represented as the work of Biblical 
 personages, the doctrines and sayings put in their 
 mouths gained additional influence. For this 
 reason the Apocrypha were particularly favoured 
 by all sects, whereas the Orthodox Church often 
 condemned them, as in the well-known Decreta 
 Gelasii, the lists of Athanasius and Nicephorus. 
 
 It is thus by no means surprising that we find 
 the greater part of these Apocrypha in the Old 
 Slavonian literature of the Bogomils, and for the 
 most part with very slight alterations, which in- 
 creases their value for critical purposes. Some of 
 these are even attributed to Popa Jeremiah himself, 
 among them the "Legend of the Cross," as I 
 have already mentioned. As we shall see, how- 
 ever, he merely altered older Apocrypha to accord 
 with his views. 
 
 The original sources of this literature, which tra- 
 velled through Europe and left permanent traces 
 of its influence on literature, poetry, painting, and 
 sculpture, are Greek texts, which came to Con- 
 stantinople from the East and passed on thence to 
 the Bogomils. A second source, equally Oriental in 
 its origin, was supplied by Jewish legends, found in 
 
26 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 the Haggadical writings, and in particular in a book 
 called Sepher Hayashar. This book, which has 
 the title of a work quoted in the Bible (Joshua x. 
 13), is a kind of Biblical history, wherein Genesis 
 and Exodus are completed by numerous ancient 
 legends, which are mostly incorporated without 
 alteration. Thus the Biblical history becomes a 
 Biblical romance ; truth and fiction are inextri- 
 cably mixed, and form together a complete Bible 
 adapted to pious readers. It did not, however, 
 prevent separate sections existing in independent 
 form as, for example, the story of Abraham and 
 Nimrod, the struggles of the sons of Jacob with 
 the inhabitants of Palestine, the legends of the 
 birth and death of Moses, &c., &c. 
 
 Precisely the same thing we have before us in the 
 Old Slavonian literature of the Bogomils. We have 
 special Apocryphal writings attributed to various 
 personages ; we have also though this has been 
 hitherto unknown an Old Slavonian Bible-story, 
 in which all these legends form one whole, and 
 which enjoyed enormous popularity and wide-spread 
 circulation. This Bible-story, called Palcea (i.e., 
 IIa\ala AiaQr\K,i]), may have been originally copied 
 from a Greek model, but in its existent and per- 
 haps extended form it contains several legends 
 which are almost literally translated from the 
 Sepher Hayashar. This Palcea belongs probably 
 to the tenth century, and is thus several centuries 
 
OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 27 
 
 older than the corresponding works in Germany 
 and France. These are independent of Comestor's 
 work Historia Scholastica, which, as I may incident- 
 ally remark, usurped ]ater on the name of the Biblia 
 Historiale. The Speculum Historiale of St. Vin- 
 cent of Beauvais is likewise a kind of Bible-story. 
 Neither of these have hitherto been satisfactorily 
 traced to their origin. It is only natural to assume 
 that, like the earliest translations of the Bible, 
 these Bible-stories may have been derived from 
 the heretical sects, especially as these Bible-stories 
 would find an even easier access to the people 
 owing to their legendary and poetic form. It is, 
 of course, also possible that they were afterwards 
 revised and freed from their heretical elements. 
 A few traces of these still remain, e.g., a cosmogony 
 varying in order and in details from that of Gene- 
 sis. Other details confirming this view must be 
 here omitted, as I devote a special chapter to a 
 more close inquiry into the origin and the sources 
 of these Bible-histories/ I must content myself 
 here with these short hints and revert to the story 
 Bible as it appears in Slavonic literature. 
 
 As I have already remarked, this contains a 
 number of Old Testament Apocrypha, to which it 
 is confined. Instead of going through them all, I 
 will select some of them of special importance for 
 their wide-spread or deep influence, and follow 
 
 * Appendix A. 
 
28 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 these through the stages of their development till 
 they become part and parcel of the popular mind. 
 I reserve the Apocrypha of the New Testament for 
 the next chapter, as they present peculiar features, 
 and form a transition to the literature of amulets. 
 
 Looking to the cosmogony,* we find that it 
 presents an unusual form. On the first day God 
 created heaven and earth; on the second, sun, 
 moon, and stars; on the third, paradise; on the 
 fourth, the sea; on the fifth, birds and beasts; on 
 the sixth, Adam; and on the seventh God breathed 
 into him the breath of life. It is, as it were, a 
 counterpart of St. Basil's Hexaemeron, which 
 attempted to explain the creation according to 
 the Bible. The fallen angels then occupy a large 
 space, but I must here pass them over, as they do 
 not offer anything special, and the legend never 
 existed as a separate Apocryphon. 
 
 Of still greater length and of far wider import- 
 ance are the legends which deal with the creation 
 of man, his fall, repentance, and death. The 
 mind of Christendom has always laid great weight 
 upon all this, in order to reach its scheme of 
 redemption, to which everything in the Biblical 
 stones had to refer, as the goal of human fate. 
 Beginning and end of the process had to be com- 
 bined, and the pious required a prophetic glimpse 
 of the final redemption while dealing with the 
 
 * Tihonravov, Pamjatniki otrefcennoi russkoi literatury, St. Petersburg, 
 Moscau, 1863, ii. p. 443 seq. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 29 
 
 beginning of sin. This association of ideas, per- 
 ceiving in the Biblical history a religious drama, 
 where the restoration of the fallen humanity is 
 foreshadowed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in 
 the New Testament, is an essential characteristic of 
 this heretical literature, to which I will revert, 
 and which I hope will give us the key for the 
 origin of the mediae val Biblia Historiale, and in 
 connection with it the "Bible of the Poor." 
 Hence the extent and number of apocryphal 
 tales dealing with this episode. These received 
 various names, such as Historia Adce et Evce, or 
 the " Legend of the Cross," or the " Pilgrimage of 
 Seth to Heaven." In Slavonic we have, in the 
 first place, the creation of man told in the favourite 
 form of question and answer, as we find it fre- 
 quently in the Middle Ages, especially in the so- 
 called Lucidarius. In a fifteenth-century copy of 
 this Slavonic text * we read as follows : 
 
 " Question. What holds up the earth ? 
 
 " Answer. The water. 
 
 " Question. And what the water ? 
 
 " Ansiver. A mighty rock. 
 
 " Question. And what the mighty rock ? 
 
 " Answer. Four golden fishes (whales). 
 
 " Question. And what the fishes ? 
 
 " Ansiver. A stream of fire. 
 
 " Question. And what holds the fire ? 
 
 * Tihonravov, 1.1. 
 
30 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 " Answer. A fire double as hot. 
 
 " Question. And what holds up this fire \ 
 
 11 'Answer. An iron tree, which was the first thing 
 created, and its roots are supported by God." 
 
 Then comes the cosmogony, which we have given, 
 only it is in the form of question and answer, which 
 continue as follows : 
 
 " Question. How did God create Adam ? 
 
 (( Answer. Out of eight things: earth, sea, stone, 
 wind, sun, thought, the speed of the angels, and 
 finally from the Holy Ghost." 
 
 This is made clearer in another MS, of the same 
 age. " The body is made out of earth, the blood 
 from the sea, the eyes from the sun, the thoughts 
 from the clouds, the bones of stone, the breath 
 from the wind, fertility from fire, and the living 
 spirit out of God Himself." 
 
 Both of these accounts have now-a-days become 
 the common property of the people among all the 
 Slavonic nations. These as well as the Eoumanians 
 repeat them in their songs, creeds, and in their 
 religious ideas, and I might quote innumerable 
 examples if I dared linger over this point. Even 
 to the present day the people explain an earth- 
 quake as a movement of the fish on which the 
 earth rests. Even in the popular recitations at 
 Eoumanian weddings the origin of man is described 
 exactly in the same way as the above. 
 
 * Pypin, 0erku literatumoi istorii starinyhu povestei, St. Petersburg, 
 1858, p. 140. 
 
ADAM AND EVE. 31 
 
 The tree on which the earth stands is of Oriental 
 origin, and occurs again in Northern mythology in 
 the form of the Ygdrasil. There we find a parallel 
 account of the creation of man, but in inverted 
 order: the giant Ymir creates the world out of his 
 own limbs, the sea out of his own blood, the moun- 
 tains out of his bones, the rocks out of his teeth, 
 the heavens out of his skull, the clouds out of his 
 humour, and the trees out of his hair.* A corre- 
 sponding cosmogony is to be found among the 
 Manichseans,t according to whom the world was 
 created out of the first man, the Urmensch of the 
 Germans, the Adam Kadmon of the Jews. It 
 also occurs in popular Russian literature, in the 
 celebrated Golubinaya Kniga, in which the most 
 heterogeneous elements have been combined into 
 an epic whole, and which may be regarded as the 
 outcome of a whole cycle of apocryphal stories. I 
 will therefore give it complete in a literal transla- 
 tion at the end of the treatment of the apocryphal 
 literature. 
 
 After Adam and Eve had been created by God, 
 they were tempted by Satan in the form of a 
 snake with a woman's head ; they fell into sin, and 
 were driven out of Paradise. All this, together 
 with their repentance and their contract with 
 Satan, forms the so-called "Confession of Eve" 
 
 * Grimm, Germ. Mythology, ed. iv., p. 464 seq. 
 t Fliigel, Mani, p. 87 scq., and the annotations. 
 
32 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 (Ispovedanye Evyne), which is also an introduction 
 to the " Legend of the Cross," and indeed represents 
 a peculiar treatment of it. Its contents are plainly 
 dualistic, which settles its origin without difficulty. 
 Slightly condensed, it runs as follows : * 
 
 "Eve tells her children that when God had 
 created everything, all things stood under her rule, 
 and no beast dared to touch her. But then came 
 the Devil ia the- form of a bright angel and tried to 
 seduce her. She repulsed him, and then came the 
 serpent as a bright angel and offered her the for- 
 bidden fruit. She trusted in the serpent, as favoured 
 by God, and ate, and gave some to Adam. Imme- 
 diately the leaves fell from all the trees except the 
 fig-tree. Then God drove them from Paradise. The 
 Archangel loil interceded for Adam and Eve in 
 vain. They stood for a fortnight before the gates 
 of Paradise, and then had to leave in order to find 
 something to eat, but they found only thistles. So 
 they returned to Paradise, and Adam complained 
 of the good fortune which he had lost, and begged 
 God to give him at least a flower as a remembrance 
 of it. God therefore sent to him incense (ladan and 
 liban). At their further request, God sent them 
 the Archangel loil, and he gave them the seventh 
 part of Paradise for them to work in ; at the same 
 time he sent all the animals out of Paradise, and 
 gave them to Adam. Adam, however, had scarcely 
 
 * Gaster, Literatura populara roinana, Bucuresti, 1883, p. 271 seq. 
 
ADAM AND EVE. 33 
 
 begun to plough the earth, when Satan appeared 
 and said, ' The earth is mine : Paradise and 
 heaven belong to God. If you are willing to be- 
 come mine, you may till the earth ; but if you 
 wish to belong to God, go back to Paradise/ 
 Adam answered, ' The earth and the heavens are 
 God's/ The Devil said, ' Give me a written agree- 
 ment that you are my property, and I will leave 
 you/ And Adam said, ' I and my children be- 
 long to Him whose is the earth/ Thereupon the 
 Devil rejoiced, and broke a stone and wrote this 
 upon it. (Another variant makes Adam place his 
 hand upon it, leaving a trace of it on the stone.) 
 The Devil preserved this stone in the Jordan, and 
 placed four hundred devils to guard it. When the 
 Saviour came, He placed Himself on this stone 
 when He was baptized in the Jordan, and broke 
 it, so that the agreement between Adam and the 
 Devil was at an end. 
 
 " Adam now went before the gates of Paradise 
 and cried and mourned ; at last he determined to 
 do penance. Eve went to the river Tigris and 
 stood in it forty days ; nevertheless the Devil tried 
 to deceive her twice, once in the form of an angel, 
 the other time in that of Adam. After the forty 
 days Adam came himself, who had done penance in 
 the Jordan, and removed her ; thus they were both 
 freed from the Devil. Many years passed by ; 
 
 Adam became ill ; his children assembled around 
 
 c 
 
34 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 them and asked them what was the matter, for 
 they had never before seen anybody ill. Eve said 
 that he had a longing for the fruits of Paradise, 
 and that this was the cause of his illness. There- 
 upon Seth determined to go to Paradise and bring 
 something thence to satisfy his father. He came 
 there, and obtained from the angel a branch of the 
 tree of which they had eaten. Adam recognised 
 the tree, drew a deep sigh, and waved the branch 
 round his head and died. Three angels with 
 lights came to bury him. After these angels had 
 prayed for a long time, God received the soul of 
 Adam graciously. Adam was then buried by Seth 
 in the spot called Gherusia Plata. A voice called 
 out to Adam, * Eemember what I said to you : 
 Earth thou art, and unto earth thou shalt re- 
 turn/ The voice called out to the earth, ' It 
 is thine, and was formed from thee : to thee all 
 things return/ And Eve died six days after. 
 Out of Adam's head a huge tree grew." 
 
 The source of this narrative is the so-called 
 Apocalypse of Moses ;* but this does not contain 
 the characteristic point of the contract between 
 Adam and Satan, in which the dualistic principle 
 is clearly expressed. Every single episode of this 
 tale occurs again in varied form in popular litera- 
 ture. The complaint of Adam is everywhere re- 
 peated wherever this story reached in Bulgaria, 
 
 * Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphse, Leipzig, 1866, pp. 1-32. 
 
LEGEND OF THE CROSS. 35 
 
 Servia, Koumania, and Russia. Curiously enough, 
 the contract survived in nearly literal form in most 
 of the reproductions. A part of these popular 
 songs became star-songs, or, as they are called in 
 England, Christmas carols. Iconography also made 
 use of the legend, and Eussian pilgrims often refer 
 to the stone on which Christ stood at His baptism. 
 In close connection with this legend stands the 
 " Legend of the Cross," one of the most wide-spread 
 and celebrated of the Middle Ages. It is found in 
 Latin MSS. of the twelfth century, and finds a place 
 in Provengal, Italian, German, and English litera- 
 ture. The legend in its simplest form is part of the 
 apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and it has often 
 been versified. References to it are to be found in 
 Dante. It was made the subject of a poem by 
 Gottfried and Viterbo, and of a drama by Cal- 
 deron. It is, of course, accepted by the Bogomils, 
 and attributed to Popa Jeremiah, their founder. 
 In Old Slavonic it is still extant in two forms, of 
 which one is by Gregorius Theologus, the other by a 
 certain Severian Gavalski. I will here give the ver- 
 sion which comes nearest to the original Bogomilist 
 form, and is more extensive than the parallels of 
 Western Europe. In the Old Slavonian version the 
 history of all the three crosses is given, whereas in the 
 West only that of the Saviour is dealt with. Brought 
 into proper order,* the legend runs as follows : 
 
 * Of. Wesselofsky, Razyskanija, St. Petersburg, 1883, x. pp. 367-424. 
 
36 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITER A TURE. 
 
 " When God created the world, only He and 
 Satanael were in existence. The latter stole some 
 of all the seeds which God sowed in the earth, and 
 planted them in Paradise. Thereupon God drove 
 him out of Paradise, and Satanael became black. 
 From the seeds he had planted rose a mighty tree 
 with three branches ; one belonging to Adam, the 
 other to Eve, and the third to God. At the Fall, 
 Adam's branch fell into the Tigris, and was taken 
 out therefrom ; Eve's was carried by the Flood to a 
 place called Merra. After the death of Adam, Seth 
 kindled a perpetual fire in his memory by the side 
 of the tree, and placed wild beasts to guard it. 
 When Lot sinned, Abraham set him as a penance 
 to bring three logs from the tree, to plant them and 
 tend them with water, which he should bring in 
 his mouth. His sin would be forgiven when the 
 logs had grown. They grew into a mighty tree. 
 Moses took the second root, and with it made sweet 
 the bitter waters of Marah. Both the trees were 
 brought to Jerusalem by King Solomon to be used 
 in the building of the Temple, but they could not 
 be adapted to that purpose. At times they were 
 too short, at times too long. On one of them Queen 
 Sivila (i.e., of Sheba) sate and burnt herself, where- 
 upon the trees were hidden in the Temple. It was 
 on these trees that the two thieves were crucified, 
 the good thief on Lot's, and the wicked one on 
 Eve's. 
 
LEGEND OF THE CROSS. 37 
 
 " Now Seth had brought a branch of the third 
 tree to his father, who made himself a crown out of 
 it, in which he was buried. Out of this grew a 
 wonderful tree, with three trunks that yet formed 
 but one. This tree was brought by the demons to 
 Solomon, who by this means obtained possession of 
 Adam's skull, which was in the roots of the tree. 
 This was so huge that a servant of Solomon once 
 took refuge in it from a storm. Solomon ordered 
 the skull to be brought to Jerusalem, and to be 
 stoned. This was the origin of the place called 
 Lithostroton (also Golgotha). This tree also was 
 of no use for building purposes, and was taken up. 
 It became the Cross of the Saviour. When Christ 
 was crucified on it, His blood fell through the rock 
 upon the head lying beneath, thus freeing Adam 
 from sin, and redeeming him." 
 
 This is the Slavonic form of the legend, and there 
 can be no doubt as to how it arose. The mention 
 of Satanael alone would prove its heretical origin, 
 and still more the whole line of thought, so far as 
 it is preserved after the orthodox revision that it 
 has undergone. It is only from the standpoint of 
 Bogomilism, which rejected the cross, that we can 
 explain the planting of it being attributed to Sata- 
 nael, or the trait that the demons brought it to 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Of the other episodes I will only linger over that 
 relating to Lot, which reminds us of Aaron's rod, 
 
38 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERA TURE. 
 
 and which, in the form of a symbol of repentance, 
 has spread so far. Who does not remember the 
 saga of Tannhauser, or the innumerable Slavonic, 
 Eoumanian, German, and French legends in which 
 the blossoming tree is a sign of sin and for- 
 giveness ? * Still more numerous are the legends 
 in which the appearance of blossoms on dead 
 branches is mentioned, though these are undoubt- 
 edly derived from the Biblical story. Among 
 others, I may mention a saga about Charlemagne, 
 which is preserved in Turpin's Chronicle. Saints 
 innumerable have performed the same miracle, and 
 even the beginning of Bohemian history is con- 
 nected with a similar miracle. 
 
 I must pass over other apocryphal stories, and 
 can only refer to the rich embellishment which the 
 stories of Cain, Lantech, Noah, and others received. 
 Melchisedek, who is specially mentioned in the 
 New Testament, is represented by three Apocrypha, 
 which aim at explaining his omission of the name 
 of his parents and his character as " priest of 
 God." The best known is that translated from 
 the Greek of Athanasius, which represents him 
 meeting Abraham in the beginning and being 
 selected as priest by the latter. 
 
 A favourite theme was the life of Abraham, his 
 destruction of the idols of Nineveh, his contest 
 with Nimrod, and so on up to his death. With 
 
 * Gaster, I. c. 
 
LEGENDS OF ABRAHAM. 39 
 
 regard to the last topic, we have in Slavonic litera- 
 ture an Apocryphon which, so far as is at present 
 known, has not been found in Greek, though there 
 can be no doubt that it originally existed in that 
 language. It is there described how Abraham was 
 taken up into heaven, and saw there the judg- 
 ment of men after death ; he returns to earth, and 
 struggles against death with all his might. Death 
 appears to him in an attractive form, and finally 
 deceives him into drinking his cup of poison. 
 Founded on an earlier Oriental legend dealing 
 with the death of Moses, this Apocryphon forms a 
 model of a whole series of similar imaginative 
 products portraying the struggle between man 
 and death, and the final victory of the latter. 
 Almost all literatures present examples of this, 
 especially in the form of folk-songs. In modern 
 Greek, the conflict of the hero Aniketos (Eussian, 
 Anika-voyn) or Digenis Akritas with Charon and 
 with death forms the subject of such songs. I 
 may also remind you of the danses macabres of 
 the Middle Ages, of Titian's celebrated picture, 
 &c. The counterpart of this, the flight of the 
 hero to the land of the immortals, is an equally 
 wide-spread theme from Ireland to India. But we 
 cannot linger here, nor even on the Testaments of 
 the twelve sons of Jacob (of which we have a 
 Slavonic translation of the fourteenth century, of im- 
 portance for the criticism of the Greek text), nor at 
 
40 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 the minor legends about Moses, but must pass on 
 at once to the legends about Solomon, which are of 
 such importance in the history of literature. 
 
 The Biblical accounts of the wisdom and riches 
 of Solomon, the visit of the Queen of Sheba, the 
 building of the Temple, and so on, caused him, even 
 in early times, to be made the hero of a whole 
 cycle of legends, round which other stories and 
 legends, derived from various sources, crystallised. 
 These in their turn underwent so many changes 
 in their wanderings towards Europe, that it often 
 requires a special investigation before we can 
 recognise the original legend in its latest form. I 
 will draw attention to two of the episodes, because 
 one of them had great influence on Russian epic 
 poetry, and the other is connected with the saga 
 of Merlin and with Bertoldo. Let us begin with 
 the latter.* 
 
 "In order to build the Temple, Solomon tried 
 to get Kitovras (i.e., Kentauros), the chief of the 
 demons, into his power. His general seized Kito- 
 vras, bound him with a chain, on the links of 
 which the name of God was written, and brought 
 him to Jerusalem. They went straight on, but as 
 they would have destroyed the house of a widow if 
 they had continued to do so, Kitovras broke one of 
 his ribs in two in order to avoid it. He heard a man 
 asking for shoes which should last seven years ; he 
 
 * Wesselofsky, Solom. i Kitovras, p. 209 seq. 
 
LEGENDS OF SOLOMON. 41 
 
 burst out laughing. He sees a prophet ; he laughs 
 again. He sees a wedding; he weeps. Finally, 
 he guides a drunkard the right way. When 
 brought before Solomon, he casts at his feet a rod 
 four feet in length. He explains to Solomon that 
 the bird Nogot possesses the worm Shamir, by 
 which stones can be split without the aid of iron, 
 the use of which was forbidden in the Temple. 
 He then explained what had happened. He had 
 laughed at the buyer of shoes, because he had only 
 seven days to live. The prophet stood over a 
 treasure, and promised good luck to other people 
 when he could not tell his own. The newly 
 married bride would die in three days ; and the 
 drunkard was a just man, of whom it was said in 
 heaven that he was worthy of protection. The 
 rod gave the length of the grave which would 
 receive Solomon at his death, though he was now 
 so ambitious of power." 
 
 This remarkable tale is originally Talmudical, 
 where the demon is called Ashmedai, here Kitovras, 
 from the Greek Kentauros. The story occurs in 
 a German form under the name of Solomon and 
 Markolph, and develops into a mere dialogue 
 between a king and a sharp-witted but vulgar 
 man. Between the two we have the saga of 
 Merlin, in which Merlin plays the part of Ashmedai- 
 Kitovras ; for he is brought before King Arthur, 
 goes through the same exploits on the way, and 
 
42 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERATURE. 
 
 explains them during the interview.^ We have, 
 further, the dialogue between Ben Sira and Nebu- 
 Jcadnezar, and in a later form, in Anglo -Latin, 
 a dialogue between Saturn and Marolph, and a 
 still later development in Bertoldo, the well-known 
 Italian chapbook. 
 
 Still more like a romance is the other specifically 
 Slavonic story of Solomon and Kitovras or Solomon 
 and Por. This runs as follows : Kitovras hears of 
 the beauty of Solomon's wife, and sends a magician 
 to bewitch her. He succeeds, and brings her to 
 Kitovras. Solomon comes in disguise, after he had 
 arrayed his army dressed in three uniforms before 
 the city. His wife recognises him and delivers 
 him up to Kitovras, who orders him to be hanged. 
 Solomon begs as a last favour that the trumpets 
 be blown three times, as he is a king. At this 
 signal his army advances in its battalions, red, 
 white, and black (explained by Solomon as fire, 
 clouds, and devils). They kill Kitovras and his 
 people, and likewise the faithless wife. This tale, 
 either in whole or in part, has passed almost literally 
 into all the popular literatures of these peoples, 
 and out of it stories and tales, and especially epic 
 songs, have been made. I mention only Koland, 
 who blows three times his trumpet, &c. 
 
 Less important are the legends of the destruction 
 of Jerusalem and the seventy years' sleep of Abed- 
 
 * Ellis, Early English Metrical Romances, ed. Halliwell, 1848, p. 31 se%. 
 
THE BABYLONIAN KINGDOM. 43 
 
 melekh. He afterwards receives Jeremiah when he 
 returns from exile with his people ; Jeremiah, seeing 
 a heavenly vision, announces the coming of the 
 Messiah, whereupon he is stoned by the people. 
 The story, which is only to be found in Slavonic, 
 modern Greek, Eoumanian, and ^Ethiopic, seems 
 also to be one of the old apocryphal legends, which 
 have hitherto been regarded as lost. 
 
 Finally, we may refer to the legend of the Baby- 
 lonian kingdom, in which a king orders the image of 
 a dragon to be placed on all objects. As a punish- 
 ment God causes all these dragons to spring into 
 life and devour the people, while round the city an 
 immense snake coiled itself. There is the grave 
 of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and thence 
 the messenger of the Emperor Leo brings a crown 
 sent by these saints. 5 * That Babylon was the home 
 of dragons and basilisks was a wide-spread belief 
 during the Middle Ages, and of this I might adduce 
 many examples. I mention here only Sir John 
 Mandeville. 
 
 Out of all these and other smaller elements 
 was compiled the Slavonic Bible-story, which exer- 
 cised so important an influence on the popular 
 imagination. 
 
 * Wesselofsky, Archiv f. Slav. Philologie, ii. I, 2, and Zametki, St. 
 Petersburg, 1883, * PP- 9 -I 4- 
 
III. 
 
 THE APOCRYPHA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. ANTI- 
 CHRIST. LIVES OF THE SAINTS. THE LETTER 
 FROM HEAVEN AND THE FLAGELLANTS. THE 
 " GOLUBINAYA KNIGA." 
 
III. 
 
 Pious curiosity, that is, the wish to fill up the 
 lacunae presented by the Biblical relations, was also 
 the principal cause that led to the origination of 
 the Apocrypha of the New Testament, especially the 
 writings commonly known as Apocryphal Gospels. 
 As Mr. Cowper says in his introduction to the 
 English translation, " Men were curious to know 
 more than the Canonical Gospels contained. Frag- 
 mentary stories or traditions were abroad relating 
 to Joseph and Mary and their families, to the birth 
 and infancy, the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, to 
 Pilate, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and so 
 on. How pleasant if all these fragments could be 
 rendered complete, and especially if the silence of 
 the four Gospels could be supplemented ! The 
 wish was not a barren one, and from time to time 
 writings appeared professing to supply the infor- 
 mation which was wanted. Some of these writ- 
 ings may be considered introductory to the evan- 
 gelical narratives, others as appendices, but all as 
 supplementary in one way or another. Joseph 
 and Mary were no longer the obscure individuals 
 the Gospels have left them ; the incarnation, birth, 
 
48 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITER A TURE. 
 
 and early life of Jesus no more remained imper- 
 fectly recorded ; the last days of Christ's earthly 
 life were set forth with wondrous minuteness of 
 detail ; the space between the death and resurrec- 
 tion of the Saviour was filled up with particulars 
 of what happened in the unseen world, as well as 
 at Jerusalem and elsewhere. Pilate was pursued 
 into every nook and corner ; all he did and said 
 was noted down, and the steps of the Nemesis 
 which hunted him beyond the very grave were 
 diligently traced." 
 
 No question that these writings were largely 
 used by heretical sects, which sought support from 
 Apostolical or Divine authorities. So we find a 
 Gospel ascribed to Nicodemus, another even to 
 Marcian, the head of the Gnostics, &c. These 
 books were used to support various doctrines and 
 opinions concerning Christ, Mary, the resurrection, 
 and so forth. 
 
 The Apocrypha of the New Testament make 
 indeed their appearance very early in Slavonic 
 literature, as well as elsewhere, but under some- 
 what different circumstances to those of the Old 
 Testament. While the latter were more or less 
 inserted into the actual text of the Bible, the other 
 Apocrypha found no place in the actual text of the 
 body of the New Testament, and had, as it were, 
 an independent existence. This fact is connected 
 with the circumstance that the Bo^omils, as well 
 
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 49 
 
 as at an earlier date the Gnostics and Manichaeans, 
 were opposed more or less to the Old Testament. Its 
 only value was as an announcement and prepara- 
 tion for the New Testament. Interpolations and 
 expansions were therefore permitted in the former. 
 Their relation to the New Testament was quite 
 different, since it was the foundation of their creed, 
 and as such enjoyed special sanctity. It did not, 
 however, prevent numerous legends of Christ, of 
 the Holy Virgin, and of the Apostles to be circulated 
 and modified in accordance with the desires and 
 views of the heretics. On the contrary, the holy 
 character attributed to this pseudo-epigraphical 
 literature raised its value and made it fitting for 
 the propagation of those views. 
 
 As is well known, the Apostle John, the author 
 of the Apocalypse, which answered so well to their 
 system, was the Beloved Apostle of the Bogomils, 
 and many a book and revelation is ascribed to him 
 The Gospel of St. John was especially worshipped, 
 and we will see farther on another book containing 
 the fundamental belief of the Bogomils ascribed also 
 to St. John. Incidentally I will mention here the 
 Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John, both 
 later accused of heresy, as well as the Freemasons, 
 who all took their oath on the Gospel of St. John 
 and had a special feast of St. John. The German 
 Johannisminne may also be brought into connection 
 with this, being till now not satisfactorily explained. 
 
50 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 The Bogomils attributed, further, a number of 
 apocryphal tales to the Apostle Paul, as well as to 
 the Holy Virgin, or, better, accepted and changed 
 them. 
 
 A peculiarity of nearly all these was that they 
 dealt with eschatological questions. While the Old 
 Testament, as enlarged by the means I have de- 
 scribed, answered the inquiring or curious minds 
 with regard to the creation of the world, of man, 
 or the origin of evil, the Apocrypha of the New 
 Testament solved the problem of the fate of man 
 after death, and thus completed the drama of re- 
 demption. These writings included descriptions 
 of heaven and hell, and gave instructions how to 
 reach the former or how to avoid the eternal fires 
 of the latter. 
 
 There is now a great difference between the 
 Apocrypha of the New Testament and those of the 
 Old, especially as regards those with which I am 
 dealing. The Apocrypha of the Old Testament 
 gradually make their way among the people, but in 
 the process often lose their name. Their contents 
 are preserved, episodes out of them are freely modi- 
 fied, and they thus pass, as it were, into the very 
 blood of the people. Being assimilated by the 
 people, they form a basis for further poetic expres- 
 sion, while the Apocrypha of the New Testament, 
 attributed to holy personages, who are actually 
 worshipped and form a part of the religious creed, 
 
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 51 
 
 are preserved, with slight alterations, in a distinct 
 book form. They are never incorporated into the 
 body of the Holy Scriptures, but have themselves 
 their own holiness. The very names given to them 
 endow them with a kind of sanctity. 
 
 Of greater popularity, and of greater importance 
 for the literature and civilisation of the world is 
 the " Gospel of Nicodemus," especially through its 
 legend of the cross, already mentioned, and above all 
 by the " Descent of Christ to Hell," which is there 
 described by two eye-witnesses from hell. We have 
 presented to us the approach of the Saviour, the 
 bursting open of the gates of hell, and the liberation 
 of all souls, from Adam downwards. It also con- 
 tains wonderful details of the trial of Christ before 
 Pilate and of His passion. There is scarcely a 
 European language into which this Gospel has not 
 been translated. The Latin translations are very 
 early, and were inserted by Jacobus a Voragine 
 in his Historic* Lombardica, or " Golden Le- 
 gend," a name of which Longfellow made use. It 
 does not come within our scope to follow the 
 work through all the literatures of the world. I 
 will content myself with referring to the Anglo- 
 Saxon translation which was printed at Oxford in 
 1698, though this had been preceded by an English 
 one in 1507. The well-known "Passion plays" 
 are based on this Gospel, and the influence of its 
 " Descent to Hell " is proved by the many imita- 
 
52 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 tions, including those of Dante and St. Patrick. It 
 is true that classical literature had its " Descents to 
 Hades," but at the time when this literature appears 
 the influence of the classical models may well be 
 doubted. Many references in Dante show clearly 
 that he was acquainted with the " Gospel of Nico- 
 demus." In Slavonic literature, besides the text 
 itself, we have many reminiscences of it among the 
 popular literature. The " Descent to Hell " itself 
 gave rise to a remarkable imitation, " The Descent 
 of the Holy Virgin," and it is easy to imagine the 
 influence it would have on the popular fancy, 
 especially as it was from the beginning regarded 
 as the clue to the mysterious life after death, and 
 therefore gave an opportunity of entering into all 
 possible torments, while the original Gospel only 
 spoke of a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
 It is not at all surprising that -we meet with this 
 in versified form when the popular songs deal with 
 man's soul after death. In Eoumania it plays a 
 great part in the so-called wakes for the dead, i.e., 
 in the songs sung by the side of the corpse. 
 
 On the other hand, the story Las become quite a 
 popular and largely circulated book, and is called 
 also " Letter of the Mother of God," as a parallel 
 and counterpart to another " Letter of God " Him- 
 self, both of which I shall shortly examine. 
 
 In close connection with the " Descent to Hell " 
 is another apocryphal writing attributed to St. Paul, 
 
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 53 
 
 which is likewise of great antiquity. This deals 
 particularly with the condition of the soul at the 
 moment of death, with the severance of the soul 
 from the earth, and with the way it must go to 
 reach heaven or hell. This too was a theme likely 
 to rouse curiosity, and its treatment would be wel- 
 come to pious believers. 
 
 The first support for the contrast between the 
 deaths of the righteous and the unrighteous is to 
 be found in the Bible, where it is said, " It came 
 to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by 
 angels into Abraham's bosom." This was repeated 
 about innumerable saints, as St. Barbara, St. Paul 
 the Hermit, &c. But the clear contrast between 
 righteous and unrighteous is to be found in a re- 
 markable manner in the writings of Mani, the 
 founder of the sect of Manichseans, who has a special 
 chapter on the point, almost in exactly the same 
 words. * The same picture is frequently repeated 
 in religious and mystical tracts, in burial and other 
 sermons, and in other moral writings intended to 
 influence the imagination of men by this means. 
 We thus find it even at the present day in folk- 
 books, as in the so-called " Mirror of Human Life " 
 in French, t 
 
 Especially noteworthy are, further, the stations or 
 posts through which the soul has to pass before it 
 reaches heaven. These are guarded by the demons 
 
 * Cf. Flugel, Mani, pp. loo-ioi. f Nisard, ii. 29. 
 
54 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 of human passions, which demand their rights from 
 the soul. This idea arose first in Egypt, it occurs in 
 the " Book of Enoch," &c., and the early Fathers of 
 the Church concerned themselves greatly with this 
 question. We meet with it also among the Mani- 
 chseans, and very often among the moral writings 
 intended for popular reading. Several visions of the 
 saints repeat it, St. Macarius and others, that of St. 
 Basil the younger at the greatest length. The idea 
 took root in popular songs, and especially in popular 
 superstitions : songs at wakes wish that the departed 
 may come safely through the " stations " of heaven. 
 Many ceremonies connected with burial may be 
 traced back to these tales of the fate of man after 
 death. Most remarkable of all, this description, 
 combined with that of hell, has given the material 
 for the Russian block-book of the last judgment of 
 the world. A careful comparison between picture 
 and tale brings out clearly the connection of the two. 
 This may be traced farther back, as the Kussian was 
 originally South Slavonic or Byzantine, and served 
 as frescoes in church. The picture is rightly to be 
 called " The Last Judgment of the Soul after Death : 
 its Eeward and Punishment," for this is all of the 
 last judgment to be found in it. 
 
 I have perhaps lingered too long over this Apoca- 
 lypse, and must pass on to the legend in which the 
 same Macarius plays the principal part, namely, his 
 journey to Paradise. This was a harder task. The 
 
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 55 
 
 Apostle Paul, it is true, saw Paradise in his Apoca- 
 lypse, but be speaks little of it. It seems as if only 
 the sorrows of men can make eloquent and can be 
 depicted, but not their happiness ; so he tells very 
 little about this, and what little he does say failed 
 to find its way into the mind of the people. Others 
 sought to find Paradise, but they only saw it from 
 afar, and could not come near to it. This was the 
 case with Alexander of Macedon in the Alexandreis, 
 and this too happened to St. Macarius, whose apocry- 
 phal tale is entirely taken from the work of Pseudo- 
 Callisthenes. Happiness is not granted to man in 
 this life ! 
 
 Among those questions which have moved men's 
 souls, and still move them, is then the question of 
 the end of all things. When and how will the end 
 of the world come ? It is true the Apocalypse of 
 St. John had given an answer to this, and depicted 
 in glowing colours the approach of Antichrist, the 
 signs of the world's end, and the last judgment. 
 
 It is sufficiently well known how these thoughts 
 interested not alone the Christian, but also the 
 Jewish and Pagan worlds. This description of the 
 burning up of the world is especially emphasised 
 in the religion of Zoroaster. We meet with it too 
 in Mani, as well as in Teutonic mythology, where 
 it plays a principal part. I do not, of course, 
 propose to pursue these ideas farther. I will 
 content myself with remarking that St. Jerome 
 
56 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 has a similar description of the signs which are to 
 precede the last judgment. So, too, the Vener- 
 able Bede, and after him a crowd of ecclesiastical 
 writers. 
 
 The deep impression made upon the mind of the 
 Slavonic peoples by the idea of Antichrist as the 
 type of the godless is proved by a number of sagas, 
 songs, fairy tales, and superstitions. The saga of 
 Gog and Magog is connected with it. This is an 
 episode of the Alexandreis, in which it is told how 
 Alexander had shut up fifteen nations under moun- 
 tains near the Caucasus. These peoples will appear 
 at the time of Antichrist and do all manner of 
 cruel deeds. Exactly similar to this is a legend 
 of South Eussia. The legend of Antichrist and 
 of the last judgment often appear in the Eussian 
 picture or block books (LuboZnija Kartinki), which 
 constitute so large a part of Eussian folk-lore. 
 Owing to the popularity of the subject, which 
 roused the terror of the people, many descriptions 
 were naturally put into circulation ; among them 
 two celebrated ones, attributed respectively to 
 Hyppolitus and Methodius of Patara. Both are 
 well known in early Slavonic literature, and are 
 often repeated in later adaptations. 
 
 Besides this Apocrypha, which had so great an 
 influence, many other Apocryphal tales were early 
 translated into Slavonic, especially the apocry- 
 phal Acts of the Apostles, of Peter, Andrew, and 
 
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 57 
 
 Kufinus, and those were especially preferred which 
 were most rich in miracles, and were thus best 
 assured of a favourable reception among the people. 
 
 Lives of the saints were also translated, espe- 
 cially those which were full of wonders, like that 
 of St. Theodore Tiron, who slew a dragon in a 
 forest and afterwards became a martyr, or like 
 that of St. George, who made the Devil speak in 
 a statue of Apollo and drove him out of it. Espe- 
 cial favourites were the hermits, like the settlers 
 of the Thebais in Egypt, St. Anthony, St. Simon 
 Stylites, St. Macarius, whom we have frequently 
 mentioned, then St. Nicholas of Myra, and others 
 whose names are legion. 
 
 In equal favour were the romantic lives which 
 more or less resembled fairy tales without their 
 fantastic elaboration. For example, the life of 
 St. Alexius, the man of God, St. Eustachius, and 
 so many others, who passed through so many mar- 
 vellous adventures before they obtained the crown 
 of happiness or martyrdom. 
 
 I have named these lives because we can prove 
 their influence on the popular literature. The 
 heroic deeds of the one in knightly encounters with 
 monsters and demons, or the struggles of another 
 with the passions, have raised a loud response in the 
 harp-strings of popular poetry, and their deeds 
 resound in many a folk-song, in which now one 
 now the other is particularly emphasised. 
 
58 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 Closer inquiry into the process of this transition 
 from tales into ballads and from ballads into 
 lyrics will lead to many an unexpected result. 
 Thus we can show that the name of the person 
 disappears gradually, and a personal song, if we 
 may so term it, is changed into a general imper- 
 sonal one. Thus, to give an example, there is in 
 the Life of St. Josaphat, which I shall have to 
 deal with later on, a song describing how he 
 flees into the desert to his teacher, and gives up 
 riches, happiness, and splendour. Now we can 
 actually show how this song in this form changed 
 gradually in Bulgaria, Koumania, and Eussia into 
 a song of the stranger, i.e., of a man who bemoans 
 all that he has left behind in his home. Many 
 more examples might be given of this kind in 
 popular literature showing this transition : the 
 subject remains, but the personal accessories dis- 
 appear. I must, however, return to the Apocry- 
 phal literature. 
 
 Before I treat of the complete books, I must 
 consider a few fragmentary works which deal 
 directly with the life of Christ. There is first the 
 Evangelium Infantite, which is not all extant. It 
 occurs in the dialogues of the three saints, Basil, 
 John, and Chrysostom, and is nothing but a kind 
 of Lucidarius. From this book many legends 
 have been preserved, and have been transplanted 
 into Christmas carols. Among these there is the 
 
DESCENT OF THE HOLY VIRGIN. 59 
 
 saga, well known elsewhere, of the sacred tree 
 under which the Holy Family rested in the flight 
 to Egypt. The tree bends low, that the Mother 
 of God may the more easily pluck its fruit, and 
 when the sun rises high up in heaven, it spreads 
 its branches out so as to shade the Holy Family. 
 Parallel passages are easily to be found in Christmas 
 carols, in songs, and even in iconographical descrip- 
 tions of the flight to Egypt. 
 
 Passing over other fragmentary Gospels, there 
 is, further, the above-mentioned Gospel of Nicode- 
 mus, preserved, as it seems, only in an abridged 
 and incomplete form in the Slavonic literature, 
 but which gave rise to the " Descent of the Holy 
 Virgin." This is, besides, one of the oldest texts 
 of Slavonic literature. The contents of it, taken 
 from a copy of the twelfth century, run as fol- 
 lows : * 
 
 " Once upon a time the Holy Virgin prayed 
 to God on the Mount of Olives, and begged Him 
 to send the Archangel Michael to show her the 
 punishments of men. Then came the Archangel 
 with a number of angels. And she asked him, 
 ' How many punishments are there, and are men 
 really punished?' And he answered, 'There are 
 innumerable punishments ; ' and he ordered the 
 Angel of the South to open hell. And she saw a 
 multitude of men and women in great anguish. 
 
 * Tihonravov, ii. p. 23 se<}. 
 
60 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 The angel explained to her that these were men 
 who had worshipped created things, as gods, sun, 
 moon, and stars, and the. Slavonic gods Trojan, 
 Hors, Veles, and Perun, and they still hankered 
 after evil ; therefore were they punished. 
 
 " Farther on she saw a thick darkness which 
 covered the people. At her request this cloud dis- 
 appeared for a moment. The punished ones could 
 not see her, because they had seen no light for an 
 endless time. The angel said that these were they 
 who had not believed in the Trinity nor in the Holy 
 Virgin. She wept bitterly over them, and went on 
 towards the south, where there is a burning stream. 
 In this men were lying, some completely immersed, 
 others only partially. These were the dishonest 
 and the cannibals, i.e., those who ruined others. 
 At one place she saw men hanged upside down, and 
 being gnawed by worms. These were the lovers of 
 gold and silver. Again, she saw women hanging 
 by their teeth, and dragons coming out of their 
 mouths. These were they that listen at doors and 
 then tell lies. Thence the Holy Virgin went to the 
 North. There she found a burning cloud in which 
 were fiery beds, on which lay men and women. 
 They had not got up on Sunday to go to church. 
 In another place men sat on burning stools. These 
 had not stood up before the priests in church. 
 Again the Holy Virgin looked and saw a mighty 
 iron tree. On its boughs hung hooks with men 
 
DESCENT OF THE HOLY VIRGIN. 61 
 
 hanging by their tongues. These were those who 
 had caused enmity between man and man. Farther 
 on she sees a man being eaten by a bird with wings 
 and three heads. With one of these it covered his 
 eyes, with the other his mouth, so that he could 
 not pray to God for mercy. This was a man who 
 knew the Scriptures but did not follow them. 
 Then she sees the punishment of unworthy priests, 
 who were careless in their duties or immoral in 
 their lives. At last she comes to a mighty stream 
 of fire, which boils like the water in a kettle and 
 tosses like the waves of the sea. Here were Jews, 
 heathens, and renegade Christians, who had fallen 
 from the true faith, and had served the Devil. 
 
 " Then the Holy Virgin arose and went to the 
 throne of God and begged for mercy for the souls 
 in torment. She called to her aid Moses the law- 
 giver, Paul the apostle and spreader of the Epistles, 
 and John the Evangelist, but all in vain. At last 
 she begs Michael the Archangel and the choir of 
 angels to pray with her for mercy from God. Christ 
 therefore descends, and when the tortured souls 
 see Him they pray to Him for mercy. Christ 
 thereupon assures them, at the request of His 
 Mother, that their punishment shall be remitted 
 from Green Thursday to Pentecost." 
 
 So far goes this fanciful description in an abridged 
 form. Similar descriptions, and much older even 
 than the Gospel of Nicodemus, we meet in the old 
 
62 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERA TURE. 
 
 apocalyptical literature of the East. I mention 
 especially that of the prophet Isaiah, and the old 
 Persian in the Arda-Viraf-Ndmeh. Here also a 
 priest travels through hell and Paradise, and de- 
 scribes at full length the punishments and the woe 
 of hell. It is a question of special inquiry as to 
 how far our Apocalypse was subject to the influence 
 of the latter, with which it shows an undoubted 
 similarity. 
 
 Besides this, there is also, as I mentioned above, 
 another eschatological story dealing with the pre- 
 vious condition of the soul from the moment of its 
 departure from the body till it reaches heaven or 
 hell. This Apocryphon is ascribed to the Apostle 
 Paul, who saw it in an apocalyptical vision. 
 
 In the Slavonic literature it has been preserved 
 in two forms, an abridged and shorter one, and an 
 enlarged one, corresponding more closely to the 
 Greek text, and treating not only of the departure 
 of the soul, but also of the happiness of Paradise 
 and the torments of hell. This latter part, how- 
 ever, has been rendered superfluous by the account 
 attributed to the Holy Virgin, and thus the first 
 part formed a separate existence, in which the de- 
 parture of the soul from the body is described as 
 follows : * 
 
 " On every day there appear before the throne 
 of God the angels of good men who live piously, 
 
 * St. Novakovirf, Primeri Knjizevnostii jezika staroga i srpsko-slovens- 
 koga, Belgrad, 1877, p. 437 seq. j Tihonravov, ii. 40 seq. 
 
APOCALYPSE OF ST. PAUL. 63 
 
 and they bring their good deeds before God, full of 
 joy and wonderment at the patient piety of man. 
 Opposite to these appear the angels of bad men, 
 crying bitterly, and they ask God why they should 
 serve such men. But God answers that they 
 should serve them as long as they lived, for perhaps 
 they might make them better. And the Apostle 
 Paul begged of the angel that he might see the place 
 of the good and the bad souls. He was first taken 
 to hell, where he saw the wicked spirits who torture 
 bad men ; they ruled the world and received the 
 souls of the wicked. Then he saw bright angels, 
 who were the angels of the good, and were always 
 ready to receive their souls at the moment of death. 
 " The Apostle then looked down upon the earth, 
 and saw it surrounded by a fiery cloud. This con- 
 sisted of the sins of the world mixed with prayers. 
 He then desired to witness the death of a just man 
 and of an unjust man. The angel bids him look 
 down. He saw a just man and troops of bright 
 angels approaching him, and all the good deeds 
 he had performed on earth. These all receive his 
 soul, and say to it three times, ' Soul, soul, look 
 upon the body in which thou hast lived, for on the 
 day of judgment thou shalt rejoin it.' This goes 
 on for three days, then comes the man's angel and 
 kisses the soul, and encourages it, for it has done 
 the will of God. It is then led up to heaven. 
 On the way the soul has to pass many stations 
 
64 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 of bad angels, who refer to its sins and attempt 
 to drag it down. But the angel supports it, and 
 the soul reaches heaven unharmed, where it is 
 greeted and welcomed by innumerable hosts, till 
 finally God places it in the fields of Paradise. 
 
 " Not so the soul of the sinner. This is taken 
 in charge by the evil spirits. The guardian angel 
 weeps and accompanies it to heaven, where God 
 recalls its sins and condemns it to hell." 
 
 I have merely given a short sketch of the contents 
 of this apocalypse. This part is spun out at length 
 in a similar vision which St. Macarius is said to have 
 had in the wilderness. This is the same Macarius 
 who had a vision of three dead men in the desert, 
 which became the foundation of ihedanses macabres, 
 which was so called, I suppose, after the name of the 
 same Macarius, altered to Macaire, Macabre. 
 
 The next question after the end of man was 
 that of the end of the world. The Apocalypse 
 of St. John gave an answer to it, but this was 
 too general for the pious and ascetic reader of the 
 olden times, and thus another Apocalypse was 
 attributed to the same St. John, in which he is re- 
 presented as asking questions and Christ as giving 
 answers about the end of all things. This book, 
 called <c Questions and Answers of St. John on 
 Mount Tabor," is of the more importance as it 
 became a standard book of the Bogomils. It was 
 translated in an early period by the Kathars of 
 
APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN. 65 
 
 Concorenzo from Slavonic into Latin, and is pre- 
 served in a much expanded form in the Acts of 
 the Inquisition at Carcassone, under the name of 
 Secretum Hsereticorum de Concorenzio. There 
 it is expressly mentioned, "portatum de Bulgaria 
 a Nazario suo episcopo, plenum erroribus." * The 
 Greek original has been published by Tischendorf, 
 and we possess Slavonic texts of the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. The Latin text embraces be- 
 ginning and end, and gives first a picture of the 
 Fall, and describes how Satan first came down to the 
 earth. He found it resting on two fishes, and these 
 on water, clouds, and fire ; and then it is told how 
 Satan created this world. It then speaks of bap- 
 tism, and finally ends with the question of the 
 second coming of Christ and the overthrow of the 
 power of Satan. This latter part forms the chief 
 contents of the extant Slavonic text. Here we 
 have also the additional trait that a mighty book is 
 shown to John : " Its thickness was that of seven 
 mountains, and its breadth so great that no human 
 mind could grasp it ; and this book had seven 
 seals. In it was written all that is in heaven 
 and on earth." This commencement and the Latin 
 version reminds us of the Golubinaya Kniga, 
 which is closely connected with it, and its origin 
 must be somehow brought into relation with 
 this Apocalypse. After this comes the story of 
 
 * Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, i. p. 884 seq. 
 
66 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITER A TURE. 
 
 the second coming, all in the form of question and 
 answer, and then the signs of the last judgment. 
 First, Antichrist will appear; he is thus described: 
 "His face is dark, the hairs of his head like sharp 
 arrows, his gaze marvellous, his right eye like the 
 rising star of morn, his left eye like that of a lion, 
 his mouth an ell wide, each of his teeth a span 
 broad, his nails like sickles, his footsteps each two 
 spans broad, and on his brow is written ' Anti- 
 Christ/ He will rise up to heaven and descend 
 to hell, and do all manner of evil deeds to the 
 righteous. Then God will turn the heaven into 
 iron, so that it will not rain, and the clouds will 
 disappear and the winds cease. Then will come 
 the Prophets Enoch and Elijah, and fight with 
 Antichrist, but will be defeated by him. Then 
 the angels will raise all the righteous, and all 
 holy vessels and books, into the sky, and every- 
 thing will be destroyed in the conflagration of the 
 world. The winds will then clear it away, so that 
 the earth will be white as snow or clean parch- 
 ment, prepared for the last judgment." Then fol- 
 lows a powerful, though fantastic, description of 
 the advent of Christ, when the seven seals are 
 opened, and the dead as well as Antichrist and his 
 followers are judged. 
 
 One of the most popular legends, of quite a 
 different character, which plays a great part in the 
 mediaeval movement, is the " Legend of Sunday," 
 
LETTER FROM HEA VEN. 67 
 
 more often called also " The Letter from Heaven." 
 Known in the East as early as the eighth century, 
 it soon became the common property of all Europe. 
 Eoger of Hovedene gives this " Letter from 
 Heaven" in his Chronicle under the year 1201, 
 and says that it had been brought in this year 
 to England by Abbot Eustachius of Flays. The 
 letter was directly copied thence by Eoger of 
 Wendover into his own Chronicle. An Anglo- 
 Saxon translation is said to be in existence at 
 Corpus Christi College in Oxford. The fact that 
 makes this letter so important is that it became 
 the leading document of the Flagellants. These 
 first appeared in Lombardy in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, and spread as far as Poland and Moravia; 
 they then disappear for a time, only to reappear 
 with renewed vigour in the fifteenth century. 
 Contemporary writers mention this " Letter from 
 Heaven" as the writing which they were accus- 
 tomed to read immediately after their flagellation. 
 In Slavonic literature, MSS. of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries are extant, which are derived 
 from the Greek, and thus render it probable that the 
 Latin texts also came from the same source. Its 
 contents, in the best known form, run as follows : 
 
 " Once upon a time in Jerusalem [other texts say 
 in Eome] there fell upon the Mount of Olives a 
 stone from heaven, which no man could raise. The 
 Patriarch and the whole Synod gathered round it, 
 
68 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERA TURE. 
 
 and prayed to God for- three days and three nights, 
 till the stone opened of itself and therein lay a big 
 roll with the following words, written by God : 
 ' I am your God, and ye are my people. I have 
 already written twice unto you, now I write for 
 the third and last time. Ye must fear me. I have 
 already sent you many signs of my wrath, but 
 ye have not hearkened. Ye shall keep holy my 
 Sunday, Friday, and Wednesday. Do ye not 
 know that on a Friday I created Adam ? that 
 on a Sunday the Archangel Gabriel brought the 
 joyful Annunciation ; that on a Sunday I was bap- 
 tized in the Jordan ; that I rose again on a Sunday, 
 and will judge the world in that day ? On Wed- 
 nesday the Jews spoke together how they might 
 slay me ; therefore shall ye on that day fast, love 
 one another, and do good. The Pagans, though 
 they have not our faith, still do good after their 
 belief. But ye do it not. Therefore would I have 
 long ago destroyed you, but that the Holy Virgin 
 and the Apostles have prayed for you that I should 
 put off your punishment. Fast ye, therefore, and 
 keep Sunday, Friday, and Wednesday, and I will 
 send you my blessing. But if you do not do this, 
 a terrible punishment will befall you. It will rain 
 fire and hot water, wild beasts will destroy man- 
 kind, and among these will be animals having 
 the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, hair 
 instead of feathers, and horses' tails.' ' : 
 
LETTER FROM HEA VEN. 69 
 
 It goes on to say that a voice from heaven 
 announced that this message came from the in- 
 visible Father Himself, and woe unto him who did 
 not believe it, for upon him would come eternal 
 punishment. Cursed be that priest or deacon who 
 would not read this message in church, or who did 
 not copy it out and send it to far lands. On the 
 other hand, he was to be relieved of all his sins who 
 read it and copied it. 
 
 This is the main drift of this letter, which was 
 copied a thousand times, and gradually was used 
 as an amulet. In later versions of it, help in ex- 
 tremity, freedom from fear, and protection against 
 the attacks of the wicked spirits is promised as 
 a reward for carrying it. Under the title of 
 "Letter from Heaven" or "The Lord's Letter," 
 this Sunday legend had become a favourite book 
 for the people in Eoumania and Eussia, and even 
 serves as an amulet. 
 
 This deep reverence for the days sanctified by 
 events in the life of the Saviour led in the East 
 of Europe to a kind of personification of those 
 days. Instead of the good fairies of Western tradi- 
 tion, we have in the fairy tales of those lands St. 
 Sunday, St. Wednesday, and St. Friday, and we 
 meet with them in popular songs, especially in songs 
 for Christmas and New Year. Superstitions were 
 connected with the proper observance of these days. 
 The slightest work would involve an immediate 
 
70 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERA TURE. 
 
 punishment. These consequences, threatened by 
 Scripture in the form of outbursts of Nature, were 
 taken quite literally, and to each particular deed is 
 appropriated its own punishment, e.g., a storm for 
 needlework, and so on. "We all know the legend 
 of the Man in the Moon, a German form of which 
 recognises in him a man who had collected a bundle 
 of wood on a Sunday.* 
 
 Once started on the way of attributing special 
 sanctity to certain days beyond those of the canon, 
 the plan was soon extended to certain Fridays on 
 which certain important events are said to have 
 happened. This forms the " Legends of the Twelve 
 Fridays," which is still now-a-days a popular book. 
 The basis of this is formed by a disputation 
 between Eleftherie the Christian and Tarasie the 
 Jew, on the result of which depends whether the 
 former should become a Jew or the latter a Chris- 
 tian. The question put by the Jew is, Which are 
 the twelve great Fridays ? Mathia, the son of the 
 Jew, betrays them to the Christian, and tells how 
 they had been written down by the Apostles and 
 hidden by the Jews. I may give here from a MS. 
 of the fifteenth century the first three : 
 
 "The first Friday is on the 6th March ; on this 
 day Adam transgressed the command of God and 
 was driven out of Paradise. The second Friday 
 is before the Annunciation; on this Cain killed 
 Abel and brought death into the world. The 
 
 * Gaster, Lit. Pop., p. 371 seq. 
 
GOLUBINAYA KNIGA. 71 
 
 third Friday is that of Christ's crucifixion ; 011 
 this He sacrificed Himself for the redemption of 
 sinners." And so it goes on. The later the text, 
 the more details are given to each day, in order 
 to make them more important and to encourage 
 observance of them and fasting upon them. 
 
 The most important example of all this literary 
 influence is the Golubinaya Kniga, i.e., Glubinaya : 
 the Mysterious book, with a translation of which 
 I conclude this sketch of the apocryphal literature. 
 It is one of the most widespread and most cele- 
 brated of Eussian folk-songs, and forms the centre 
 of all recent inquiry into Kussian folk-lore. Its 
 contents will sufficiently explain the interest which 
 attaches to ifc. I have selected the variant which 
 seems to be most complete.* 
 
 " In a land far in the East arose a dark grey cloud. 
 
 " From the dark grey cloud fell the Golubinaya Kniga 
 upon the light-giving, life-giving Cross. 
 
 " Round this Kniga collected forty Tzars and Tzarevitch 
 forty kings and princes with many dukes and boyards. 
 
 " Among them were five Tzars, the greatest Tzars Isaj Tzar, 
 Vasilej Tzar Tzar Volontoman Volontomanitch and the wise 
 Tzar David Essevitch [son of Jesse]. 
 
 " Then out spake Tzar Volontoman ' Who among us, my 
 brothers, is skilled in reading? that he may read this Kniga 
 Golubinaya and tell us of the white world out of what the 
 white world is made and of what the beauteous sun and of 
 what the moon with her soft light and of what the crowded 
 stars and of what the glorious gloaming the twilight of the 
 eve, the twilight of the dawn 1 ' 
 
 * Bezsonof, Kaleki PerchoSie, L, Moscow, 1861, No. 81, p. 293 scq. 
 
72 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LIT ERA TURE. 
 
 " Then stood the Tzars all silent. 
 
 " Bat the answer gave the wise Tzar David Essevitch ' I, 
 my brothers, will speak unto you about the Golubinaya Kniga 
 John the Priest (Bogoslov) wrote it the Prophet Isaiah 
 read it for three years he read it and yet 'twas but three 
 leaves. 
 
 " ' I will tell you by heart what was in this writing : the 
 world arose from Christ the Tzar of heaven, The beauteous 
 sun arose from God's bright face, from His bosom the moon 
 with her soft light, from his robe the crowded stars, the red 
 sky of eve and dawn from the eyes of God.' 
 
 " Thereon bowed all the Tzars (and said) ' thou wise 
 Tzar David Essevitch tell us too let us know from what 
 we Tzars arose from what the princes and boyards whence 
 the true believers whence the men 1 ' 
 
 " Answered then the wise Tzar * We Tzars have our origin 
 in the head of Adam the boyards and princes from his rib 
 the peasants from his knees from him too arose the race of 
 women ; our body is out of the moist of the earth our bones 
 out of stones our blood out of the Black Sea our thought of 
 the clouds/ 
 
 " Bowed the Tzars and gave their thanks and said c But 
 tell us who is the greatest Tzar, which town the mother of 
 all towns, which church is the mother church V 
 
 " He answered ' Our wise Tzar is the greatest because he 
 believed in the holy Christ his hand is stretched over all 
 over the whole inhabited world therefore is he mightiest. 
 Jerusalem is the mother of all cities because she stands in the 
 centre of the world in the midst of the famous city stands 
 the cathedral the holy of holies of the Mother of God and of 
 the resurrection in this church is the tomb of Christ ever 
 is incense and ladan burning there hence is this the mother 
 of the churches.' 
 
 " The Tzars thanked him and asked ' Which are the most 
 important which lake, which fish, which bird, and what 
 beast is the mightiest of all ? ' 
 
 " The wise Tzar answered * The sea of ocean is the mightiest 
 
GOLUBINAYA KNIGA. 73 
 
 it surrounds the whole earth out of the sea of ocean arose 
 the cathedral of the holy St. Clement. Lake Ilmen is the 
 mightiest of all not the one in Novgorod but that one in 
 the Turkish realm this Ilmen is near Jerusalem and from 
 it rises Little Mother Jordan. The mightiest of fishes is the 
 whale for the earth rests on three whales. The bird strefil 
 (ostrich) is the mightiest of birds it lives in the midst of the 
 sea and eats and drinks after prayers two hours after mid- 
 night the strefil shakes himself at once dawn breaks and 
 all the cocks they crow. The mightiest of beasts is the uni- 
 corn he lives on Mount Tabor walks under the earth and 
 cleans the brooks and wells wherever this beast goeth the 
 wells boil over when he comes back all beasts bow down 
 before him.' 
 
 " The Tzars thanked him and asked him ' "Which mount 
 is the most important which stone, which tree, and which 
 herb?' 
 
 " The wise Tzar answered * The Mount Tabor is the most 
 important because in it Christ was announced before His 
 apostolic disciples to whom He showed great glory. The most 
 important stone is the white Latyr-sione (altar-stone) Christ 
 stood on it as He talked with the disciples established the 
 Christian faith, and spread the Bible over the earth. The 
 cypress is the greatest tree for out of it was moulded the 
 wondrous cross on which Christ was crucified. "Willow-herb 
 is the greatest as the Mother of God was going to her son 
 her tears fell on the moist earth whence sprang the willow- 
 herb/ 
 
 " The Tzars then bowed and said * Tester morn came 
 two hares from far afield one was grey, the other white 
 they tore one another till the grey one conquered the white. 
 The white one went into the bright field the grey one into 
 the darksome wood ; what sins will never be forgiven ? ' 
 
 " The wise Tzar answered * The two hares are Justice and 
 Injustice they struggle with one another Injustice conquers 
 Justice Justice goes to heaven above to Christ Lord In- 
 justice came to this world to the people and hid herself in 
 
74 GREEKO-SLA VONIC L1TERA TURE. 
 
 the heart hence unjust deeds He that insults the Holy Ghost 
 for his sin there is no repentance neither in this nor in the 
 future world.' " 
 
 In this folk-song the whole Apocryphal literature 
 of the Old and New Testament is portrayed. The 
 variants omitted here show other well-known traits. 
 In all of them, however, we recognise without 
 hesitation the dualistic and Bogomilistic origin, 
 which is clearly expressed in the justice in heaven 
 and the injustice on earth. We recognise in it 
 parallels with German mythology, traces of the 
 Physiologus in the cosmogony, and what is more, 
 the saga of the San-Grdal in the puzzling latyr- 
 stone, which I have translated altar-stone. 
 
IV. 
 EXORCISMS AND SPELLS. 
 
IV. 
 
 I HAVE already touched upon the translation of 
 the Apocrypha of the New Testament into amu- 
 lets, i.e., into means for producing wonders or 
 good health, quite apart from their legendary con- 
 tents. 
 
 Here we come across an important division of 
 general folk-lore, viz., exorcisms and spells directed 
 against disease, regarded as an evil spirit. Accord- 
 ing to old notions, the enemy of man could be the 
 sole author of all sorrows. In an Old Slavonic 
 legend it is said that when God created Adam and 
 left his body on the ground before putting the soul 
 into it, Satanael came and put upon Adam seventy 
 diseases. When God bade him take them away 
 again, Satanael caused them to enter the body, 
 and told God that unless man suffered he would 
 never think of God. In this way man remained 
 troubled with pains.* 
 
 In the New Testament many examples are given 
 of men possessed who were freed by Christ, and 
 of invalids who were healed by the Apostles. We 
 have, too, the invulnerability of the Apostles, as in 
 the story of St. Paul and the viper. The more the 
 
 * Pypin, I c., pp. 12-13. 
 
78 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 view grew of this evil power of Satan, as it naturally 
 would from a dualistic standpoint, such as that 
 of the Manichseans and other heretics, the more 
 must the healing powers of the saints increase. 
 They had to free man from the power of the arch- 
 enemy. 
 
 The belief in Satan and the legends relative to 
 the worship of the Devil under the form of a cat, 
 with all the orgies attributed to the heretical sects, 
 has been further the origin of all the tales connected 
 with witches and with sorcery. It lies outside of 
 the limits of the present inquiry to follow out this 
 connection, and to prove that the accusations 
 against the latter have not been anything else 
 than a transfer from the extirpated Cathars or 
 Bogomils or Manichseans to the innocent victims 
 
 o 
 
 of fanaticism and ignorance. The witches too 
 worship Satan, acknowledge his power, sell their 
 souls for earthly benefit and might, and become 
 thus dreaded foes of their fellow-citizens. 
 
 The very name of Vaulderie, denoting witch- 
 craft, is derived from the Vauldois or Waldenses, 
 just as Boggard, a Northern provincial appella- 
 tion of a foul fiend, evidently resolves itself into 
 Bulgard or Bulgarian, the very common designa- 
 tion of the Albigenses, whose dealing with Satan 
 was notoriously a general belief.* They are, like 
 their master, the cause of every disease, and the 
 
 * Cf. G. S. Faber, Valdenses, London, 1838, p. 339, Xo. i. 
 
EXORCISMS. 79 
 
 exorcism is employed as well against them and 
 tlieir witchcraft as against the direct work of the 
 evil spirit. The parallelism between the witches 
 and the heretics is perfect, the one being the suc- 
 cessor of the other. 
 
 The belief in witchcraft can scarcely be traced 
 in Europe earlier than the fourteenth century, and 
 ranges in time also exactly with the appearance 
 and spread of the dualistic creed. 
 
 As soon as the belief was established that dis- 
 ease is the work of an evil spirit, its remedy took 
 a symbolic form. Certain ceremonies were adopted, 
 and a saint was called upon who in his lifetime 
 had fought against the same spirit, and had de- 
 feated him. First among these, of course, we must 
 take into account Christ Himself, to whom the 
 patient has resort, trusting that the illness once 
 healed by Him will be again cured. Then very 
 frequently the Holy Virgin was invoked, generally 
 as an interceder for the sufferer, and so the invoca- 
 tions go on to apostles and saints. Any one who 
 has looked through the German Ro7nanus-buchlein, 
 the French Enchantements (Nisard), or the English 
 superstitious rhymes of Chalmers and Halliwell, or 
 the earlier collections in Delrio (Disquisitio Magi- 
 carum), will meet at every turn with such invoca- 
 tions and spells. They are equally numerous, if 
 not more so, in modern Greek, Slavonic and Rou- 
 manian folk-lore. Especially well known and cele- 
 
80 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 brated is a formula of incantation against the twelve 
 fever-fits (Tresevica). This is attributed to Popa 
 Jeremiah himself, the founder of Bogomilism. 
 They are quoted as such in the old Indices Ex- 
 purgatorii. There is no doubt, therefore, that the 
 spell is derived from the East, and I have elsewhere 
 proved its existence in that quarter as early as the 
 eighth century. It may have been of Manichsean 
 origin, and probably was translated and adapted 
 by Popa Jeremiah himself. The spell has been 
 preserved up to the present day in all the lands 
 of East Europe, and, with certain modifications, 
 also among Jews and Germans. The legend runs 
 as follows : 
 
 " St. Sisinie was a brave warrior. Once upon 
 a time the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him in a 
 dream, and told him to go to his sister Melintia. 
 She had had five children who had all been stolen 
 by the Devil, and was about to give birth to a sixth. 
 Sisinie was to pursue the demon and obtain the 
 children back from him. 
 
 "His sister had made for herself a marble pillar, 
 and had shut herself in it. When Sisinie made 
 himself known to her, she opened the door. But 
 the demon had changed himself into a millet- 
 seed, and came in with him under the hoof of his 
 horse. He steals the child and flies away. St. 
 Sisinie pursues him, and as he passes a willow tree, 
 asks it if it has seen the demon with the child. 
 
LEGEND OF\S$. SISINIE. 81 
 
 This deceives him, and says No, and is thereupon 
 cursed by St. Sisinie with the curse that it shall 
 only blossom but bear no fruit. Then he asks a 
 briar, which likewise deceives him. This shall have 
 its head in the earth, and all men shall become 
 entangled in it, so that they will curse at it. At 
 last he asks the olive tree, which tells the truth 
 and receives a blessing for it. 
 
 "The saint accordingly casts his line into the 
 sea, and pulls out the demon, and beats him with 
 seventy-two fiery clubs till he shall restore the six 
 children. He says he will give the children back 
 when the saint shall be able to give back all the 
 milk which he has taken from his mother's breasts. 
 St. Sisinie does this by aid of a miracle, and the 
 demon has to return all the six children he had 
 stolen, and the demon promises to keep away from 
 every house where the prayer (or formula) of St. 
 Sisinie was to be found." 
 
 The prayer or formula referred to here in the 
 text has freed itself and acquired an independent 
 existence, or, as I would prefer to assume, it existed 
 even before the legend. This, though attributed 
 to Sisynios, the immediate follower of Mani, as 
 chief of the Manichseans, seems to have been derived 
 from an earlier Oriental tale, which became the 
 basis of all later formulse. I give it here in the 
 Roumanian form, which closely resembles the old 
 
 * Gaster, 1. c., p. 393 seq. 
 
82 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 one. It may be observed that here, as in all the 
 other variants, the demon is a feminine one. The 
 following is the legend : 
 
 ' 'I, Sisoe, as I came down from the Mount of 
 Olives, saw the Archangel Gabriel as he met the 
 Avestitza wing of Satan, and seized her by the hair 
 and asked her where she was going. And she 
 answered that she was going to cheat the Holy 
 Virgin by her tricks, steal the new-born child and 
 drink its blood. The Archangel asked her how 
 she could get into houses so as to steal the chil- 
 dren ; and she answered that she changed her- 
 self into a fly or a cat, &c. But whosoever knew 
 her twelve (19) and a half names and wrote them 
 out, she could not touch. She told him these names 
 and they were written down." 
 
 There is a Coptic parallel to this, more or less 
 identical, as well as a Greek and Slavonic one. 
 The fairy who steals children is called Lilitli, and 
 is further identified with Herod ias and her twelve 
 daughters, as personifications of different kinds of 
 fever. 
 
 The vicissitudes of this belief in the Middle Ages 
 are too well known for me to do more than refer to 
 them. Everywhere vilas, elves, fairies, and similar 
 female beings lie in wait for children. The part they 
 play in the whirlwind of the German myths connects 
 this belief, which might appear to be very old in 
 Europe, with this female demon of the Oriental tales. 
 
SPELLS. 83 
 
 The characteristic point is that this female spirit 
 is everywhere regarded as the cause of catalepsy 
 or fits. Hence the invocation to St. Sisinie as 
 driving these away. Then this invocation is used 
 as an amulet and spell. I add the translation 
 of one of these from the Roumanian, in which 
 the Holy Virgin is taken as the healer. In the 
 Russian parallel the names of the twelve daugh- 
 ters are taken as personifications of the disease. 
 The Roumanian formula is against cramp in the 
 night. 
 
 " There is a mighty hill and on this hill is a golden apple- 
 tree. 
 
 " Under the golden apple tree is a golden stool. 
 
 " On the stool who sits there ? 
 
 "There sits the Mother of God with St. Maria. With 
 the bow in her right hand with the cup in her left. 
 
 " She looks up and sees naught she looks down and sees 
 Mr. and Mrs. Disease. 
 
 " Messieurs Cramp and Mesdames Cramp Mr. Vampyre and 
 Mrs. Yampyre Messieurs Wehrwolf and Mesdames Wehrwolf. 
 They are going to N. N. to drink his blood and to put in 
 him a foul heart. 
 
 " The Mother of God when she saw them went down to 
 them spoke to them and asked them 'Where go ye Mr. 
 and Mrs. Disease ? ' &c. 
 
 " ' We go to N. N. his blood to drink his heart to change 
 to a foul one.' 
 
 " ' No ! ye shall go back give him his blood back restore 
 his own heart and leave N. N. immediately/ . . . 
 
 " Cramps of the night cramps of the midnight cramps of 
 the day cramps wherever they are. From water from the 
 wind go out from the brain from the light of the face from 
 
84 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LIT ERA T URE. 
 
 the hearing of the ears from his heart from his hands and 
 feet from the soles of his feet. 
 
 " Go and hide where black cocks 'never crow where men 
 never go where no beast roars. 
 
 " Hide yourself there stop there and ^never show yourself 
 more. 
 
 "May N. N. remain pure and glad as he was made by 
 God and was fated by the Mother of God. 
 
 " The spell is mine the cure is God's." 
 
 I will now give a few more of the Old Slavon- 
 ian spells which are connected with holy persons. 
 These are especially directed against diseases from 
 which the saints suffered, and from which they were 
 freed by their inborn divine power. 
 
 Thus we have the following formula, dating from 
 1423, against snake-bite, under the title "Prayer 
 of St. Paul against Snakes," just as we had before a 
 similar prayer of St. Sisinie : * 
 
 " In the name of the Father, the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost, I was once a persecutor, but am now 
 a true follower ; and I went from my dwelling-place 
 to Sicily, and they set light to a trunk, and a snake 
 came therefrom and bit my right hand and hung 
 from it. But I had in me the power of God, and 
 I shook it off into the burning fire and it was 
 destroyed, and I suffered no ill from the bite. I 
 laid myself down to sleep, then the mighty angel 
 Michael appeared to me and said, ' Saul, Paul, 
 stand up and receive this writing/ and I found in 
 
 ** Tihonravov, 1. c., ii. p. 291. 
 
SPELLS. 85 
 
 it the following words : I exorcise you sixty and 
 a half kinds of beasts that creep on the earth 
 in the name of God, the Creator of heaven and 
 earth, and in the name of the immovable throne. 
 Serpent of evil, I exorcise thee in the name of 
 the burning river which rises under the footstool 
 of the Saviour, and in the name of his incorporeal 
 angels. Thou snake of the tribe of basilisks, thou 
 four-headed snake, twelve-headed snake, variegated 
 snake, dragon-like snake, that art on the right side 
 of hell, whomsoever thou bitest thou shalt have no 
 power to harm, and thou must go away (with all 
 the twenty-four kinds). If a man has this prayer 
 and this curse of the true holy Apostle, and a snake 
 bites him, then it will die on the spot, and the man. 
 that is bitten shall remain unharmed, to the honour 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now 
 and for all time. Amen." 
 
 Here we have then another kind of prayer like 
 the one above of St. Sisynios but attributed to St. 
 Paul, and already in form of an amulet in 1423. 
 Another example may be given of a " prayer against 
 toothache, to be carried about with one : " * 
 
 " St. Peter once sat on a stone and wept. Christ 
 came to him and said, ' Peter, why weepest thou ? ' 
 Peter answered, ' Lord, my teeth pain me/ The 
 Lord thereupon ordered the worm in Peter's tooth 
 to come out of it and never more to go in again. 
 
 * Novakovid, Primeri, p. 516. 
 
86 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LIT ERA TURE. 
 
 Scarcely had the worm come out when the pain 
 ceased. Then spoke Peter, ' I pray you, Lord, 
 that when these words be written out, and a man 
 carries them, he shall have no toothache/ And the 
 Lord answered, ' 'Tis well, Peter ; so may it be.' ' : 
 
 In the North of England we find the same 
 charm against toothache, in the same wording : 
 
 " Peter was sitting on a marble stone 
 
 And Jesus passed by. 
 Peter said, ' My Lord, my God, 
 
 How my tootli doth ache ! ' 
 Jesus said, ' Peter, art whole ! 
 
 And whosoever keeps these words for my sake 
 Shall never have the toothache ! ' " * 
 
 Here is a third specimen, a charm against nose- 
 bleeding : " Zachariah was slain in the Lord's 
 Temple, and his blood turned into stone. Then 
 stop, blood, for the Lord's servant N. N. I 
 exorcise thee, blood, that thou stoppest in the name 
 of the Saviour, and by the fear of the priests when 
 they perform the offices (Liturgy) at the altar." t 
 
 I might easily add other examples to these, hav- 
 ing their origin in the same spiritual movement. 
 There is always some mention of a holy person 
 who is invoked. The story itself, telling how the 
 saint was freed from his illness, becomes an amulet, 
 and then passes into the spoken literature of the 
 people. At this stage its contents are versified 
 
 * Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes, p. 291. 
 t Novakovic, 1. c., p. 516. 
 
SPELLS. 87 
 
 with rhyme and refrain, as a means best adapted 
 of fixing them in the memory. This kind of pro- 
 cess is well known throughout the world's litera- 
 ture, and the most ancient literary products were 
 preserved in this way till they were written down 
 in book form. This happened with the Vedas and 
 with Homer, and exactly the same always happens 
 when anything appeals to the mind of the illiterate 
 people and they wish to preserve it, either from 
 superstitious or aesthetic reasons. 
 
 The whole theme is worthy of more extended 
 treatment, for it shows us in documentary form 
 the deep influence that Christianity in its manifold 
 forms exercised on the thought and feeling of the 
 people. Perhaps much that is considered to date 
 from hoary antiquity, and has become the object of 
 a reconstructive mythology, proves, when properly 
 investigated from a historical standpoint, to be 
 very much younger. The influence of Christianity 
 on the people has been sadly undervalued, because 
 only the higher ethical characteristics were re- 
 garded, and the miraculous and legendary elements, 
 which have the greatest attraction for the people, 
 were almost entirely left out of account. 
 
V. 
 
 ROMANTIC LITERATURE. FOURTH CRUSADE. 
 ALEXANDER. TROJAN WAR.DIGENIS. 
 
V. 
 
 THE Slavonic nations owe to Greek literature not 
 ouly their theological literature, but also their 
 romances and fables. Byzantium, at the gateway 
 of the East, was not alone an intermediary for the 
 religious views and theological literature of the 
 Orient, but also of its profane and poetical litera- 
 ture. Here, if anywhere, the traces of classical 
 antiquity remained. To this point flowed the litera- 
 ture that had taken its rise on Alexandrian soil, 
 and it was sought to keep alive as much as pos- 
 sible the memory of the glorious past. 
 
 One can observe in Byzantium more than else- 
 where preservation and care for ancient monuments, 
 especially when these flattered the national vanity, . 
 or did not hold out against a religious or allegorical 
 application. We accordingly find in Byzantine 
 literature many legends taken from ancient epic 
 cycles. The names of Alexander the Great and 
 Achilles, the siege of Troy and other episodes of 
 the ancient history, are recorded with pride and 
 vanity. 
 
 Not so the legends which have their roots in the 
 mythology of the Hellenes or the ancient Greeks. 
 
92 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITER A TURE. 
 
 These legends, as much, as the romances of Tatius, 
 Longus, Chariton, and others, with whom the history 
 of modern romance is closely connected, these all 
 are carefully excluded. In Byzantium the theo- 
 logical spirit ruled with overwhelming power. Many 
 pages of Byzantine history are filled with the records 
 of spiritual and dogmatical struggles, of councils of 
 war, and extinction of heresies. This was not a 
 soil favourable for the development of joyous life 
 and of epic poetry. The spirit of chivalry could 
 never rise among the knights in the frock of a monk, 
 and amongst the warriors against the tricks of 
 Satan. 
 
 The Greek Orient preserved, therefore, the me- 
 mory of bygone days, and only the romantic tales 
 of prominent figures of the Greek antiquity were 
 changed, elaborated, and widely spread, if not alto- 
 gether turned into a religious legend. This state 
 of things, however, underwent a change, as it seems, 
 at the close of the tenth century, when we meet a 
 peculiar offspring of the Greek epic muse in the 
 poetical account of the heroic deeds of Digenis 
 Akritas, which we shall come across later on. 
 
 No doubt the Oriental poetry, especially that of 
 the Persians, must have been more or less known 
 at that time in Byzantium, and the intercourse 
 between the far East and the Greek empire became 
 a frequent one. 
 
 The fables and apologues of India appear, are 
 
ROMANTIC LITERATURE. 93 
 
 translated and circulated, and in their footsteps 
 came surely also a very richly developed oral folk- 
 lore. 
 
 At a fixed time, and from these Oriental sources, 
 which we can follow step by step in their wander- 
 ing from nation to nation, a new form of literature 
 arose in the Middle Ages, the literature of novels. 
 These were Oriental, for the most part Indian tales, 
 which were collected together in one framework, 
 and were originally intended for didactic purposes. 
 They were intended to be the mirrors in which 
 the Eastern princes and autocrats should see them- 
 selves, and learn lessons of justice and mildness 
 in the form of tales and talks. These tales were 
 gradually released from their framework, and be- 
 gan life on their own account. They formed 
 most of the materials for Provengal and Southern 
 French poets of fabliaux, and having been early 
 brought to Italy, the novel received its most 
 artistic form at the masterly hand of Boccaccio. 
 Their somewhat free and sportive though attrac- 
 tive contents answered to the freer views of 
 modern life, and the Italian novels, together with 
 their basis, the Oriental tales, spread throughout 
 Europe with astonishing rapidity, giving rise every- 
 where to new poetic creations. English literature 
 itself begins with Chaucer, who drew from these 
 sources, and Shakespeare's genius has derived 
 thence the elements of some of his immortal pro- 
 
94 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 ductions. The great reservoir into which this 
 literature was poured, and from which it was 
 again drawn, is the collection of tales made in 
 the thirteenth century, and well known under the 
 name of Gesta Romanorum. Into this everything 
 flowed; pious legends, Indian parables, classical 
 myths, and Roman history were received side by 
 side, and allegorised in a clerical spirit. 
 
 The influence of this novel-literature on the 
 peoples themselves was no slight one, nor less in 
 importance. They received the new materials with 
 avidity, assimilated them to the old, and created 
 new forms out of the two. This was the origin of 
 the literature known in England by the name of 
 Chaplooks, as well as of a large number of fairy 
 tales. I must, however, refrain from entering upon 
 this wider field, attractive though it be, and must 
 limit myself to the narrower one before us. 
 
 Greece has here too played the part of an inter- 
 mediary between East and West. Everything that 
 came from India to Europe was early translated 
 into Greek, and with only one exception was com- 
 municated through the Greek. 
 
 By the side of these writings, which in their 
 way from the East first found a welcome in Greece 
 and the Balkan peninsula, we have to take into 
 account a stream of oral tradition which also 
 reached these shores. Nothing is now more pro- 
 bable than the supposition that oral folk-lore and 
 
ROMANTIC LITERATURE. 95 
 
 fairy tales came by the same route, and found 
 from thence their way to the "West. As I men- 
 tioned above, Benfey has explained the communi- 
 cation of the fairy tales through the Mongolians, 
 who ruled for a long time in Eussia. He suggests 
 that from them Indian, and especially Buddhist, 
 tales and stories reached the other peoples of 
 Europe. But we know very little of any such 
 connection, and the Mongolians came to Europe 
 as a destructive rather than as a cohesive element. 
 The case is quite the contrary with the Byzantines 
 and the Slavonic peoples, who, as we have seen, 
 were the introducers of an important religious 
 movement in the Middle Ages, which came to 
 the other nations not with the sword, but with 
 the Bible and the legends clustering around it. 
 We have, besides, to take into account another 
 point, which has hitherto been overlooked, but 
 which gives another source for communication 
 between the East and West of Europe. I mean 
 the fourth crusade in the twelfth century, in 
 which Constantinople was captured by the Franks, 
 and a new Frankish empire established there. 
 Now the connection with their original home was 
 kept up, and it is well known that travellers and 
 soldiers are the most important element in the 
 spread of folk-literature. How easily, then, could 
 these Oriental tales, especially since they had 
 taken firm root in Greece, be passed on to France, 
 
96 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 where exactly at this time the literature of fab- 
 liaux arose. These fabliaux are versified novels 
 and stories taken from the most various sources. 
 Hitherto it has not always been possible to point 
 out their exact literary source ; this can now be 
 explained by the fact that many had been trans- 
 planted from the new Frankish empire in Byzan- 
 tium to the home in the West. 
 
 A future comparison of fairy tales in Europe 
 would probably show that those gathered in the 
 Balkan peninsula and in the neighbouring countries 
 are the more primitive and less elaborate, if those 
 tales are of real Oriental origin. 
 
 The question of the origin of fairy tales, and 
 especially of the European, is much too delicate and 
 controversial to allow me more than to mention it 
 here. I must pass on, and turn to the romances, 
 of which some found their way into Slavonic litera- 
 ture, and obtained a wide circulation. 
 
 Many of these Greek romances were hitherto only 
 known in a Eussian form till later investigations 
 established the real fact that almost all these tales, 
 as well as the Church legends, had been brought to 
 the North from the South, where they had been 
 previously translated. In the first place, among 
 these is the romance of a hero who was in early 
 times surrounded by sagas and legends, and whose 
 knightly deeds, bold adventures, and early death 
 have moved all nations from India to Ireland, and 
 
LEGEND OF ALEXANDER. 97 
 
 formed for all of them an object of the greatest 
 interest, and even become their pride, so far as they 
 could bring their own history in connection there- 
 with. Even at the present day the name of Alex- 
 ander the Great lives on in undiminished splendour, 
 and many a legend is still being connected with 
 him. No story has gone through so many adap- 
 tations and ornamentations as the " Life of Alex- 
 ander the Great," falsely attributed to Callis- 
 thenes. Each nation has changed it according to 
 its desires, and adapted it to its own views and 
 wishes. The legend of Alexander accordingly 
 affords one of the most instructive examples of the 
 influence of written on oral literature, and of the 
 reaction of the latter on written literature. In con- 
 nection with the Alexander saga we can prove 
 the origin of many mediaeval beliefs, especially 
 geographical and ethnical ones, which from the book 
 found their way among the people. We can also 
 see how, in its manifold wanderings among dif- 
 ferent peoples, it has adopted native elements, and 
 was handed on, enriched by them. An accurate 
 comparison of all the versions would doubtless 
 show us the artistic peculiarities of each people. 
 Among these versions are the less known Slavonic 
 and Eoumanian versions. These connect them- 
 selves more with the Byzantine forms, which are 
 of later date, and expanded by many marvellous 
 
 episodes. At the same time they have a definite 
 
 G 
 
98 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 religious colouring, peculiar to the country and the 
 time. For while in the West, Alexander serves as 
 a brilliant example .of a knight, in the East he is 
 a believer in the Lord Sabaoth, and figures as a 
 champion of the true faith against the infidels. 
 He goes to Jerusalem, and there recognises the 
 true God. So, too, Alexander burns the temple of 
 the idols in Persia, and says, " If they were truly 
 gods, they would be able to show their power and 
 save themselves," that is, he speaks and acts like 
 a Christian saint. 
 
 Incidentally it may be remarked, that in this 
 story a fact of importance for Zoroastrian literature 
 has been preserved ; for in this fire, as all Parsees 
 believe, the old books of Zarathustra were destroyed. 
 The legend of Alexander meets us in the Sla- 
 vonic versions in a double form, viz., as an inde- 
 pendent story, and as forming part of Chronicles. 
 In the Slavonic translations of Malala and Hamar- 
 tolos, the Alexander saga had been introduced 
 as early as the thirteenth century, unless we are 
 to assume that it already existed in the Greek 
 originals, from which the Slavonic texts were de- 
 rived. The independent form is probably of not 
 much later date. The extent of the story is too 
 great for me to give any selections from it. I 
 will only refer to the most striking incidents, and 
 those which exercised the greatest influence on 
 the popular fancy. 
 
LEGEND OF ALEXANDER. 99 
 
 " Alexander is, of course, the son of Nektanebus, 
 the king of Egypt ; he is educated by Aristotle 
 and tames Ducipal (i.e., Bucephalus). After the 
 death of Philip he becomes king of Macedonia. 
 He defeats the Tartars and their king Atalmish. 
 He then goes to Eome, where he receives some 
 marvellous gifts, as, for example, Solomon's mantle 
 adorned with snakes' eyes, and three jewels which 
 had twelve properties, and could heal all diseases. 
 He then goes through the wilderness, and sees 
 marvellous beings, with men's faces and snakes' 
 bodies (Gorgons). The war with Darius is then 
 related, and how he hemmed in the wild nations 
 between the mountains; and then are described 
 in full the wonders he saw in the wilderness, men 
 with dog's heads, with one foot, others with one 
 eye, wonderful ants that eat up men ; further, the 
 pigmies who war with the storks. Then he reaches 
 the ' Macarian ' Isles (of the blessed), where he 
 holds a conversation with the Kahmans and their 
 king Ivant. From him he receives a flask with 
 the water of life ; this is, however, all drunk up by 
 his slaves, who are now elves that live for ever. 
 
 " He then undertakes a journey to Paradise, but 
 cannot reach it, and returns. He comes across the 
 sun-tree, which prophesies his early death. He is 
 then led down to hell, and sees there sinners and 
 their tears, among them Darius. He dies poisoned 
 by Levkadiush. ' 
 
ioo GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 Almost each trait of these complicated contents 
 recurs in popular literature. The description of 
 the wonders of India was a favourite chapbook 
 in the West. A part of zoological mythology is 
 derived from this. In it all the legends about 
 Gryphons and Arimaspians, and similar monsters 
 known to classical antiquity, found a place and 
 thence spread farther. The conversation with the 
 Eahmans occurs again in popular riddles, and many 
 superstitious practices and beliefs connect them- 
 selves with the Brahmany who dwell in the East, 
 and for whose happiness care is taken. The well- 
 known legend of St. Christopher Cynocephalos is 
 also connected with this cycle of sagas. Thus the 
 manifold influence of the Alexander saga, which is 
 even to-day a folk-book, is sufficiently clear.* Sir 
 John Mandeville also tells the story of the en- 
 closure of the nations, and has many other wonder- 
 ful facts which are derived from the Alexander 
 saga. I might, indeed, have often referred in the 
 course of these lectures to the Travels of Sir John 
 Mandeville, had I not feared to repeat them, for it 
 contains a number of the sagas we treat of. 
 
 After the Alexandreis we may pass on to a second 
 saga, which in ancient and mediaeval times was 
 considered real history, but was later regarded as 
 a saga, and now-a-days, through excavations, has 
 
 * Wesselofsky, Iz istorii romana i povesti i. St. Petersburg, 1886, 
 pp. 129-501. 
 
TROJAN WAR. 101 
 
 been again placed in the foreground of historical 
 events. I refer of course to the Trojan War. 
 Already in ancient times Homer had been sup- 
 planted by the fictions of Dares and Dictys. These 
 became the- basis of the great work of Guido da 
 Colonna, which, in its turn, became the armoury 
 for all the mediaeval representations in prose and 
 poetry. Of the numerous adaptations I need refer 
 here only to that translated and printed by Caxton, 
 "Becuyell of the Historyes of Troye," the first 
 printed book in English. 
 
 The lively interest taken by European peoples 
 in the Trojan legend may be explained by their 
 desire to bring their own history into connection 
 with that of the Trojans, and to refer back their 
 genealogy to as ancienfc a date as possible. Almost 
 all the ruling families of the Middle Ages go back 
 to Troy and JEneas. Thus, in Gregory of Tours, 
 Fredegar, in the German Kaiser- CJironik, Jornan- 
 des, the Edda even, traces back the Danes to the 
 Trojans. Finally, the English kings are directly 
 connected with Troy through Brut. 
 
 In the South Slavonic literature we first meet 
 with the Trojan legend in the chroniclers, but we 
 find also that it existed separately. The latter 
 treatment has only recently been met with in a 
 MS. of the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 now at Bucharest. The treatment is quite short, 
 and it is remarkably interesting owing to its 
 
102 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 modifications and insertion of heterogeneous ele- 
 ments. I may venture to give it here in an 
 abridged form : 
 
 " There was in the East a mighty city at the 
 place Skamander ; it had fifty-six gates, out of which 
 seventy standard-bearers could march abreast. The 
 city was named Troada. In it was a mighty king 
 named Amor. He had once a terrible dream, and 
 was much terrified thereat : his queen bore him 
 a burning torch which set the city on fire and 
 burnt it up. Soon after this the queen gave birth 
 to a girl. When she was six months old she was 
 placed in a tower with dumb hand-maidens. There 
 she grew up, and as she turned every morn to the 
 sun, she learnt a language composed of all tongues. 
 All wondered at this, and her father caused men 
 from all quarters of the world to come to her and 
 listen, and he wrote down the words that each 
 understood. Then they combined all the words 
 together, and the king found that his dream referred 
 to the son who was shortly about to be born. 
 When he was born, the king caused him to be 
 exposed on a lonely mountain. He was there 
 brought up by a she-bear : after three years she 
 was killed by hunters, and the child brought to 
 the king. He recognised his (grand) son. He sets 
 his daughter free, giving her the name Magdona, 
 while he calls the boy Alexander, i.e., in Greek, the 
 found (Obretenu). Magdona paints the picture of 
 
TROJAN WAR. 103 
 
 a man, and when any one asks for her hand, she 
 answers that she will only take him for her hus- 
 band who resembles the picture. One day she 
 saw a man riding through the sea, and she said to 
 her father, 'That is the expected husband/ He 
 is brought in, and it turns out that he is the king 
 of the Saracens, and has travelled through the 
 world to find the beauty whom he has seen in a 
 dream. Magdona is this beauty, and they are 
 married. On the other hand, Alexander finds out 
 from the Magi where is the most beautiful woman 
 in the world. When he learns that she is the wife 
 of King Sion, he orders the Magi to let him see 
 her in a dream and to cause her to see him in 
 the same way. They fall in love with one another. 
 After two years he clothes himself as a merchant 
 and travels to her with many goods. He sees 
 the woman whose name is Egyluda, and appears 
 with her before the king, who is astonished at 
 the resemblance between this woman and his wife. 
 Alexander flies with her, and the injured king 
 assembles fourteen other kings, among them King 
 Tog, &c., and they sail for Troas. When Alexander 
 and Egyluda came to Troas, the whole city moved, 
 and the King Amor said, ' My dream is being 
 fulfilled/ For ten years the enemy besieged 
 Troas without success. The King Sion had a 
 councillor named Palmida; he made an artificial 
 horse in which King Sion and three heroes hid 
 
104 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 themselves. A part of the army hid itself near 
 the city. In the morning the whole army made 
 a feint of going right away. They had put the 
 horse-shoes on the horse pointing backwards. At 
 Alexander's command the horse is brought into 
 the city. The heroes come out of it ; the others 
 with Palmida follow, and the city is destroyed. 
 Alexander flies to his brother-in-law, and rouses 
 him against the Canaanite princes and Tog, who 
 had marched against him. The Sultan takes their 
 lands, and since that time they belong to the 
 Saracens. The servants of King Sion had run off 
 with the wives of the soldiers. A reconciliation 
 is effected between Alexander and Sion, but the 
 servants fight against their lords and destroy one 
 another. King Sion falls and the city of Jeru- 
 salem is destroyed. Alexander then sees what 
 trouble one woman can bring into the world : he 
 cuts off her head and throws himself into the sea." * 
 Here we have the influence of the legend of 
 Solomon and Kitovras in the abduction, not to 
 speak of smaller details which have so changed the 
 legend of Troy. The other form of this legend is 
 based on that of Dictys, included in the Chronicle 
 of Malala. The legend together with the Chronicle 
 was translated probably in the tenth century. 
 Between the two there is still existing an inter- 
 mediate form of the legend of Troy, preserved in 
 
 * Syrku, in Archiv f. Slav. Philologie, vii. pp. 81-87. 
 
DIGENIS. 105 
 
 the translation of Manasses' Chronicle ; tins enables 
 us to watch, the transition between the two.* 
 
 The Middle Greek epic of Digenis has quite the 
 character of a romance of chivalry, in which the 
 knight seeks for adventures, undergoes danger, and 
 wins his lady-love after many hard tasks and con- 
 tests. The Slavonic translation of this was known 
 long before the Greek text was recovered and edited. 
 Kecent investigations have not alone proved the 
 great age of this version, but have shown the in- 
 fluence it exercised on the epic songs of Eussia. 
 Many Byline, as these songs are termed in Eussia, 
 are derived from the " Adventures of the Invincible 
 Devgenie." We may go a step farther, and in 
 popular tales and in Slavonic fairy tales again re- 
 cognise this romance. Its contents may shortly be 
 put as follows : " A Saracen or Arabic Emir loves 
 the daughter of a pious widow of royal descent 
 who lives in Greece. He collects an army, invades 
 Greece, and steals the girl. She has three brothers, 
 and her mother sends them in pursuit of the Emir, 
 and orders them not to return without their sister, 
 or they may lose their heads. They fly like a 
 hawk with golden wings and reach the borders of 
 Arabia, where they kill 3000 guards, who attacked 
 them from three sides. By this means they reach 
 the Emir, who allows them to decide by lot which 
 of them shall fight with him. Thrice does the lot 
 
 * Pypin, Ocerku, p. 54 seq. 
 
io6 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 fall on the youngest, and he fights with and con- 
 quers the Emir. The latter promises to be baptized 
 from love of their sister. The brothers then ask 
 the sister how he had treated her. She had been 
 covered with jewels, and her face was veiled and 
 had been well guarded, and she says he only saw 
 her once at a distance in thirty days. They all go 
 together to Greece, and the Emir becomes a Chris- 
 tian and marries her. The mother of the Emir is 
 vexed at this, and she sends three Saracens to bring 
 him back. She gives them three horses, Wind, 
 Thunder, and Lightning. When they ride on 
 Wind, they would be invisible in Greece. When 
 they ride on Thunder, they would be heard through- 
 out Arabia when they came back. When they 
 ride on Lightning, they would be invisible to all. 
 They come to Greece and hide themselves. The 
 Emir's wife has a wonderful dream ; from this the 
 Emir learns about the three Saracens. These are 
 fetched from their hiding-place and are converted 
 to Christianity. The three horses are given to the 
 three brothers-in-law." 
 
 " After some time a child is born to the Emir, 
 who receives the names Devgenij and AJcritas. 
 He grows quickly and becomes a perfect hero by 
 his fourteenth year. He tears into pieces an elk 
 and a bear, and kills a monster with four heads 
 near a marvellous brook. He is, in short, the true 
 hero of the romance, the previous incidents only 
 
DIGENIS. 107 
 
 serving as an introduction, to his adventures, which 
 form the chief contents of the book. We are told 
 of his fights with Persians and Saracens, quite after 
 the manner of knights, recalling in tone and colour 
 in a remarkable way the Shah-nameh of Firdusi. 
 Of especial interest are two episodes, because they 
 afford us parallels to the heroic tales of the North, 
 and have, it would seem, strongly influenced certain 
 Eussian Byline or epic songs ; as, for example, the 
 songs of Dobryna and Nastasia, &c. These episodes 
 run as follows : 
 
 Digenis fights with Filip-papa (in Greek Philio- 
 pappos), one of the greatest of heroes, and then 
 with his daughter Maximiana, whom he conquers. 
 Filip-papa thereupon says to Digenis that there 
 is a much greater hero than he is, and that is 
 Stratig, with his four sons and daughter, who is 
 an Amazon, and had hitherto been unconquered. 
 Digenis goes to meet her, plays on a silver harp 
 with golden strings, and wins the maiden's love. He 
 conquers the father and the brothers, marries the 
 maiden, and receives rich gifts from her relations. 
 In this Slavonic version the characters have become 
 a little mixed ; this can be checked by the Greek 
 original. The unconquered heroine is not the 
 daughter of Stratig, nor does he ever fight with 
 her, but it is Maximiana, who is an Amazon 
 princess. She is the counterpart of Brunhilde in 
 Northern mythology. Stratig's daughter, in the 
 
io8 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 Greek Ducas, is carried off by Digenis. He is pur- 
 sued by her relatives ; he conquers them and then 
 follows a final reconciliation, as in the Slavonic. 
 
 The fame of Digenis, who is also called Aniketos 
 the Invincible, lives on to the present day in Greek 
 folk-songs. He is the type of invincible strength, 
 and even struggles with Charon, the modern Greek 
 god of death, till he is defeated by Death. In this 
 form he occurs in Russian and Roumanian folk-tales 
 about heroes who struggle with death. This story 
 has passed into a Russian song of Anika Voinu, 
 i.e., the hero Anika (from the Greek Aniketos), and 
 it has been pictorially represented in one of the 
 Russian block-books (Lubocnyja Kartinki). I have 
 already referred to the Apocrypha of Abraham or 
 the " Legend of Moses," which has influenced it, 
 as well as the whole cycle of similar tales to which 
 it belongs. These are the Greek epic romances, 
 which have also come into the possession of the 
 Slavonic peoples. 
 
VI. 
 
 APOLOGUES AND FABLES. BARLAAM AND 
 yOSAPHAT.THE WISE A KIR AND SYN- 
 TIPAS. 
 
VI. 
 
 I PASS now to the legendary biography of Buddha, 
 which, as early as the eighth century, had been 
 transformed into a Christian legend. The " Life of 
 St. Barlaarn and Josaphat" was attributed to St. 
 John of Damascus, or another St. John, and was at 
 an early date translated into Slavonic. St. Josaphat 
 is no other than Buddha himself; he too leaves 
 house and home, honour and throne, to follow his 
 teacher, Barlaam, into the desert, and to lead the 
 life of a hermit. This determination is produced in 
 him by the sight of human misery on four occasions, 
 just as is told of Buddha. This self-sacrifice answers 
 exactly to the ascetic spirit of the Middle Ages and 
 the heretical movement, and it is no rash assumption 
 to attribute to it -a part in the spread of this re- 
 ligious romance through Europe. In a previous 
 part I have referred to the deep impression this 
 episode made on the feeling of the people, and even 
 to the present day the song is sung in Kussia and 
 Koumania which Josaphat addresses to the solitary 
 wood where he is about to pass his life. The spread 
 of this tale would be likewise encouraged by the 
 poetical parables which it contains ; among them 
 
112 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 that of the three caskets of the " Merchant of 
 Venice." Almost equally celebrated is that of a 
 man flying from a unicorn, and hiding himself in a 
 brook, where he clings to a tree that grows there. 
 He sees two mice, the one white, the other black, and 
 they gnaw at the root of the tree, while under him 
 stands a dragon with open jaws. Then the man 
 notices a honeycomb on the tree, and he for- 
 gets everything while he eats it. The unicorn is 
 death, the brook the world full of evil, the tree life 
 gnawed away by day and night, the dragon hell, 
 and man forgets all this to enjoy a few drops of 
 earthly pleasure. 
 
 These parables were repeated times innumerable ; 
 every one of them has its own history, and we 
 often meet with them in Slavonic and Eoumanian 
 literatures. 
 
 A second biography, though not of a saint, which 
 I can also trace back to the East, is the " Life of 
 ^Esop," falsely attributed to Planudes. This is 
 also full of marvellous tales of cleverness and wit. 
 Translated from Greek into Latin, these tales like- 
 wise find a place in world-literature. I have said 
 that this life is falsely attributed to Planudes, and 
 I support this conjecture by the fact that we pos- 
 sess in Slavonic literature a tale only differing from 
 it in a few of the biographical details, and which is 
 older than the epoch of Planudes. This is the 
 " Story of the Wise Akir. and the Sultan Sin a- 
 
THE wrsB^&K^S^- 113 
 
 grip, and Anadam, the nephew of Akir." There 
 is almost an identical agreement of this tale, the 
 drift of which I will give, with many passages of 
 the " .zEsop." It runs as follows : 
 
 "In a land, Adar, lives a king, Sinagrip. He 
 has a wise counsellor named Akirie, who is very 
 rich, but has no children. He therefore adopts 
 his nephew, Anadam, and educates him in the 
 best manner. After a time he appoints him his 
 successor in his post, and retires. But Anadam 
 wanted to destroy him entirely, so that he may soon 
 inherit his wealth. He therefore accuses Akirie be- 
 fore the king, and says he wished to dethrone him. 
 Akirie is taken prisoner and condemned to death; 
 But a friend takes his part, and hides him from the 
 world. When Pharaoh heard of the death of Akirie, 
 he sends an ambassy to Sinagrip to request that 
 he would send him an architect to build a city 
 in the air and to answer all riddles that one could 
 ask him. Sinagrip regrets the death of the wise 
 Akirie. His friend thereupon informs him that 
 he is alive. He is sent to Egypt under another 
 name. There he makes clever answers to all 
 riddles. In order to build the city in the air, he 
 binds a chest to two eagles, places a child in the 
 chest, and gives it a spit with flesh on it, and tells 
 it to hold this up. The eagles fly with the chest 
 into the sky. When he is up there, the child asks 
 
 for bricks and mortar. Pharaoh owns his defeat, 
 
 H 
 
1 14 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 and recognises that his visitor must be Akirie. 
 The latter returns home full of honours. His 
 nephew is given up to him for punishment. He 
 only reminds him every day of what he has done, 
 which he takes so much to heart that he dies." * 
 
 This, shortly put, is the contents of the book, and 
 it occurs in exactly the same form in the " Life of 
 ^Esop," with only a change in the names. The direct 
 source of the story of Akirie is doubtless Greek. It 
 is curious that hitherto no Greek text has been found 
 for it, and the suggestion occurs to one that the 
 Greek text has passed into the " Life of ^Esop." 
 This explains the disappearance of Akirie in Greek, 
 and, on the other hand, the non-existence of ^Esop 
 in the Old Slavonic literature. The Oriental 
 original is preserved in the "Arabian Nights," even 
 the names there corresponding. Akirie is called 
 Heykar, and Sinagrip Sinharib, i.e., the Biblical 
 Sennacherib. The story, however, goes farther 
 back, and the journey through the air and the 
 riddles connect it with the Solomonic cycle ; for 
 the Oriental fable tells of Solomon, how he flew 
 through the air, carried by a demon. Out of this 
 was later made a flying carpet, a flying chest, and 
 even a flying horse, as we meet with them in the 
 fairy tales of all parts of the world. It is also re- 
 ported of Buddha, of Nimrod, and of Alexander 
 that they flew in the air carried by eagles. The 
 
 * Gaster, Lit. Pop., p. 104 seq. 
 
SYNTIPAS. 115 
 
 gnomes which Akirie gives to his nephew, put in 
 striking form like proverbs, have become popular 
 sayings in Kussia and Koumania. 
 
 The popularity enjoyed by Akirie in the past, 
 and even in the present, has prevented that of the 
 " Life of ^Esop " from becoming popular, but not 
 his fables, which have been translated into Slavonic. 
 We need not be surprised to find that the number 
 and form of these fables varies greatly. Still less 
 need we be surprised that many of them have 
 become common property and occur as so-called 
 animal-fables, and in the form of fairy-tales. 
 
 We may connect with this series of Oriental tales 
 the important book of novels Syntipas. The 
 history of this book, originally Indian, and after- 
 wards placed by its attractive contents at the head 
 of the novel-literature of the Middle Ages, is by 
 itself a striking example of how such literature 
 spread. Early translated into Syriac, it was trans- 
 lated into Greek by Andreopulos in the eleventh 
 century. From an Arabic translation was derived 
 a Hebrew one, then a Latin one, and it thence 
 found a home in all vernaculars. But during its 
 travels it grew larger and larger. Tales belonging 
 to quite a different source were introduced into it, 
 and it received a different name in each country. 
 The oldest and favourite one is Syntipas, the name 
 of a sage who takes the chief part in it. In other 
 versions it is called " The Book of the Seven Wise 
 
1 1 6 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 Masters," because seven sages appear in it. Even 
 their number was increased, and so we get a "Book 
 of the Ten Wise Masters," and even " Of the Forty 
 Veziers." Its contents may be thus abridged : 
 
 " After many years without a child, a king at last 
 obtains a son. As soon as he is grown, he gives 
 him to the care of the sage Syntipas, the wisest 
 man in his kingdom. Many years pass and the 
 prince is about to return home to his father. The 
 sage searches the stars, and finds a great danger 
 threatening the prince, and that there is only one 
 means of evading it, and that is that he should be 
 silent for seven days. This is done, and the king 
 is in great trouble over it. The stepmother of the 
 prince causes him to be brought to her, on the pre- 
 text of being able to cause him to speak. There is 
 then a repetition of the old episode of Joseph and 
 Potiphar's wife. The queen accuses him, and seeks 
 to have him killed. Then there appear seven sages, 
 and each tells a tale, the moral of which is that a 
 man should not be too hasty, for woman is not to 
 be trusted. In this way the punishment is put off 
 from day to day. The queen also appears each 
 day and tells on her side a story, intended to in- 
 duce the king not to listen to his counsellors. Thus 
 the fateful seven days pass over, and on the eighth 
 appear Syntipas and the prince, who, being able 
 now to speak, tells the truth." This is the frame- 
 work story by which the others are connected, their 
 
SYNTIPAS 117 
 
 number being increased and the form altered as 
 time goes on. This is also true of other Oriental 
 tales, like the "Arabian. Nights," Pantchatantra, &c. 
 The novel-writers of the Middle Ages followed 
 their example, as Boccaccio, Cinthio, Margaret of 
 Navarra, and Chaucer. So far as we yet know 
 the literature of the Southern Slavs, the book of 
 Syntipas, as a book, has not been preserved in it. 
 The Eussian version of the sixteenth century was 
 derived from a Polish one which came from the 
 West. But a large number of the stories contained 
 in it have been preserved in the folk-literature of 
 the Southern Slavonic nations, especially in their 
 jest-books. 
 
 On the other hand, we possess a translation of 
 early date of the no less important Pantchatantra. 
 The history of its travels is no less interesting than 
 that of Syntipas. While the latter is more closely 
 connected with the novel literature, the Pantclia- 
 tantra is more closely connected with tales. The 
 investigation of this connection was, as I have 
 already said, a turning-point in the history of folk- 
 lore, with which the name of Benfey will ever be 
 connected. 
 
 Brought at an early date from India, the book 
 was first translated into Pehlevi, in the mixed 
 dialect of the Sassanide epoch. From this were 
 made Syrian and Arabic versions, under the name 
 of Kalilag and Damnag, or Kalila and Dimna. 
 
ii8 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERATURE. 
 
 These names are derived from those of two jackals, 
 KarataJca and Damanaka, which play a principal 
 rdle in the framework-story. From Arabic it was 
 translated by Symeon Seth in 1080 into Greek, 
 and from this into Slavonic, perhaps in the twelfth 
 century. Owing to a mistake about the proper 
 names, Seth called Kalila Stephanit and Dimna 
 IhnilateSy and these names also occur in the 
 Slavonic translations. I cannot here of course 
 pursue the history of the Arabic version, which 
 was translated into no less than five different 
 languages, and thus passed into the folk-literature 
 of Europe. I will merely give a few examples out 
 of the Slavonic translation, which, like the Greek, 
 is shorter than the other versions. I will preface 
 these with the remark that the book is attributed 
 in Slavonic to St. John of Damascus, owing to a 
 mistake about the title, because Seth was said to be 
 also of Damascus. 
 
 Of a Merchant. It is related that in a certain 
 city there was a merchant who wished to travel 
 on business, and left some iron with a man as 
 a pledge. When he came back, he went to the 
 man with whom he had left the iron, and said 
 to him, " Friend, give me the iron that I left 
 with you." He answered him, " I placed your 
 iron in one of my cellars, and the mice have 
 eaten it up. But do not trouble yourself about 
 that, for you have come back safe and sound. 
 
SYNTIPAS. 119 
 
 Come to us one of these days, and we will have 
 a feast and rejoice over your return." The other 
 man agreed, and came to eat with him. After 
 dinner he went home with him. There he saw 
 the son of the man with whom he had left the 
 iron, seized him, carried him to his own house, and 
 hid him there. Coming out again, he saw the 
 man seeking everywhere for his son. He then 
 said to him, "If you are looking for your son, 
 (know) that I have seen an eagle carrying him 
 through the air." But the other turned round 
 and said, " Have you ever seen an eagle carrying a 
 man ? " But the merchant answered, " In a place 
 where mice eat iron, an eagle can carry a man 
 away." The other understood, and gave him back 
 his iron, on which he gave him back his son.* 
 
 Here ends the story, which recurs in innumerable 
 jest-books. Another story is the celebrated fable, 
 La Fontaine's Perette. 
 
 " There was once a poor man who had received 
 from a friend some butter and honey, which he 
 hung up in a pot. One night he thought to him- 
 self and said, " 111 sell this butter and honey ; 
 with this I'll get ten she-goats, and these will in 
 five months give birth to as many kids. In five 
 years I shall have at least 750, and so they will go 
 on increasing. I shall then sell them, and buy 
 100 oxen, with which I will plough, and from their 
 
 * A. Viktorov, Stefanit i Ihinlat, Moscow, 1881, pp. 32-33. 
 
1 20 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITERATURE. 
 
 produce I shall become very rich, and build a 
 house four storeys high and covered with gilding, 
 and I'll buy several slaves and marry a wife. 
 She shall bear me a son, who shall be called Pan- 
 gel" (i.e., "in all good"), "and I'll bring him up 
 as I like ; and if I find him disobedient, I'll punish 
 him with this rod." At this he seized the rod 
 which lay near him, and, without intending it, 
 struck the pot with the butter and honey and 
 broke it, and the butter and honey ran away.* 
 
 As in the Greek original, the Slavonic contains 
 in addition the chapter on the king's dreams, which 
 is wanting in the Arabic version, while it still exists 
 in the Syrian and Tibetan versions. These sym- 
 bolic dreams and their interpretations exist inde- 
 pendently, with the title " The Dreams of the 
 Tzar Mamer and Shahaisha." Besides these, other 
 Oriental tales are included in the Slavonic MSS. ; 
 these, it may be conjectured, also occurred in the 
 Greek original, and were translated from it. 
 
 Having arrived at the conclusion of this short 
 sketch of the Greeko-Slavonic literature, I may 
 take a short retrospect of the line of argument. 
 The first thing that meets us is the fact, estab- 
 lished by numerous examples, that we can no 
 longer consider the soul-lives of the European 
 peoples in the Middle Ages as independent from 
 
 * Viktorov, Z.c., p. 67. 
 
ROMANTIC LITERATURE. 121 
 
 one another. Paths lead from one nation to an- 
 other, along which passes a literature which exer- 
 cises a uniform influence on all, the traces of 
 which are to be found not alone in mediaeval, but 
 also in modern folk-lore. It follows, further, that 
 the literature of the people, as we now have it, 
 is throughout dependent on a previous literary 
 period. It is from literary works that there passed 
 into the consciousness of the nations almost all 
 legends, sagas, fairy tales, and even amulets, spells, 
 and other superstitious customs. 
 
 As a third result, we have seen that the common 
 sources out of which these have been derived are 
 mostly of Oriental origin, and are seldom known 
 in Europe before the tenth century. It is by no 
 means implied that the peoples of Europe had 
 nothing of the sort before, or that no mythologi- 
 cal views were prevalent in earlier times. Nature 
 abhors a vacuum, and so does the human mind. 
 But the earlier possessions must have been of poor 
 and unenduring quality, and few positive traces 
 can be shown of this early mythology. The simi- 
 larity of legends and customs which used to be 
 given as proofs for the existence of a mythology, 
 and that the same for all nations, will henceforth 
 be considered as proofs to the contrary. Not a 
 little of this folk-lore can be traced back to one 
 and the same literary source, and we have there- 
 fore explained the identity of legends and customs 
 
122 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 amongst different nations of Europe, not by means of 
 any hypothetical identity of their mythology, but by 
 the actual identity of their literary substratum. I 
 have had to confine myself to narrow limits, other- 
 wise many other Oriental and Christian legends 
 might have been traced through all forms of folk- 
 literature in their subsequent changes ; at first saga 
 or legend, then chronicle, knightly adventure, and 
 fairy tale, then epic, and finally lyrical song. Ke- 
 miniscences of these might have been found in 
 superstitions, customs, and habits. Further, their 
 influence on art might have been traced in icono- 
 graphy and sculpture, and many other branches. 
 
 The few examples I have adduced will have 
 proved, I hope, that the folk-literature of Western 
 Europe is derived for the most part from the litera- 
 ture of the East, and especially from the Christian 
 and Buddhist literatures. We have recognised 
 in Greeko- Slavonic literature the chief, and often 
 the only factor, in the communion of East and 
 West. Apocryphal and imaginative works, early 
 introduced into Greece, were brought thence into 
 the Slavonic lands, and the missionaries of dualism 
 thence carried to all quarters these religious tales, 
 which were easily taken up and assimilated by the 
 people. It was also from the South-East, and pro- 
 bably by oral tradition, that the knights and 
 soldiers of the fourth crusade brought romances 
 of chivalry and Buddhistic fables, which must 
 
ROMANTIC LITERATURE.' 123 
 
 have found their way with other works from 
 India through Persia and Asia Minor to Byzan- 
 tium and the Balkan peninsula. The veil that 
 has hitherto hidden the history and importance of 
 Slavonic and Middle Greek literature is gradually 
 beginning to be raised, and we obtain a new fertile 
 source for the critical inquiry of our time. The 
 connection between Western and Greeko-Slavonic 
 literature has been broken and their unity dis- 
 solved, and I shall consider myself fortunate if it 
 is granted to me to have restored this connection, 
 and to have shown, even if only on a small scale, 
 that all these elements worked harmoniously to- 
 gether in religion and poetry, fable and tale, creat- 
 ing a new birth of the spirit in Europe, the results 
 of which are to be seen in the civilisation of 
 to-day. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE SLAVONIC PEOPLES IN THE BALKAN 
 PENINSULA. ORIGIN OF THE SLAVONIC 
 LITERATURE. CYRILL AND METHOD. 
 
VII. 
 
 AFTER the brief sketch of Greeko-Slavonic litera- 
 ture given in the preceding pages, it is absolutely 
 necessary that we should attempt to form some idea 
 of the background on which our picture was painted. 
 I must content myself here with the merest sketch 
 of the most important events which took place 
 in the Balkan peninsula, viz., the invasion and 
 settlement of the Slavonic tribes, their struggles 
 with the Greeks, the arrival of the Bulgarians, and 
 the influence exercised by them on neighbouring 
 peoples. We shall then come to the conversion 
 of the Slavs to Christianity, the two apostles of 
 the Slavs, Cyrill and Method, the inventors of the 
 Slavonic alphabet and the founders of Slavonic 
 literature. 
 
 Probably no country in Europe, with the excep- 
 tion of the neighbouring Koumania, has been the 
 scene of so many invasions and raids as the Balkan 
 peninsula. It was the first stage reached by the 
 Aryans as they crossed over from Asia, at first the 
 mysterious Pelasgians, then the Hellenes, who sup- 
 planted them, then the Thracians in the north, 
 with their numerous tribes and divisions. If the 
 
128 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 Albanians, as is generally assumed, are descended 
 from the Thracians, then these last two peoples, 
 the Hellenes and Thracians, have kept their hold 
 on the Balkan peninsula to the present day. 
 
 Innumerable are the names of the more recent 
 peoples who have passed through the peninsula, 
 from the Gauls to the Eomans, Goths, Huns, 
 Avars, Petchenegs, and Cumans. I merely mention 
 these names and pass at once to the Slavs, who 
 more nearly interest us. Nor will I go into the 
 question of the original home of the Slavs. Suffice 
 it to remark, that the Bulgarians and Servians of 
 to-day were originally identical with the Slovenes 
 in Pannonia, and that they wandered from there 
 in the course of many centuries into Mcesia, which 
 had been laid waste and depopulated by the hordes 
 traversing it. At last, in the fifth century, they 
 became powerful enough to undertake expeditions 
 on their own account against the Byzantine empire. 
 Many investigators place the Slovenes in Koumania 
 about this time, basing their conclusions on the 
 Slavonic place-names. Some have gone so far as to 
 call the ancient Dacians Slavs. Critical investiga- 
 tion brings to light the fact that these Slavonic place- 
 names are of comparatively recent date, and bear 
 trace of specific sounds which belong to a late period 
 of the Slavonic language, when this began to split up 
 into dialects and came under Bulgarian influence. 
 
 The Slavonic population of the Balkan peninsula 
 
THE BULGARIANS. 129 
 
 displayed no power of cohesion, just as that of 
 Russia failed to show any in the early period. Its 
 organisation is that of the clan, each clan being 
 settled in a separate hamlet, with its knez at its head. 
 This word, which in Slavonic, and thence in Rou- 
 manian, means leader or chief, is of peculiar interest, 
 as it is borrowed from the Goths, among whom the 
 word appears as kuni. The English word king is 
 absolutely identical with it, coming through the 
 0. H. G. cunic, A.-S. cuning. It is further well 
 known that in consequence of the Arian movement 
 Bishop Ulfilas, the translator of the Bible into 
 Gothic, led part of his people across the Danube 
 and settled in Moesia, and it is from this quarter 
 that the Slavs, who arrived there later, took this 
 name. This may serve us as an index to settle 
 the date of the invasion and settlement of the 
 Slavs in the Balkan peninsula. This must have 
 been consummated about 6 70 A. D. Even earlier than 
 this Byzantine chroniclers mention struggles with 
 the Sklavinoi. Thus Constantine II. led an ex- 
 pedition against the people of the laud called 
 Sklavinia in 657 A.D., and conquered them. 
 
 A turning-point in the political life of the 
 Southern Slavs is formed by the invasion of the 
 Finno-Tartar nation of the Bulgarians, who came, 
 under the guidance of Isperich, in 679 A.D. from 
 the north through the present Dobrugea to Moasia. 
 Like the German Yarsegians in Russia, they col- 
 
1 30 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 lected their scattered clans and united them into 
 one nation, to which they gave their name, unlike 
 the Varasgians, whose name disappeared/'' 
 
 The few relics of the Bulgarian language which 
 still remain mostly consisting of proper names 
 do not permit us at present to determine exactly 
 their ethnological character. The most recent 
 hypothesis is that they are related to the Tchu- 
 vashians, whose descendants, it is probable, are 
 the present Tartars at Kazan. The name Bulgar 
 has been connected with that of the river Volga. 
 They certainly belong to the great family of 
 Turkish peoples who ruled in South Eussia for 
 centuries, and of whom the Chazars are the best 
 known. They did not come, however, alone, but 
 with them came also Finnish tribes, absorbed after- 
 wards into one nation, t 
 
 Contemporary writers have given us a few details 
 about their customs, which confirm this guess. 
 I will merely mention their burial customs. As 
 soon as a great man died, he was laid out in a 
 mortuary in which were also shut up his favourite 
 wife and his slaves. They occur most frequently 
 in South Eussia, and in Eoumania. As regards 
 this point Bulgaria is still a terra incognita. 
 
 The number of these conquerors cannot have 
 been inconsiderable, as it took two or more centu- 
 
 * Of, Jirecek, C. T. Geschichte der Bulgaren Prag, 1876, p. 126 seq. 
 t Miklosich, in Miscellanea di Filolologia e Linguistica Florence, 1886, 
 pp. 1-4. 
 

 THE BULGARIANS. 131 
 
 lies before the Bulgarian language died away, and 
 conquerors and conquered were remodelled into a 
 new people. This period is filled with mighty 
 struggles which roused the Byzantine empire, as 
 under Krum, Boris, Ormortag, &c. The power of 
 the Bulgarians spread over almost the whole of 
 the Balkan peninsula ; all its inhabitants were sub- 
 dued. By the side of Greeks and Slovenes, and 
 older than the latter, there was a Eoman popula- 
 tion throughout the Middle Ages known by the 
 name of Wallachians, and destined to play an im- 
 portant rdle in the history of Bulgaria. Besides 
 these there were the Albanians, and likewise scat- 
 tered remnants of other peoples like the Goths and 
 Avars, who had settled there. Over all these the 
 power of the Bulgarians spread, and yet it is 
 generally assumed that no trace of their influence 
 remains. I call attention to this point, as the view 
 I have to bring forward contradicts all these theories. 
 If we observe the languages of the Balkan pen- 
 insula as they appear before us to-day, they all 
 betray a surprising similarity in their grammatical 
 formation. This is especially the case, as it is im- 
 portant to notice, in their inflexions, a point in 
 which every language shows itself, as is well 
 known, remarkably sensitive, and only loses them 
 under some striking influence of another language. 
 English is so prominent an example of this fact, 
 that I need only refer to. this point. 
 
132 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 Now Albanian, Eoumanian, Neo-Greek, and Bul- 
 garian, as well as Servian in part, offer us such 
 identical phenomena, that the influence which 
 has produced this change in all four languages 
 must, under every circumstance, have been simul- 
 taneous. This consideration excludes any Thracian 
 influence, which was first assumed by Thunmann 
 and Kopitar, and is now generally accepted. Ac- 
 cording to this theory, the Roumanians, Greeks, 
 and Bulgarians, through intermixture with the 
 indigenous Thracian population, lost many of their 
 grammatical inflexions. As a proof of this, it is 
 urged that the Albanian, which represents the old 
 Thracian, presents the same phenomena. But 
 much has been overlooked which renders this view 
 impossible, as I believe ; for between the influ- 
 ence of the Dacians, who are supposed to be 
 identical with the Thracians, on the Eoumanians, 
 and the same on the Slavs, intervene at least 
 several centuries. It is not to be assumed that 
 a language could have remained unchanged for 
 many centuries, and should have produced exactly 
 the same linguistic results on a quite different 
 medium, in one case Slavonian and in the other 
 Latin. For the moment I will not press the 
 point that at the time of the Slavonic invasion 
 only Roman colonies in Moesia and descendants 
 of Goths are referred to, whereas there is not the 
 slightest reference to any Thracian population, 
 
THE LANGUAGES OF BALKAN PENINSULA. 133 
 
 though this must have been very numerous, to 
 judge from the influence assumed. Of far greater 
 importance is the difficulty offered by Albanian. 
 To the present day no one has succeeded in de- 
 finitely settling the linguistic characteristics of 
 this language. By the side of the Thracian theory 
 there exists also a Greek theory, which recognises 
 in Albanian an archaic (Pelasgian) form of Greek. 
 I need not discuss such an hypothesis farther. The 
 point of interest is the grammatical similarity 
 with the other tongues. The philosophy of lan- 
 guage does not permit us to regard this as the 
 original type after which the remaining languages 
 have formed themselves. Phenomena such as those 
 before us only occur as the result of a conflict, of 
 a struggle between the two languages, in which 
 both suffer losses, and become elevated into a third 
 language having a higher unity. We must, there- 
 fore, regard these forms in Albanian as late. It 
 would be otherwise inexplicable how a form should 
 have been preserved in Albanian which in the 
 other languages is undoubtedly of later formation. 
 Finally, if we pass to Modern Greek, we find the 
 same objection against a Thracian origin which 
 we adduced when speaking of Bulgarian, viz., that 
 there was never so numerous a Thracian population 
 as could transform Greek in so essential a manner. 
 In addition to all these points we have to take 
 into account the fact, which comes out irrepressibly 
 
1 34 GREEKO-SLA VON 1C LITER A TURE. 
 
 in an analytical investigation of, for example, the 
 Koumanian language ; this is, that these changes 
 must have taken place at a late period at a 
 period when the Latin language had already been 
 transformed into the Eoumanian ; in particular, 
 after the end of the change of consonants, but 
 before the determination of the inflexions. If we 
 assume that this transformation of Slavonic into 
 Bulgarian, and of Greek into Modern Greek is of 
 late date, we are necessarily obliged to assume 
 some thoroughgoing simultaneous influence spread- 
 ing over the whole Balkan peninsula between the 
 seventh and the tenth century, and transforming 
 all the tongues there and then in existence in pre- 
 cisely the same way. 
 
 But there is no other nation to whom we can 
 ascribe this change but that of the Bulgarians, 
 which made its appearance in so striking a manner 
 about this time, establishing a kingdom which 
 flourished for centuries. The number of the Bul- 
 garians could not have been inconsiderable, as one 
 can perceive if one thinks of the numerous popula- 
 tions whom they ruled. Besides, they managed to 
 keep alive their language about more than two 
 centuries, although in a continuous struggle with 
 other peoples and languages ; and though it passed 
 over into these, yet not, as was previously thought, 
 without leaving deep traces on them. 
 
CONVERSION OF THE BULGARIANS. 135 
 
 The next important factor was the acceptance of 
 Christianity, which had a most extensive influence 
 on the development of the Slavonic peoples ; for 
 by the side of their faith, and in consequence of 
 their faith, there grew up for them a literature and 
 progress. 
 
 In course of time the whole of Western Europe 
 had been converted to Christianity ; even the Slavic 
 tribes in Moravia, Pannonia, and Croatia had been 
 baptized. Threatened by Christian Byzantium in 
 the south, Boris, Prince of the Bulgars, saw him- 
 self surrounded on all sides by Christians, and, to 
 relieve himself from the threatening danger and 
 to ensure his political security, he determined to 
 proceed to Byzantium and to accept Christianity. 
 
 Accordingly, about the year 864-865, he was 
 baptized at Constantinople, and received the name 
 of Michael. It was only after a long hesitation 
 between Eome and Constantinople that he decided 
 in favour of the latter, and received thence the first 
 Bulgarian bishop, by name Joseph. Boris-Michael 
 withdrew in old age into a monastery, and after his 
 death became the first Bulgarian saint. The news 
 of the conversion of the Bulgarian ruler and of part 
 of his people soon spread, and attracted missionaries 
 desirous of winning over a people who had shown 
 themselves ready to give up their old faith. I may 
 mention specially the Paulicians or Manichaeans, 
 who came about this time into Bulgaria, and also 
 
136 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 the Jews, who had likewise converted the Chazars 
 to Judaism. I draw particular attention to these 
 two factors, as they were of great importance in 
 the spiritual and literary movements of the follow- 
 ing centuries. 
 
 The Bulgarian power reached its culmination 
 under Boris's successor, Tzar Samuel (893-927). 
 The whole peninsula was in his hands, and he 
 called himself Tzar i Samoderzetz Bulgaramu 
 i GreJcamu, i.e., Tzar (Csesar) and independent 
 ruler of Bulgarians and Greeks. His time, and 
 that of his successor Peter, is likewise the golden 
 age of Slavonic literature, which had now found a 
 true home and reached its highest limit. The seed 
 which the apostles of the Slavonians had sown in 
 the West rose, strange to say, in the East. At this 
 point, then, I will follow out in a few words the 
 careers and activity of the apostles of the Slavs. 
 
 Constandin was born in 827 A.D., of a distin- 
 guished family, probably in Thessalonica : it is not 
 known whether he was of Slavonic origin. He 
 was sent to Constantinople, and brought up at the 
 Imperial Court. His remarkable knowledge of 
 languages was peculiarly noticeable, especially of 
 Oriental languages. But I will not enter into the 
 details of his biography, contenting myself with 
 the chief points. He early became a monk, and 
 received the name of Cyril. In this character he 
 travelled among the Chazars, whom he is said in a 
 
CYRIL AND METHOD. 137 
 
 legend to have converted to Christianity. His 
 younger brother, Methodius, who had at first held 
 some official post, but afterwards also became a 
 monk in the monastery at Olympus, accompanied 
 him in his journey to the Chazars. 
 
 In the year 862 A.D. they were both dispatched 
 by the Emperor, Michael III., to Eatislav, in 
 Moravia, where they proceeded to develop their 
 literary labours. They first translated the Gospel 
 and the Liturgy into Slavonic. All difficulties 
 which lay in their path they were enabled to 
 overcome by aid of the Pope ; for Cyril jour- 
 neyed to Kome, and the Slavic Mass was thrice 
 repeated in the churches of Kome, with the per- 
 mission of the Pope. Cyril died in the year 869 
 A.D. Methodius henceforth continued by himself 
 the work which he and Cyril had begun. The Pope 
 revived the loog-disused Bishopric of Pannonia, 
 and appointed Methodius to this See. He was 
 also specially favoured by Prince Kocel, who re- 
 sided at Blatna (nowadays L. Platten). In 885 A.D. 
 Methodius died at Velegrad, then the capital of 
 Bohemia. Two years ago pilgrimages to his grave, 
 on the thousandth anniversary of his death, were 
 performed by all the Slavonic nations. 
 
 Scarcely had Methodius closed his eyes in death 
 when persecution on the part of the German 
 bishops, started already in his lifetime, was re- 
 newed with greater force. The numerous disciples 
 
I 3 8 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 whom Methodius had collected arouiid him fled to 
 Bulgaria, and brought with them the Slavonic 
 alphabet. Up to a very recent time the so-called 
 Cyrillian alphabet was regarded as the genuine work 
 of the Apostle Cyril. But many texts were found 
 written in an entirely different character, termed 
 Glagolitza, and this was studied first by Kopitar, 
 then by Schafarik, Miklosich, and Jagic, and, mostly 
 on philological grounds, was declared to be the true 
 Cyrillian alphabet, the so-called Cyrillian being of 
 later date. The chief proof of this position and it 
 was more and more confirmed as time went on by 
 the discovery of new texts was that the texts 
 written in this character came nearest to the lan- 
 guage in which Cyril worked, viz., the Pannonian, 
 now termed Old Slavonic. They were, besides, the 
 oldest relics of the language, some of them not 
 a hundred years later than Cyril. The most im- 
 portant evidence of all was that Cyrillian palimp- 
 sests were invariably written over Glagolitic texts. 
 A Cyrilliau text is, in such cases, invariably written 
 over a Glagolitic one that had been erased, and 
 never vice versd. This proves incontestably that 
 the Cyrillian is later than the Glagolitic. The 
 most important Glagolitic texts are Clozianus (edit. 
 Kopitar), Codex Zographos (Athos, ed. Jagic), 
 and the Codex Assemani (at Rome), and others. 
 
 Not a few attempts have been made to explain 
 the origin of this curious alphabet. The difficulties 
 
THE SLAVONIC ALPHABETS. 139 
 
 are many. In the first place, the remarkable form 
 of the letters ; then their no less remarkable names, 
 which are completely unsystematic, and, when trans- 
 lated, become unintelligible. All kinds of sug- 
 gestions have been made, none of which have led 
 to positive results. Some have thought of the 
 Kunes (Hanush), others of the Gothic alphabet of 
 Ulfilas (Schafarik), others again of the Greek Tahy- 
 graphs (Taylor), and, finally, resort has been had 
 to the idea of a peculiar and prototypal (Greeko- 
 Latin) Albanian alphabet (Geitler) ; but none of 
 these explain either the names and arrangement 
 of the letters, or even their form. 
 
 I may venture to suggest what I believe to be a 
 new solution, which seems to me to remove the 
 greatest difficulties, and carries with it no inherent 
 improbability. As I have remarked above, the 
 literary labours of the brothers Cyril and Methodius 
 began after their return from the Chazars, where 
 they, according to legend, held disputations with 
 Jews, Mohammedans, and Schismatics, i.e., Mani- 
 chseans. The last were, without doubt, Armenians, 
 as these were at that time the chief representatives 
 of Manichsean ideas, and sent out missionaries in 
 all directions. 
 
 How easily might Cyril have adopted this Arme- 
 nian or a similar alphabet, when it became known 
 to him among the Chazars, as most suitable for his 
 purpose, and have adapted it to express the Slavonic 
 
140 GREEKO-SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 
 
 sounds ? That this must have been really the case 
 is proved by the similarity of the Glogolitza with 
 Armenian and Georgian, if we disregard, as is only 
 natural, a few modifications which have taken place 
 in the former. The other so-called Cyrillian was 
 probably compiled by Clement, one of Cyril's dis- 
 ciples in Bulgaria. He took the Greek uncials as 
 a foundation, because they were then better known, 
 and took the characters still wanting, from the 
 Glogolitic. Clement was later Bishop of Velica, 
 and died 916 A.D. This is the origin of this 
 alphabet, which drove the other from the field and 
 usurped its name ; and in this manner was the 
 foundation laid for a Slavonic literature, with which 
 we have now to deal. Further details are to be 
 found in the Appendix B. 
 
 The chief representatives of this literature are the 
 so-called Seven Saints, viz., Cyril and Methodius 
 themselves, and their five immediate disciples, Cle- 
 ment, Gorazd, Angelar, Naum, and Sava, to whom 
 for the most part the ecclesiastical literature owes 
 its Slavonic form. They translated the Bible, the 
 Liturgy, " Legends of the Saints," Synaxaria, as 
 they were called ; homilies, among which the Zlato- 
 struj, or "Golden Stream," deserves to be mentioned, 
 as it was attributed to Tzar Samuel, and contains a 
 collection of more than 100 (? 105) homilies of St. 
 Chrysostom (Slav. Zlatoust). Under his auspices 
 the Byzantine chronicles of Malalas and Gregorios 
 
THE SEVEN SAINTS. 141 
 
 Hamartolos (Slav. Greshnyj) were translated, and 
 the great Slavonic encyclopaedia arose termed 
 Izbornik, or " Collection of all the Important 
 Knowledge of the Time." In imitation of the 
 Hexaemeron of Basil, Joanes, the Exarch, compiled 
 a similar compilation of theological, philosophical, 
 and scientific views on cosmogony, connecting them 
 with the first chapter of Genesis. The book is 
 known under the name of Shestodnev, i.e., " Hexa- 
 emeron on the Six Days," &c. 
 
 The impulse once given, continued through the 
 centuries, even through the two centuries during 
 which Bulgaria had ceased to exist, and was entirely 
 joined to Byzantium. It continued later under the 
 Asenides, who again made Bulgaria independent, 
 till it fell under the power of the Turks. Tzar 
 Samuel had often beaten the Greeks, and came near 
 taking Constantinople ; but after his death a political 
 decline succeeded, though the progress of thought, 
 on the other hand, went on increasing. Under the 
 influence of Tzar Peter (927-968 A.D.) a rich diver- 
 sity of spiritual life was shown. The state was 
 often disturbed by the Greeks, and in 971 East 
 Bulgaria was conquered by Emperor John Zimiski. 
 Basil II. frequently beat Tzar Samuel, grandson of 
 Symeon, and likewise his successor, John Vladislav, 
 who met his death in the battle of Durazzoin 1018. 
 In the same year Bulgaria became a Byzantine pro- 
 vince, to rebel again, and fall afterwards into the 
 
142 GREEKO-SLA VONIC LITERA TURE. 
 
 hands of the Turks until the liberating war of 
 1878. 
 
 The Slavonic literature became meanwhile the 
 literature of the orthodox peoples of the South- 
 West of Europe, and especially of the Slavonic 
 nations. Naturally in the MSS. peculiarities of the 
 special languages have crept in, which enable us to 
 determine the home of each at a glance. I will 
 only mention one of these peculiarities, though that 
 is a specially important one. The nasal vowels 
 y, e, are replaced by one or other of the remain- 
 ing vowels when the MS. is not written in Bulgaria. 
 
 During recent centuries the chief place of refuge 
 for this literature, as well as its chief place of cul- 
 tivation, have been the monasteries on Mount Athos. 
 To the present day many a precious MS. is pre- 
 served there, and from there most of the best MSS. 
 to be found in Russia derive their origin. Thus 
 the celebrated " Zographos Gospel," now in Moscow, 
 once belonged to the Zographos Monastery on Mount 
 Athos. The connection with Roumania and Russia 
 has never ceased. Many of the most important 
 monasteries are foundations of the Roumanian 
 princes. The important position that Mount Athos 
 holds for Greek literature is well known to all con- 
 cerned with the subject, nor can it be said that the 
 whole matter has been as yet thoroughly inves- 
 tigated. Still less can we say .that we have a 
 complete control over the whole of old Bulgarian 
 
THE SLAVONIC LITERATURE. 143 
 
 literature. Slavonic MSS. are to be found scattered 
 throughout all the libraries of Europe, and in many 
 monasteries of Bulgaria itself, of Koumania, and of 
 Kussia, which have not yet been explored. But 
 what we have in hand is sufficient to enable us to 
 settle its extent, and determine its characteristics 
 with some amount of precision. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 
 
 IN close connection with the history of the Bible 
 proper, of its translation, and of the influence it 
 exercised, especially during the Middle Ages, is the 
 history of the so-called Bible Historiale.viz., the his- 
 torical part of the Bible, enriched and embellished 
 by legendary and exegetical means, to serve at the 
 same time homiletical and edifying purposes. 
 
 There is, however, notwithstanding its great 
 importance, no special study which, as far as I 
 know, endeavours to fill the gap of our knowledge 
 in this respect, to trace the development of the 
 Bible Historiale through the literatures of Europe, 
 and to discover its probable origin. The following 
 pages claim to be no more than an attempt to 
 gather scattered elements and to bring this literary 
 problem under a new light, furnished by the 
 Oriental, and especially by the Slavonic literature 
 with which we are dealing. There is no need to 
 add that it is only a brief sketch, in consideration 
 of the literature it embraces, the wide space it 
 covers, and the results to which it leads. 
 
148 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Under the name of Bible Historiale is generally 
 understood the Latin compilation of Pierre le 
 Mangeur, or Petrus Comestor, vice-chancellor of 
 the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, 
 termed by himself Historia Scholastica. Composed 
 about 1175, it is the first compilation embracing 
 the entire contents of the Old and New Testament. 
 At short intervals there are also introduced special 
 chapters referring to the history of the world. 
 The author excluded from his work the dogmatical 
 and prophetical portions of the Bible, and the rest 
 is not rendered in a literal translation, but in a mere 
 paraphrase of the text. Sometimes this is shortened, 
 very often explanatory glosses of an exegetic or 
 polemical character are added. Not seldom the 
 author inserts legendary traits or entire legends 
 drawn from non- canonical sources. Almost every 
 episode is treated and commented in an allegorical 
 or spiritual way, and the author has often the oppor- 
 tunity of showing his profound learning, and his 
 deep acquaintance with the philosophical and scho- 
 lastical speculations of the time. 
 
 By the success this compilation shortly after- 
 wards acquired it seems that it perfectly suited 
 the taste of the time. Not long after its appear- 
 ance the book was translated into the vernacular 
 French, and it served as a basis and model for 
 many similar productions both in prose and verse 
 in various countries. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 149 
 
 One question, however, has not even yet been 
 satisfactorily settled, namely, from what sources 
 did Comestor draw his legendary stories, and how far 
 is he indebted to some other similar compilation ? 
 
 This question is the more difficult to answer, as 
 hitherto under the heading of Bible Historiale 
 many books have been classed which bear some 
 resemblance to each other. A closer inquiry proves, 
 however, that there existed at least two different 
 Bible-histories, one of which is the older and 
 genuinely popular, while the second is the Historia 
 Scholastic^ with all its variations and translations. 
 
 A true light on this very interesting branch 
 of universal literature is thrown on it by the older 
 version, whose existence I am now endeavouring to 
 prove, and which I am now going to examine inde- 
 pendently of the other. 
 
 Before entering into this research, it is desirable 
 to mention another work, the Speculum of Vin- 
 centius of Beauvais, that unparalleled encyclopae- 
 dia, which comprised in one book all the different 
 facts and ideas then current in the Christian 
 world. In the fourth division of this Miroir, Vin- 
 centius passes in review and relates the history of 
 man from Adam down to the resurrection and end 
 of the world. Here are also inserted a number of 
 legends and apocryphal narratives similar to the 
 previous, and a century-older Historia Scholastica. 
 This too served as a source for the following period. 
 
150 APPENDIX A. 
 
 The question as to the origin whence these are 
 derived is also unsettled. 
 
 If we now compare the vernacular translations 
 of the Bible as they have been preserved up to 
 the present time, and if we include in this our 
 inquiry not only the prosaic and literal, but also 
 the versified and amplified translations extant in 
 France and Germany, not to speak for the moment 
 of the Italian, Slavonic, and other versions, and if 
 we add to these the "Mysteries" based upon the 
 versified Bible, we are inevitably compelled to affirm 
 for a distinct part of them an undoubted inde- 
 pendence from the Historia Scholastica as well 
 as from the Speculum. And we must further 
 acknowledge that they represent a different version, 
 richer in legends and tales, less acquainted or 
 blended with world-history and sophistical specula- 
 tions, and distinctly at variance in the allegorical 
 and spiritual explanations to those put forth in 
 the above-mentioned works. In order to explain 
 this hitherto unnoticed fact, we must go a step 
 farther, and ask when and under what circum- 
 stances was the Bible itself translated into the 
 vernacular ? 
 
 There is no doubt that, curious as it may seem, 
 with the exception of the Gothic translation by 
 Ufilas, the Slavonic translation is the oldest extant 
 in Europe. Above we have already traced a rough 
 sketch of the literary activity of the two Slavonic 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 151 
 
 apostles, Cyril and Method, and laid stress upon 
 the importance which their translation had for the 
 development of the Slavonic literature, which clus- 
 ters round it as its natural centre. 
 
 Almost contemporaneously with this transla- 
 tion, that is, as early as the ninth century, and as 
 a consequence of it, there appears in the Slavonic 
 language also a Bible Historiale, with all its 
 peculiar characteristics, widely circulated, and of 
 enormous influence upon the Church and profane 
 literature. 
 
 The Apocrypha of the Old Testament mentioned 
 and referred to in the course of these Lectures were 
 mostly taken from this Bible Historiale, in which 
 the Biblical history is interwoven with legends. 
 
 This Slavonic Bible has a peculiar value, because 
 it is at least two centuries older than the corre- 
 sponding work in the Western literature, and especi- 
 ally than the Historia Seholastica, and also because 
 it is richer in tales and legends, which on close 
 inquiry prove to be of a more primitive and ori- 
 ginal form. 
 
 The age of this Slavonic version can be fairly 
 well traced, as we find reference to it in the earliest 
 Russian chronicle of Nestor. We further find en- 
 tire parts of the Palcea embedded in the Russian 
 Hronographi, just as we find traces of Biblical 
 legends in the analogous works in the German lite- 
 rature, which are world-histories, beginning with 
 
152 APPENDIX A. 
 
 the creation of the world, and containing the whole 
 Biblical history, after which in these Hronographi 
 follows the Byzantine, and with this, lastly, is con- 
 nected the Eussian or Slavonic history. 
 
 The Byzantine literature, with the chronicles of 
 Malalas, Hamartolos, Syncellus, and others, and 
 latter on Dorotheas of Monembasia, offered the ma- 
 terial and the example for similar Slavonic works. 
 They were, and this at an early period, translated ; 
 and the chronicle of Georgius Hamartolos (Slavonic 
 Greshnyi) in especial forms the basis of the Hrono- 
 graphi. What is now an essential point is that the 
 Biblical history therein contained is not drawn from 
 the Holy Writ directly, but from the embellished 
 Bible, the Palcea. 
 
 The references in these Hronographi help us 
 also to establish the fact that from the two forms 
 in which the Palcea now-a-days exists as a shorter 
 one, and a more developed, the latter is the older 
 form, while the shorter represents only an epitome 
 of it. In the Hronographi the longer version is 
 generally quoted, proving thus its greater antiquity. 
 The difference between the two versions is by no 
 means essential. The text is nearly always the 
 same ; they vary only in the number and extent of 
 the legends inserted in the text. We shall meet 
 ]ater on with a similar fact in the German versi- 
 fied Bible Historiale. of which there are also two 
 forms, a shorter and a longer, filled with legends. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 153 
 
 So also in the Komance literatures. The Slavo- 
 nic Palcea being all but absolutely unknown, I 
 will endeavour to give here a brief sketch of its 
 contents, in order to enable us to elucidate the 
 relation in which it stands to the literature with 
 which we are dealing. I hope, however, to have an 
 early opportunity of publishing an exact translation 
 of the legends and apocryphal tales contained there- 
 in, with the necessary commentary. 
 
 The Palcea, as has been said, is an embellished 
 Bible ; but it would be a mistake to consider it as 
 a work of only an exegetical character, intending 
 to explain the words of the text by legendary in- 
 terpretation. Besides this, it has also a definite 
 tendency ; it is apologetic and polemic, as well as 
 exegetic and homiletic. 
 
 The fundamental idea developed in the Palcea is 
 that there is no event mentioned in the New Tes- 
 tament which has not been adumbrated and typified 
 in the Old Testament. The New is only the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecies and prototypes of the Old ; 
 hence the truth of the former, and hence, on this 
 theory, also the unavoidable acceptance of the New 
 Testament by the followers of the Old Testament. 
 
 This is the polemic argument used in the Palcea 
 against Jews, and in a less prominent way against 
 Mohammedans, who are often addressed directly. 
 We find expressions like the following scattered all 
 over the book, as, for example : " Listen, Jew ! . . . 
 
154 APPENDIX A. 
 
 I ask thee, Jew ! ... ye sinful Jews ! and ye 
 unclean Besserman (Slavonic Musulman). . . . Be- 
 hold the wonder and thank the Lord. . . . Open 
 your ears . . . and lift up your eyes," and so forth. 
 
 This direct attack, and the typical parallelism 
 between the hope of the Old and the fulfilment in 
 the New Testament is a characteristic feature of 
 the greatest value, which I point out here, as I 
 shall have the opportunity later on to refer to it 
 frequently. 
 
 The Palcea begins, as is natural, with the descrip- 
 tion of the six days of the creation, and lingers 
 especially at the episode of the creation of the 
 angels, being intimately connected with the fall of 
 Satan. According to the Palcea, ten hosts of angels 
 were created at the first day. The leader of the 
 fourth group was Satanael, who rebelled against the 
 authority of the Lord, and was therefore cast from 
 heaven down into the depths of hell, together with 
 all his mutinous followers. 
 
 This hierarchy of angels is one of the most im- 
 portant events of creation, and the Palcea accord- 
 ingly deals with it at some length. We have therein 
 the accurate and minute description of the angels' 
 rank and dignities, also which elements of nature 
 are ruled by special angels. So there are enumer- 
 ated the angels of snow, rain, hail, &c., as they are 
 to be found in the heavenly hierarchy of Dionysius 
 Areopagita and its sources. 
 
THE BIBLE H1STORIALE. 155 
 
 Abounding with particular incidents, and very 
 amply elaborated, is the description of the magni- 
 fied works created during each day, just as is the 
 case in the so-called Hexaemera, and in the com- 
 mentaries on Genesis of the oldest fathers of the 
 Church. Among other tales, they are full of legends 
 of animals drawn from the Physiologus, and other 
 similar productions. 
 
 A large space is further devoted to the creation 
 of men, and the entire drama the centre of which 
 is Adam. It deals with the life in Paradise, the 
 tree of knowledge, the creation of Eve, the various 
 experiences Adam and Eve go through till their 
 ejection from Paradise; and the legendary story 
 goes on till their death ; telling us, at the same 
 time, of the travelling of Seth to the gates of 
 Paradise, and including, therefore, the famous 
 Legend of the Cross. 
 
 This part may be considered as the real centre 
 of this Biblical History, as we have very often to 
 refer back to it, and as all the following events 
 are only natural consequences of the first sin, and 
 point to the last catastrophe the crucifixion and 
 redemption already foreshadowed at the commence- 
 ment. 
 
 We have already given (pp. 36-38) the contents 
 of this legend. Suffice it now to add, that in the 
 Slavonic text the oldest and most complete form 
 of it has been preserved, which, as we shall see, is 
 
156 APPENDIX A. 
 
 a consistent and constituent part of all the Bible 
 Historiales. But whilst it is stunted in the West, 
 losing many primitive elements, the Slavonic form 
 by its greater completeness helps to explain it in a 
 more satisfactory way. The non-consideration of 
 the latter prejudiced the otherwise valuable study 
 of Mr. W. Meyer, as has been proved by Wessel- 
 ofsky. The seeming incoherence and contradiction 
 in the statement of the Legend of the Cross by 
 Liutwin and Calderon, for instance, is made clear 
 and comprehensible through the comparison with 
 the Slavonic versions. 
 
 Following the account given by the Bible, we are 
 told of the murder of Abel by means of a stone, 
 the death of Cain, shot by Lamech, who is blind, 
 and led by a child. We learn also all the other 
 legends relative to the Biblical personages, and 
 all the apocryphal stories connected with them. 
 So also the wills of the twelve sons of Jacob, the 
 life and adventures of Joseph, the prototype of 
 Christ in every detail, his being sold, the temptation, 
 &c. The life of Moses is also adorned with legends, 
 out of which I select the episode relating to his 
 youth. The daughter of Pharaoh brought home 
 the child Moses to her father, who took him kindly 
 to caress him, when Moses suddenly seized the 
 crown, tore it from Pharaoh's head, and threw it 
 down. The crown had an image of an idol as 
 ornament. Pharaoh seeing this, remembered an 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 157 
 
 old prophecy warning him against a son of his 
 slaves, who would at a time depose him from his 
 throne. He therefore considered the deed of Moses 
 as an ill-boding omen, and ordered him to be 
 killed. But a councillor said, " It is not right to 
 kill a child ; but let us put him to a test. Two plates 
 shall be brought in, one filled with precious stones, 
 the other with fiery coals, and we will place them 
 before the child. If he stretches out his hand for 
 the precious stones, then the child is intelligent, 
 knows what he does, and must die ; but if he 
 touches the coals, we will desist from killing him." 
 The two plates were brought, and Moses grasped 
 some of the coals, put them in his mouth, and 
 burned his tongue. He was saved, but he remained 
 a stammerer for his life.* 
 
 We now quickly pass over the rest, as the de- 
 scription of the ten plagues, the Pascha and its 
 identity with the self-sacrifice of Christ, the manna 
 and its wonderful properties, the death of Moses, 
 and the very short sketch of the Judges till the 
 advent of David. Some texts stop at the history 
 of Saul ; others extend the narrative as far as 
 Solomon, including all the remarkable legends of 
 which he is the centre. 
 
 These are the meagre outlines of the Slavonic 
 Palcea, two-thirds of which at least deal with the 
 contents of Genesis and Exodus, while the later 
 
 * Gaster, Lit. Pop., pp. 318-320. 
 
158 APPENDIX A. 
 
 portion is added only to form the link between 
 Moses and Solomon, who occupies the rest of the 
 book. Therefore the Palcea is often and rightly 
 called the enlarged or interpreted Genesis. 
 
 The first question which now arises, and which 
 I will proceed to answer, is, what is the origin of 
 the Palcea, and which the sources whence it has 
 drawn its materials ? Is this book to be considered 
 as a genuine production of a Slavonic author, who 
 out of many books compiled this Bible with his- 
 tories, or is the Slavonic literature indebted for it 
 to another, whence it was only translated ? 
 
 The name Palcea itself leaves no doubt that it is 
 of foreign, specially Greek production, just as the 
 other contemporaneous Slavonic literature is de- 
 rived from the Greek. The name Palcea is the 
 Greek IIa\\<ua SiaOrj/crj, viz., the Old Testament, 
 the last word having been dropped in the course of 
 time. 
 
 The relationship in which the Slavonic transla- 
 tion stands to its Greek original is a matter some- 
 what difficult to decide, as no Greek text has yet 
 been published, and there is, indeed, only one copy 
 supposed to be in existence a MS. in the library 
 of Vienna. 
 
 The texts of the Palcea, in spite of their general 
 unity, vary as to the extent of their contents, and 
 we find in other contemporaries of the Slavonic 
 literature and in the Hronographi legends which 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 159 
 
 no doubt formed part of the Palcea, and which 
 are now missing entirely, or are found only in 
 a fragmentary form. Some of the legends, as, 
 for instance, that of the Cross, are further due 
 to a remodelling by the Bulgarian heretical 
 sects. 
 
 All these and similar considerations lead us to 
 the conclusion that, based upon a Greek original, 
 the Palcea, as a popular book, and a book of pro- 
 nounced tendency, underwent in its Slavonic form 
 a change during the centuries, which, however, 
 did not alter it essentially. It became in part 
 shortened, partly amplified by materials drawn 
 from many sources, and developed according to 
 special views and purposes, but all are of the 
 same origin, namely, Byzantine, and ultimately 
 Oriental. 
 
 The whole theological literature of Byzantium 
 points clearly to the East as its cradle, and there we 
 must look also for the origin of the Bible Historiale. 
 Not a few of the allegorical interpretations meet us 
 in the early literature of the fathers of the Church, 
 especially such as Ephraem Syrus in his Homilies, 
 and others. The East is also the acknowledged 
 homestead of the Apocrypha in one word, all 
 the constituent elements of this literature are 
 Oriental. 
 
 The works of Josephus, the most widely spread 
 book in ancient times as well as in the Middle 
 
160 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Ages, contain many legends which passed later on 
 into the ecclesiastical literature, as nearly all the 
 writers of the Occident made large use of its 
 contents. 
 
 Not in these incidental references nor in these 
 scattered legends do we see, however, the imme- 
 diate original of the Bible Historiale, but in entirely 
 similar books existent in the Jewish literature. 
 The connection between these later and the Bible 
 Historiale has been totally overlooked, because the 
 link was missing which united them with the 
 Western literature. 
 
 I see the most ancient instance of an enlarged 
 history of the principal events of the Bible in the 
 book called the Book of the Jubilees, or rather 
 the Boole of Adam, which dates from at least as 
 early a period as one century before Christ. 
 
 This book contains the Biblical history from the 
 creation till the institution of the Pasclia (Passover), 
 clothed in the form of a revelation made to Moses 
 during his stay on Mount Sinai. Here we meet for 
 the first time compiled in the form of a book nearly 
 all the minor legends of the Palcea. We are at 
 the beginning of the poetical and legendary activity, 
 which much later, and through various influences, 
 into which I need not now enter, developed itself 
 and produced the greater legends. 
 
 So we find here those relating to Cain and Lamech, 
 to Noah, Abraham, and his children, &c. Here, also, 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 161 
 
 we find the minute description of the creation of the 
 angels, and of the elements over which they preside ; 
 further, of the number of works accomplished in 
 the six days of the creation, and so on. 
 
 A characteristic feature of this book is that it 
 gives the names of the women of the Biblical nar- 
 rations. From this treatise they enter into all the 
 other compilations of later times, and especially 
 into the Bible Historiale, and into the so-called 
 Prophecies of Pseudo- Methodius. 
 
 The whole matter is chronologically arranged, 
 and the time is equally divided into jubilees, each 
 of forty-nine years, hence the name of the book. 
 But the book is more renowned under the name of 
 Leptogenesis, that is, Parva Genesis the smaller 
 Genesis. No doubt the meaning thereof is smaller 
 in authority, as its size is greater than that of 
 the real Genesis. It has been also termed the 
 Book of Adam, as the part he plays is the most 
 prominent.* 
 
 The legendary matter included in the " Book of 
 the Jubilees " can be shown, then, in a Palestinian 
 Commentary of the Pentateuch extant in two texts, 
 one complete and the other fragmentary. Being 
 
 * By the way I may here mention that many other books of the same 
 legendary character exist in the Jewish literature, from which one is called 
 the greater, the other the smaller, the cause of this not being very clear. 
 So we have also a Mayna Genesis (Bereshith Rabba), perhaps in opposition 
 to the above Parva Genesis; so, further, Seder Olam Rabba and Seder 
 Olam Zutta ; Eliah Rabba and Eliah Zutta ; PesiTcta Rabba and Pesikta 
 Zuttarta, &c. 
 
 L 
 
1 62 APPENDIX A. 
 
 connected with the Hebrew text, this commentary 
 has a loose form, and not the compact arrangement 
 of an independent book. Its value lies in the fact 
 that by means of it we can pursue step by step the 
 growth of the legend, this commentary not being 
 at any rate later than the fifth century. 
 
 To the seventh century, again, is ascribed another 
 work, this time again a book, which has never been 
 considered in this connection I mean the Pirke de 
 R. Eliezer, or the book called the Chapters of R. 
 Eliezer, which bears this title because it is divided 
 into fifty-four chapters, and the authorship is falsely 
 ascribed to K. Eliezer, who lived in the first cen- 
 tury (A.C.) 
 
 But if we look nearer, we see that it is unfor- 
 tunately a fragment of a larger book purporting to 
 be a kind of legendary development of the Penta- 
 teuch (or rather only of Genesis and Exodus), 
 similar to the " Book of the Jubilees," with which 
 it has in common calendarial calculations, and the 
 division of the matter in accordance with a special 
 view. 
 
 Out of these fifty-four chapters not less than 
 forty treat of the events contained in the book of 
 Genesis ; namely, nine are devoted to the descrip- 
 tion of the creation, ten to Adam, two to his descen- 
 dants till Noah, and so forth. The order of the 
 last chapters has been transposed, the book is sud- 
 denly interrupted, and remains without a real end. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 163 
 
 The contents are nearly all of a legendary character, 
 akin to that of the afore-mentioned book. 
 
 A striking resemblance to the Slavonic Palcea is 
 further afforded by the last book of Jewish origin 
 which I have occasion to mention the Sepher 
 Hayashar. The major portion of this book deals 
 with Genesis and Exodus, the other three books 
 of Moses, together with Joshua and the Judges, 
 being dealt with in two to three pages out of 
 nearly 150. 
 
 Many of the principal legends of the Palcea have 
 here, I may say, their immediate source. Parts 
 correspond word for word with each other, as, for 
 example, the legend of Lamech, the above-quoted 
 legend of Moses, of his wonderful rod, originating 
 from Paradise, which becomes afterwards in Chris- 
 tian transformation the tree of the cross, and 
 others we shall meet with in the course of this 
 investigation. 
 
 Out of this Sepher Hayashar, together with the 
 Book of the Jubilees, arose the Greek Bible His- 
 toriale, the original for the Palcea. That explains 
 also the curious disappearance at a certain period 
 from the Byzantine literature of the " Book of the 
 Jubilees," which till that time was very well known, 
 and quoted by nearly every Byzantine chronicler. 
 As has been shown by Fabricius, and now by 
 Ronsch, the " Book of the Jubilees " was known to 
 the fathers of the Church as early as the fourth cen- 
 
1 64 APPENDIX A. 
 
 tury ; and down to the sixth century they, as well 
 as the Byzantine writers, cite large passages from 
 it ; while from that time no trace of that book is 
 left. It had been absorbed by the Bible Historiale. 
 That the Sepher Hayashar, or a very similar 
 book, contributed to the formation of that work, 
 there cannot be any doubt, seeing the literal agree- 
 ment between the two books on one side, and, on 
 the other, that there is no other source known for 
 many legends of the Palcea and of the Western 
 Bible Historiale than the Sepher Hayashar. 
 
 In order to become the Palcea, this compilation 
 had to be adjusted to the Christian and ecclesias- 
 tical point of view. The whole matter had to be 
 recast in a new mould, symbolical and allegorical 
 explanations had to be added, and the work from a 
 book of amusement changed into a book of polemi- 
 cal tendency. 
 
 Amongst other new elements, we can easily 
 detect some derived from the literary activity of 
 the Bogomils, who, like all heretical sects, eagerly 
 adopted old legends in order to turn them, by 
 slight changes and interpolations, into means of 
 diffusion of their teachings. Nothing pleases the 
 people more than allegories and parables. There- 
 fore the Palcea very soon became a popular book, 
 and exercised the deepest influence upon popular 
 fancy and its outcome, popular literature. 
 
 To this heretical influence is due the introduction 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 165 
 
 of Satanael, the chief character of this dualistic 
 heresy, and the rdle played by him as the patron of 
 the earth ; and especially the Legend of the Cross, 
 which, as we know (p. 35), is directly attributed 
 to Popa Jeremiah, the founder of Bogomilism, who 
 is expressly mentioned as its author. Many inci- 
 dents in its contents confirm the heretical origin of 
 this legend in its present form. 
 
 This is a point upon which I lay the greatest 
 stress, as the Legend of the Cross forms an essential 
 part in all the different versions of the Bible His- 
 toriale. There is not one in the group we are 
 studying from which this legend is missing, while 
 the Comestor group is denuded of it. 
 
 It is one of the numerous links uniting the 
 Eastern with the Western Bible Historiale to which 
 we now pass. 
 
 In the West, France was the cradle of the study 
 of the Bible and of its translation into the ver- 
 nacular. As will be seen hereafter, traces of this 
 translation can be followed out as early as the 
 tenth century or the beginning of the eleventh. 
 The oldest translations seem to be lost, and also 
 the translations of a Bible Historiale. They were 
 no doubt supplanted by the translations of Come- 
 stor's Historia Scholastica. But we can recon- 
 struct the contents of that old Bible Historiale 
 by many means. First of all, through the versified 
 Bibles, some of them dating from the twelfth 
 
1 66 APPENDIX A, 
 
 century (c. 1140) ; then through the Mysteres du 
 Viel Testament, based upon such a Bible Historiale. 
 Besides this we have some modern copies, all of them 
 representing an amplified text, corresponding to 
 the amplified text of the Palcea. There is, finally, 
 also an abridged form preserved in the Catalan, 
 Bearnais, and Provenal dialect, discovered only in 
 the last ten to fifteen years, and known to students 
 under the most inappropriate name of Romanische 
 Weltchronik. This is also nothing else than the 
 Bible Historiale in a form resembling that of the 
 short text of the Palcea. 
 
 I will now try to summarise briefly the con- 
 tents of each of these works, as far as their par- 
 ticulars bear resemblance to those of the Palcea or 
 Sepher Hayashar, and are independent of Come- 
 stor, thus proving their identity of origin with the 
 former. 
 
 We start with the versified Bibles, following 
 closely the meagre extracts given by Bonnard,* 
 who, however, pursued another purpose in his 
 precis, and is anything but satisfactory as regards 
 his account of the contents of the texts he dealt 
 with. A comparison with the texts themselves 
 will furnish, I am sure, more incidents confirming 
 the views now expounded, and perhaps some other 
 investigator may be induced to follow out more 
 closely what I only briefly indicate here. 
 
 * Bonnard, Traductions de la Bible en Francais . . . au Moyen Age, 
 Paris, 1884. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 167 
 
 The first to be mentioned is Herman de Valen- 
 ciennes (c. 1140), whose versified Bible extends to 
 the history of Solomon. He cannot be thought 
 dependent from Comestor, as he is much older 
 than the latter, who lived cir. 1175. The history 
 of the Bible is adorned by legends, amongst them 
 the legend of Moses, different from the version of 
 Comestor, and corresponding to that quoted above 
 from the Palcea. Two plates are brought to the 
 child, one with precious stones and the other filled 
 with coals, and not only one, as is said by Comes- 
 tor.* The two plates we find also in all other ver- 
 sified Bibles and in the Romance Chronicle. 
 
 Peculiar to these Bibles is the division of the 
 world into seven periods, after which the end of 
 the world shall come. At the end of some periods 
 Herman sums up the principal events, interrupting 
 in an abrupt way the course of the narration. 
 Exactly the same is the case in the Romance 
 Chronicle. Bonnard says (p. 26) : " Par deux 
 fois Herman fait des principaux eVenements de 
 la Bible une rapide recapitulation qui ne se lie 
 a rien et qui coupe brusquement le recit." 
 
 This division of the history is a faint echo of 
 the old divisions in the Oriental prototypes of the 
 Bible Historiale, and the number seven is chosen 
 in accordance with the seven days of the creation, 
 alluded to already by Barnabas (cap. xii. v. 4) : 
 
 * Bonnard, p. 16. 
 
1 68 APPENDIX A. 
 
 11 Consider, my children, what that signifies, He 
 finished them in six days. The meaning of it is 
 this that in six thousand years the Lord God will 
 bring all things to an end." We find it further 
 said by Augustinus* and what is more important 
 in this connection, in the apocryphal book of the 
 Bogomils, attributed to St. Johannes (mentioned 
 above, p. 64), where it is also expressly stated 
 that the power of Satan will last for seven days, 
 that is, seven periods. t Other ecclesiastical writers, 
 such as Bede, St. Isidorus, &c., adopted the same 
 division, current in the Middle Ages. 
 
 I mention this at some length, because, as we 
 shall see, it served as a proof for the supposed de- 
 pendence of the Romance Chronicle upon Isidorus. 
 
 The legend of the Cross originating from Para- 
 dise is also contained in the versified Bible, and 
 other particulars of minor importance. 
 
 Decidedly independent of Comestor is also the 
 next author, Geffroi de Paris. He is identical 
 with Herman " pour les legendes introduces dans 
 le texte sacre." J 
 
 Mace de la Charite, author of another versi- 
 fied Bible, borrowed his numerous glosses also from 
 another source than Comestor. Bonnard says expli- 
 citly (pp. 72, 73): "It is certain that the abundant 
 glosses used by Mace to adorn his narrative are not 
 derived from P. Comes tor's Historia Scholastica." 
 
 * End of De Civitate Dei. t Thtio, i. p. 890. J Bonnard, p. 43. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 169 
 
 The foreign source can be much more clearly 
 proved for EvraVs versified Genesis. (He lived 
 c. 1198.) He cites Josephus, Bede, and Hierony- 
 mus, but surely only at secondhand. Comestor is 
 never mentioned, and what he quotes from the 
 maitre this is the title for Comestor in writings 
 of later period is not to be found in the Historia 
 Scholastica* 
 
 On the contrary, from the brief extracts given by 
 Bonnard,we can recognise the identity with the Bible 
 Historiale, and the author divides the history also 
 into periods. We find the death of Cain caused by 
 Lamech. Continual reference is made to parallel 
 passages in the history of the New Testament, with 
 the same allegorical and symbolical explanations ; 
 so in the lives of Jacob and Rachel ; so is Joseph 
 sold for thirty deniers, although the Bible clearly 
 speaks of only twenty pieces of silver. This change, 
 made with the purpose of finding a parallelism 
 between Joseph and Christ, occurs already in chap- 
 ter ii. of the apocryphal Testament of Gad, the 
 son of Jacob.t So also in the Roumanian " Hrono- 
 grqf" cap. xi. The comparison between Joseph and 
 Christ is a favourite topic of the old writers of 
 homilies, such as Ephraem Syrus and others. 
 
 Treating the blessing of Jacob, when Evrat comes 
 to Dan, where it is said, " Dan shall be a serpent 
 
 * Bonnard, p. in. 
 
 t Fabricius, Vet. Test., i. p. 677 ; cf. ii. p. 79. The Slavonic transla- 
 tion, Tihonravov, i. p. 207. 
 
1 70 APPENDIX A. 
 
 in the way, an adder in the path," he gives at full 
 length the legend of Antichrist. 
 
 The explanation of Dan's blessing as pointing to 
 Antichrist is likewise given in the Palcea, and in 
 more ancient sources, such as Hippolytus and St. 
 Theodoret of Cyprus (457). * 
 
 This is the more characteristic, as Evrat also 
 denounces very strongly the clergy and the bishops, 
 who are arrogant, and despise " le pauvre monde." 
 The attack on the clergy and the advocacy of 
 "the poor men," in combination with the legend 
 of Antichrist, cannot be a mere incident. It is 
 well known that this formed the most important 
 book of the " Poor Men," the " Pauvres de Lyon," or 
 the Poor Valdenses. The Antichrist is represented 
 here by the Pope, residing in Borne-Babylon. 
 
 Add to this the fact that Evrat lived in the 
 Champagne, and so we may presume that he him- 
 self belonged to the " Society of the Poor," which 
 hypothesis will be confirmed when I shall establish 
 the origin of the Bible Historiale in France. 
 
 Another point worthy of consideration is the 
 inversion in the order of the creation. According 
 to Evrat, the animals are said to be created on the 
 fifth day, although the Bible fixes their creation on 
 the sixth day. This is also no accident, as, curiously 
 enough, the order of the creation in the Mystere du 
 Viel Testament differs widely from the authorised 
 
 * Upenski, Tolkovaya Paleya, Kazan, 1876, pp. 87-88. 
 
THE BIBLE H1STORIALE. 171 
 
 version. According to the Mystere, there were 
 created on the first day the four elements and the 
 angels ; on the second, the water was separated 
 from the earth, and fishes and trees were created ; 
 on the third, the sun and the moon ; on the fourth 
 the stars ; on the fifth, the birds and animals 
 (just as in Evrat), and the Paradise ; on the sixth, 
 man.* A similar transposition of the creation 
 we meet also in the Slavonic version (vide above, 
 
 P . 28). 
 
 In the same way the other translations and texts 
 of versified Bibles furnish support for the exist- 
 ence of a Bible Historiale earlier than and inde- 
 pendent of the Historia Scholastica, and even more 
 widely spread and better known than the latter, 
 as it formed the basis for the versifications of the 
 Bible. 
 
 One single legend I will further mention here, as 
 Bonnard cites it as an example of the invention 
 of the poet, whilst it is in fact an Oriental legend, 
 and not at all due to the inventive power of the 
 author. 
 
 In an anonymous versified Bible it is said that 
 the father of the daughters of Zelophehadt is 
 identical with the man who, being found gathering 
 sticks upon a Sabbath-day, was stoned by the con- 
 gregation.;]; This identification is many centuries 
 
 * J. de Rothschild, Le Miste're du Viel Testament, Paris, 1878, i. p. xl. 
 t Numbers xxvii. I ff. J Numbers xv. 32 ff. 
 
i?2 APPENDIX A. 
 
 older than the versification, being already men- 
 tioned in the Talmud.* 
 
 The instances cited are scanty, as I could not 
 here enter into details, and as the work of Bonnard 
 gives only small extracts. The book of Berger was 
 not accessible to me. 
 
 Much richer is the harvest we can gather from 
 the Mystere, which lies printed before us in the 
 handy edition of Baron J. de Eothschild. 
 
 In this dramatised Bible, as we may term it, 
 we find again all the legends hitherto quoted in 
 the course of this volume. To these are also joined 
 many others, about which the editor says nothing, 
 but that " there are in these Mysteres . . . allu- 
 sions to Jewish legends not mentioned by Nicolas 
 de Lyra, and we do not know by what means they 
 came to be known by Christian writers" (i. p. x.) : 
 " II y a dans notre mystere . . . diverses allusions 
 a des legendes juives dont Nicolas de Lyre n'a pas 
 parle, et nous ignorons par quelle voie elles ont etd 
 connues des auteurs chretiens." 
 
 The story of the creation, to begin with, is, as 
 we know, at variance with the Biblical. After it 
 follows the fall of Satan, the sin of Adam, and 
 the expulsion from Paradise. Here is inserted 
 the Proces du Paradis (v. 1295-1882), which has 
 no foundation whatsoever in the Bible. When God 
 
 * Sabbath, fol. g6 b , Sifri, ed. Friedmann, fol. 33 b , 113; Talmud, 
 Jerush. Synhedrin, i. c. 5 ; Jalkut, i. 743-750, fol. 228 a - b . 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 173 
 
 is about to condemn mankind, a dispute arises 
 between Justitia and Misericordia. Justitia asks for 
 severe punishment, whilst Mercy pleads the cause 
 of man, pointing out his weakness. The Lord then 
 decides in favour of Mercy, and promises the salva- 
 tion through His own Son. 
 
 The prototype for this heavenly drama is, as 
 shown by the editor in the Sepher Hayashar, to 
 be found also in the much older Genesis Rabba* 
 whence it has been borrowed ; but what he failed 
 to remark, and what we have already noticed here, 
 is the identical legend in the German Historien 
 Bibel. The dispute in this version is before the 
 creation, more like the Jewish form, but the rest 
 approaches the French, thus forming a link between 
 these two offshoots of the old Bible Historiale. 
 
 We pass over smaller details ; suffice it to say, 
 that we also find here the legend of the Cross men- 
 tioned at the death of Adam, just as in the Palcea. 
 Cain marries his sister Calm ana, Abel Delbora, as 
 it is told in the " Book of Jubilees." No doubt 
 from the same source are also the names of Noah's 
 wife and of his sons' wives, although they are 
 not similar to the names given to them in the 
 " Book of Jubilees." Still we must not think that 
 this latter served as a direct source, or that it was 
 even known to the author of the Mysteres. The 
 names are rather due to the prophecies of Pseudo- 
 
 * Sect. 8. 
 
174 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Methodius, referred to above, which were also well 
 known and widely spread in the old Slavonic lite- 
 rature. 
 
 In the Mystere Cain also dies, shot by Lamech ; 
 Nimrod builds the Tower of Babel ; Ninus appears 
 here together with Nimrod, as in the Palcea and 
 Hronograf. The death of Haran, Abraham's bro- 
 ther, is related as in the Sepher Hayashar. Haran 
 is thrown into the furnace and burnt to death. 
 The life of Joseph typifies that of Christ, as 
 in Evrat, the Palcea, and other Oriental writers. 
 Joseph's encounter with Potiphar's wife happens on 
 the occasion of a festival given by Pharaoh ; that 
 is why Potiphar and all the servants are absent 
 from the house. This is likewise to be found in 
 the above-named books. From the same source 
 is derived Joseph's prayer, which is shortly referred 
 to in the Palcea, Further, in the Moses episode 
 with the crown he tramples upon it, and so on many 
 parables occur till the end of the Mystere, which, 
 like the Palcea, concludes with Solomon, and con- 
 tains a tale existing, as I have proved, only in the 
 Palcea in the older literature. 
 
 This short sketch of the contents clearly proves 
 that the Mystere is independent of the Historia 
 Scholastica, and has many a part in common with 
 the Palcea, thus pointing necessarily to another 
 Bible Historiale as its foundation, the same which 
 is the basis for the Versifications. And really such 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 175 
 
 a Bible Historiale seems to be preserved, but only in 
 a copy of the fifteenth century. M. Rothschild tells 
 us that there is in the National Library in Paris 
 a manuscript containing almost every legendary 
 or holy episode which has been brought on the 
 stage as a mystery (" a peu pr&s sans exception 
 les Episodes sacrees ou legendaires, qui ont ete trans- 
 portees sur la scene," i. p. xi.) This manuscript 
 has the title Le Viel Testament lequel traicte les 
 Histoires de la Bible, que aucuns appellent les 
 Histoires des Hebrieux ou des Juifes that is, 
 "the Old Testament which treats the histories of 
 the Bible, called by some the histories of the 
 Hebrews or of the Jews." This is just the title of 
 the Mystdre, also called Viel Testament, and like- 
 wise the name of the Palcea, the Old Testament, 
 with the addition " of the Jews," and also like the 
 title of the French manuscript Palda na Judie : 
 Palaea Secundum Judaeos.* 
 
 The French manuscript, being modern, has cer- 
 tainly passed through purifying hands, which elimi- 
 nated as far as they could the apocryphal or other 
 not very orthodox parts. Not so was the older 
 text upon which the Mystere is directly based, 
 differing from the former in this point. The editor 
 says : " The differences (between the Mystere and 
 the manuscript) prove sufficiently that the authors 
 
 *.To the Books of the Jews is also made reference in the Romance Chro- 
 nicle. Vide Lespy, i. p. 19. 
 
1 76 APPENDIX A. 
 
 of the Mystere did not have in their hands the 
 same version as our manuscript contains, but an 
 older and simpler version, which did not distinguish 
 the orthodox and the apocryphal books. This text, 
 which may perhaps be found some day, has furnished 
 them with the mystical comparisons between the 
 Bible and the New Testament, in which really con- 
 sisted the exegesis of the Middle Ages" (i. pp. xi., xii.) 
 
 In a few bold lines we find thus here sketched the 
 principal features of the Palcea, viz., the blending 
 together of apocryphal with . canonical books, and 
 the allegorical and mystical exegesis characteristic 
 of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Besides the complete or ample texts, we have 
 also an abridged Bible Historiale in three Eomance 
 dialects, of which two only are translations of the 
 third, viz., a Proveual, Bearnesian, and Catalan 
 Bible Historiale. 
 
 Of these, only the last two have been published, 
 while the Provenal is still unpublished. The 
 Catalan has been minutely studied by Khode,* 
 who came to somewhat curious conclusions with 
 regard to it. The fact that mediaeval historio- 
 graphy begins with the Biblical narrative and 
 joins to it later developments, had as a result 
 that the Palcea was incorporated into the Eussian 
 chronicles, and that almost all mediaeval chronicles 
 
 * In Suchier Denkmaeler der provenzalischen Literatur u. Sprache, 
 Halle, 1883, L p. 589 ff. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 177 
 
 begin their history of the world with the Bible. 
 This misled Mr. Kbode, who took this short Bible 
 Historiale for a chronicle, although it stops at 
 Solomon, like all Bible Historiales we have here- 
 tofore noticed. The result to which Mr. Ehode 
 conies may be shortly summarised as follows : 
 
 The Komance original, from which this is a 
 translation, belongs to the thirteenth century, and 
 is compiled, or, better, pieced together, from six 
 different sources, viz., (a) the Vulgata (resp. Com- 
 estor) ; (b) Apocrypha in the widest sense ; (c) 
 Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodinensis ; (d) 
 six great legends ; (e) the Chronicon of Isidorus 
 Hispalense ; and (f) an unknown source. 
 
 Let us now see how far each of these sources 
 bas contributed to our compilation, and in what 
 way. According to Mr. Rhode, the division of the 
 history into distinct epochs is due to Isidorus's 
 Chronicon ; but the comparison proves it to be so 
 insufficient, that Rhode himself is compelled to 
 acknowledge that it is only in the general outline, 
 namely, the division into periods. This similarity 
 is absolutely irrelevant and merely accidental, be- 
 cause we find precisely the same division in all 
 other French Bible Historiales, as I have shown 
 above (p. 167). 
 
 The comparison in the contents between this 
 Romance Chronicle and the Elucidarium shows 
 
 even more discrepancy. Out of the sixty-seven 
 
 M 
 
1 78 APPENDIX A. 
 
 columns the latter occupies in the edition of Migne, 
 vol. clxxii., only a few traits are alike, and then we 
 must assume that the author of the Romance Chro- 
 nicle had selected them out without any visible 
 order, a portion from here and a portion from there, 
 never following the sequence of the Elucidarium. 
 The apparent likeness comes therefore from the com- 
 mon source from which they have both been drawn. 
 What Mr. Rhode did further not succeed in show- 
 ing is the source of the Apocrypha and of the six 
 legends embodied in this supposed chronicle. He 
 admits them simply as sources, without telling us 
 how they penetrated to the South of France as early 
 as the thirteenth century. The six legends are the 
 following. The Legend of the Cross, which is very 
 well known to us as an essential part of the Bible 
 Historiale, and we need not look for Viterbo and 
 Beleth, to which Mr. Rhode refers (pp. 625-626), 
 as being similar to the form of the Chronicle. The 
 Denar legend, connected with Terah, Abraham's 
 father, has its source in the Orient, and occurs in an 
 Oriental writer, a fact which was not noticed by 
 Rhode ; * and Evrat already points to the thirty 
 silverlings when he mentions that Joseph was also 
 sold for thirty silverlings. The further legends of 
 Judas, Veronica, and Constantine occur very often in 
 Slavonic literature and at an early period, so that 
 they might also have crept into the Bible Historiale. 
 
 * Fabricius, Vet. Test., ii. pp. 79-81. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 179 
 
 This view is further confirmed when we try 
 to ascertain the unknown source. Two legends 
 are taken from this, viz., a legend of Abraham, 
 according to which Abraham destroys the idols of 
 his father, and places the axe in the hands of the 
 supreme idol, left undestroyed, in order to say that, 
 for the sake of his gluttony, he killed the others, 
 to save all the dishes for himself alone. The 
 source, which was unknown to Mr. Rhode, is the 
 Sepher Hayashar, so often quoted, and to the same 
 source belongs also the other legend of Moses, in 
 the well-known form, as by Herman de Valenciennes, 
 Palcea, &c. 
 
 Considered as a chronicle, this book has the 
 aspect of a mosaic pieced together in so curious a 
 manner, that often two consecutive lines are taken 
 from two different sources ; while considered, as I 
 regard it, as a Bible Historiale, all is of one piece, of 
 one and the same source, and corresponds entirely 
 to other compilations belonging to the same class 
 of works. 
 
 For in an abridged manner we find here again 
 the principal characteristics, such as Bible history 
 interwoven with Apocryphal tales, the mystical 
 exegesis, and the New Testament predicted in the 
 Old, the legend of the Cross, the chronological 
 recapitulations, as in Herman, and also one pecu- 
 liar point misunderstood hitherto. In this short 
 Bible Historiale, as well as in some of the versified 
 
i8o APPENDIX A. 
 
 Bibles, we find not unfrequently the exhortation : 
 "Hearken ! listen ! see ! " and other similar passages. 
 From this the editors and Mr. Ehode presumed 
 that the book was read in churches and schools, 
 and hence the exhortation. But if we bear in mind 
 that the contents is not at all orthodox, and that 
 the Bible in vernacular was never read in Catholic 
 churches, this explanation is at least a defective 
 one. Quite otherwise is the meaning when we com- 
 pare these phrases with the same exhortations so 
 frequent in the Palcea, to which I drew attention 
 when describing it. It is a polemical work in the 
 Slavonic language, and addresses itself to the Jew 
 or other unbeliever. In the Romance Chronicle 
 we have the faint echo of it. Hence the otherwise 
 incomprehensible address. 
 
 Before now passing on to Italy, I will briefly 
 notice also the Noble Leyczon of the Waldenses, 
 consisting of a kind of short Bible history, with 
 expressed tendency. To each deed or command in 
 the Old Testament is opposed a similar passage of 
 the New Testament, which proves, according to 
 their views, the progress and superiority of the 
 latter. 
 
 Our knowledge of the Italian literature is scanty. 
 It begins with Dante, who, as I have said, was well 
 acquainted with the " Legend of the Cross " and 
 other Apocryphal writings. A noteworthy fact is, 
 further, that in Northern Italy arose the standard 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 181 
 
 book of legends, the Legenda Aurea, compiled out 
 of many spurious sources by Jacobus a Voragine. 
 
 A Bible Historiale can be proved to have existed 
 also in Italian, although of a relatively late period. 
 At the Council of Trent (1545-63), a book bearing 
 the title Fioretti . . . di tutta la Biblia . . . 
 was condemned as full of heretical legends. Konsch 
 mentions also a second book like to it, called El 
 Fiore di tutta la Biblia Historiato. I regret that 
 I have not been able to see either of them ; they 
 are wanting even in the British Museum. But as 
 far as I can ascertain from Fabricius,^ Konsch,t 
 and some quotations of Wesselofsky, \ these are 
 likely to be nothing else than Italian Bible 
 Historiales, with the same or similar Apocryphal 
 contents. Konsch describes it as follows : " Both 
 (viz., Fioretti and El Fiore) are in the main part 
 identical ; entire chapters, especially those at the 
 beginning, being analogous. The matter is in both 
 the same, only slightly changed in the latter, and 
 the number of chapters is different. The first has 
 137 (short) chapters, and the second 156. As far 
 as could be ascertained at a fleeting glance, the 
 matter was not derived directly from the ' Book of 
 the Jubilees,' but from other books like Pseudo- 
 Methodius ; and from our comparison with regard 
 to the legends of Adam, they seem to be in nearer 
 
 * Vet. Test., ii. 122 ; cf. i. 864. 
 
 t Das Buch der Jubilseen, Leipzig, 1874, p. 469. 
 
 $ Razyskaniya, x. p. 377, No. 4. 
 
1 82 APPENDIX A. 
 
 relation to the Gadela Adam (Vita Adami), trans- 
 lated from the Ethiopic, than to the ' Book of the 
 Jubilees.' " 
 
 To this description we add that given by Fabri- 
 cius, who says that it contains the history from 
 the creation down to the time of Christ. It is full 
 of absurd legends, and those relative to Christ are 
 very much akin to the Apocryphal Gospels of the 
 Infancy. 
 
 In the life of Adam there is also a reference to 
 the " Legend of the Cross," according to the quota- 
 tion of Wesselofsky. 
 
 Thus we have here the principal elements con- 
 stituting the Bible Historiale, the legendary his- 
 tory similar to the " Book of the Jubilees," though 
 only through the mediation of Pseudo-Metho- 
 dius, just as in the Mystere, &c., legends of the 
 Biblical personages, Adam, and the Cross, and 
 the apocryphal Infancy tales, occurring also in 
 some of the versified French Bible Historiales. 
 We may now fairly admit the existence of a Bible 
 Historiale in Italy, independent of the Historia 
 Scholastica, and nearer to the Palcea. Here also 
 I must leave to others the fuller inquiry. 
 
 It remains now to pursue the Bible Historiale 
 in the German literature also. More than forty 
 manuscripts were studied by Merzdorf,* the editor 
 
 * T. Merzdorf, Historienbibel, vol. c. and ci. of Literarischer Verein, 
 Stuttgard. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 183 
 
 of the German Historien Bibel, and yet the material 
 is far from being exhausted. This proves the great 
 favour that book enjoyed in Germany, and con- 
 sequently the great influence it exercised. More 
 than one literary point, however, is left unsettled. 
 In his valuable introduction, Merzdorf classifies 
 the different extant versions, and comes to the con- 
 clusion that there are two distinct classes of Bible 
 Historiales falsely united under the same title. One 
 is entirely dependent on the Historia Scholastica 
 of Comestor, and the other is more or less a prose 
 transcription of Rudolf von Ems's Chronicle. It 
 is now established * that the Historia Scholastica 
 was early translated into French (c. 1286 or 1289) 
 by a certain Guiars de Moulin, canon of St. Peter's 
 in Aire (Ae'ria), near the frontier of Flanders, and 
 upon this version the later French Bible Historiale 
 is based. This was also translated and widely cir- 
 culated in Germany, and forms Group L, edited by 
 Merzdorf as the real Historien Bibel. As such, 
 we have nothing to do with it. 
 
 Besides this, Group II. is subdivided by Merz- 
 dorf into two branches (a) and (6), the first corre- 
 sponding entirely to the Chronicle of Kudolf, the 
 other, less complete, but more amplified, belonging, 
 as he asserts, to a later development of that chro- 
 nicle, due to another anonymous author. 
 
 * Reusz, in Herzog, Heal Encyclopaedic, xiii. p. 30 ff. s. v. Romanische 
 Bibeltibersetzung. 
 
1 84 APPENDIX A. 
 
 We will deal shortly with Ila. It is not my 
 purpose to enter now into the vexed question as to 
 the priority of the versified to the prosaical form, 
 in so far as it regards mediaeval literature. I, for 
 my own part, strongly believe that every artificial 
 poem is based upon a prose original and not vice 
 versd ; and thus this falsely termed chronicle is only 
 the Bible history from the creation to the time 
 of Solomon, exactly like the Palcea, the work of 
 Herman of Valenciennes, &c. ; and is no doubt based 
 upon a prose original. Hence the apparent identity 
 of the present prose version Ila. with the poem, 
 which is explained as a transcription of that metrical 
 form. It may be that this latter exercised some 
 influence upon the present text, but the comparison 
 with the other literatures shows that we may assume 
 a prose original for the poem of Eudolf of Ems. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that almost all the pro- 
 ductions of this poet are more or less based upon 
 foreign or Oriental themes ; it is so with " Barlaam 
 and Josaphat," the Oriental tale of Buddha, and 
 with the " War of Troy," for the first time treated 
 in French by Benoit de St. Maur, but before un- 
 known in the West ; and, finally, with the " Good 
 Gerhard of Koln," the Oriental origin of which I 
 proved some years ago. It is therefore not unjus- 
 tifiable to presume also a foreign and prose original 
 for his chronicle also. 
 
 Unfortunately the poem is not printed, and we 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 185 
 
 are reduced to draw our information from the pam- 
 phlet published in 1839 by Vilmar, who was the 
 first to devote a special inquiry to the subject. 
 The conclusion he arrived at was, that Rudolf is 
 dependent upon Comestor, but only in a remote 
 way, and he may have also made use of the Pan- 
 theon of Godfrey of Viterbo and Solinus' Poly- 
 histor (Vilmar, p. 13). That is to say, that the 
 Chronicle of Rudolf bears some resemblance to 
 the above-mentioned, without being a verbal copy 
 of them, as is the case with the Bible history of 
 Group I. ; thus the chronicle has the same charac- 
 teristic features as the French and Romance Bible 
 Historiales which we have previously studied, and 
 might rightly also be termed Bible Historiale. 
 Moreover, it cannot be assumed, as some might be 
 induced to think, that Rudolf borrowed from the 
 Speculum Historiale of Vincentius of Beauvais, as 
 his chronicle was finished c. 1251, whilst the latter 
 composed his Speculum after 1254. 
 
 The same mistake which induced Rhode to call 
 the Romance Bible Historiale "Chronicle" induced 
 the German writers to give the same name to the 
 poem of Rudolf, which does not extend farther 
 than to the time of Solomon, in a manner identical 
 with that of all the other Bible Historiales and 
 the Palcea. But, like the literary development of 
 Byzantium, where Malalas or Hamartolos or other 
 chroniclers incorporated the history of the Biblical 
 
186 APPENDIX A. 
 
 period into their chronicle, joining the later world 
 history to the end of the Biblical, so it happened 
 in Germany and Eussia also, where the chronicles 
 began with the Pal&a resp., with its German 
 counterpart, the versified Bible of Kudolf of Ems. 
 Hence the misleading name, which I hope will 
 soon be dispensed with. 
 
 Eicher in details, and better known by some 
 extracts, is version 116., which is also considered as 
 a transliteration of a poem into a prose composi- 
 tion based upon a development of Eudolf s Bible, 
 due to an anonymous author. This more amplified 
 version is called the Christ Herre version, after the 
 beginning words, whilst Eudolf s is distinguished as 
 the Richter Gott version, after the two initial words. 
 According to Vilmar, this 116. is nothing else than 
 a literal translation of Comestor's Historia Schol- 
 astica and the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo. 
 
 But if we are to believe the assertion of Merz- 
 dorf, that 116. represents exactly that unpublished 
 poem, then matters stand quite otherwise. Among 
 the manuscripts of 116. there are some true Bible 
 Historiales. To these belongs also a MS., once 
 in possession of a certain Mr. Schroder, who gives 
 the following description of it. "The MS. is a 
 copy from c. 1430-50, whose author might have 
 lived in the thirteenth century (that is, contempo- 
 raneously with Eudolf !). It contains an abstract of 
 the Biblical history down to the Maccabeans, without 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 187 
 
 the Prophets and Psalms. The text is not couched 
 after the Vulgata, but is probably taken from an 
 older German codex." * 
 
 What especially strikes us here is, that the text 
 of the Bible is not translated from the Vulgate, but 
 that it is due to some other source the author 
 presumes a German version without any proof. 
 It is not necessary to add that this Bible history 
 is full of legends, apocryphal and otherwise. 
 
 A similar manuscript of the fifteenth century, 
 with illustrations, is noted by Yon der Hagen, who 
 published the complaint of Adam after his expul- 
 sion from Paradise in a wording like to the legend 
 of Adam in the Palcea, &c., and a parallel to it 
 from the above manuscript. 
 
 Mr. Merzdorf, who numbered this manuscript, 
 and also arranged it amongst those of 116., unfor- 
 tunately considered the legendary parts to be 
 irrelevant, and omitted them entirely, being satis- 
 fied only with a few remarks. He did not pay 
 any great attention to this smaller group generally, 
 as it was of secondary importance to him, although 
 a better inquiry would have disclosed to him the 
 real value of this version. 
 
 There still remains a third manuscript belonging 
 to the same group, once in possession of a certain 
 J. D. Muller, afterwards in that of the Pastor 
 Goetze, famous through his controversies with Les- 
 
 * Merzdorf, pp. 34-35. 
 
1 88 APPENDIX A. 
 
 sing, and at present in the municipal library of 
 Hamburg. Out of this manuscript, also from the 
 fifteenth century (c. 1458), Muller gave some ex- 
 tracts of the creation reproduced by Fabricius,* 
 enabling us thus to recognise the relationship be- 
 tween these manuscripts and the Bible Historiale. 
 
 The history begins with the dispute between 
 Mercy and Justice, as in the French Mystery. 
 The mystical parallelism between the Old and 
 New Testament is consistently pursued through- 
 out the history. Very detailed is the description 
 of the angels who fell, during three days and three 
 nights, from heaven into hell. The rank and order 
 of the aDgels is explicitly stated. The description of 
 how the world and Adam were created follows, and 
 it is said that Adam fell into a deep slumber, wherein 
 he saw prophetical visions telling him of the future 
 redemption. During this time Eve was created, not 
 by G-od Himself, but by an angel. Here the author 
 mentions the Jewish legend that Adam had had 
 another wife, created, like him, out of loam and 
 outside Paradise, while Eve was created from his 
 rib in Paradise. The legend referred to is well 
 known in Jewish literature, and appears in the 
 Alfabetum Pseudo-Siracidicum (dr. eighth cen- 
 tury)^ 
 
 The Bible Historiale goes on to say that the 
 
 * Vet. Test., i. 36-47. 
 t Ed. Steinschneider, Berlin, 1858, f. 2$a. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 189 
 
 serpent which deceived Eve was Lucifer, and the 
 serpent walked upright and had a woman's head. 
 After the sin Adam and Eve repented of it by a 
 severe penitence in the waters of Gihon. This 
 episode corresponds exactly with the version pub- 
 lished by Yon der Hagen. We are told also that 
 Cain was born together with his sister Calmana, 
 and Abel with Delbora,whom he marries afterwards, 
 just as in the Mystery and Pseudo-Methodius. 
 
 Amply developed are the death of Adam and 
 the legend of the Cross, intimately connected with 
 it. Seth goes to the gates of Paradise to bring 
 food for his sick father. The angel Michael appears, 
 and tells him that 5200 years must elapse before 
 the sin of Adam will be atoned, and then God's 
 Son will come with the oil of mercy. Seven days 
 after Adam dies, and also Eve ; all as in the similar 
 legend in the Palcea, Mystere, &<x, drawn from the 
 same apocryphal source. 
 
 The extract given by Fabricius stops here, but it 
 suffices to show that we have before us a work quite 
 analogous to the Bible Historiale described above. 
 
 Naturally the more modern a copy is the more 
 probable it is that it was influenced by other similar 
 works, as, for instance, the Historia Scholastica. 
 But, nevertheless, all the characteristic features 
 have been preserved, and point to another inde- 
 pendent and certainly older source. 
 
 One point (which we reserved for the last) in the 
 
190 APPENDIX A. 
 
 description of this German Bible Historiale is of 
 the highest importance, as it will enable us to find 
 the connecting link between this and the Slavonic 
 version, viz., "When God was going to create heaven 
 and earth, He created first the angel Satael, and 
 afterwards the other angels." This Satael is nobody 
 else than the Satanael of the Palcea, occurring 
 only in Bogomilian writings, and due solely to their 
 heretical influence. In perfect harmony with this 
 is also the presumption that Satanael was the first 
 being created, the most powerful, and superior to 
 the other angels, whence his arrogance and fall. 
 
 Curiously enough, Satanael is also mentioned in 
 the Historia Scholastica of Comestor, where he is 
 identified with Lucifer, but falsely explained as 
 Satan : adversary El : to God (sic dictus est ante 
 lapsum, vel forte post lapsum, Satan, quasi adver- 
 sarius, El : Deo (Glosse to Genesis, c. iv.) This 
 brings us to the question as to the origin of the 
 Bible Historiale in France, and also to the other 
 question, whence did Comestor draw the materials 
 for his Historia Scholastica, especially that which 
 regards the Biblical legends ? I cannot enter here 
 into this difficult question in any detailed manner. 
 
 As sources, Comestor himself mentions, among 
 others, Methodius and Josephus. The former is, 
 as I have proved, a compilation of the " Book of 
 the Jubilees ; " and as to Josephus, it is remarkable 
 that many a legend professedly taken from his 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 191 
 
 works is not to be found in them ; so, for instance, 
 the story of Potiphar is nowhere to be found in 
 Josephus, although contained in the Jerusalem 
 Targum (Genesis xxxix. i) and in the Talmud/''' 
 Then the story of Moses's two marvellous rings, and 
 that Cain married his sister Calmana, said to be 
 taken from Josephus, is really from Methodius, and 
 so forth. 
 
 On the other hand, a comparison with the old 
 French versified Bibles, and even the German, 
 shows, notwithstanding great discrepancies, a simi- 
 larity which cannot be denied, and which can only 
 be explained by admitting a common source. It 
 ought not to be forgotten that these latter also 
 very often refer to Josephus and Hieronymus, 
 although they certainly never made direct use of 
 their works. Noteworthy is the same fact in the 
 Palcea, where Josephus is also avowedly quoted, 
 and here, also, surely through the mediation of 
 some other work. 
 
 The source for the Western Bible Historiale, and 
 in some way for the Historia Scholastica, is there- 
 fore to be sought in the Greeko-Slavonic Palcea, 
 brought by currents, we shall soon learn, from the 
 East into France and Provence. 
 
 One of the striking features is the free admission 
 of apocrypha and their blending together in one 
 Bible. These apocrypha do not appear before that 
 
 * Tractat Sotah, f. 136. 
 
I 9 2 APPENDIX A. 
 
 period in the West, with the exception of England, 
 where the Evangelium Nicodemi seems to have 
 penetrated very early (eighth or ninth century), but 
 which exercised no influence upon the surrounding 
 literatures. 
 
 The Infancy Gospels are also of a recent date. 
 Herman of Valenciennes, who was the first to ver- 
 sify the Bible, was also the first who versified the 
 Gospels. Comestor did not know them ; only a 
 century later they were inserted in the Speculum 
 of Vincentius.* 
 
 Not in orthodox, but in heterodox circles did 
 the Apocryphal literature have its rise and develop- 
 ment ; and here also arose the BMe Historiale, 
 whose appearance coincided strangely with a remark- 
 able movement which took place at that time in 
 France and throughout the centre of Europe. 
 
 At the beginning of the thirteenth century arose 
 a society in Metz for the purpose of reading the 
 Bible in the vernacular. Till that time the Bible was 
 only known in the Latin translation of Hieronymus, 
 being thus accessible only to the clergy, while the 
 people were absolutely ignorant of it. The result of 
 the reading and understanding the Bible was that 
 the members of that society soon began to despise 
 the priests and the bishops, whose deeds and doc- 
 trines did not at all harmonise with the teaching 
 
 * R. Rheinsch, die Pseudoevangelien in d. rom. u, germ. Literatur, Halle, 
 1879. PP. 7. 
 
UNI 
 
 ^L 
 
 THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 193 
 
 of the Bible. The Bishop of Metz immediately 
 denounced the society to Pope Innocent III., who 
 first allowed the reading of the Bible in the ver- 
 nacular, as there was no law which forbade it. The 
 gap between the clerics and laymen consequently 
 widened more and more, and threatened to become 
 irreparable. This could never be in the interest 
 of the Church ; so the Bishop remonstrated ener- 
 getically against it to the Pope, urging the adoption 
 of a speedy remedy, as the members of the Bible- 
 reading society rebelled also against the authority 
 of the Pope himself. Innocent being compelled 
 to do something in the matter, appointed a com- 
 mission, consisting of the Bishop of Metz, the Abbot 
 of Cistercium, and three other Abbots, to investi- 
 gate it, and to examine the proceedings of that 
 society. 
 
 The result was that the members of the Bible- 
 reading society were convicted of being heretics and 
 their Bible was pronounced full ofheretical contents. 
 In consequence thereof the society was dissolved and 
 the Bible burnt. With this fact begins the per- 
 secution of the Bible in the vernacular by the 
 Catholic Church, which finally decreed the prohibi- 
 tion of reading the Bible in the vernacular at 'the 
 Council held at Toulouse in the year 1229. After 
 this no layman dared read the Bible unless in Latin. * 
 
 This early date proves that at the beginning of 
 
 * Neander, Kirchengeschichte, 4th ed., Gotha, 1864, vol. viii. pp. 37-42. 
 
 N 
 
194 APPENDIX A. 
 
 the thirteenth century the Bible must have been 
 widely circulated and eagerly read in the ver- 
 nacular. Indeed, the translated Bible read by the 
 society in Metz was an imported one, brought 
 thither by the Waldenses, as is expressly stated.* 
 
 We are thus in possession of the link which 
 connects the translation of the Bible into the ver- 
 nacular and the circulation of it, with the heretical 
 sects flourishing about that time, especially in the 
 South of France. 
 
 There is now every evidence to prove the exist- 
 ence of such a translation, and the profound know- 
 ledge of it amongst the heretical sects, said by all 
 the contemporary writers to be very well versed 
 in the Bible. 
 
 This is a common characteristic for every dis- 
 senting movement which appears in the history 
 of religion, and especially of the Christian Church. 
 The separation is based upon and supported 
 by the real or pretended better understanding 
 of Holy Scripture. Without going into further 
 details, already Petrus Siculus, speaking of the 
 Paulicians in Asia Minor, asserts that even before 
 their emigration from Armenia they possessed a 
 translation of the Bible, and that their women 
 were well acquainted with its contents. Cedrenus 
 adds that they brought it with them, coming into 
 the Byzantine empire. 
 
 * Neander, I c. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 195 
 
 That the Slavonians had the Bible translated at 
 an early period has been often enough stated in 
 these pages. In the year 1007 the heretical 
 sects in the Occident were already accused of 
 reading the Old and New Testament, only with 
 polemical purposes, and with the intention of 
 denying the truth therein contained. And finally, 
 Reinerius, who is the chief source for our know- 
 ledge about the Albigenses, states that almost 
 every heretic in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies knew at least the New Testament by heart 
 in the vernacular.* And they not only knew the 
 Bible in the vernacular, but also taught that the 
 translated Bible had the same power as the Latin 
 Bible, t 
 
 Internal evidence proves further that the oldest 
 French Bible was not translated from the Vulgate, 
 but from a Greek original, or from another which 
 in its turn was translated from the Greek version of 
 the LXX. One at least of the German texts the 
 others have not yet been studied from this point of 
 view is not derived from the Vulgate, but from 
 another text, supposed by Schroder to be an older 
 German ; but this, lastly, is also not more than a 
 translation, and a different one from the Vulgate. 
 
 The literary and missionary activity of the Albi- 
 genses is too well established to be doubted. We 
 
 * Faber, Waldenses, p. 400, No. I, and p. 492. 
 
 t C. U. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1845, 
 vol. i. p. 94. 
 
196 APPENDIX A. 
 
 find already in 1025 the record of their schools, 
 where they taught their doctrines and expounded 
 the Bible.* The same Eeinerius tells us that the 
 Cathari had more schools than the theologians, 
 and his own words are : "In almost every locality 
 in Lombardy, Provence, and other places, their 
 number exceeded by far that of the theologians, 
 and they had more pupils, who disputed openly and 
 induced the people to enter into discussions with 
 them ; and they preached in tents and fields, and 
 nobody dared stop them, as they had powerful and 
 numerous protectors. In the diocese of Padua alone 
 they had more than forty-one schools, not counting 
 those of Germany and France." f 
 
 At the same time the translation of the Bible 
 into the vernacular was undertaken by Petrus 
 Valdo (c. 1 1 70), founder of the sect of the Wal- 
 denses, who is said to have paid two priests 
 Stephan de Ansa and Bernhard Ydras for their 
 work, as at his command they translated the 
 G-ospels and other Biblical books into the Komance 
 language.J Soon afterwards (1179), that is, only 
 eight years later, a deputation of the Waldenses 
 waited upon the Pope, Alexander III., during the 
 time when a Council was held in Eome, with the 
 object of obtaining his approbation for a French 
 translation of the Psalms with glosses, and several 
 
 * Faber, 1. c., p. 358 ff. t Ibid., I. c., p. 361. 
 
 I Neander, 1. c., viii. p. 409 ; Faber, p. 456. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 197 
 
 other parts of the Old and of the New Testament. 
 Gualterus Mapes, who gives a graphic description 
 of their appearance, was also appointed to discuss 
 with them concerning their dogmas. The result 
 was a scornful dismissal of their demand.* 
 
 There is no doubt, as is expressly stated, that the 
 dismissed translation was not at all literal, but was 
 amplified by glosses, that is, it was a paraphrastic 
 translation, t Further noteworthy is the difference 
 in the wording when the New and when the Old 
 Testament is spoken of. The Old Testament is 
 never mentioned entirely; only parts of it are 
 translated, whilst generally the G-ospels are wholly 
 translated. This is easily explained when we bear 
 in mind the form of the Bible Historiale, that the 
 translation confined itself to the historical parts, 
 leaving out the rest, and therefore is only spoken 
 of parts of the Bible. 
 
 If we might draw a conclusion from the con- 
 temporary Jewish literature, the character of this 
 paraphrastic Bible, or Bible with explanatory 
 glosses, might have been somewhat similar to the 
 text of the Bible together with the Commentary 
 of R. Salomo Itzhaki (Rashi), who lived in Troyes, 
 and died 1 105, with the single difference that here 
 all is written in Hebrew, while in the former case 
 
 * Faber, 1. c., p. 471. 
 
 t " Qui librum Domino Papae prsesentaverunt lingua conscriptum gallica 
 in quo textus et glossa Psalterii plurimorumque Legis utriusque librorum 
 continebatur." 
 
198 APPENDIX A. 
 
 all is translated. This Commentary, which may be 
 considered as consisting of glosses to the Biblical 
 text, is full of legendary explanations, drawn from 
 the old Aggadic literature, and the influence it ex- 
 ercised even upon the Christian commentators is 
 pretty well shown by the example of Nicolas de 
 Lyra, who is greatly indebted to Eashi. 
 
 It is not my intention to follow out here the 
 friendly relations which existed between the Jews 
 and the heretical sects in France, and how far they 
 mutually borrowed from each other. Suffice it to 
 say, that many a zealous priest of the Catholic 
 Church complained bitterly about this free inter- 
 course.* 
 
 Keturning to the Bible of the Waldenses and of 
 the other sects, its contents must have been ampli- 
 fied by glosses of a legendary character, and no 
 doubt contrasting with the .dogmas of the ruling 
 Church, as the Council of Metz declared it to be 
 heretical, and condemned it to the pile. 
 
 This points clearly to our Bible Historiale, whose 
 prominent peculiarity is the adoption to so large 
 an extent of apocryphal tales and legends, which 
 constitute its chief elements. 
 
 The diffusion of the apocryphal literature in 
 Europe is due in a certain measure to the activity 
 of the heretical sects, originating especially in the 
 Middle Ages in Bulgaria, with which country they 
 
 * Neander, 1. c., viii. p. 43 ff. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 199 
 
 never lost connection. Thence they also carried 
 this literature to the West, and it is by no means 
 an exaggeration to presume the original identity of 
 the Western Bible Historiale with the Palcea. 
 
 The coincidence of so many facts brought under 
 consideration is so striking, that there cannot be 
 any other explanation for it than to assume the 
 former unity, preserved even through the manifold 
 changes which the Bible Historiale underwent in 
 course of time and in different countries. The 
 main features remained, and we have been able to 
 trace the existence of such a Bible Historiale back 
 to the twelfth century as the basis for the versified 
 Bible, for the My sieve, and for the abbreviation in 
 the three Komance dialects of Beam, Provence, 
 and Catalonia. 
 
 The crusade against the Albigenses broke down 
 the poetical life of Provence, and at the same 
 time stamped out every trace of the heretical lite- 
 rature. What wonder that the Bible Historiale 
 suffered the fate encountered by all similar works. 
 But the influence could not be totally obliterated, 
 and even in the orthodox disguise we could recog- 
 nise the old Bible Historiale. 
 
 Merely as an additional remark, for it leaves a 
 wide field for conjecture and special studies, I 
 venture to give an explanation of the name of that 
 illustrated Bible commonly called Bible of the Poor. 
 
200 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Up to the present day nobody has succeeded 
 in either tracing the origin of that Bible or in 
 explaining its name. Berjeau, if I am not mistaken, 
 is the last who devoted a study to this question. 
 (The later publication of Laib and Schwarz deals 
 merely with the windows of Hirschau and the Ger- 
 man texts of the BMia Pauperum). He describes 
 the Biblia Pauperum as follows : 
 
 " The Biblia Pauperum is a set in the first edition of forty, 
 and in the second of fifty woodcuts, disposed in three horizontal 
 compartments, which we will call upper, middle, and lower, 
 each being itself arranged in three vertical divisions, which may 
 be distinguished as left, centre, and right, all divided from each 
 other by an architectural framework, uniform alternately for all 
 the verso and recto pages of the work. 
 
 "The left division of the upper compartment contains a 
 number of lines (which are not rhythmical) in black letter, with 
 very contracted abbreviations, in which the subject of the Old 
 Testament immediately under is explained in few words, with a 
 reference to the centre subject, taken from the New Testament. 
 
 "The right division contains likewise the explanation of the 
 subject on the right, with its reference to the same subject of 
 the New Testament represented in the centre of the page. 
 
 " The centre vertical division of the upper compartment 
 represents a double window, with a prophet on each side of a 
 central pillar. The name of the prophet is inscribed under his 
 bust, which generally holds the end of a scroll, on which is 
 written some sentence from that prophet, referring to the central 
 subject. 
 
 " The middle horizontal compartment, with its three vertical 
 divisions, forms the principal part of the woodcut, the left and 
 right subjects being taken from the Old Testament, while the 
 central subject is always taken from the New Testament ; this 
 latter only being in chronological order. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 201 
 
 " The lower compartment contains, like the upper one, in the 
 centre, in a double window, the busts of two prophets, each 
 holding a scroll, with his name and a sentence taken from his 
 prophecies, and referring to the centre subject. In the blank 
 spaces on each side is a leonine verse explaining the subject 
 above ; while at the bottom of the page, immediately under the 
 busts of the prophets, is another leonine verse explaining the 
 central design."* 
 
 In order to make it clearer, I here give the trans- 
 lated contents of leaf v. 
 
 " The Holy Family in Egypt. Upper com- 
 partment, left. "We read in the thirty-first and 
 thirty-third chapters of Exodus that when Moses 
 had come to the foot of Mount Sinai, he alone 
 ascended the mountain to receive the Law; and 
 when he had done this and was descending, he 
 saw the molten calf which Aaron had made of gold. 
 Moses himself having thrown away the Tables, 
 destroyed the calf and broke it up ; which well 
 figured the idols falling in a heap when Christ 
 entered Egypt." 
 
 Next to it the double window ; at the left is the 
 bust of the Prophet Hosea, with the inscription : 
 ' He shall break down (their altars)/ taken from 
 Hosea x. 2. In the next window, to the right, is 
 Nahum with the scroll : ' Out of the house of thy 
 gods will I cut off the graven image and the 
 molten image' (Nahum i. 14). The next white 
 square, forming the upper right compartment, con- 
 
 * Berjeau, Biblia Pauperum, London, 1859, pp. 3-4. 
 
202 APPENDIX A. 
 
 tains the following passage : ' We read in the first 
 book of Samuel (chap, v.) that the Philistines had 
 placed the ark of the Lord, that they had taken in 
 war, near Dagon, their god. Those who entered 
 the temple in the morning found Dagon lying on 
 the ground, and both his hands broken off : which 
 figure was truly fulfilled when the Blessed Virgin 
 came with Christ, her child, into Egypt ; then 
 the idols of Egypt fell into a heap ; and it figures 
 the Virgin, who with Christ enters the state 
 of trial into which infidels through error have 
 collapsed/ 
 
 The middle is occupied by the three designs 
 described, and underneath the lower compartment 
 contains on the left front the leonine verse : ' By 
 Moses the sacred image of the calf was destroyed.' 
 Then the bust of Zachariah, with the inscription : 
 * I will cut off the names of the idols out of the 
 earth ' (Zach. xiii. 2). Next to it is the bust of 
 Zephaniah, with the words : ' The Lord will famish 
 all the gods of the earth ' (Zeph. ii. 1 1 ). Above it 
 is the other leonine verse, explaining the design : 
 ' The ark is made the cause of the sudden ruin of 
 Dagon.' And finally, at the bottom of the page, 
 just under the lower double window, and thus 
 under the design of the centre, is the third leonine 
 verse : ' The idols fell swiftly when Christ was 
 present/ ' 
 
 Berjeau says further : "It would not be easy to 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 203 
 
 ascertain who was the author of the Biblia Paupe- 
 rum, who conceived the idea of such a book, and 
 who composed the three lines of poetry which 
 explain the three subjects on each page. The rest 
 of the text contained on both sides of the upper 
 compartment is not rhythmical, as it has been said, 
 but contains mere quotations from the Old Testa- 
 ment and Prophets with reference to the central 
 subject taken from the New Testament." * Never- 
 theless, Berjeau t suggests that Vincentius of 
 Beauvais might be the author of the text, on no 
 other ground than that he is now acknowledged to 
 be the author of the Speculum Humance Salva- 
 tionis, which was likewise engraved and printed by 
 the xylographer of Haarlem to whom the engravings 
 of the Biblia Pauperum are attributed. 
 
 But before we enter into the study of this, for 
 us, most important point, we will deal shortly with 
 the history of this Biblia Pauperum, its date, and 
 the origin of the drawings. 
 
 " It is pretty certain that the author or copyist of 
 this text was not the artist who made the designs. 
 The circumstance that there are sensible variations 
 between the drawing of the subject and its Latin 
 explanations shows sufficiently that the artist did 
 not understand the literal meaning of the Latin 
 text." \ This text belongs, therefore, to an earlier 
 period, and the original manuscript may be traced 
 
 * Loc. cit., p. 5. f Loc. cit., p. 23. $ Loc. cit., p. 5. 
 
204 APPENDIX A. 
 
 to the twelfth or thirteenth century, as the leonine 
 verse and the abbreviations used in the text point 
 clearly to that period. 
 
 The costumes of the block-book announce a more 
 recent period, namely, 1410-20. The conclusion 
 at which Berjeau arrives as to the time when this 
 first block-book arose, and the circumstances to 
 which it owes its origin, is : J " By its architectural 
 framework our block-book may be said to belong 
 to the Tuscan school, as illustrated in the Duomo 
 di Orvieto, in Santa Maria di Toscanella, in San 
 Ministo di Firenze. The drawings, imitated from 
 the fresco paintings of Italian convents, most likely 
 by John van Eyck, ornamented some costly MS. 
 before being engraved on wood by some of the 
 Jiguersnyders so numerous in the Netherlands at 
 the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century. The block-book was afterwards 
 the model on which were made and painted the 
 windows of the celebrated Convent of Hirschau, 
 and was the starting-point of numberless imita- 
 tions by the early German painters and wood and 
 metal engravers, such as Springinklee, Albert Dlirer, 
 Schaufielein, Hans Hemmling, &c." 
 
 Other reproductions of later periods have sometimes 
 changed these drawings. I will not attempt here 
 to enter into the difficult and unsettled question as 
 to the origin of those Italian wall-paintings which 
 
 * Loc. cit., p. II. 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 205 
 
 served as a model for the block-book. How did this 
 kind of picture arise just in a place and in a time at 
 which a strong religious, or more properly heterodox, 
 movement was prevalent in that country ? HOAV 
 was it that it was just there that art for the first 
 time emancipated itself from the official Byzantine 
 influence ? Tischendorf has dwelt at length on 
 another very interesting point, viz., when and how 
 far did the apocryphal tales creep into the Chris- 
 tian art of painting ? Traces of this are also extant 
 in our block-book ; for instance, on folio 2, where 
 the ox and ass are drawn standing near the crib in 
 which Christ is lying, though no mention is made 
 of them in the Gospels. They are derived from 
 the apocryphal Gospel of Infancy. Or on folio 6, 
 the story of the fall of the idols in Egypt, related 
 above, and so forth. 
 
 This and other similar questions must be left for 
 the moment undecided, and so also the question 
 as to whether there was not an illustrated block- 
 book or MS. older than that now known, and which 
 underwent the same refinement and change through 
 John van Eyck as was effected in the case of his 
 drawings by his followers. 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that the original text 
 is much older; and yet some have tried to ex- 
 plain the name Biblia Pauperum, or Bible of the 
 Poor, as the name given to the block-book, which 
 was naturally cheaper than the illustrated MS., 
 
2 o6 APPENDIX A. 
 
 and therefore termed the "Bible of the Poor," as 
 every man was enabled to buy it. But whoever 
 is acquainted, however slightly, with the prices such 
 works fetched in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
 turies would immediately recognise that even in 
 the shape of a block-book such a book was by far 
 too dear to be bought by a poor man. The name 
 must be, therefore, of quite a different origin, and 
 was surely the name of the text itself, which is a 
 kind of abridged Bible, and served as a basis for 
 the later or contemporary drawings. 
 
 Indeed, if we look more accurately into this text, 
 we again find the elements of the BMe Histomale, 
 with the same characteristic opposition of the Old 
 to the New Testament, and fulfilment in the latter 
 of the predictions given in the former. What is 
 more, out of eighty texts which form the forty pages, 
 two in the upper compartment of each page, not 
 less than seventy-six are taken from the Old Testa- 
 ment, and especially from the following books : 
 Twenty-one from Genesis (fol. i, 5, 8, 10 bis, 12, 
 16, 17 Us, 1 8, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 
 38, 39); six from Exodus (2, 6, 9, 18, 26, 35); 
 one from Leviticus (4) ; four from Numbers (2, 9, 
 13, 25); one from Deuteronomy (38); four from 
 Judges (28, 29, 33) ; twelve from Samuel (3, 4, 5, 
 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 1 6, 21, 28, 37) ; fourteen from Kings 
 (3, 7, ii Us, 14, 19 Us, 22, 23, 24, 34, 35, 36, 
 37); two from Jonah (27, 29); three from Daniel 
 
THE BIBLE HISTORIALE. 207 
 
 (12, 22, 31) ; three from Song of Solomon (30, 31, 
 40); one from Ezra (15); one from Esther (36); 
 one from Job (39) ; two from Maccabees (15, 21) ; 
 whilst from the New Testament there are one from 
 Matthew (20) ; one from Luke (32) ; and two from 
 the Apocalypse (20, 40). 
 
 From this proportion we see that all the texts, 
 without any exception, are taken from the historical 
 books of the Bible only, like those of which the 
 Bible Historiale is composed, and none from the 
 Prophets. 
 
 The text itself closely resembles that examined 
 by us as the Bible Historiale. Thus we again find 
 here the identification of Joseph with Christ. 
 Joseph is further sold for thirty pieces of silver, 
 which clearly denotes that the author did not take 
 the passage directly from the canonical Bible, but 
 from an uncanonical source, here the Bible Histo- 
 riale. The quotations are also never literal, but 
 are rather contractions of the Holy Writ, just as 
 they are to be found in the above-named book. 
 
 To these internal evidences as to the origin of 
 this short Bible is also added the name it bears as 
 Biblia Pauperum. 
 
 The Waldeuses were best known under the name 
 of the Poor of Lyons (Pauper es Lugdunenses). 
 Under this name they appeared at the Council in 
 Eome, and under the same name they became famous 
 for centuries. 
 
208 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Many a common point between their Bible and 
 their Noble Leyczon induces me to ascribe to them 
 also the authorship of this short Biblical treatise, 
 perhaps from the beginning already accompanied 
 with rough sketches, out of which arose the later 
 more refined drawings. And so it got the name of 
 Biblia Pauperum, or the "Bible of the Poor," 
 viz., the Bible of the Poor of Lyons, preserved as 
 such until the present time. 
 
 It is not without interest to notice that nearly 
 all the first block-books deal with subjects favoured 
 in the highest degree by the heretical sects, and 
 became popular books. Thus the Antichrist, the 
 Legend of the Cross, the Apocalypse of St. John, 
 are among the oldest block-books, all containing 
 subjects with which we have become familiar in 
 the course of these pages. 
 
 The identification of the Poor with the Waldenses, 
 or the Poor of Lyons, is not only not far-fetched, as 
 it might seem at the first glance, but is also the 
 only plausible explanation of the title, as it ex- 
 plains at the same time the origin of the book. 
 
APPENDIX R 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET, 
 
 DOBROVSKY, the founder of Slavonic philology, at 
 the close of the last century for the first time 
 drew attention to a mode of writing employed in 
 some Slavonic books totally different from the 
 Cyrillian. This question was vigorously taken up 
 by Kopitar when he published in 1836 the Slavonic 
 textwritten with such characters, and known thence- 
 forth under the name of " Glagolita Clozianus" 
 
 The problem which presented itself thus to the 
 students of Slavonic philology was to ascertain 
 the date and the probable origin of this long-for- 
 gotten or totally neglected alphabet 
 
 The most opposite views were taken upon the 
 matter, and a discussion ensued which lasted nearly 
 half a century, till at least one point was generally 
 agreed upon, viz., the greater age of the Glagolitic 
 alphabet and its priority to the Cyrillian, 
 
 The reasons brought forward are twofold : philo- 
 logical and palaeographical. A close inquiry into 
 
 the nature of the language represented by the Glago- 
 
 o 
 
210 APPENDIX B. 
 
 litic texts proves it to be of the most archaic form, 
 and to approach as closely as possible that lan- 
 guage which is considered by Professor Miklosich 
 to be the basis of the so-called Church Slavonic 
 or Old Slavonic language the Slavonic dialect, 
 namely, into which the Apostles Cyril and Method 
 are said to have translated the Bible for the first 
 time. In these Glagolitic texts are thus preserved 
 the oldest specimens of the Slavonic literature, 
 whilst the language of the Cyrillian text is more 
 modern, and already contains traces of dialectic 
 influences, chiefly Bulgarian peculiarities, as is 
 only natural, when we remember the rise and de- 
 velopment of the Slavonic literature in Bulgaria. 
 Among these texts we do not find anything of 
 so hoar an antiquity as some of the Glagolitica 
 possess, where one or another is considered to be 
 no more than a hundred years distant from the 
 lifetime of the apostles. 
 
 So far the philological reason. To this the palseo- 
 graphical now comes as a powerful support. Just 
 as we find in the West of Europe palimpsests, 
 that is, parchments which have been written upon 
 twice, the first writing having been erased, so we 
 find them in the Slavonic literature, and the pecu- 
 liar thing is, that the first writing has always been a 
 Glagolitical, which was erased and a new Cyrillian 
 text written upon it. Never up to the present day 
 has the contrary been discovered. We know of no 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 211 
 
 instance in which a Glagolitical text has been 
 written upon a primitive Cyrillian. 
 
 For these two reasons the Glagolitza, as we will 
 in future term this alphabet, calling the other 
 Cyrillitza, is now universally accepted to be the 
 older alphabet, superseded in a later period by 
 a more modern, which usurped its name, and not 
 the opposite of this, as was formerly believed. 
 The palimpsests also show that the Cyrillian writers 
 had Glagolitical texts at hand. 
 
 The next question is the origin of this alphabet. 
 Is it a primitive one or a derived ? and if the 
 latter, whence is it derived, and on what model is 
 it formed ? 
 
 My purpose is here only to enter into the dis- 
 cussion of the origin of the Glagolitza, and not into 
 the history and development of the Glagolitic 
 literature, that is, of the works written and pub- 
 lished in these characters. I confine myself to the 
 characters themselves, to point out their peculiarity, 
 endeavouring to give a new solution to this oft 
 discussed problem. 
 
 We have to consider first the forms of the 
 letters, and then the order in which they are 
 arranged. Of minor importance, and yet still im- 
 portant, are the curious names the letters of this 
 alphabet possess. The difficulty of explaining the 
 names and the order of the Cyrillitza, as these are 
 identical with the Glagolitza, was no less in former 
 
212 APPENDIX B. 
 
 times when the Glagolitza was unknown. More- 
 over, the form of some letters of the Cyrillian 
 alphabet was puzzling, as their origin could not 
 easily be traced. 
 
 As regards this alphabet, it is now proved that 
 the main part of it was taken from the Greek uncial 
 writing, and the signs employed for sounds strange 
 to the Greek are due to the Glagolitza, whence 
 they were borrowed by the later compiler of this 
 alphabet, who, as it seems to be, was St. Clemens 
 (t 916) in Bulgaria, for in his biography it is 
 expressly stated " that he invented other clearer 
 letters than those which were invented by the 
 wise Cyrill " (eo-o^/craro KOI ^apcucTtjpa^ erepovs ypa/ui- 
 7rpo9 TO (TafpecrTepov tj ov$ e^evpev 6 (rcxpos 
 
 o?).* The Greek literature and the Greek 
 writing were generally known in Bulgaria at that 
 period, and it was only natural to adopt the better 
 known signs for their own language than to adopt 
 an entirely new alphabet, as the Glagolitic was, 
 taking from this only the signs not wanting in the 
 Greek alphabet, just as was done many cen- 
 turies before, under the same circumstances and 
 at the same spot in Bulgaria by Bishop Ulfilas 
 when he invented the so-called Gothic alphabet. 
 
 Not so, however, with the order and the names 
 of the letters ; they were both transferred from one 
 
 * Miklosich, Algemeine Encyclopaedic, Ersch und Gruber, vol. Ixviii. 
 1859, p. 413. 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 213 
 
 to the other ; the Glagolitza was changed into the 
 Cyrillitza with respect only to what belongs to 
 the form ; the rest remained unchanged. The 
 letters of the alphabet serve further as ciphers 
 indicating the numbers, the value depending upon 
 the place the letter occupies in the alphabet. By 
 this numerical value attributed to the letters the 
 order of the alphabet has been maintained. 
 
 More complete than the Cyrillitza is the Gla- 
 golitza, which numbers forty signs, as the plate at 
 the end of the book shows. There are the forms of 
 both alphabets, together with others to which I 
 shall refer hereafter. 
 
 I now give the name of every letter, with its 
 translation, numerical value, and pronunciation, 
 indicating at the same time which letter does not 
 exist in the Cyrillitza and vice versa. The num- 
 ber assigned to them corresponds entirely with 
 the number in the plate, and is the same as that 
 adopted by Kopitar and Miklosich : 
 
 1. azii : ego, i, a. 
 
 2. bukiivi : littera, 2, b. 
 
 3. vede : scio, 3, v. 
 
 4. glagoli : loquere, 4, g. 
 
 5. dobro : bonum, 5, d. 
 
 6. esti : est, 6, e. 
 
 7. zivete : vivite, 7, z (English j). 
 
 8. zelo : valde, 8, dz. 
 
 9. zemiya : terra, 9, z. 
 ro. ize : qui, 10, i 
 
 ii. i 20, i. 
 
214 APPENDIX B. 
 
 12. dya 30, dy (only Glagol.) 
 
 13. kako : quomodo, 40, k. 
 
 14. lyudiye : homines, 50, 1. 
 
 15. myislete : cogitate, 60, m. 
 
 1 6. nasi : noster, 70, n. 
 
 1 7. onu : ille, 80, o. 
 
 1 8. pokoy : quies, 90, p. 
 
 19. rlci: die, 100, r. 
 
 20. slovo : verbum, 200, s. 
 
 21. tvrudo : durum, 300, t. 
 
 22. ukii : doctrina(?), 400, u. 
 
 23. frutti 500, f (pb). 
 
 24. cheru : 600, h. 
 
 25. otii : ab, 700, o. 
 
 26. sta 
 
 800, st (sbt). 
 
 27. ci 
 
 900, c (tz). 
 
 28. criivi : 
 
 vermis, 1000, c (ch). 
 
 29. &a : 
 
 i (sh). 
 
 30. yerii: 
 
 ii (a dull sound). 
 
 31. yeruy: 
 
 uy. 
 
 32. yeri : 
 
 i. 
 
 33- 6ti 
 
 e (a kind of yea). 
 
 34. yusu: 
 
 yu- 
 
 35- 
 36. 
 
 y * | (only Cyrill.) 
 
 37- (en) 
 38. (|n) 
 
 > (nasal vowels). 
 % > 
 
 39- 
 
 y- 
 
 40. 
 
 y?- 
 
 41. 
 
 x (only Cyrill.) 
 
 42. 
 
 ps (only Cyrill.) 
 
 43- 
 
 th. 
 
 44. 
 
 u. 
 
 The translation is given after Miklosich. The 
 strange mixture of substantives, adverbs, and verbs, 
 in different moods and tenses, indicates clearly that 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 215 
 
 they must be corruptions of words not understood 
 by the people, who tried to bring them nearer to 
 their own understanding by the well-known pro- 
 cess of popular etymology. They became Slavo- 
 nised, if I may coin such a term. 
 
 This increased the perplexity, and thwarted every 
 effort made to solve the problem ; but even greater 
 was the difficulty with regard to the form. 
 
 It would be useless to summarise here all that 
 has been said on this subject. 
 
 Professor Miklosich, with his usual thoroughness 
 and mastery of his subject, has summed up the 
 whole matter and given the entire bibliography.* 
 His opinion, of course, is of the greatest weight. 
 He proves the absolute dependence of the Cyrillitza 
 upon the Glagolitza, and considers the latter to be 
 the alphabet used by the apostles of the Slavonians 
 themselves. In order to explain why they accepted 
 such a complicated alphabet, Professor Miklosich 
 suggests that it may have previously existed and 
 been in use among the Slovenes, and that therefore 
 Cyril and Method adopted it. " Nevertheless," 
 says Professor Miklosich, "this alphabet is not a 
 primitive and invented, but an adopted alphabet, 
 taken over from somewhere else," without, however, 
 giving us the slightest hint as to the alphabet from 
 whence it was derived. 
 
 * Allgemeine Encyclopaedic of Ersch und Gruber, vol. Ixviii., 1859, 
 pp. 403-422, s. v. Glagolitisch. 
 
216 APPENDIX B. 
 
 The decisive point of his utterance is that the 
 Glagolitza is an alphabet originally destined for 
 another language, and in later times adapted to 
 the Slavonian. 
 
 From this point of view only can we explain the 
 superfluous richness of signs observable in the 
 enumeration above. They were necessary in the 
 original, serving for the expression of some lan- 
 guage very rich in sounds, and taken over entirely 
 as it was, and adapted to the expression of the 
 Slavonic alphabet, itself very rich, but not nearly 
 so much so as the other. 
 
 This must be the starting-point of our inquiry. 
 That many have endeavoured to ascertain the origin 
 of the Glagolitza has already been mentioned. 
 Professor Miklosich reviews these opinions, and his 
 condemnation renders ifc unnecessary for us to 
 reiterate them and refute them. But after the 
 publication of that essay by Professor Miklosich 
 there appeared two other attempts, with which I 
 will now deal shortly. 
 
 The first is that of Mr. Taylor, who suggests 
 that the Greek cursive alphabet and the combina- 
 tion of signs in the tachygraphical writing of the 
 Greek might have served as a model for the Gla- 
 golitic. The comparison, however, shows such a 
 complicated mode of passing from one into the 
 other, that on formal grounds alone this idea must 
 be rejected. To this may further be added the fact 
 
THE GLAGOLITJC ALPHABET. 217 
 
 that sounds like sh, ch, j, and others not existing 
 iu the Greek could not be borrowed from these, 
 even not as combinations of letters, a-% retained for 
 ever its sound as o-^, and only nowadays do we de- 
 compose the combined sounds into their elements 
 by physiological inquiries into the nature of human 
 speech, a process unheard of in ancient times, when 
 for each sound one simple sign was used. 
 
 Not much better is the theory of Geitler, who 
 developed it in an elaborate and otherwise very 
 remarkable treatise.* He assumes that the strange 
 alphabet from which the Glagolitza is derived was 
 an old autochthonous Albanian alphabet, preserved 
 to the present time in a mutilated form in some 
 Albanian manuscripts. Not only the form of the 
 characters, but also their names are derived from 
 the Albanian. The first part has been thoroughly 
 annihilated by the profound criticism of Professor 
 Jagic ; f and as to the names, it will suffice to show 
 that some of them, considered by Geitler to be 
 Albanian, are Turkish elements of a very recent 
 origin, later than the fourteenth century, and there- 
 fore impossible to be of such an age as to be adopted 
 by Cyril in the eighth century, that is, six centuries 
 before. So, for instance, Albanian meseletd, from 
 which he derives Slavonic myslete, is plural of mesel, 
 Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew mashal; Albanian lula 
 
 * L. Geitler, Die Albanesischen und Slavischen Schriften, Wien, 1883. 
 t Archiv fur Slav. Philologie. 
 
218 APPENDIX B. 
 
 is the Turkish luleh, pipe, with the same meaning, 
 and has nothing whatsoever to do with lyudye, &c.* 
 
 Once agreed upon that point, that the Glago- 
 litza is taken from another people, my view is that 
 we must seek to find at the time when Cyril 
 flourished such an alphabet, rich in sounds and 
 not so far distant, that it could not easily be 
 reached or known by Cyril. 
 
 Some, induced by an apparent similarity between 
 the Glagolitic sh and ge with the Coptic, sought 
 the origin in the latter; but, in addition to the 
 difficulty of proving Cyril's acquaintance with the 
 Coptic, there is, moreover, no further similarity 
 among all the remainder, consisting of thirty- eight 
 signs. This view may therefore be disregarded. 
 The Latin and Greek, through the scantiness of 
 sounds, and therefore of signs and difference of 
 form and order, also need not be brought under 
 consideration, and it is quite another direction to 
 which I turn in order to find the probable proto- 
 type of the Glagolitza. 
 
 Nobody has up till now taken into consideration 
 the Armenian alphabet and the other kindred 
 alphabet of Georgia, so rich in sounds and signs, 
 that they are unequalled and unsurpassed by any 
 others. 
 
 The relationship and dependence of the Glago- 
 litza upon this or another alphabet akin to it of 
 
 * v. Geitler, I c., pp. 168-171. 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 219 
 
 those regions is now for me beyond any doubt, 
 and I will endeavour to prove it in the following 
 pages. 
 
 Let us first examine the historical conditions and 
 establish the connection between Cyril and these 
 alphabets. 
 
 As it has been said above (p. 136), Cyril was 
 brought up at the court of Constantinople, receiv- 
 ing the best education, and his knowledge of Eastern 
 languages was especially praised. One of the most 
 important Eastern languages of the time was the 
 Armenian, the language of a rich literature and a 
 powerful Church, often mixed up with ecclesiastical 
 disputes, and playing an important role in the 
 history of Manichseism. It is further noteworthy 
 that the Armenians sent emissaries everywhere 
 challenging the orthodox, and the halls of the 
 palace in Byzantium resounded often enough with 
 their speeches and disputes. 
 
 There is no doubt that Cyril, the learned monk, 
 who himself was sent later on as an emissary to 
 the Khazars, and who took part at the conversion 
 of the Pannonian Slavonians, must have known 
 this language, spoken at the gates of Constan- 
 tinople. 
 
 It is no matter of consequence to ask now the 
 origin of the Armenian alphabet itself, but even 
 the history of this invention is so striking an 
 analogy to the history of the Glagolitza, that it is 
 
220 APPENDIX B. 
 
 worth while to mention it here briefly, the more 
 so as it also explains the apparent similarity be- 
 tween Coptic and Glagolitic characters. 
 
 All the native writers are unanimous in ascribing 
 the invention of the present Armenian alphabet to 
 the Bishop Mesrup (fifth century), who succeeded 
 by these means in freeing himself from the Greek 
 influence and establishing a genuine Armenian 
 Church and literature. He first translated the 
 Bible into the Armenian language, thus forming 
 the basis for the new literature. 
 
 There are now different views as to the question 
 of the model taken by Mesrup for his new alphabet. 
 I, for my own part, derive it in its essential parts, 
 against the opinion of Mr. F. Mtiller,* from the 
 Zendic alphabet of the neighbouring Persians, with 
 which the Armenians were avowedly well ac- 
 quainted. One single glance suffices to show the 
 similarity between these two alphabets. But the 
 Zendic is poor in signs, as the Persian dialect has 
 not so many sounds, and this want had to be 
 supplied from other sources. The chief source 
 was here the Coptic alphabet. If we remember 
 that some of Mesrup's prominent pupils, Moses of 
 Chorene, the famous Armenian chronicler, and 
 others, spent a long time in Alexandria, then the 
 difficulty arising from the distance between Arme- 
 nia and Egypt is easily removed. For they had 
 
 * Sitzungsberichte of the Academy of Vienna, vol. xlviii. pp. 431-438. . 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 221 
 
 been sent by their master to collate the oldest 
 Greek manuscripts of the Bible preserved in the 
 great library of Alexandria, with their translation 
 into Armenian. The only alphabet of a Christian 
 people rich in signs, and thus serving their pur- 
 pose, was the Coptic, and so they took from it 
 the elements wanting to complete their own new 
 alphabet. 
 
 From Armenia this alphabet spread to the North, 
 and was soon adopted by the Georgians, who adapted 
 it to their own requirements, also changing here 
 and there the shape of the letters ; for instead of 
 being angular with sharp corners, they rounded 
 the edges and added spirals and flourishes. This 
 makes that alphabet somewhat more similar to the 
 Glagolitza, also characterised by its spirals and 
 flourishes. 
 
 The same alphabet no doubt also spread in South 
 Kussia, and most probably was known in the em- 
 pire of the Khazars, at that time very powerful, 
 and having a language judging from the other 
 Turko-Turanian languages to which this belonged 
 rich in both vowels and consonants. 
 
 It is at least remarkable to find in a peculiar 
 Greek alphabet of Mariupol, discovered by the late 
 Dr. Blau,* the characteristic letter sh represented 
 in the same way as in the Armenian alphabet, 
 
 * Zeitschrift der Deutsch Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxviii. pp. 
 562-576, and vol xxix. 166-167. 
 
222 APPENDIX B. 
 
 which is the same as we have noted here in the 
 Glagolitza, and hence in the Cyrillitza. 
 
 Our investigation would be much furthered if 
 anything written in the Khazaric characters had 
 been preserved, such as it was used by them in 
 their proceedings. Unfortunately we have only, 
 and this in a more modern copy, the Hebrew 
 letter sent by the Khazars to Hisdai ibn Shaprufc 
 in Spain. Also of Khazaric origin, and this time 
 genuine, I consider, is another Hebrew manuscript, 
 recently discovered and described by Professor 
 Harkavy, who does not, however, recognise its 
 origin, and considers it, without any internal proof, 
 to be from Crete. As it was a well-known alphabet, 
 and a Biblical text, there was no need to introduce 
 any different letter, as is the case when writing 
 down, even with the same characters, other foreign 
 words or names. It is therefore difficult to prove 
 the influence of a genuine alphabet. Nevertheless, 
 I think that, for instance, the peculiar flourished 
 m can be traced only to such an influence, as it offers 
 in the way of its upward spiral a striking resem- 
 blance to the Armenian and Georgian m. 
 
 What further induces me to see in this MS. a 
 text written by a Khazar is that there is no differ- 
 ence made between ch (cheth) and h (he), unknown 
 also to the Karaims, who are surely remnants of the 
 Khazars, and so forth. 
 
 If I have insisted especially upon this point, it 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 223 
 
 is because the life of Cyril is also intimately con- 
 nected with the Khazars, as he was sent thither by 
 the Emperor to convert them to Christianity. 
 
 His biography describes with many details his 
 stay at the court, and the disputations he had there 
 with Jews and Mohammedans. 
 
 Here, no doubt, already more or less acquainted 
 with the Armenian, he came across another simi- 
 lar alphabet, and when he decided to compose a 
 special alphabet for his Slavonic translations, he 
 only adopted this alphabet as the most fitting for 
 its purpose. He followed also at the same time 
 the example given by Mesrup centuries before. 
 In this connection we can now explain the hitherto 
 unknown origin of the Glagolitic alphabet, and 
 we proceed to a minute examination to ascertain 
 how far the historical explanation is backed by 
 the similarity between the Glagolitza and an 
 alphabet closely resembling the Armenian and 
 Georgian. 
 
 If we now consider the forty signs of the Glago- 
 litical alphabet in the annexed plates, we can easily 
 detach at least seven as composed from two other 
 primitive elements, thus reducing the total number 
 of signs to thirty-three. The composed are the 
 following : No. 22, out of 17 + 30 ; 26, of 29 + 21 ; 
 31, of 30+ 10 ; 38, of 17 + 37; 39, of ii + 37 or 
 of 6 + 37 ; 40, of 10 + 37 or 30 -f 37 (Miklosich) ; 
 and, finally, 34, which seems to be composed of 
 
224 APPENDIX B. 
 
 30 + 17 ; this latter turned on one side. Nos. 30 
 and 32 seem originally to be identical, but we leave 
 that for the moment unsettled. The elements of 
 combination are the vowels z, I (u), ct, , forming 
 the peculiar Slavonic preyoted vowels. No. 26 is 
 simply composed of the two elements sh t. 
 
 It is now noteworthy that the vowel u is formed 
 of o and u. We have further two doublets, viz., 
 Nos. 8 and 9, both representing a similar (z) sound, 
 and Nos. 10 and 1 1, both i. In this alphabet there 
 are also two signs for o, Nos. 17 and 25 ; and what 
 is more curious, No. 24, when compared with No. 4, 
 both g, although Miklosich admits a difference 
 between the two sounds. All these peculiarities 
 point clearly to a foreign origin, where the alphabet 
 consisted of at least the same number of signs, 
 and where none of these signs were doublets, each 
 of them representing a distinct sound. 
 
 If we now examine the Armenian alphabet, we 
 shall find it composed of thirty-six letters, out of 
 which three represent peculiar Armenian sibilants, 
 not to be met with in any other language, and not 
 to be distinguished from three other sibilants, ex- 
 cept by a stronger pronunciation. These are rightly 
 considered to be doublets of c, z, and tz, and there- 
 fore left out, and we have thus the exactly correspond- 
 ing number of thirty-three letters, representing, as 
 we shall soon see, the same sounds as the characters 
 of the Glagolitza. The similarity also extends to the 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 225 
 
 curious facts noticed above. To begin with the 
 vowels, we find in the Armenian, too, the dull 
 vowels fc, u (Glagol., Nos. 30, 32), and the charac- 
 teristic ^ ( = No. 33); we find further twice o (= Nos. 
 J 7> 25), and twice i( = Nos. 10, n), just as in the 
 Glagolitza, and also that one of the i signs is equally 
 employed as the consonant y, as No. 10 is employed 
 in the combination of Nos. 3 1 and 40. No. 3 1 has 
 an exact parallel in the Armenian ey. In the Arme- 
 nian we have also a combined sign for u, consisting 
 of o and u, like the Greek o-u, and exactly the same 
 in the Glagolitza No. 22. The likeness in this case 
 goes much farther even, for, as Professor Miklosich 
 observes,* in old MSS. this letter is sometimes 
 written with the two signs of o (No. 17), and in 
 the same way the Armenian w is nothing else but 
 the reduplication of the same sign u, a concordance 
 which under no circumstances can be considered 
 as a merely accidental one. 
 
 We pass now to the consonants, and see that 
 we have in the Armenian all the consonants of the 
 Glagolitza. By this similitude we are even enabled 
 to settle two difficult questions as to the value 
 of No. 8 and the much disputed No. 12. To the 
 former corresponds the Armenian dz, and when used 
 in the Cyrillian transcription in Roumanian texts, 
 that sign actually indicates this sound. With re- 
 gard to the latter, we identify it with the peculiar 
 
 * Loc. cit.j p. 404. 
 
226 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Armenian thus described by Lepsius.* " The 
 letter 2 is now pronounced everywhere as the 
 Arabic ghain y, although it is proved that it was 
 in many cases formerly, and still in the fifth cen- 
 tury, a kind of soft and more palatal I, distin- 
 guished from the stronger and more guttural I, the 
 value of which is now that of our common /."t 
 That is to say, that in the eighth century it repre- 
 sented a special kind of g. Supporting this is 
 the view of Miklosich, who assigned the same 
 phonetical value to that Glagolitic sign. 
 
 Nearly the same thing is to be noted in the 
 Georgian alphabet, which, although a little different 
 in minor points, affords on the whole a much 
 greater similarity to the Glagolitza. According to 
 the wants of the language, the number of signs 
 was increased to thirty-eight, but five represent 
 aspirates, which being excluded, leave just thirty- 
 three letters, corresponding to the Glagolitza. "We 
 notice further the compound u, composed of o and v, 
 as in the former. We have here too the peculiar g, 
 and everything mentioned in discussing the Ar- 
 menian. But what is especially characteristic is 
 the order of the letters in this alphabet, which, I 
 may say, is exactly the same as in the Glagolitza, 
 
 * Standard Alphabet, 2d edit., 1863, p. 134. 
 
 t Of. also Hlibschmann, Ueber Aussprache und Umschreibung des 
 Altarmenischen. Zeitschrift d. D. M. G-., vol. xxx. 1870, pp. 53-73; and 
 Gardthausen, Ueber den griechischen Ursprung des armenischen Alpha- 
 betes, ibid., pp. 74-80. 
 
r 
 
 LPHABET. 
 
 THE GLAGOLITICLPHABET. 227 
 
 and this is the second point on wEFctf we are now 
 going to touch in pursuing our inquiry as to the 
 relation of the Glagolitza to these alphabets. The 
 system followed in the arrangement of the Georgian 
 alphabet is that first come the letters correspond- 
 ing to the Semitic (Hebrew, Phoenician), then the 
 Greek o-u, $, #, and last of all the specific Georgian 
 sounds. Hence the presence of v (consonant) at the 
 beginning of the alphabet, at the same place where 
 the Hebrew van stands, between e and z, while 
 the order is a little disturbed between n and r, 
 where y (short ie) is introduced instead of s, and 
 q left out, which is added at the end. Here all the 
 kindred sounds are arranged after their affinity, the 
 gutturals together and the sibilants together ; and 
 the whole list finishes with two signs, given in the 
 transcription of Brosset as hew and hoe.* 
 
 Almost identical with this is the order of the 
 letters in the Glagolitza. Only in the Georgian and 
 in the latter we find the v at the beginning of the 
 alphabet, although not in exactly the same place. 
 The difference to be observed in the Glagolitza 
 comes from the system of its arranger, who, follow- 
 ing his original, grouped the kindred sounds to- 
 gether, so that we have v and b; z, dz, and z; i and i; 
 g and k ; tz, ch, and sh ; u, uy, and i, and all the 
 peculiar signs at the end ; the simple, as well as their 
 
 * P. Brosset, Elements de la langue georgienne, Paris, 1837, p. 45 ; cf. 
 Lepsius, I. c., pp. 138-140. 
 
228 APPENDIX B. 
 
 combinations with y, and lastly the e and a, corre- 
 sponding, as I believe, exactly to the Georgian 
 hoe and hoe. If we now disregard the derange- 
 ment caused by this classification, we find the 
 alphabet in general following exactly the same 
 line as the Georgian, with which it corresponds ; 
 also in the numerical value of the letters, varying 
 only little from it, for the same cause. 
 
 This shows a coincidence which, as I repeat, 
 can under no circumstances be accidental, and 
 proves, on the other hand, that the Glagolitza is 
 not merely a copy, but a calculated adaptation 
 from a model closely resembling the Georgian and 
 Armenian, being nearer to the former, but not en- 
 tirely different from the latter. In the annexed 
 plate I now, in conclusion, also give the graphic 
 proof of the formal identity or resemblance. To 
 each Glagolitic letter I have compared that which 
 closely resembles it, taken from the two alphabets, 
 the Georgian and Armenian, to which I have joined 
 the transcription. 
 
 In expressing this my view as to the origin of 
 the Glagolitic alphabet, I have confined myself 
 only to probabilities, and have neither ventured to 
 engage in rash surmises, nor endeavoured to ex- 
 plain every difficulty. I renounced, therefore, the 
 task of tracing also the origin of the names of the 
 letters, and I have left their explanation to others, 
 
THE GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET. 
 
 229 
 
 I, for my own part, seeing in them undoubted 
 corruptions from a foreign language. 
 
 It was sufficient for me to approach the whole 
 question from a direction quite different to any 
 that has hitherto been taken by scholars, and to 
 settle the more important part the origin of the 
 form and order of the Glagolitic alphabet. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
GLAGOLITIC 
 (CYKILI.IAN). 
 
 GEORGIAN. 
 
 ARMENIAN 
 
 MODERN AND OLD 
 PRONUNCIATION. 
 
 I a 
 
 3 P 
 
 t 
 
 / 
 
 > f n ti 
 
 63>i 
 eft I 
 
 C s 
 V * 
 
 3 
 
 a, 
 
 > 
 
 3 
 
 ru d, t 
 
 (h 3 
 
 e 
 
 ^ 
 
 *" <? 
 
 ^ 2. 
 
 //Si to 
 
 /I ^ 
 
 /^ ^g ^ '{ 
 
 tf 7% sm/ 
 
 ft % /TV 
 
 if 9 9 o 
 
 /8 -P P f> 
 
 i* b B ^ 
 lo 8 ^ 
 
 <i/1 (TO ffff "C, 
 
 II ik S Vitoiijg 
 
 * t 
 I f 
 
 k 
 
 /nv 
 
 Y o c 
 p. p 
 C z t 
 
 HL Us LOLL 
 
GLAGOLITIC 
 (CYKILLIAN). 
 
 GEORGIAN. 
 
 ARMENIAN 
 
 MOl ERN AND OLD 
 PRONUNCIATION. 
 
 <* 
 
 if 
 
 it 
 
 as in 
 
 * 
 /* 
 
 3 1 "PV/Z/J iy 
 
 3i 4 (b.1) ifo 
 
 33 A 
 
 3S (ty 
 16 (hi) </e 
 
 37 < * 
 2>& U 
 39 > 
 
 - 
 
 41 a 
 
 f 
 
 3 
 
 *>' 
 
 o o 
 
 ee 
 
 nee 
 
 oo 
 
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 THE MESNEVI 
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 Book the First. 
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 MEVLANA SHEMSU-'D-DIN AHMED, EL EFLAKI, EL 'ARIFI. 
 
 Translated, and the Poetry Versified, in English, 
 BY JAMES W. REDHOUSE, M.R.A. S., &c. 
 
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 THE MIND OF MENCIUS ; 
 
 OR, POLITICAL ECONOMY FOUNDED UPON MORAL 
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 A SYSTEMATIC DIGEST OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE CHINESE PHILOSOPHER 
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 Translated from the Original Text and Classified, with 
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 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. 
 
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 THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 
 
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 A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN AND 
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 Vol. I. HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Translated from the Dutch with the Assistance of the Author. 
 
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 YUSUF AND ZULAIKHA. 
 
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 LINGUISTIC ESSAYS. 
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 THE SARV A - DARSANA - SAMGRAHA ; 
 
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 TIBETAN TALES DERIVED FROM INDIAN SOURCES. 
 
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 UDANAVARGA. 
 
 A COLLECTION OF VERSES FROM THE BUDDHIST CANON. 
 
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 BEING THE NOKTHEKN BUDDHIST VERSION OF DHAMMAPADA. 
 
 Translated from the Tibetan of Bkah-hgyur, with Notes, and 
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 By W. WOODVILLE ROCKHILL. 
 
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 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF AFRICA. 
 
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 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION TO THE 
 SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS. 
 
 BY C. P. TIELE, 
 
 Doctor of Theology, Professor of the History of Religions in the 
 University of Leyden. 
 
 Translated from the Dutch by J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, M. A. 
 
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 Eut there are some men whose sketches from a thumb-nail are of far more worth 
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 Post 8vo, pp. xii. 312, with Maps and Plan, cloth, price 148. 
 
 A HISTORY OF BURMA. 
 
 Including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and Arakan. From 
 
 the Earliest Time to the End of the First "War with British India. 
 
 BY LIEUT. -GEN. SIR ARTHUR P. PHAYRE, G.C.M.G., K. C.S.I., andC.B., 
 
 Membre Correspondant de la Societe Academique Indo-Chinoise 
 
 de France. 
 
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 RELIGION IN CHINA. 
 
 By JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D., PEKING. 
 
 Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese, with 
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 " Dr. Edkins . . . may now be fairly regarded as among the first authorities on 
 Chinese religion and language." British Quarterly Review. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. X.-274, cloth, price 93. 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA AND THE EARLY 
 HISTORY OF HIS ORDER. 
 
 Derived from Tibetan Works in the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyur. 
 Followed by notices on the Early History of Tibet and Khoten. 
 
 Translated by W. "W. ROCKHILL, Second Secretary U. S. Legation in China. 
 
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 has consulted and tested the ancient documents bearing upon his remarkable sub- 
 ject." Times. 
 
 " Will be appreciated by those who devote themselves to those Buddhist studies 
 which have of late years taken in these Western regions so remarkable a develop- 
 ment. Its matter possesses a special interest as being derived from ancient Tibetan 
 works, some portions of which, here analysed and translated, have not yet attracted 
 the attention of scholars. The volume is rich in ancient stories bearing upon the 
 world's renovation and the origin of castes, as recorded in these venerable autho- 
 rities." Daily News. 
 
 Third Edition. Post 8vo, pp. viii.-464, cloth, price 163. 
 THE SANKHYA APHORISMS OF KAPILA, 
 
 With Illustrative Extracts from the Commentaries. 
 
 Translated by J. R. BALL ANT YNE, LL.D., late Principal of the Benares 
 
 College. 
 
 Edited by FITZEDWARD HALL. 
 
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TRUBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. 
 
 In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. cviii.-242, and viii.-syo, cloth, price 243. 
 Dedicated by permission to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. 
 
 BUDDHIST RECORDS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, 
 
 Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629). 
 BY SAMUEL BEAL, B.A., 
 
 (Trin, Coll., Camb.) ; R.N. (Retired Chaplain and N.I.) ; Professor of Chinese, 
 University College, London ; Rector of Wark, Northumberland, &c. 
 
 An eminent Indian authority writes respecting this work : " Nothing 
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 THE ORDINANCES OF MANU. 
 
 Translated from the Sanskrit, with an Introduction. 
 By the late A. C. BURNELL, Ph.D., C.I.E. 
 
 Completed and Edited by E. W. HOPKINS, Ph.D., 
 of Columbia College, N.Y. 
 
 "This work is full of interest ; while for the student of sociology nnd the science 
 of religion it is full of importance. It is a great boon to get so notable a work in so 
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 ' ' Few men were more competent than Burnell to give us a really good translation 
 of this well-known law book, first rendered into English by Sir William Jones. 
 Burnell was not only an independent Sanskrit scholar, but an experienced lawyer, 
 and he joined to these two important qualifications the rare faculty of being able to 
 express his thoughts in clear and trenchant English. . . . We ought to feel very 
 grateful to Dr. Hopkins for having given us all that could be published of the trans- 
 lation left by Burnell." F. MAX MULLER in the Academy. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xii.-234, cloth, price 93. 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ALEXANDER 
 CSOMA DE KOROS, 
 
 Between 1819 and 1842. "With a Short Notice of all his Published and Un- 
 published "Works and Essays. From Original and for most part Un- 
 published Documents. 
 
 By THEODORE DUKA, M.D., F.R.C.S. (Eng.), Surgeon-Major 
 H.M.'s Bengal Medical Service, Retired, &c. 
 
 "Not too soon have Messrs. Triibner added to their valuable Oriental Series a 
 history of the life and works of one of the most gifted and devoted of Oriental 
 students, Alexander Csoma de Koros. It is forty-three years since his death, and 
 though an account of his career was demanded soon after his decease, it has only 
 now appeared in the important memoir of his compatriot, Dr. Duka." Bookseller. 
 
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 In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. xii.-3i8 and vi.-3i2, cloth, price 219. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO 
 INDO-CHINA. 
 
 Reprinted from "Dalrymple's Oriental Repertory," "Asiatic Researches," 
 and the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal." 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 I. Some Accounts of Quedah. By Michael Topping. 
 
 II. Report made to the Chief and Council of Balambangan, by Lieut. James 
 Barton, of his several Surveys. 
 
 III. Substance of a Letter to the Court of Directors from Mr. John Jesse, dated 
 July 20, 1775, at Borneo Proper. 
 
 IV. Formation of the Establishment of Poolo Peenang. 
 
 V. The Gold of Limong. By John Macdonald. 
 
 VI. On Three Natural Productions of Sumatra. By John Macdonald. 
 
 VII. On the Traces of the Hindu Language and Literature extant amongst the 
 Malays. By William Marsden. 
 
 VIII. Some Account of the Elastic Gum Vine of Prince-Wales Island. By James 
 Howison. 
 
 IX. A. Botanical Description of Urceola Elastica, or Caoutchouc Vine of Sumatra 
 and Pulo-Pinang. By William Roxburgh, M.D. 
 
 X. An Account of the Inhabitants of the Poggy, or Nassau Islands, lying off 
 Sumatra. By John Crisp. 
 
 XI. Remarks on the Species of Pepper which are found on Prince-Wales Island. 
 By William Hunter, M.D. 
 
 XII. On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations. By J. 
 Leyden, M.D. 
 
 XIII. Some Account of an Orang-Outang of remarkable height found on the Island 
 of Sumatra. By Clarke Abel, M.D. 
 
 XIV. Observations on the Geological Appearances and General Features of Por- 
 tions of the Malayan Peninsula. By Captain James Low. 
 
 XV. Short Sketch of the Geology of Pulo-Pinang and the Neighbouring Islands, 
 By T. Ware. 
 
 XVI. Climate of Singapore. 
 
 XVII. Inscription on the Jetty at Singapore. 
 
 XVIII. Extract of a Letter from Colonel J. Low. 
 
 XIX. Inscription at Singapore. 
 
 XX. An Account of Several Inscriptions found in Province Wellesley. By Lieut. - 
 Col. James Low. 
 
 XXL Note on the Inscriptions from Singapore and Province Wellesley. By J. W. 
 Laidlay. 
 
 XXII. On an Inscription from Keddah. By Lieut.-Col. Low. 
 
 XXIII. A Notice of the Alphabets of the Philippine Islands. 
 
 XXIV. Succinct Review of the Observations of the Tides in the Indian Archipelago. 
 
 XXV. Report on the Tin of the Province of Mergui. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere. 
 
 XXVI. Report on the Manganese of Mergui Province. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere. 
 
 XXVII. Paragraphs to be added to Capt. G. B. Tremenheere's Report. 
 
 XXVIII. Second Report on the Tin of Mergui. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere. 
 
 XXIX. Analysis of Iron Ores from Tavoy and Mergui, and of Limestone from 
 Mergui. By Dr. A. Ure. 
 
 XXX. Report of a Visit to the Pakchan River, and of some Tin Localities in the 
 Southern Portion of the Tenasserim Provinces. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere. 
 
 XXXI. Report on a Route from the Mouth of the Pakchan to Krau, and thence 
 across the Isthmus of Krau to the Gulf of Siam. By Capt. AL Fraser and Capt. J. G. 
 Forlong. 
 
 XXXII. Report, &c. , from Capt. G. B. Tremenheere on the Price of Mergui Tin Ore. 
 
 XXXIII. Remarks on the Different Species of Orang-utan. By E. Blyth. 
 
 XXXIV. Further Remarks. By E. Blyth. 
 
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 Index of Vernacular Terms. 
 
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