Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/391

 in the Academia delle Belle Arti at Venice, and is the subject of a picture by Beham in the Munich Gallery. The legend is told in full in the Vita Christi, printed at Troyes in 1517, in the Legenda Aurea of Jacques de Voragine, in an old Dutch work, “Gerschiedenis van det heylighe Cruys,” in a French MS. of the thirteenth century in the British Museum. Gervase of Tilbury relates a portion of it in his Otia Imperalia, quoting from Comestor; it appears also in the Speculum Historiale, in Gottfried von Viterbo, in the Chronicon Engelhusii, and elsewhere.

Gottfried introduces a Hiontus in the place of Seth in the following story; Hiontus is corrupted from lonicus or lonithus.

The story is as follows :

When our first father was banished Paradise, he lived in penitence, striving to recompense for the past by prayer and toil. When he reached a great age and felt death approach, he summoned Seth to his side, and said, “Go, my son, to the terrestrial Paradise, and ask the Archangel who keeps the gate to give me a balsam which will