Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/747

Rh this was hardly to be expected: the Roman authorities, seeing the danger of such plain revelations in the nineteenth century, even when coupled with such devout explanations, put the book under the ban, though not before it had been spread throughout the world in various translations. Father Hue was sent on no more missions.

Yet there came even more significant discoveries, especially bearing upon the claims of that great branch of the Church which supposes itself to possess a divine safeguard against error in belief. For now was brought to light by literary research the irrefragable evidence that the great Buddha—Sakya Muni himself—had been canonized and enrolled among the Christian saints whose intercession may be invoked, and in whose honor images, altars, and chapels may be erected; and this, not only by the usage of the mediæval Church, Greek and Roman, but by the special and infallible sanction of a long series of Popes, from the end of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth—a sanction granted under one of the most curious errors in human history. The story throws an additional light upon the way in which many of the beliefs of Christendom have been developed, and especially upon the way in which they have been influenced from the seats of older religions.

Early in the seventh century there was composed, as is now believed, at the Convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, a pious romance entitled Barlaam and Josaphat, the latter personage, the hero of the story, being represented as a Hindu prince converted to Christianity by the former.

This story, having been attributed to St. John of Damascus in the following century, became amazingly popular, and was soon accepted as true: it was translated from the Greek original not only into Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic, but into every important European language, including even Polish, Bohemian, and Icelandic. Thence it came into the pious historical encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais, and, most important of all, into the Lives of the Saints.

Hence the name of its pious hero found its way into the list of saints whose intercession is to be prayed for and it passed without challenge until about 1590, when, the general subject of canonization having been brought up at Rome, Pope Sixtus V, by virtue of his infallibility and immunity against error in everything relating to faith and morals, sanctioned a revised list of saints, authorizing and directing it to be accepted by the Church; and among those on whom the seal of Heaven was thus forever infallibly set was included "The Holy Saint Josaphat of India, whose wonderful acts St. John of Damascus has related." The 27th of November was appointed as the day set apart in honor of this