These examples sufficiently indicate the broad apologetic purpose in the patristic writing of history. There was another class of composition, biographical rather than historical, the object of which was to give edifying examples of the grace of God working in holy men. The reference, of course, is to the _Vitae sanctorum_ whose number from the fourth century onward becomes legion. They set forth the marvellous virtues of anchorites and their miracles. In the East, the prime example is the Athanasian Life of Anthony; Jerome also wrote, in Latin, the lives of Anthony’s forerunner Paulus and of other saints. But for the Latin West the typical example was the _Life_ of St. Martin of Tours, most popular of saints, by Sulpicius Severus. To dub this class of compositions (and there are classes within classes here) uncritical, credulous, intentionally untruthful, is not warranted without a preliminary consideration of their purpose. That in general was to edify; the writer is telling a moral tale, illustrative of God’s grace in the instances of holy men. But the divine grace is the real matter; the saint’s life is but the example. God’s grace exists; it operates in this way. As to the illustrative details of its operation, why be over-anxious as to their correctness? Only the _vita_ must be interesting, to fix the reader’s attention, and must be edifying, to improve him. These principles exerted sometimes a less, sometimes a greater influence; and accordingly, while perhaps none of the _vitae_ is without pious colouring, as a class they range from fairly trustworthy biographies to vehicles of edifying myth.[89] Miracles are never lacking. The _vita_ commonly was drawn less from personal knowledge than from report or tradition. Report grows passing from mouth to mouth, and is enlarged with illustrative incidents. Since no disbelief blocked the acceptance of miracles, their growth outstripped that of the other elements of the story, because they interested the most people. Yet there was little originality, and the _vitae_ constantly reproduced like incidents. Especially, Biblical prototypes were followed, as one sees in the _Dialogi_ of Gregory the Great, telling of the career of St. Benedict of Nursia. The Pope finds that the great founder of western monasticism performed many of the miracles ascribed to Scriptural characters.[90] Herein we see the working of suggestion and imitation upon a “legend”; but Gregory found rather an additional wonder-striking feature, that God not only had wrought miracles through Benedict, but in His ineffable wisdom had chosen to conform the saint’s deeds to the pattern of Scriptural prototypes. And so, in the _Vitae sanctorum_, the joinder of suggestion and the will to believe literally worked marvels.