Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/52

xl 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 authorized 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 August 26, the name 'of the holy Iosaph, son of Abenēr, king of India.' Barlaam is not mentioned, and is not therefore recognized 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

2 p. 160 of the part for the month of August of the authorized of the Greek Church, published at Constantinople, 1843: "."