Aspects of the Christian religion » Christian myth and legend »
History of Christian myth and legend » The Middle Ages
Christian myth and legend were adapted to new traditions as the
faith expanded beyond its original cultural milieu of the Mediterranean
into northern Europe. New saints and martyrs emerged during the process
of expansion, and their miracles and other pious deeds were recorded in
hagiographic works. As before, the saints and their relics were known
for their miraculous cures, but they also performed miracles associated
with new social conditions, such as releasing petitioners from prison.
Moreover, a new hagiographic genre appeared that described the practice
of furta sacra (“holy theft”). These accounts, most famously that of St.
Nicholas, detail the practice of stealing saints’ relics—removing relics
from one shrine and placing them in a new one. The narratives describe
the miracles that occurred in the process, including the saint’s
unwillingness to move and the inability of the holy thief to move the
relics.
Medieval scholars and theologians compiled not only new lives of the
saints but new lives of the ultimate enemy of the saints, the
Antichrist. Drawing from the Scriptures and ancient traditions, the
legend of the Antichrist took shape in late antiquity and the early
Middle Ages. In the 10th century Adso of Montier-en-Der collected these
traditions in his popular and influential Epistola ad Gerbergam reginam
de ortu et tempore Antichristi (“Letter to Queen Gerberga on the Place
and Time of Antichrist”), a mirror image in the negative of the lives of
Jesus and the saints. Adso’s treatise became the standard account of the
life of the Antichrist.
A related legend was that of the “Last Emperor.” The myth began to
form as early as the 4th century, and in the 7th century the legend was
shaped further in the Syriac work of the Pseudo-Methodius, who wrote in
response to the expansion of Islam into Christian territories.
Translated into Greek and Latin, Pseudo-Methodius provided the basis for
further reworking of the legend in the 10th and 11th centuries by
writers in the Latin West. The legend itself describes the deeds of the
last emperor of the world, who will arise in great anger to fight
against the enemies of the faith. He will establish peace before
fighting and defeating the armies of Gog and Magog. He will then go to
Jerusalem, where he will offer up his crown to Christ, who will bear it
and the emperor’s spirit up to heaven. After the ascent of the emperor’s
spirit to heaven, the Antichrist will appear in Jerusalem, and the final
battle between good and evil will be fought.
Ed.
Bogomil and Cathar heretics developed a number of myths that
circulated in both eastern and western Europe. The stories usually
stressed the role of Satan as co-creator of the world, as the creator of
the human race, or as a being whose fall is responsible for the evil
that exists in the world. They also taught that Jesus entered the Virgin
Mary’s body through her ear and only appeared to be born of her.
A number of Christian myths, legends, and works of art were aimed at
awakening religious capacities, turning the viewer or listener against
repulsive forms of evil, and hastening the effects of the salvation
achieved in Christ. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the
bestiaries, fables, and cosmic dramas sculpted into Romanesque
cathedrals. Christ, the glorious King, and his saintly cohorts confront
armies of monsters and demons. Together the two sides show forth the
full spectrum of the imaginary world of Christian legend and myth of the
day.
Christian legends and myths were also woven into various literary
creations: the late medieval chansons de geste yielded to the epic
tales, lyric poetry, and songs that conducted audiences into an
enchanted symbolic world that paralleled their mundane one. Such are the
enigmatic poems of the courtly-love tradition of the 12th-century and
the literature patronized by Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter,
Marie, countess of Champagne. Similarly the troubadours of 12th-century
Provence creatively refashioned, in Christian terms, the inspirations
they received from the Arabic poetry of Spain and the influences of
Celtic and Oriental themes in circulation at the time. These tendencies
toward the fantastic in Christian expression reached their literary peak
in the works of Dante (1265–1321), whose Divine Comedy depicts the
terrifying and attractive visions of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell in
such a way as to quicken the ultimate powers of the imagination and
thereby draw the reader toward the effective images of the mystery of
their own salvation.
In the place of Charlemagne, a favourite hero of the old chansons de
geste, the legendary cycles of the 12th century spawned a new generation
of romantic heroes—King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table.
Marie, countess of Champagne, sponsored Chrétien de Troyes, the poet who
composed five long romances that became the mythic foundation for
chivalry. These cycles interweave Christian, Muslim, and Celtic elements
into a singular cosmic vision. Suffering ordeals during their
adventures, the knights of the Arthurian cycle (Arthur, the Fisher King,
Perceval, and Lancelot) journey through the Wasteland on their heroic
quests for the Holy Grail and for the cure that will revitalize king and
cosmos. Wolfram von Eschenbach offers the most coherent mythology of the
Grail in his Parzival, a refinement of Christian legends that draws on
the worlds visited by the crusaders and by Italian merchants—Syria,
Persia, India, and China. At the conclusion of many of these cycles, the
Holy Grail, often in the image of the chalice of salvation in Christ, is
transported to a fabulous mythical location in the Orient.
The 12th century also witnessed the rise of a new mythology of
Christian history. Joachim of Fiore (1130/35–1201/02) was an abbot of
the Calabrian monastery of Fiore and was well-known in the Christian
world of his day. On the vigil of Easter and on Pentecost Sunday, God
infused him with special knowledge, which enabled him to decode history
as a series of divine signs. According to Joachim, universal history has
three stages, each age (status) corresponding to a person of the Holy
Trinity. The first age, presided over by God the Father, was ruled by
married men and propelled by their labour. Jesus Christ presided over
the age of the New Testament, an epoch ruled by the clergy and driven
forward by the power of science and discipline. The two testamental
periods featured the two kinds of people chosen in each, the Jews and
the Gentiles. Joachim fascinated the faithful of his day with a
prediction that the second age, the age of the New Testament presided
over by Jesus Christ, would end in 1260. Then would dawn a new epoch,
the third age, presided over by the Holy Spirit, guided by monks and
fueled by their contemplation. It was to be an epoch of total love, joy,
and freedom. But three and one-half years of cataclysm ruled by the
Antichrist would precede entrance to this bliss.
Joachim promised that God’s mysterious saving power would burst fully
into history in the immediate future and would change forever the
fundamental structures of the cosmos as well as the social and
ecclesiastical world. Joachim’s new vision of history generated
critiques of the 13th-century church and society and was adopted by the
Spiritual Franciscans and the violent heretic Fra Dolcino. His doctrine
of the Trinity was condemned at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In
1255 Pope Alexander IV suppressed a collection of his written works, and
in 1263 the regional Council of Arles condemned many of Joachim’s most
stirring ideas. His notions of an impending third epoch, in which
history would come to complete fulfillment, lived on.
Aspects of the Christian religion » Christian myth and legend »
History of Christian myth and legend » Renaissance magic and science
Christian legend and myth also found fertile ground in the practices of
alchemy. Through the perfection of metals the alchemists sought their
own perfection and, indeed, the salvation of all matter. The alchemist
sought to dissolve and then fuse his own physical matter and spirit with
the prime matter of the universe. These efforts at the reduction into
prime matter were thought to make possible the re-creation of individual
and cosmos as a single, pure element. Even the philosopher’s stone or
elixir was reinterpreted so that Christ appeared as the perfect matter
produced by the alchemical process—that is, Christ was the stone of all
wisdom and knowledge. In the alchemist’s spiritual forge, the Stone
reemerged from the Matrix, the crucible containing the so-called Bath of
Mary, whose amniotic fluids dissolved all impurities. This dissolution
prepared one for rebirth as a perfect being. All matter was redeemed by
immersion in the fluids of the womb where Jesus assumed the flesh.
Mystical union with Christ’s death and physical regression to that same
uterus where God became matter empowered the Christian alchemist to
effect a new fusion of redeemed realities, freed of all impure dross.
The alchemical tradition was secretly continued by a number of
scientists, including the foremost pioneers of modern physics and
chemistry: Robert Fludd, Robert Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Legends also found their place in the growing science of astronomy.
In the Middle Ages it was learned that conjunctions of planets occur
every 20 years on a minor scale and every 960 years on a major scale.
This theory, described in the Liber magnarum coniunctionum, was
advocated by Albumazar (787–886), a disciple of al-Kindī (?–c. 870), a
Muslim philosopher who assimilated Greek philosophy to Islam. Roger
Bacon used this theory to work out the chronology of great personalities
in history and to map the chronological relationship of true prophets
(Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, Mani, and Muhammad), one for every
320 years. Based on observations of a supernova in 1604, Johannes Kepler
calculated the “true date” of the birth of Jesus. These calculations
revitalized an interest in the Magi, who had followed the great star.
Kepler believed that the conjunctions were unnatural events brought
about by the miraculous acts of God, who had decided to lodge the birth
of his son between the significant zodiacal signs of the Fish (Pisces)
and the Ram (Aries).
Rosicrucian announcements of the imminent coming of a new world also
propagated the theory that great celestial conjunctions appeared at the
births of prophets and saviours. Kepler’s scientific achievements
confirmed the hopes of the Rosicrucians and became a foundation for the
new secret order reputedly founded by Christian Rosenkreuz. The editors
of Rosicrucian publications dated the death of their founder to 1484 and
fixed the time of the discovery of his tomb as 1604 in order to
coordinate the events with the last two great conjunctions of stars.
Aspects of the Christian religion » Christian myth and legend »
History of Christian myth and legend » Christian practice in the modern
world
The 20th century continued to generate important Christian myths and
legend-based practices, including pilgrimages made on Marian feast days
to holy wells and fairy rings outside the Irish town of Sneem and
devotions at the tomb of Christ in Japan, where, according to local
legend, Christ ended the long life of missionary travels he began after
his mock death in Jerusalem. These acts and the explanations that
accompany them detail the impact of Christian salvation on reality in
modern times. In all the cultures where Christianity has been
propagated, myth and legend express the fulfillment of the religious
desires and hopes that constituted the religious traditions before
contact with Christian revelation. The following examples suggest their
variety and vitality.
The healing of sickness is, as it was in the time of the New
Testament, a sign of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ in its
fullness. In Africa, for example, many so-called Independent Churches
have reinterpreted disease and rites of cure along Christian lines. In
Douala, Cameroon, during the 1980s, two healing prophets named Mallah
and Marie-Lumière divided their disciples, whom they called the “sick
ones of the Father,” into groups named for the important categories of
illness described in the Gospels: the Blind, the Halt, the Lame, the
Deaf, the Epileptic, the Dumb, and the Paralyzed. The disciples
evidenced none of these physical symptoms, but they were asked to
identify deep within themselves with the affliction described in the
Gospel, so that salvation might touch them in their inner being. By
becoming sick, they could be healed and thus join the elect. In lengthy
sermons the healing prophets reimagined traditional African religious
imagery and refashioned it in the light of Christian belief. The
experience of their peculiar mystical disorders afforded a basis for
social regrouping and for rethinking the past and present.
The Christian expression of sacred music and trance is often grounded
in legend or myth. In Brazil, for example, Macumba, Candomblé, and other
Afro-Brazilian cults have roots sunk deep into the religions of African
slaves transplanted to the New World. Afro-Brazilian rites often centre
on possession by a supernatural being, called an orixá. The innumerable
orixás are ranked in hierarchies modeled on the pantheons of the Yoruba
people of West Africa, among others. In Brazil (and in much of
Afro-American religious life of the Americas), each orixá is identified
with a specific Christian saint. In the Umbanda cult of Brazil, altars
hold small plaster images of the Christian saints associated with the
orixás. Each one of the saints presides over a domain of human activity
or over a disease, social group, geographic area, or craft. For example,
Omolú, the god of smallpox, is identified with St. Lazarus, whose body,
in Christian legend, is pocked with sores and who heals diseases of the
skin. Oxossi, the Yoruba god of hunting, is associated with the
bellicose St. George or St. Michael, the slayers of dragons and demons.
Yansan, who ate the “magic” of her husband and now spits up lightning,
is associated with St. Barbara, whose father was struck by lightning
when he tried to force her to give up her Christian faith. In the
worship site each orixá has its own stone, which is peculiarly shaped,
coloured, or textured; arranged in a distinctive position on the altar;
and identified as the Cross of Christ. A single saint may be identified
with several orixás or vice versa. Regions vary the saintly
identifications, and some designations shift over time. Each orixá has
its own musical rhythms and sounds. When called by drums, dance, and
music, the supernatural being may take over the possessed medium, reveal
valued information, and carry out effective symbolic acts on behalf of
the community.
European communities in the 20th century remained fascinated with the
rigorous asceticism of St. Anthony of Egypt, who repulsed the assaults
of wild beasts, reptiles, and demons and remained steadfast in the
faith. He is considered the patron of domestic animals, and in many
parts of Italy, the drama of the feast of St. Anthony, historically
associated with the winter solstice, rivals any other feast day of the
Christian calendar. To celebrate his feast, the people of Fara Filiorum
Petri, a town in the Abruzzi region of Italy, ignite enormous bonfires
on the night of January 16. Each of the 12 outlying hamlets brings into
the main town’s square a bundle (farchia) of long poles. Set on end, the
bundles are lashed together to form a single tall mass, an act that
commemorates the historical union of the mountain settlements as one
bonded community. Then the bundles of farchie, 15 or more feet high, are
set ablaze. The fire is believed to cleanse the community and hold at
bay the evil forces of sickness and death. As the fire dies down, young
men jump through the purifying flames. Spectators carry remnants of the
blessed fire back to their homes, spreading the ashes in their stalls
and on their fields.
The birth of Christ was still a focus in the 20th century for
traditional legends and myths that had developed outside ecclesiastical
institutions. In rural Romania, for instance, on Christmas Eve groups of
young carolers (colindatori) proceed from house to house in the village,
singing and collecting gifts of food. Often these carolers impersonate
the saints, especially John, Peter, George, and Nicholas. The words of
their songs (colinde) describe legendary heroes who carry the sun and
wear the moon on their clothes. They live in paradisal worlds and subdue
monstrous animals in order to leave the world free from harm and ready
to renew itself in the fertile acts of spring.
The symbolic reenactments of legend often experiment with alternative
social orders and criticize or reverse existing divisions of labour and
prestige. In Sicilian-American communities of Texas, Louisiana,
California, and elsewhere, the female head of the household dedicates
and displays an altar to St. Joseph and thus fulfills a promise made in
a moment of need. She prepares fruit, hard-boiled eggs, cakes,
fig-filled pastries, pies, and special breads and uses them to decorate
a series of tiers stretching from floor to ceiling. She also arranges on
this festival altar the figurines of saints, the Virgin Mary, and the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. The construction of this panorama takes nine
days, a period that constitutes a ritual novena of prayer and devout
action. Representatives who act in the accompanying ceremony play the
roles of the Holy Family and other saints important to the altar
display. Re-creating the Holy Family’s search for room in a Bethlehem
inn on the night of the Nativity, the ritual drama builds toward the
moment when the altar-giver opens her home to Joseph and Mary. As Mother
Mary prepares to give birth to Jesus, the hostess readies her home,
heart, and community so that they may become fit dwelling places for the
sacred being. The presiding women play the roles of Magi-Kings bearing
gifts of food and hospitality to the Holy Family and their entourage,
which includes most of the neighbouring community. A single family can
host from 500 to 1,000 people in the feast that terminates the
celebration.
Sometimes the new Christian mythologies function as
counter-theologies or theologies of resistance to the impositions of
Christian culture. They criticize the Christian missionary enterprise
even while they embrace aspects of the new religion. In the 20th
century, for instance, biblical and Christian themes occupied a large
part of the mythology of the Makiritare Indians in the upper Orinoco
River region of Venezuela. For them, Wanadi was the Supreme Being of
great light and, although one being, he exists in three distinct persons
(damodede, “spirit-doubles”). Over the course of creation and human
history, Wanadi has sent his three incarnations to earth in order to
create human beings and redeem them from the darkness into which they
have fallen. In the end, Wanadi, the god incarnate who comes to save
humankind, is crucified by mythical monsters called Fañurus (from the
Spanish españoles: “Spaniards”), at the instigation of an evil being
called Fadre (from the Spanish padre: “father” or “priest”). To all
appearances, Wanadi was slain by the Fañurus, but, in fact, he cut his
own insides out and allowed his inner spirit (akato) to dance free of
his dead, cast-off body. Before his spirit ascends into heaven, Wanadi
gathers his 12 disciples together and promises to return in a new and
glorious body to destroy the evil world and create a new earth.
Unlike the orthodox canon of Christian scripture, which was inscribed
and closed in the first centuries, Christian myth and legend have arisen
anew throughout all of Christian history. It offers a record of the
spread of Christianity—through the Mediterranean, eastern and western
Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas—and highlights the
diversity of cultures brought into contact with the Christian message of
salvation. The diverse religious hopes, heroes, and rites of these
cultures continue to shape reinterpretations of the life of Christ and
his saintly followers.
Legend and myth constitute a record of critical reflection on
Christian reality in all its dimensions—social, political, economic,
doctrinal, and scriptural. No social class or geographic region can lay
exclusive claim to Christian myth and legend; they fill the stanzas of
royally sponsored poets, the visions of utopian philosophers, and the
folklore of rural populations. Indeed, many ideas widely held about the
workings of salvation (especially regarding the saints, angels, the
devil, and the powers of nature) find their origin in legendary episodes
rather than biblical text. Through myth and legend, communities across
the globe have absorbed into their rich religious histories the message
of Christian salvation and, through the same fabulous means, they have
evaluated the impact of Christian temporal power on their world.
Lawrence E. Sullivan
