Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/349

 heeding the brand put upon her pure brow by an indignant clergy, who saw in her only the Roman Venus in her grossest character, and not Aphrodite, the foam-begotten moon, rising silvery above the frothing sea.

Further this legend shall not lead us. Its history is painful.

That ancient myths should have penetrated and coloured Mediæval Christianity is not to be wondered at, for old convictions are not eradicated in the course of centuries. I shall, in this book, instance several cases in which they have left their impress on modern Protestant mythology. But it is sad that the Church should have lent herself to establish this fable by the aid of fictitious miracles and feigned revelations. And now, when minds weary with groping after truth, and not finding it in science, philosophy, and metaphysics, turn to the Church with yearning look, why should she repel them from clasping the Cross, which, in spite of all fables, “will stand whilst the world rolls,” by her tenacity in clinging to these idle and foolish tales, founded on paganism, and buttressed with fraud?

Is this cultus of Ursula and her eleven thousand nothing but a “pious belief”? A pious belief,