Chapter XIV: Introduction (2)

1. Through the Christian literature of the Middle Ages from the eleventh century onwards runs a rich vein of legend, which Dante students have explored in search of a possible clue to the genesis of the Divine Comedy. The theme, it may be said, is also a visit to places, which, being inaccessible to the ordinary mortal, may readily be identifiable with the regions beyond the grave. These legends, having three main characteristics in common, may be grouped in one cycle. They are tales of wonderful voyages to fantastic islands; the protagonists are either adventurers, or saints, or conquerors, who are invariably more mythical than historical; and the aim of these is generally a religious one—to spread the Gospel, to do penance, to find the isle of earthly paradise or the fountain of life, or to seek the immortal prophets, Enoch and Elijah.[508]

These legends may be roughly subdivided into three groups corresponding to the natures of the protagonist. Tales of mere adventure are the voyages of Harold of Norway and Gorm of Denmark; the Celtic voyages of Maldwin, of the sons of Conall Dearg Ua-Corra, and of Snedhgus and MacRiaghla. Of the adventurous pilgrimages by sea the most celebrated is the voyage of St. Brandan, a veritable monastic odyssey, imitations of which are the stories of the voyages of St. Barintus, St. Mernoc, St. Malo, St. Amarus, and the Armorican monks. Voyages of conquest are the parallels to the voyage of Alexander the Great, such as the legends of Hugh of Bordeaux, Baldwin of Seeburg, Ugger the Dane, Hugh of Auvergne, and Guerin the Mean.

2. By the tenth century, at the very latest—the epoch of flourishing trade in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean—Islam had produced and given widespread popularity to a whole cycle of similar legends; and the hypothesis that their influence was responsible for the genesis of the Christian legends is strengthened by the fact that they show the same three characteristics mentioned above. They also are stories of wondrous adventure in fabulous islands. The protagonists are seldom historical persons and, like the heroes of the Christian legends, are either adventurers or conquerors, religious devotees or pseudo-prophets. Thirdly, the aim of most of these voyages is religious. The adventurers set out to seek Mahomet or spread the gospel of Islam; to visit hell and the paradise of saints and martyrs; or to find the abode either of the prophets Enoch and Elijah or of the fabulous pseudo-prophet Khidr, who is the protagonist of some of the legends.

Like their Christian counterparts, these Moslem legends may be grouped, in accordance with the nature of the protagonist in each, under three headings. The voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, of Hassan of Basra, of Azim, of Ganisa, and of the Prince of Karizme, are purely voyages of adventure. The heroes of the religious voyages are prophets or ascetics, who are either wholly mythical or are historical personages clothed in mythical garb, such as Khidr, Moses, Joseph, Jonah, and Boluqiya. To this group also belong the tales of the birth of Mahomet, the tales of Abd al-Mutallib the Wise, Yarab the Judge, Tamim Dari the Soldier, Abu Talib the Lawyer, Zesbet, Abu al-Fawaris, and Sayf al-Muluk. The third group comprises the expeditions that are partly warlike and partly religious; typical of these is the Koranic legend of Dulcarnain, a mythical figure that in Moslem legend is strangely interwoven with the figure of Alexander the Great as depicted by the pseudo-Callisthenes.

3. This similarity in outline shown by the two legendary cycles is in itself significant of Moslem influence. But there is further evidence. Victor Chauvin, in his monumental work on the bibliography of Moslem fiction, has traced a number of episodes and descriptive features from the Moslem to Christian tales.[509] Thus, the legends of Herzog Ernst, of Heinrich der Loewe, of Reinfried of Brunswick, of Hugh of Bordeaux, and of Guerin the Mean, would all appear to be derived from the Arabic story of the Prince of Karizme. Hence Chauvin’s conclusion that “the direct or indirect influence of Oriental tales of marvellous voyages is to be seen in several works of mediæval fiction.”[510] In addition, there is the testimony of the Dutchman, De Goeje, the eminent Arabic scholar, whose inquiry into the close relationship between the “Voyage of St. Brandan,” the most typical of Irish tales, and the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, has won at least the partial adhesion of so great an authority on Romance philology as Graf.[511] Thus, the problem may be regarded as practically solved, and there only remains to add a few data corroborative of De Goeje, and to point out the hitherto unsuspected Arabic origin of some other Christian legends.

4. A typical instance of imitation from a Moslem source is provided by the “Voyage of St. Brandan.” De Goeje attributes its origin to the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor and a few other tales of adventurous voyages that are briefly recorded by Al-Idrisi. Even more likely sources, however, would appear to have been the tales of Boluqiya and of Dulcarnain, which, having been handed down by Thaalabi, must have been known before the eleventh century. Other Islamic tales of remote date also come into consideration.

St. Brandan chances upon an uninhabited castle on an island, and in the castle a table laden with the richest food, of which he and his followers eat their fill.[512]

Boluqiya, on arriving at an island, likewise finds beneath a
tree a table set with food of different kinds. A bird greets
him from the branches of the tree and invites him to partake of
the food, which has been prepared by the order of God for all
His servants who come on foreign pilgrimage; and Boluqiya eats
his fill.[513]

On another island, visited by St. Brandan and his monks, grow trees, from which they cut wood and make a fire to cook their food. But what appeared to them an island was, in fact, an enormous whale, which, upon feeling the heat of the fire upon its back, begins to move and the monks throw themselves into the sea and swim to safety.

This episode, as has been pointed out by De Goeje, and before De Goeje by Reinaud and D’Avezac, is identical with that of the island-whale which Sindbad and his companions come across on the first of their voyages. This fact, however, does not dispose of the difficulty; for the legend of St. Brandan, though none of its extant versions dates back further than the eleventh century, is by some supposed to be derived from earlier Irish sources. Hence it is that Schroeder even goes so far as to suppose that the episode of the whale passed from Ireland to the East, and Graf himself does not deny the possibility of this.[514] Weighty arguments can, however, be adduced against this theory. For one thing, the myth is contained in remote works of Oriental literature,[515] for both the Talmud and the Avesta mention a sea-serpent or tortoise on whose back the same scene is enacted; so that, as any direct imitation of these works by the author of the legend of St. Brandan is out of the question, it is reasonable to suppose that Arabic literature was the medium of communication. Is it possible that the tale of Sindbad the Sailor formed this connecting link? In default of any documentary evidence of the date of the Arabic tale, De Goeje has recourse to an argument which, though interesting, is not conclusive. “In the oldest forms of the legend that I know,” he says, “the island-whale is devoid of all vegetation. The tale of Sindbad and the _Navigatio_ (of St. Brandan) alone mention trees as growing on the fish.” Accordingly, he argues, as it appeared in the East in its simple as well as its more complex form, the tale originated there rather than in Ireland, where it appeared only in the latter form, and that at a comparatively late time. De Goeje’s argument would have been strengthened had he been able to produce an Arabic document giving the myth in its more complex form before the tale of Sindbad appeared. Such a document does exist in the _Book of Animals_, written by Al Jahiz, of Basra, who lived from 781 to 869 A.D., or more than a century prior to the date attributed to the tale of Sindbad,[516] and certainly long before the composition of the Irish tales that have been regarded as the sources of the “Voyage of St. Brandan.”[517] Al Jahiz, speaking of monsters that are supposed to live in the sea, mentions the sea-serpent or dragon, a certain crustacean of the sea called “_sarathan_,” and an enormous fish, which undoubtedly is the whale. He is inclined to doubt the existence of the two first-mentioned animals.[518]

“To tell the truth,” he says, “we have never heard of these”
(the sea-serpents) “except in tales of magic and in sailors’
yarns. To believe in the existence of the sea dragon is akin
to believing in the existence of the phœnix. Never did I hear
the dragon spoken of, but those present called the teller of
the tale a liar.... As to the _sarathan_, I have never yet met
anybody who could assure me he had seen it with his own eyes.
Of course, if we were to believe all that sailors tell ...
for they claim that on occasions they have landed on certain
islands having woods and valleys and fissures and have lit a
great fire; and when the monster felt the fire on its back,
it began to glide away with them and all the plants growing
on it, so that only such as managed to flee were saved. This
tale outdoes the most fabulous and preposterous of stories....
However, as for the fish, I state that it is as true as I am
alive that I have with my own eyes seen the fish of enormous
size called _Albala_ (the whale) and it was killed with
unerring aim.”

Originating in Persia, the myth lived on in the neighbouring countries and, seeing that Al Jahiz gives it as a common theme of the sea legends of his time, must have passed into Islam at least as early as the eighth century. Thus, it is included in the popular tenth-century story of Sindbad the Sailor, and is handed down in various Arabic works to the twelfth century. Algazel refers to it in his _Ihia_, written at the beginning of that century. Speaking of the immensity of the ocean, he says, “in it live animals of so great a size that when the back of one of them appears upon the water it is taken for an island and sailors land upon it; but should they perchance light a fire, the monster, feeling the heat, moves and the sailors become aware that it is alive.”[519]

The further arguments adduced by Schroeder in support of his theory, that the myth of the whale arose in the north, are feeble. His assertion that the whale is only to be found in the northern seas we have just seen categorically denied by Al Jahiz. Surely the myth would be more likely to arise among a people to whose seas whales would only come from time to time rather than in the northern countries, where their appearance was too common an occurrence even to suggest such a fable.

The next island to which St. Brandan comes is inhabited by a multitude of birds which are gifted with speech and conceal certain angelic spirits beneath their plumage.

Boluqiya, it will be remembered, also meets a marvellous bird, endowed with the gift of speech, which invites him to partake of the food spread upon a table. It explains that it was one of the birds of paradise sent by God to offer Adam, after he was driven out of Eden, food from that very table. Later it is this same bird, or another, also of white plumage, that is charged with carrying Boluqiya on its wings from the island to his home. It is seen, then, that the Moslem legend also mentions birds of white plumage, that are gifted with speech and act as angels or messengers of God. Moreover, in the discussion of the legend of St. Macarius, Moslem precedents were shown to exist for the idea of supposing human souls incarnate in birds gifted with speech from the time of death until the day of judgment. Some _hadiths_ even go further[520]; speaking precisely of white birds, endowed with the gift of speech, they say that they incarnate, not human souls, but angelic spirits, to wit, the angels that are entrusted with the duty of judging the soul after death. Again, several religious legends attest the Moslem belief that flocks of white birds, beyond all doubt angels incarnate, attended the burial of ascetics as if to receive their souls and lead them up to heaven.[521] The strong hold this myth had on the Moslem imagination explains why in all books on the interpretation of dreams birds are said to signify angels.[522]

Proceeding on his voyage, St. Brandan lands on another island, inhabited by holy monks whose only sustenance is the bread that falls from heaven; these monks observe strict silence and are subject neither to illness nor old age.

This episode is simply an amalgamation of two scenes appearing in some versions of the expeditions of Dulcarnain—the scene of the island of the monks and the island of the wise men.[523]

On the former island Dulcarnain finds ascetics so emaciated by
the austerity of their holy life that they appear as black as
coal; the fish and herbs provided for them by God are their
only nourishment, yet they assure Dulcarnain that they feel
no desire for the things of this world. On the other island
the wise men ask him whether with all his vaunted power he can
vouchsafe them eternal life and freedom from sickness. To his
answer that he cannot, they reply that God has granted them
this, and many other things besides.

Another island in the voyage of St. Brandan is described as bearing enormous vines, from which hang bunches of grapes of monstrous size; the seeds alone are as large as apples and suffice to satisfy the hunger and slake the thirst of the saint and all his companions.

This incident is undoubtedly founded on the _hadiths_ telling of the gardens of paradise, in which grow vines of monstrous size.[524]

“Does the vine grow in heaven?” asked one of the first
disciples of Mahomet, and upon the Prophet’s answering that
it did, the disciple inquired, “Of what size are the fruit?”
“As the distance covered by a raven in a month’s uninterrupted
flight,” was the answer. “And what is the size of the seeds?”
“Of that of a large jar.” “Then, with a single seed I and all
my family could eat their fill?” “And thy whole tribe as well,”
concluded Mahomet. Other _hadiths_ even state the exact length
of each bunch of grapes to be twelve cubits.

Continuing his pilgrimage, St. Brandan comes to an enormous column of the clearest crystal; rising from the bottom of the sea it appears to touch the sky, and around it is what seems to be a great pavilion formed of a silvery substance with large meshes.

Two very similar descriptions are found in the Islamic fables of Solomon, which depict a submarine dome and an aerial city.[525]

Solomon sees rising from the bottom of the sea a pavilion,
tent, tabernacle, or tower, vaulted like a dome, which is made
of crystal and is beaten by the waves; from a gate emerges
a youth, who proceeds to relate to him his life of solitary
devotion beneath the waters. The aerial city is erected by the
genii at the order of Solomon, who bids them build him a city
or palace of crystal a hundred thousand fathoms in extent and
a thousand storeys high, of solid foundations but with a dome
airy and lighter than water; the whole to be transparent so
that the light of the sun and the moon may penetrate its walls;
a white cupola, surmounting the highest storey and crowned by
a brilliant banner, with a resplendent light lit up the route
of Solomon’s army during the night, when the king, floating
through space in his aerial castle as in an airship driven by
the wind, sallied forth on an expedition.

Upon reaching the regions of the damned, St. Brandan and his companions find Judas sad, and naked but for a rag over his face, seated upon a rock in the midst of the ocean. Other similar Christian legends show Judas standing in a pool or pit through which flow all the waters of the world; or again, he is represented as being consumed internally with fire in spite of the waters that beat incessantly upon him. The picture is an adaptation from the Moslem legends of the torment of Cain, one of which, dating from the eighth century, reads as follows:

A man of the Yemen, named Abd Allah, with various companions
set out on a voyage, in the course of which they came to a
sea that was wrapt in darkness. For several days they sailed
onwards until suddenly the veil of darkness lifted and they
found themselves close to an inhabited coast. “I went ashore,”
said Abd Allah, “in search of water, but all the houses I
came to were closed; in vain I knocked at the doors, for no
one answered. Of a sudden two horsemen appeared, mounted on
snow-white steeds, who said to me: ‘Abd Allah! follow yonder
path and thou wilt come to a pool of water; drink thy fill and
be not afeared at what thou seest there.’ I inquired of them
about the empty houses through which the wind whistled, and
they told me they were the dwellings of the souls of the dead.
Upon arriving at the pool, I found a man leaning head downwards
and seeking to reach the water with his hand. When he saw me,
he cried out: ‘Abd Allah, I pray thee, give me to drink,’ and I
filled the cup to give him water, but lo! my hand was stayed.
I said to him, ‘Oh, servant of the Lord! thou hast seen that I
would fain have served thee. Tell me, then, who thou art!’ And
he answered, ‘I am the son of Adam who first shed blood upon
earth.’”

Another tale, also dating from the eighth century, is similar:

A shipwrecked sailor saves himself by clinging to a spar and is
flung upon the shore of an island. Proceeding along the shore,
he comes to a stream the course of which he follows to a spot
where the water seems to flow from the bottom of the earth.
There he finds, chained by the feet just out of reach of the
water, a man who begs him to slake his thirst, saying he is
the son of Adam that slew his brother and since that deed is
chastised for every murder that is committed on earth.[526]

The last incident in the voyage of St. Brandan that is worthy of note is his meeting with the hermit Paul, who lives on a rock in the middle of the ocean, fed by a lark for the last hundred and forty years, and will there remain alive until the day of judgment.

Here, blended into one, we have two characters—the historical person of St. Paul the Hermit, who, fed by a raven until his death, lived in the desert of Thebes, and the mythical figure of Khidr, in the conformation of which Islam combined features of Elijah, Elishah, the Wandering Jew, and St. George. Khidr, like Elijah, is immortal, and in many legends is depicted as a sea-hermit, praying in the midst of a desert island, or on a rock beaten by the waves, where he is fed by a bird, which brings him food and water in its beak, or from a table sent down from heaven. There, it is said, he will live until the day of judgment and, having often been seen by shipwrecked sailors, he is regarded in Islam as the patron saint of mariners.[527]

St. Brandan now approaches the Isle of Paradise, which is the goal of his pilgrimage; but, like Abd Allah of the Yemen, and like Dulcarnain in his search for the Fountain of Life, he first has to pass through a region of darkness. The German version of the voyage, moreover, contains two interesting features. The ground of the Isle of Paradise is, like the ground traversed by Dulcarnain, strewn with precious stones; and from a fountain spring four rivers, of milk, of wine, of oil, and of honey, similar to the rivers that water the gardens of paradise in the Koran (XLVII, 16-17).

5. It would thus seem that everything points to the same conclusion, namely, that an Eastern or, to be more precise, an Islamic origin must be given to this legend—the legend that Renan regarded as “the most perfect expression of the Celtic ideal and one of the most admirable creations of the human mind,”[528] and that Graf, though admitting the influence of the story of Sindbad the Sailor, nevertheless believes to be Gaelic in foundation. Other Romance scholars, however—owing to their lack of all documentary evidence, they could never go beyond mere suppositions—came nearer to the truth. Labitte, for instance, was struck by “le tour, l’imagination brillante et presque orientale qu’elle décèle”;[529] and D’Ancona admits that Eastern fables are mixed among its other elements.[530] The very monotony of rhythm in the narration; the precise number of seven voyages, corresponding to the seven seas through which Boluqiya also sailed; the fantastic adventures, which led St. Vincent of Beauvais and the Bollandists to describe these legends as _apocrypha deliramenta_; and, lastly, the many episodes traced to Islamic sources by De Goeje[531] and in the above pages—all go to warrant the conclusion that, if the voyage of St. Brandan and other similar legends were indeed written by an Irish monk on a basis of Celtic tradition, the plethora of Islamic elements that were grafted on to the native stock was such as to change their original character.

6. The same conclusion may be drawn from an examination of the other tales of voyages that are more warlike expeditions than mere pilgrimages. In these legends traces of the Arabic stories of the fabulous Dulcarnain are frequently to be found.

Thus, in the legend of the Frisian sailors, narrated by Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century, the adventurers, after traversing a dark region of the ocean, arrive at an island the inhabitants of which hide in caves while the sun is on the horizon, that is to say, at midday, the time of the arrival of the strangers.[532]

This detail is characteristic of the country described in the legends of the voyage of Dulcarnain as being that in which the sun rises, “the inhabitants of which do not build houses, but take refuge in caves until the sun goes down, when they sally forth to seek their living.”[533] The tenth century Moslem record is based on _hadiths_ of a much earlier date, and they in their turn were written as gloss on a passage of the Koran (XVIII, 89), which alludes to the fabulous voyage of Dulcarnain to “the country where the sun shines on people to whom We have given no protection from its rays.”

A more striking instance of imitation from the Arabic is seen, however, in the final episode of the Latin and German versions of the voyage of Alexander the Great to the earthly paradise.[534]

The guardian of paradise presents Alexander with a precious
stone, the hidden virtues of which, he says, will cure him
of his ambition. Alexander returns with the stone to where
his army awaits him, and of all his followers a wise Hebrew
alone is capable of solving the riddle. The stone, he finds,
outweighs whatever quantity of gold is put in the balance, but,
when covered with a little dust, it at once loses its weight
and becomes as light as a feather. The aged Hebrew concludes
his interpretation with the words: “This precious stone is an
image of the human eye; when alive, it is insatiable, but, when
dead and covered with earth, it aspires to nought.”

Graf, after tracing the story to its most ancient sources both in Greek and Hebrew lore, comes to the conclusion that its model is to be sought in a tale of the Babylonian Talmud, though that tale mentions a real human eye. A more likely model, however, is provided by the Arabian story, recorded in the tenth century and attributed to Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet[535]:

Alexander, or rather the Koranic Dulcarnain, with his army
reaches the region of darkness that lies before the Fountain
of Life, and, beyond this region, he beholds a palace rising
to an enormous height. Advancing to the gate, he speaks to
the youthful guardian, who hands him an object like a stone,
saying, “If this be satisfied, thou also wilt be satisfied; if
it be hungry, then wilt thou be hungry too.” Alexander returns
to his companions with the stone and summons the wise men to
discuss the riddle. They test the stone in the balance with
first one, then two, and finally a thousand similar stones, and
find to their amazement that it outweighs them all. Khidr, a
counsellor of Alexander’s, upon seeing that all the sages are
unable to solve the riddle, thereupon intervenes and places
on one of the scales an ordinary stone and, on the other, the
miraculous stone covered with a handful of dust; and, to the
amazement of all, the scales now balance. To Alexander, Khidr
then explains the riddle as follows: “God has granted thee the
utmost power achievable by man, yet thou art not satisfied. For
man is never satisfied until dust cover him and the earth fill
his belly.” According to another, longer, version, Khidr ends
his explanation with the words: “The stone is the human eye,
which, whilst alive, even though it should possess the whole
world, is insatiable, and which only death can satisfy.”[536]

VIII

LEGENDS OF SLEEPERS

1. Graf has reviewed all the legends on this theme that were common in Christian Europe from the thirteenth century onwards.[537] In the main they tell the same story. The protagonists are monks or princes who, after visiting the earthly paradise, return to their homes believing that their absence has lasted but a few hours or days; whereas in reality long years, even centuries, have passed; astonished at the change in their surroundings, they try to make themselves known, only to meet with incredulity; in the end they succeed in establishing their identity either by the testimony of some venerable old man, who vaguely remembers the story of their disappearance, or by the aid of books of record.

Of the three principal legends of this cycle, the Italian one of the monks of the Jihun dates from the fourteenth century:

Three monks set out to seek the earthly paradise, and after
many adventures succeed in finding it. They return under the
delusion that they have been absent but three days, whereas
three whole centuries have elapsed. The monastery still stands,
but the monks are strangers who do not recognise them. With the
aid of old records they manage to prove their identity, and
forty days after recounting their experiences they turn into
dust.

The German legend of the Cistercian monk, Felix, also dates from the fourteenth century:

Felix doubts that the bliss of heaven can last eternally
without cloying the elect. But one day, listening in the garden
to the sweet song of a little bird of white plumage, he falls
into a trance. The clanging of the bell calling to Matins
awakens him and he hastens towards the monastery to find that
he is unknown to the porter, who, on hearing his explanations,
believes him to be either drunk or mad and turns him away. Nor
do the monks recognise him, although one of them, a centenarian
and infirm, does remember that when he was a novice a monk
named Felix disappeared; and it is found that the books record
his supposed death. A century had passed in what seemed to
Felix a single hour.

Another Italian legend, which is later than the eleventh century, tells a similar story of a young prince:

Three days after his wedding, the prince sets out from his
castle and is miraculously led to a garden of paradise, where
he remains for three hundred years, which to him appear but
three hours. On his return, he finds his home strangely
changed; for his wife and parents, having given him up for
dead, had converted the castle into a monastery and his hall
into a church. On the tower, where formerly had flown the
standard of his family with the eagle, he sees a banner with
the cross. He makes himself known to the porter and tells his
story to the monks and people of the village, who listen to him
in awe. The story is recorded, but the prince, upon eating the
bread of man, ages and dies and is buried by the side of his
wife.

Occasionally, this theme is introduced into stories of fabulous voyages, as in the legend of the Armorican monks, which is an imitation of the voyage of St. Brandan[538]:

After visiting the isle of paradise, the monks return to their
monastery and find everything changed; church and town have
disappeared, and a new king rules over a strange people. They
have been absent for three hundred years.

The Spanish legend of San Amaro, which is still current in Spain, belongs to the same group:

After many wonderful adventures at sea, the saint visits the
earthly paradise and, on returning to the place where his
companions were to await him, finds a city built by them; and,
in a monastery erected to his memory, he dies. His absence,
which he had believed to be but of an hour’s duration, had
lasted two centuries.

2. From the eighth century onwards there existed in Islam two groups of legends, which deal with this subject pretty much after the manner of the Christian legends. The protagonists are either prophets—Hebrew or mythical—or noble Christian martyrs, who, after a sleep of centuries, which to them appear brief hours, return to their homes where they finally succeed in proving their identity by means either of witnesses of venerable age or of ancient documents.

3. The tales of the first group were composed by companions of the Prophet as gloss on a passage of the Koran (II, 261), in which the theme is outlined as follows:

Behold him who, passing one day by a ruined and deserted city,
cried out, “How shall God bring this dead city to life again?”
God laid the hand of death upon this man for a hundred years
and then, bringing him to life again, asked him: “How long
hast thou lain here?” “A few hours, or maybe a day,” answered
the man. And God replied: “Thou hast lain there for a hundred
years. Behold thy food and thy drink, they are yet good; and,
lo! there is thine ass. We have proposed thee as a sign (of
wonder) to the people. Behold how the bones are brought to life
again and are clothed with flesh.” And when (this miracle) was
made manifest (the man) exclaimed: “Verily, I see that God is
all-powerful.”

Around this nucleus, which had its origin in a Talmudic source, three legends appeared, one of which, dating from the eighth century, reads as follows[539]:

Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem and its temple and carries
off the surviving Israelites into captivity at Babylon.
Jeremiah (in other versions, Esdras), who had sought refuge in
the desert, returns to find the city in ruins and he doubts
whether God will be able to rebuild the city and its temple.
God sends him into a profound slumber, which lasts for a
hundred years. In the meantime, the ass he was mounted on dies,
but the wine and figs he carried with him remain intact. God
shields the prophet from beasts and birds of prey and renders
him invisible to man. A hundred years later, and thirty years
after God has caused Jerusalem to be rebuilt, Jeremiah is
brought to life again and, when he opens his eyes, he sees the
bones of the ass lying scattered on the ground. A voice from
heaven calls upon them to unite and clothe themselves with
flesh and skin, and the ass returns to life. God asks Jeremiah
how long he thinks he has slept and, when he answers “a few
hours or a day,” tells him that he has slept a hundred years.

The second tale dates from the seventh century:

Esdras, who had been carried off into captivity at Babylon in
his boyhood, escapes some years later and, mounted on an ass,
sets out for his native country. Passing on his way through a
deserted village on the banks of the Tigris, he eats his fill
of the fruit of the trees and, having drunk the juice of the
grapes, he stores the remainder in a pitcher and some figs in
a basket. He does not believe that God could ever rebuild the
ruined village and, having tied up his ass, he falls asleep.
God sends death upon him for a hundred years and then brings
him to life again. The angel Gabriel asks him how long he
thinks he has been asleep, and he replies “A day or less.”
Gabriel tells him that he has slept a hundred years and bids
him observe that the ass, the figs and the wine are intact.
Thereupon Esdras returns to his native country and finds that
his children and grandchildren have grown old, whilst his own
hair and beard are still black.

The third legend is attributed to Ibn Abbas, and provides the conclusion to the two former versions:

Upon awakening from his hundred years’ sleep, Esdras returns
to his native village, where no one will believe his story. At
last he finds an old woman who had been his father’s servant
and is now a hundred and twenty years of age, blind and
paralytic. “Esdras,” replies the old woman to his story, “was
hearkened to by the Lord in his prayers. If thou art he, pray
then to God that He restore my sight, that I may see thee.”
Esdras cures the old woman of her infirmities, and she leads
him to the house where a son of his is still alive, although a
hundred and eighteen years old. Even his grandchildren are of
great age. None will believe either him or the old woman, until
finally his son recognises him by a birth-mark he bears between
his shoulders.

According to a variant version, he is recognised by his knowledge of the Torah[540]:

During their captivity at Babylon, the Israelites lose their
knowledge of the Mosaic Law. Esdras, on his return, is scoffed
at as a liar and is only believed when he recites by heart and
writes out the whole of the Torah and the text is found to
agree literally with an old copy found buried in a vineyard.

4. The Islamic tales belonging to the second group of this cycle were also woven around a passage of the Koran (XVIII, 8-24), which in its turn was based upon a Christian legend of the East, the tale of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The fact that this Islamic myth had its remote origin in Christianity renders it of little interest as far as our argument is concerned, so that especially as Guidi has published an Italian version of the Oriental texts, both Christian and Moslem, we need give here only the outline of the Moslem tale, as it appears in the four versions handed down by Thaalabi and translated by Guidi[541]:

During the persecution under Dacian seven Christian nobles
of Ephesus seek refuge in a cave where, after a frugal meal,
they fall asleep for three hundred years. Their kinsmen give
them up for lost, and record on a tablet the story and date
of their disappearance. At the end of the three centuries
God restores them to life, and they awake thinking they have
slept but a day. Under this delusion, one of them sets out for
Ephesus to purchase provisions and secretly bring back tidings
of the persecution. As he proceeds, his astonishment increases
at the changes he sees on every side. Over the gate of the
city a banner bearing the inscription, “There is but One God,
and Jesus is His Spirit,” puzzles him greatly. In the city
the people are all strange and, when he tenders a coin of the
time of Dacian in payment of bread, he arouses suspicion and
is led before the authorities on the charge of having found
secret treasure. In vain does he attempt to vindicate his
story, for the authorities refuse to listen to him until he
can find someone who can identify him. He ultimately succeeds
in reaching his own house, when a grandson of his, though
blind and infirm with great age, recognises him. The tablet
recording his disappearance is also found and thus his story
is corroborated. The authorities and townsfolk seek out his
companions, who now definitively die and are buried with great
pomp.

5. The close resemblance of the Islamic tales of both the above-mentioned groups to the Christian mediæval legends related by Graf is too evident to be ignored. But, it will be asked, is this resemblance to be attributed to Moslem influence upon Christian folklore? Graf, with all his erudition, makes no mention of the precedents that these Christian tales may have had in other literatures.[542] And, indeed, the question is not an easy one to answer. Guidi has shown[543] that the Islamic tales of Jeremiah and Esdras are derived from rabbinical stories, the protagonist of which is either Abimelech or the Rabbi, Joni Hamaggel. Now both of these probably lived before the third century of our era, but there is no evidence to prove that these Jewish tales, as such, ever spread to the West. On the other hand, the Islamic legends of the Seven Sleepers are based on a Syrian legend that appeared, also in the East, in the sixth century; and this tale, we know, in that very century passed to the West, where it is found in a Latin version that St. Gregory, of Tours, included in one of his books on the saints.[544] But are we, on that account, to suppose that the Christian mediæval tales mentioned by Graf grew solely from the seed sown by St. Gregory and were uninfluenced by the Islamic legends? If so, how can it be explained that that seed should have taken over six centuries to germinate and did not produce its crop of legends until the thirteenth century?

That is the problem, in so far as the influence of the myth of the Seven Sleepers on the similar Christian tales of the thirteenth century is concerned. But there still remains the other group of Islamic legends, of which the protagonists are Jeremiah and Esdras. The resemblance of these to the Christian tales is no less striking; and here there can be less doubt about the direct Moslem influence, for there is nothing to show that the early rabbinical models ever passed to Christian Europe.

IX

LEGENDS OF THE RESPITE FROM TORTURE

1. Until the sixth century the question whether the sufferings of the sinners in hell were to be regarded as eternal or not was still debated by the Fathers of the Church. Indeed some doctors, mainly of the Eastern Church, favoured temporality.[545] Western opinion prevailed, however, and by the Council of Constantinople the doctrine of everlasting punishment was definitely established as part of the Catholic dogma. It is, then, all the more strange to find, in the eleventh century, legends popular in Western Christendom treating mainly of a respite from, or mitigation of, the sufferings of the damned.[546] The myth first appeared in the vision of St. Paul. But, as was pointed out in the discussion of that legend, the primitive Greek version spoke of a _yearly_ respite, whereas in the Latin versions, dating from the twelfth century, the respite is _weekly_.[547] The difference is significant, as explaining the genesis of the later forms of the legend from Moslem models; for, whilst the doctrine of a weekly respite lacks foundation in Christian tradition, and particularly in that of the West, it was indeed fully justified in the dogma of Islam.

2. Even more striking influence of Islamic influence is shown by another Christian tale, told in substantially the same terms by St. Peter Damian, in the eleventh century, and Conrad of Querfurt and St. Vincent of Beauvais, in the twelfth.[548]

A cavern situated in the volcanic region of Pozzuoli, to the
west of Naples, or on the volcanic island of Ischia in the gulf
of the same city, and washed by black and evil-smelling waters,
was supposed to be the mouth of hell. At sunset every Saturday,
birds of a sulphur-blackened plumage and fearsome aspect were
believed to rise from the waters of that cave and fly away to
the neighbouring mountains. There they would stay stretching
and pruning their wings until the early morn of the following
Monday, when they would return and enter the waters of the
cave. These birds were generally believed to be the souls of
the dwellers in hell, who thus enjoyed a respite from their
tortures.

3. It was a doctrine of Islam,[549] quoted even by Graf, that the torture of both believers and infidels ceased for the day and night on Friday, during which time the soul is allowed to visit its tomb and there receive the prayers offered up on its behalf. The belief, which inspired many very popular legends,[550] is based on the sanctity of the day and is as old as the Moslem religion; indeed from the first century of the Hegira onwards it was held for certain that Moslems who died during the day or night of Friday were exempt from the private judgment of the soul that is peculiar to Islam.[551]

That the souls of the wicked are incarnate in birds of black plumage is a belief attributed to Mahomet himself, just as the myth that holds the saintly soul or angelic spirit to be incarnate in white birds has been shown to be of Moslem origin.[552]

“The souls of the host of Pharaoh are imprisoned in hell in the
body or belly of birds of a black hue; these birds sit on nests
of fire in the bottommost depths of the seventh earth and eat
and drink fire.”[553]

That these black birds rise to the surface, in respite from their torture, and precisely from the waters on the seashore, is told in a Moslem legend so strikingly similar to the Christian tale as actually to appear to be its model or prototype. The legend in question is attributed to Al-Awzai, a writer of the eighth century, and is related by Ibn Abu Aldunya, of the ninth century[554]:

A man of Askalon inquired of Al-Awzai, “Oh, Abuamer! We see
birds of a black plumage rise from the sea and when they return
at night, behold! their plumage is white.” And Al-Awzai said
to him, “Dost thou not know what those birds are?” And he
answered, “Yes.” And Al-Awzai proceeded, “In the entrails of
those birds are the souls of the host of Pharaoh; they are
exposed to the fires of hell, which burn and blacken their
plumes. After a while they lose those plumes, but, when they
return to their nests, once again they are burnt in the fire.
Thus shall they continue to the day of judgment, when a Voice
shall say: Cast the host of Pharaoh into the bottommost pit.”

4. Closely related to this subject of respite from torture is that of the mitigation of suffering when a debt is paid. Graf quotes, among others, the legend related by Cæsar of Heidenbach in the thirteenth century.[555]

After his death a soldier appears before a certain man and
tells him that he is in hell for an act of robbery. He begs the
man tell his children of his wish that the property be restored
to its rightful owner, so that his punishment may be lightened,
but the children turn a deaf ear to the other’s pleadings.

It was a Moslem belief, borne out by numerous _hadiths_, that debts left behind on earth either delayed or hampered the soul in its ascension to heaven[556]:

Thus, at a certain funeral Mahomet decreed that no prayers
should be said for the deceased until his debts had been paid.
On another occasion, he addressed the children of the deceased
thus, “Your father stands at the gates of heaven, detained by a
debt. If ye wish, ye may yet ransom him; if not, ye must leave
him to be dealt with by the wrath of God.” In other _hadiths_,
Mahomet is represented as ordering a son of the deceased to
pay the debts in order to obtain a remission of his father’s
suffering.

Around these _hadiths_ there grew up legends very similar to the Christian tale described above. One such legend, dating from the ninth century, runs as follows:

To two ascetics, who lived in the eighth century, there
appeared a man who, seated on boards floating in the bottom
of a pit, cried out to them in a hoarse voice, saying he was
a citizen of Antioch who had just died and was held prisoner
in that pit until a debt of his were paid. He added, “My
children live at Antioch unmindful of me and of my debt.” The
two ascetics proceed to Antioch and pay the debt, and the next
night the deceased again appears to them and thanks them for
their act of charity.[557]

5. In conclusion, it was a common belief in mediæval Europe that prayers, fasting and almsgiving served to obtain mitigation, not merely of the expiatory suffering in purgatory, but even of the punishments of hell.[558] This belief persisted in the face of the opposition of the Church, which adhered the more rigidly to the doctrine of everlasting damnation as being the one feature distinguishing hell from purgatory. But the rigidity of the official theology was set off by what Graf happily terms the theology of sentiment, as expressed in many popular legends. These, Graf is of opinion, were the spontaneous outcome of the feelings of pity to which the masses are ever prone. That such feelings may lead to popular reactions, unconsciously heterodox, against the strictness of doctrine based on intellectual exegesis, is undeniable; but the growth of the belief in question may have been stimulated by contact with Moslem eschatology, which on this point was much more benign than the official Christian doctrine.

Islam, as is well known, condemns only the infidel and the polytheist to eternal punishment; the true believer, however sinning, will one day see an end to his suffering. And even this temporary torture may be alleviated by the prayers of those on earth. Suyuti, with many other authors, has left us a collection of authoritative texts on this point.[559] These show that prayer, almsgiving, pilgrimage, fasting, and even such pious or merely beneficent works as the erection and endowment of mosques, hostels, schools, or the construction of bridges and irrigation works, all serve to influence the lot of the soul; but special importance is attached to the offering up of prayers on Fridays on the tomb of the deceased. Thus Islam, in adopting the milder views of a minority of Eastern churchmen, may have been the medium through which this belief was transmitted to the West after it had been unanimously rejected as heretical by the Councils, the Fathers, and the Doctors of the Roman Church.

X

LEGENDS OF THE DEBATE BETWEEN ANGELS AND DEVILS FOR POSSESSION OF THE SOUL

1. A common subject of Christian mediæval legend is the inquest held on the soul immediately after death by angels and devils as a preliminary to final judgment. Graf, in _Demonologia di Dante_,[560] and Batiouchkof, in _Le débat de l’âme et du corps_,[561] have analysed these legends, the main elements of which are the following:

i. Every soul has one or more angels and devils to guard and
tempt it during life.

ii. At death these angels and devils fight for possession of
the soul.

iii. Often the debate is conducted with the aid of two books,
one recording the sins, and the other the virtues of the soul.

iv. In other legends, the virtues and vices appear in person to
bear witness.

v. Or again, the members of the body accuse the soul of the
sins they committed.

vi. The balance is also used to decide the debate.

vii. Finally, the angels or devils carry off the soul to heaven
or hell.

2. Christian doctrine furnishes but scant authority for these features, especially the more striking ones enumerated under iv, v and vi. These are precisely the elements that were most common in Islam, which had derived them from other Oriental religions, particularly the Zoroastrian religion.

The belief in a guardian angel, based as it is on the Gospel and conserved in patristic writings, formed part of the Christian faith both in the East and West. From the fifth century onwards it was, though not dogma, commonly believed that, in addition, everyone had a devil to tempt him. That, at death, the angel and devil fought for the soul, was again merely a popular belief, the earliest documentary evidence of which is to be found in a seventh century vision of the after-life composed by St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany. It reappears in the ninth century Germanic poem _Muspilli_[562]; and it is noteworthy that both these legends are enhanced by the introduction of elements iv and v personifying the virtues and vices and the members of the body, features of Islamic or Zoroastrian origin,[563] which then make their first appearance in Christian eschatology.

3. Islam, in contrast to Christianity, contained in its early _hadiths_ the sources of all the elements detected in the mediæval legends. These tales, with the exception of those dealing with the balance[564], are briefly summarised on the following pages:

1. _Hadiths on Topic_ i

Algazel records the following _hadith_ without mentioning the companion of the Prophet who related it:

“At his birth each man has an angel allotted to him by God, and
a devil by Satan, who whisper good and evil suggestions into
his right and left ear respectively.”[565]

A _hadith_ by Jabir ibn Abd Allah, of the seventh century:

In this tale Mahomet says that God has appointed a guardian
angel to each man and two other angels to record his good and
evil deeds. At his death these angels return to heaven, whence
they will descend to bear witness on the day of judgment.[566]

A _hadith_ by Al-Hasan, of the seventh century, says:

“To every man lying on his death-bed there appear his
guardians, who show him his good and evil deeds. At the sight
of the former, he smiles; at the sight of the latter, he
frowns.”[567]

A _hadith_ by Salman, also of the seventh century, reads:

“A man who lay on his death-bed told the Prophet that a black
and a white figure had appeared before him. The Prophet
inquired, ‘Which stood the nearer to thee?’ and the man
replied, ‘The black figure.’ ‘Then,’ said the Prophet, ‘great
is the evil and little is the good.’”[568]

Finally, a _hadith_ by Wahb ibn Al-Ward, of the eighth century, says:

“To everyone at his death there appear the two angels who
during his life were the guardians of his deeds....”[569]

2. _Hadiths dealing mainly with the fight for the soul_

A _hadith_ by Ibrahim, son of Abd ar-Rahman ibn Awf, of the seventh century:

Abd ar-Rahman, who had been given up for dead, tells how,
as he lay prostrate, two demons of fearsome aspect appeared
before him, saying, “Rise, for we will lead thee to the Supreme
Judge.” On their way they met two angels of mercy, who cried
out, “Whither would ye lead him? Leave him to us, for God has
destined him to enter heaven.”[570]

A seventh-century _hadith_ of the Caliph Muawya, but attributed to Mahomet:

A murderer, moved to repentance, proceeds to a monastery to end
his days in prayer. But death overtakes him on the way. The
angels of wrath and of mercy appear on the scene and fight for
his soul. The dispute is decided by the soul being allotted to
the nearest dwelling. This, upon measurement, is found to be
the monastery, and the murderer is saved.[571]

_Hadith_ of Abu Hurayra, also of the seventh century:

A person relates his experiences during a trance. A man of
beautiful features and sweet-smelling breath had hardly placed
him in his grave, when a woman of repulsive mien and evil
odour appeared and accused him of his sins. She then disputes
with the other for his soul. During the dispute he withdraws
at the woman’s bidding and, in a mosque near by, finds a man
reciting the same verses of the Koran that he used to delight
in reciting. These verses are adduced in his favour, and the
man of the beautiful countenance claims him as saved.[572]

Legend of Daud ibn Abu Hind, of the eighth century: