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 LEGENDS

120

LEOEUDS

moment of his birth the boy shows his vicious instincts, which urge hin, when grown to manliood, to a career of monstrous crime. At 'last the horror which lie in- spires everywhei« causes him to reflect, and, having found out the awful secret of his birth, he hastens to Rome to confess to the pope. He undergoes the most rigorous penance, living in the disguise of a fool at the emperor's court in Rome. Three times he delivers the city from the assault of the Saracens, but, refusing all reward, he ends bis life as a pious hermit. According to another version he marries the emperor's daughter, whose love he has won in his humble disguise, and suc- ceeds to the throne.

The oldest known account of this legend is a Latin prose narrative by a Dominican friar, Etienne de Bour^ Don (c. 1250). Then it appears in a French metrical romance of the thirteenth century, also in a dit of somewhat later date, and in a miracle play of the four- teenth centvuy. A French prose version was also pr^ fixed to the old "Croniques de Normandie" (probably of the thirteenth century). But the legend owes its popularity to the 8tor>'-l)ooks, of which the earliest known appeared at Lyons in 1496, and again at Paris in 1497. under the title " La vie du terrible Robert le dvable' . Since the sixteenth century the legend was often printed together with that of Richard sans Peur; it was published in completely recast form in 1769 under the title " HLstoire de Robert le Diable, due de Normandie, et de Richard Sans Peur, son fils."

From France the legend spread to Spain, where it was very popular. In England the subject was treated in the metrical romance, "Sir Gowther", the work of an unknown minstrel of the fifteenth century. An English translation from the French chap-book was made by WjTikyn de Worde, Caxton's assist-ant, and published without date under the title " Robert deuyll" (reprinted inThoms, " Early English Prose Ro- mances", London and New York, 1907). Another vei^ sion, not based on the preceding, was given by Thomas Lodge in his book on "Robin the Divell" (London, 1591). In the Netherlands the romance of Rol)recht den Duv^-el was put on the index of forbidden books by the feishop of Antwerp (1621). In Germany the legend never attained much of a vogue; not until the nineteenth century did it pass into the Volkshucher, being introduced by Gdrres (q. v.). It was treated in epic form by Victor von Strauss (1854), in dramatic form by Raupach (1835) . Meyerbeer's opera " Robert le Diable" (1831) enjoyed great favour for a time. The libretto, written by Scribe and Delavigne, has little in conmion with the legend except the name of the hero.

Du M^iRiL, La Ifgendt de Robert le Diable in Etudes aur quelques points d'arch/i)loQie et d'hisUnre lUtfraire (1862), 272-317; introduction to Breul, Sir Qowlher (Oppeln, 1886). In this book a complete bibliography ia given. See also the in- troduction to LdscTH's edition of Robert le Diable (Paris, 1903).

The Wandering Jew. — ^This legend has been widely popular ever since its first appearance in a German chap-book of 1602. There it is told as follows: When Jesus bore his Cross to Calvary, he passed the house of a cobbler, Ahasuerus by name, who had been one of the rabble to shout, " Crucify him." Sinking beneath his burden, Jesus stopped to rest at the threshold of the cobbler, but was driven away with the words; gazed sternly at Ahasuerus and said: "I will stand here and rest, but thou shalt go on until the last day." And since then the Jew has l)een roaming restlessly over the earth.
 * 'Go where thou belongest." Thereupon Gur Lord

The first lit^raiy record of such a doomed wanderer is found in the "Floras Historiarum", a chronicle of Roger of Wend over, a monk of St. Albans (d. 1237). The account there given was incorporated with some slight amplifications into the "Historia Major" of Matthew Paris (d. 1259). The story is told on the authority of an Armenian bishop who visited England

in 122S and had personally known the doomed man. According to this version, Cartaphilus, a door- keeper at Pilate's mansion, saw Jesus as he was led fortn to be crucified and struck him contemptuously, crying at the same time: "Go Jesus, go faster, why dost thou linger? " Whereupon Jesus replied : " I go, but thou shalt wait till I come." And so the offender has not been able to die, but still waits for the com- ing of Christ. He is leading a quiet, saintly life. Whenever he reaches the age of a hundred years he is miraculously restored to the age of thirty. Since his conversion to Christianity his name is Joseph. A similar version, also on the authority of the Armenian bishop, is given by the Flemish chronicler, Philippe Mousket, Bishop of Toumai (about 1243). No doubt, this version is the basis for the story given in the chap' books.

Now the legend is surely not the invention of the Armenian bishop, as has been sometimes claimed. It was well known m Italy during the thirteenth century, and must liave existed long before that. According to the astrologer Guido Bonatti, who is mentioned by Dante (Inf., xx, 118), the wanderer passed tlirougjn Forli in 1267. PliiUp of Novara, a famous jurist, in his "Livre de Fonne de Plait" (c. 1250), refers to a certain Jehan Boute Dieu as one proverbially long- lived. Now Philip resided for a long time in Jeru- salem and Cyprus; this, together with the fact that the account in the English chronicles also localizes Carta- philus in Armenia, seems to point to an Oriental origin for the legend. Probably it was part of a local cycle that sprang up in Jerusalem in connexion with the Passion, and was brought to Europe by crusaders or pilgrims. A legend of a surviving witness of the Crucifixion, who is represented as the victim of a curse, was certainly current in Jerusalem, and is re- peateidly referred to in accounts of travels to the Holy Land. The name of the accursed wanderer is generally given as Joannes Buttadeus, in ItaUan as Bottadio, which evidently means " God-smiter". An old Ital- ian legend knows of a similar punishment inflicted on the soldier who struck Christ before the High Priest (John, xvili, 22), and later on this soldier was identi- fied with Malchus whose ear was cut off by Peter. This legend was furthermore confused, it seems, with one current about St. John, to whom tradition as- cribed immortality on the basis of a passage in John, xxi, 20 sqq. The names Johannes and Cartaphilus (Kdfyra 4>L\os "much beloved"), given to the wanderer, lend some colour to this theory.

But, whatever its origin, the legend owes its fame and popularity to the above-mentioned German chap- book, which appeared anonymously in 1602 under the title: "Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzehlung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahas^'•erus ", etc. There the story is related on the authority of a Lutheran clergy- man, Paul us von Eitzen (d. i598), who claimed to have met the Jew in person in Hamburg in 1542, and to have heard the story from Ahasuerus himself. In a later edition of 1003, " Wunderbarlicher Bericht von Einem Juden Ahasver", etc., where the anonymous author assumes the pen-name of Chrj'sostomus Uudu- Iffius Westphalus, the meeting is assigned to the year 1547, and in an appendix the fate of the Jew is made the subject of an exhortation to the Christian reader.

The legend at once sprang into popular favour, and numerous editions followed. Prom Germany it spread to Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and es- pecially to France, where it nas enjoyed a great vogue up to the present. The best-known French version is the "Histoire admirable d'un Juif Errant" dating from the seventeenth century. Here a tragic touch is added by the recital of the dangers which the Jew courts ill the vain hope of ending nis misery in death. Stories of the actual appearance of the Jew also began to be common, many of them, no doubt, traceable to impostors who played the r61e with succew. Of such