character of the Papacy, and the names of historical popes, as Innocent and Gregory, given to the heroes, raise the suspicion that these tales are something more than _märchen_, and lead directly to the enquiry, not whether such prodigies have in fact been the means of determining the succession to the popedom, but whether they have been believed to have occurred. Now it happens that this very event was reported in {308} connection with the election of the great Pope Innocent III., in the year 1198. Three doves, it was said, flew about the church during the proceedings, and at last one of them, a white one, came and perched on his right side, which was held to be a favourable omen.[308.1] In the atmosphere of the Middle Ages an occurrence of the kind, if it happened, could not fail to make a great impression on the popular mind. The dove would be regarded as no less than the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. Long before Innocent’s day--indeed before the Middle Ages began--something like this would seem to have happened. It is recorded by Eusebius that in the reign of the Emperor Gordian, who ruled from A.D. 238 to 244, when all the brethren were assembled in the church for the purpose of electing a successor to Anteros, Bishop of Rome, suddenly a dove flew down from on high and sat on the head of Fabian. Thereupon the assembly with one voice acclaimed him bishop and seated him on the episcopal throne.[308.2] Nor were popes alone thus honoured. Dr Conyers Middleton, in his once famous _Letter from Rome_, records that “in the cathedral church of Ravenna I saw, in mosaic work, the pictures of those archbishops of the place who, as all their historians affirm, were chosen for several ages successively by the special designation of the Holy Ghost, who in a full assembly of the clergy and people, used to descend visibly on the person elect in the shape of a dove.”[308.3] Among the apocryphal stories in _The Book of Sir John Maundeville_ we are told that in the convent on Mount Sinai are many lamps burning. The author, {309} whoever he may have been, writes rather a muddled account of the election of “prelate of the abbey.” I gather from it that each monk has a lamp, and that when a prelate is chosen his lamp will light of itself, if he be a good man and worthy of the office; if otherwise, the lamp, though lighted, will go out. An inconsistent tradition ran that the priest who sang mass for the deceased dignitary found written upon the altar the name of him who was to be chosen in his place. But though the miracle-monger who writes under the name of Sir John Maundeville professes to have been at the monastery and questioned the monks, he admits that he could not induce them to tell him the facts.[309.1]