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278 ROMAN DA YS.
tile fields of poetic imagination. In the times from which
these sagas date, no effort was even made, to do so. To
wander over the ground which had been trodden by those
they had learned to love and prize above all others, to
breathe the same air and see the same sights these had
breathed and seen, but know little or nothing of the tenor
of the last years of their lives —how could believers en-
dure this, without seeking to fill the void with pleasing
pictures, especially as they were convinced, the heavenly
radiance that had shone around the known portion of the
earthly Hfe of these holy men, had certainly followed them
to the brink of the grave, and beyond? Thus, many of
these stories, from an invisible seed planted by pious
longing in imagination’s fruitful soil, have sprung up,
during the lapse of ages, and ripened into church tradi-
tion. Others have arisen in a different way. A single
instance of this.
There is an old book, the Clementine Homilies, as-
sumed to have been written by the Roman bishop Clem-
ens, in the generation immediately following that of the
apostles. The unknown author belonged to the Jewish
Christian party, which strove against Paul’s higher con-
ception of Christianity, and made Peter, whether rightly
or wrongly, their advocate against the Gentile apostle.
The author does not, however, dare attack Paul openly,
but thrusts forward in his place Simon Magus, the sor-
cerer and false prophet, puts the teaching of Paul partly
into his mouth, and makes Peter, among other things,
reprove Paul with these words, obviously directed against
the Gentile apostle :
" Why should Christ have lingered
a whole year with His apostles, and have been obliged to
instruct them, if one by a mere vision can be qualified as
a teacher? But if you really did, through an instanta-
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