The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,335 pages of information about The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2.

The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,335 pages of information about The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2.
already canonised elsewhere, were then acknowledged by the Pope and the College of Rites to be saints of the Catholic Church of Christ.  Among such, under the date of the 27th of November, are included “The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts Saint John of Damascus has described.  Where and when they were first canonised, I have been unable, in spite of much investigation, to ascertain.  Petrus de Natalibus, who was Bishop of Equilium, the modern Jesolo, near Venice, from 1370 to 1400, wrote a Martyrology called Catalogus Sanctorum; and in it, among the ‘Saints,’ he inserts both Barlaam and Josaphat, giving also a short account of them derived from the old Latin translation of St. John of Damascus.  It is from this work that Baronius, the compiler of the authorised Martyrology now in use, took over the names of these two saints, Barlaam and Josaphat.  But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, they do not occur in any martyrologies or lists of saints of the Western Church older than that of Petrus de Natalibus.  In the corresponding manual of worship still used in the Greek Church, however, we find, under 26th August, the name ’of the holy Iosaph, son of Abener, King of India.’  Barlaam is not mentioned, and is not therefore recognised as a saint in the Greek Church.  No history is added to the simple statement I have quoted; and I do not know on what authority it rests.  But there is no doubt that it is in the East, and probably among the records of the ancient church of Syria, that a final solution of this question should be sought.  Some of the more learned of the numerous writers who translated or composed new works on the basis of the story of Josaphat, have pointed out in their notes that he had been canonised; and the hero of the romance is usually called St. Josaphat in the titles of these works, as will be seen from the Table of the Josaphat literature below.  But Professor Liebrecht, when identifying Josaphat with the Buddha, took no notice of this; and it was Professor Max Mueller, who has done so much to infuse the glow of life into the dry bones of Oriental scholarship, who first pointed out the strange fact—­almost incredible, were it not for the completeness of the proof—­that Gotama the Buddha, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint!” Professor T.W.  Rhys Davids gives further a Bibliography, pp. xcv.-xcvii.

M.H.  Zotenberg wrote a learned memoir (N. et Ext. XXVIII.  Pt.  I.) in 1886 to prove that the Greek Text is not a translation but the original of the Legend.  There are many MSS. of the Greek Text of the Book of Barlaam and Joasaph in Paris, Vienna, Munich, etc., including ten MSS. kept in various libraries at Oxford.  New researches made by Professor E. Kuhn, of Munich (Barlaam und Joasaph.  Eine Bibliographisch-literargeschichtliche

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The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.