THE WARRIOR SAINTS OF CHRISTENDOM. Beauty and Importance of the Figures of the Military Mar- tyrs. Legend of St. Mercurius and Julian the Apostate. ST. MAURICE, and the Theban Legion. The Legend. Its B EFORE entering on the general subject of the early martyrs, I shall place together here the great Patron Saints of Eastern and Western Christendom. All saints are, in one sense, patron saints, either as protectors of some particular nation, province, or city; or of some particular avocation, trade, or condition of life: but there is a wide distinction to be drawn between the merely national and local saints, and those universally accepted and revered. St. Denis, for instance, is not much honored out of France; nor St. Januarius, the Lazzarone saint, out of Naples; but St. George, the patron of England, was at once the GREAT SAINT of the Greek Church, and the patron of the chivalry of Europe; and triumphed wherever triumphed the cross, from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules. Those patron saints who had not, like St. Peter of Rome, St. Mark of Venice, St. James of Spain, St. Mary Magdalene, a Scriptural and apostolic sanction, yet were invested by the popular and universal faith with a paramount dignity and authority, form a class apart. They are, St. George, St. Sebastian, St. Christopher, St. Cosmo and St. Damian, St. Roch, and St. Nicholas. The virgin patronesses, to whom was rendered a like universal worship, are St. Catherine, St. Barbara, St. Margaret, and St. Ursula. I place them here together, because I have observed that, in studying the legendary subjects of Art, they must be kept constantly in mind. In every sacred edifice of Europe which still retains its mediaval and primal character, whatever might be its destination, whether church, chapel, convent, scuola, or hospital, in every work of art in which sacred personages are grouped together, without any direct reference to the scenes or events of Scripture, one or other of these renowned patrons is sure to be found; and it becomes of the utmost importance that their characters, persons, and attributes should be well discriminated. Those who were martyrs do not figure principally in that character. They each represent some phase of the beneficent power, or some particular aspect of the character, of Christ, that divine and universal model to which we all aspire; but so little is really known of these glorified beings, their persons, their attributes, the actions recorded of them are so mixed up with fable, and in some instances so completely fantastic and ideal, that they may be fairly regarded as having succeeded to the honors and attributes of the tutelary divinities of the pagan mythology. is really a most interesting speculation to observe how completely the prevalent state of society in the middle ages modified the popular notions of these impersonations of Divine power. Every one knows by heart those exquisite lines in which Wordsworth has traced the rise and influence of the beautiful myths of ancient Greece: "In that fair clime the lonely herdsman, stretched And, in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear It Which his poor skill could make, his Fancy fetched, A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart 3 So Thus the mythology of the ancient Greeks was the deification of the aspects and harmonies of nature, while the mythology of Christianity was shaped by the aspirations of humanity; — it was the apotheosis of the moral sentiments, colored by the passions and the suffering of the time. So in an age of barbarity and violence did St. George, the redresser of wrongs with spear and shield, become the model of knighthood. So when disease and pestilence ravaged whole provinces, the power to avert the plague was invoked in St. Sebastian; and the power to heal, ever a godlike attribute, reverenced in St. Cosmo and St. Damian. at a time when human life was held cheap, and beset by casualties, when the intercourse between men and nations was interrupted by wide forests, by unaccustomed roads, by floods and swamps, and all perils of sea and land, did St. Christopher represent to the pious the immediate presence of Divine aid in difficulty and danger. So also were the virgin patronesses to all intents and purposes goddesses in fact, though saints in name. The noble sufferance, the unblemished chastity, the enthusiastic faith of a St. Catherine or a St. Ursula, did not lose by a mingling of the antique grace, where a due reverence inspired the conception of the artist :- Venus and Diana, and Pallas and Lucina, it should seem, could only gain by being invested with the loftier, purer attributes of Christianity. Still there was a diversity in the spirit which rendered the blending of these characters, however accepted in the abstract, not always happy in the representation ; — |