Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/59

Rh. Not always indeed was this the process; nor the apotheosis always intentional. Succeeding times exhibited another mode of realizing fables, if I may so speak; and discovered another path to falsehood under the garb of truth. The monks were accustomed to exercise themselves with declaiming upon the merits of their patron saint. To give a new varnish to his fame, to excite yet more powerfully either the intellects or the devotion of the drowsy brotherhood, they added romantic fictions of their own; and invented familiar stories, derived from an infinite variety of sources. But because eastern imaginations were more splendid and captivating—because Jerusalem, and the Holy Sepulchre were in the East—because "an idle and lying horde of pilgrims and palmers," (as Mr. Dunlop expresses it) annually brought thither fresh subjects for credulity to feed