CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MRS. JAMESON'S

WORKS

1826. The Diary of an Ennuyée.

1829. Loves of the Poets.

1831.

Celebrated Female Sovereigns.

1831. Memoirs, Biographical and Critical, illustrating the Diaries of Pepys, Evelyn, Clarendon, and other Contemporary Writers. (The text of "The Beauties of the Court of King Charles II.")

1832. Characteristics of Shakespeare's Women.

1834. Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad. (4 vols., containing Mrs. Jameson's previously published works and in addition, Sketches of Art, Life, and Character.)

1834. Translation of the text of Retzsch's "Fancies." (Illustrations of Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, etc.)

1838. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles.

1840. Social Life in Germany. (A translation of the domestic dramas by Princess Amelia of Saxony.)

1841. Companion to Private Galleries.

1842.

Handbook to the Public Galleries in and near London. 1845. Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters.

1846. Memoirs and Essays (1. The Home of Titian. 2. The Xanthian Marbles. 3. The Life of Washington Allston. 4. The Lyrical Drama in England. 5. The Condition of the Women of the Working Classes. 6. The Means afforded for the Training of Women. 7. The relative Position of Mothers and Governesses).

1846. Introduction and descriptive text of Grüner's Engravings of the frescoes in Buckingham Palace Summer House. 1848. Sacred and Legendary Art. First Series. (Saints and Mar

tyrs.)

1850. Legends of the Monastic Orders. (Second series of Sacred and Legendary Art.)

1851. Companion to the Court of Modern Sculpture. (Guide book for Crystal Palace Exhibition.)

1852. Legends of the Madonna. (Third series of Sacred and Le

gendary Art.)

1854. Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.

SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART

I. INTRODUCTION

I. OF THE ORIGIN AND GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LEGENDS REPRESENTED IN ART

we cannot turn

WE cannot look round a picture gallery over a portfolio of prints after the old masters, nor even the modern engravings which pour upon us daily, from Paris, Munich, or Berlin — without perceiving how many of the most celebrated productions of Art, more particularly those which have descended to us from the early Italian and German schools, represent incidents and characters taken from the once popular legends of the Catholic Church. This form of hero-worship has become, since the Reformation, strange to us

as far removed from our sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the fall of Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being left but two or three. centuries behind us, and closely connected with the faith of our forefathers and the history of civilization and Christianity. Of late years, with a growing passion for the works of Art of the Middle Ages, there has arisen among us a desire to comprehend the state of feeling which produced them, and the legends and traditions on which they are founded; a desire to understand, and to bring to some surer critical test, representations which have become familiar without being intelligible. To enable us to do this, we must pause for a moment at the outset; and, before we plunge into the midst of things, ascend to higher ground, and command a far wider range of illustration than has yet been attempted, in order to take cognizance of principles and results which, if not new, must be contemplated in a new relation to each other.

The Legendary Art of the Middle Ages sprang out of the legendary literature of the preceding ages. For three centuries at least, this literature, the only literature which existed at the time, formed the sole mental and moral nourishment of the people of Europe. The romances of Chivalry, which long afterwards succeeded, were confined to particular classes, and left no impress on Art beyond the miniature illuminations of a few manuscripts. This legendary literature, on the contrary, which had worked itself into the life of the people, became, like the antique mythology, as a living soul diffused through the loveliest forms of Art, still vivid and vivifying, even when the old faith in its mystical significance was lost or forgotten. And it is a mistake to suppose that these legends had their sole origin in the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but the necessary result of the age which produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner life which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere find them. It will be said, "In the purer doctrine of the Gospel." But where was that to be found? The Gospel was not then the heritage of the poor: Christ, as a comforter, walked not among His own blessed teaching was inaccessible except to the learned it was shut up in rare manuscripts; it was perverted and sophisticated by the passions and the blindness of those few to whom it was accessible. The bitter disputes in the early Church relative to the nature of the Godhead, the subtle distinctions and incomprehensible arguments of the theologians, the dread entertained by the predominant Church of any heterodox opinions concerning the divinity of the Redeemer, had all conspired to remove Him, in His personal character of Teacher and Saviour, far away from the hearts of the benighted and miserable people—far, far away into regions speculative, mysterious, spiritual, whither they could not, dared not follow Him. In this state of things, as it has been remarked by a distinguished writer, "Christ became the object of a remoter, a more awful adoration. The mind began, therefore, to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies." And the

men.

same author, after tracing in vivid and beautiful language the dangerous but natural consequences of this feeling, thus sums up the result: "During the perilous and gloomy days of persecution, the reverence for those who endured martyrdom for the religion of Christ had grown up out of the best feelings of man's improved nature. Reverence gradually grew into veneration, worship, adoration: and although the more rigid theology maintained a marked distinction between the honor shown to the martyrs, and that addressed to the Redeemer and the Supreme Being, the line was too fine and invisible not to be transgressed by excited popular feeling." (Milman, Hist. of Christianity, iii. 540.)

"We live," says the poet, "through admiration, hope, and love." Out of these vital aspirations - not indeed always "well or wisely placed," but never, as in the heathen mythology, degraded to vicious and contemptible objects - arose and spread the universal passion for the traditional histories of the saints and martyrs, personages endeared and sanctified in all hearts, partly as examples of the loftiest virtue, partly as benign intercessors between suffering humanity and that Deity who, in every other light than as a God of Vengeance, had been veiled from their eyes by the perversities of schoolmen and fanatics, till He had receded beyond their reach, almost beyond their comprehension. Of the prevalence and of the incalculable influence of this legendary literature from the seventh to the tenth century, that is, just about the period when Modern Art was struggling into existence, we have a most striking picture in Guizot's "Histoire de la Civilisation." "As after the siege of Troy," says this philosophical and eloquent writer, "there were found, in every city of Greece, men who collected the traditions and adventures of heroes, and sung them for the recreation of the people, till these recitals became a national passion, a national poetry; so, at the time of which we speak, the traditions of what may be called the heroic ages of Christianity had the same interest for the nations of Europe. There were men who made it their business to collect them, to transcribe them, to read or recite them aloud, for the edification and delight of the people. And this was the only literature, properly so called, of that time."

Now, if we go back to the authentic histories of the suffer