devout imagination. A certain
rivalry existed between the claims of profane and religious
literature, and a popular audience for narrative poems designed for
edification was secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous
some of these are--as the legend of St. Margaret--but they were not
on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain
instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator,
and thus the way was in a measure prepared for the future
mystery-plays.

More than fifty of these Lives of Saints are known, composed generally
in octosyllabic verse, and varying in length from some hundreds of
lines to ten thousand. In the group which treats of the national saints
of France, an element of history obscured by errors, extravagances,
and anachronisms may be found. The purely legendary matter occupies
a larger space in those derived from the East, in which the religious
ideal is that of the hermit life. The celebrated _Barlaam et Joasaph_,
in which Joasaph, son of a king of India, escaping from his father's
restraints, fulfils his allotted life as a Christian ascetic, is
traceable to a Buddhist source. The narratives of Celtic origin--such
as those of the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the voyages of St.
Brendan--are coloured by a tender mysticism, and sometimes charm us
with a strangeness of adventure, in which a feeling for external
nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints
are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the
lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of
our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had
himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses
in England; he visited the places associated with the events of
Becket's life; his work has high value as an historical document;
it possesses a personal accent, rare in such writings; a genuine
dramatic vigour; and great skill and harmonious power in its stanzas
of five rhyming lines.

A body of short poems, inspired by religious feeling, and often
telling of miracles obtained by the intercession of the Virgin or
the saints, is known as _Contes pieux_. Many of these were the work
of Gautier de Coinci (1177-1236), a Benedictine monk; he translates
from Latin sources, but with freedom, adding matter of his own, and
in the course of his pious narratives gives an image, far from
flattering, of the life and manners of