A Legend[79] was originally a book used in the old Romish churches, containing the lessons that were to be read in divine service. Hence also the lives of saints and martyrs came to be called legends, because chapters were read out of them at matins, and in the refectories of the religious houses. The GOLDEN LEGEND is a collection of the lives of the Saints, compiled by James De Varasse, better known by the Latin name of J. De Veragine, Vicar-General of the Dominicans, and afterwards Bishop of Genoa, who died in 1298. It was received into the church with the most enthusiastic applause, which it maintained for 200 years; but, in fact, it is so full of ridiculous and absurd romantic monstrosities, that the Romanists themselves are now generally ashamed of it. On this very account alone the word Legend got into general disrepute. The following is stated to be the origin of those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends:—The professors in rhetoric, before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at _amplification_. The students, being constantly at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents, so found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet when James De Veragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for the materials in the libraries of these monasteries; and, awakening from the dust the manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity; and as the book is adorned with a number of cuts, these miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Fleury, Tillemont, Baillet, Launoi, and Ballendus, cleared away much of the rubbish. The enviable title of _Golden Legend_, by which James De Veragine called his work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly express the character of this folio.