LEGEND. —
I. CONCEPTS
From the gerundive of legere (“legenda,” things “to be read”), with reference to passages from the lives of the saints whose reading was prescribed or recommended in the Divine Office or in meditation, the word has come to indicate any narrative in which the historical element is associated with the fantastic, as has occurred in more than one instance in the narration of the life and deeds of the martyrs and other champions of the Catholic faith. A legend is therefore a narrative that disregards history and distorts it, but refers to persons who actually lived or even to imaginary figures linked to a given place and active at a given moment in time. Thus the saga (from the German sagen, “to say”) of the Nibelungs, though containing fantastic elements, refers to the Burgundian people and has the Rhine as the theater of its deeds. Because of this reference to a place and a time, the legend differs from the fairy tale, which is a narrative indeterminate in time and space (fairy tales all begin with “Once upon a time”), has as its essential actors human beings and animals, is told solely for amusement, and does not imply religious faith, just as the short story or tale, also indeterminate in time and space, does not imply it either, though its protagonists are human beings and not animals.The legend, in addition to requiring a historical or topographical link with reality, always has a purpose of a religious or civic nature relating to the life of the human group to which it refers. Given the superior function of the legend, it is understandable that its content is ideally amplified because it serves as a synthesizing symbol of the group’s history and a norm for its actions. From this point of view, the legend has a profound truth in that it is a mirror of the popular soul and its aspirations.
II. CHARACTER OF THE LEGEND
It is simple as a narrative because such is the desire of popular mentality, which loves to summarize in a few lines the whole of the fundamental institutions of the group.The legend can also be transposed, that is, applied to another person and another setting, while remaining unchanged in its fundamental theme: for example, the Christian legend of Sts. Barlaam and Josaphat is the transposition of the legend of the Buddha in search of his enlightenment; or it can be transformed into one of a different nature and value. Thus Gog and the land of Magog (Ezek. 38–39), who wages war against the kingdom of Israel but is defeated, becomes, through the contamination of its legend with that of Alexander the Great, the leader of a barbarous people whom Alexander enclosed within an iron wall in a territory of Central Asia, from which he will emerge at the end of the world to lend strength to the Antichrist.
III. THEMES OF THE LEGEND
By theme or motif of the legend is meant the basic plot of the narrative. The themes are not necessarily tied to a geographical area, a race, or a cultural zone, but are found spread over vast areas, which, however, for novellas (which are legends lacking historical anchorage and religious or utilitarian purpose), can be distributed into the following thematic zones: Northern Europe and Asia; Central Europe; the Mediterranean basin; the Niger basin; the Congo basin; the Far East with Tibet, India, and Indonesia; Oceania; Australia (van Gennep).There are, however, some themes that recur in all these zones so that they can be considered truly universal. These are above all themes linked to magical beliefs and practices characteristic of primitive mentality, which persist as survivals even in culturally advanced civilizations. Such are the theme of the marvelous object (whoever possesses the object can perform astonishing deeds), the theme of the taboo of the name (knowing the true name of a person is having power over his life), and the theme of the potent word (whoever knows it is capable of creating and destroying). In these universal themes, the details may vary (for example, the object is here a ring, there a staff or a pouch, etc.), but the motif remains identical.
IV. CLASSIFICATION OF LEGENDS
Legends are naturalistic when directed at explaining the phenomena of the natural world: the sky, the earth, vegetation, etc. (v. MYTH); supernormal when they refer to beings of a superhuman nature: heroes, demons, etc., to which primitive mentality is inclined to attribute the effects of causes that elude it; or they exalt the few certain data of history (as in the legend of the Buddha, which the Indian poet Ashvaghosha sang) insofar as they are to be normative for the moral life of the individual or the group; or they see in the sublimated figure the type of the national hero, as the Greeks did with the figure of Heracles, born of the love of Zeus and Alcmena, exceedingly strong from the cradle where he strangled two serpents sent against him by Hera, victor over twelve labors, and, after his death on a pyre he himself prepared, assumed among the gods of Olympus; and historical.V. HISTORICAL LEGENDS
These are those in which popular imagination distorts, by exaggerating, exalting, or diminishing, the data of reality to supplement the accounts of the origins of a given people, the deeds it performed at a given moment, and the circumstances that determined the establishment of certain customs or rites. They love to synthesize by referring them to a single person and with broad, intuitively clear lines that are easily remembered, whatever pertains to the origins and primitive history of the group. Thus Romulus is the son of Mars, the national god of the Romans, and of Rhea Silvia, the vestal who links Rome to Alba Longa; he asserts his supremacy over Latium, founds the city according to traditional rite on the 21st of April, dwells on the Palatine where his house is shown, and finally disappears in a cloud, becoming the indigenous deity of the fatherland. The same can be said of Numa as the institutor of priests and sacred rites. Naturally, the legend, in order to fulfill this normative function, exaggerates some elements, suppresses others, and connects places with precise memories relating to the hero it wishes to exalt. Even the epic legends have a historical basis insofar as they arise around a real event that they develop in a manner congenial to the character of the people and all redound to its honor, even if the events unfolded quite differently. Thus the episode of the rout at Roncevaux (778)—in which the rearguard of Charlemagne was defeated by the attack of the Basques—is attributed in the Chanson de Roland to the treachery of Ganelon, who, offended at being placed after Orlando, launches the Saracen army against it, against which the Emperor will finally win, exacting just vengeance on the traitor.VI. DIFFUSION OF THE LEGEND
Born within the people, the legend is carried about by shepherds, merchants, soldiers, and pilgrims. Centers of encounter and diffusion are inns, monasteries, and shrines, where wayfarers stop and which become sites of fairs and markets, with the exhibition of songs that exalt the heroes or the titular saints of the locality. J. Bédier has shown that the chansons de geste spread precisely through the stages of pilgrimage sites: at Santiago de Compostela, Rome, and Jerusalem.Historical and epic legends remain alive until the abandonment or destruction of the places with which they are connected, the change of environments due to cultural progress, or the superimposition of other peoples. Once they have lost their privileged position, they may survive in popular tales or be rescued by the work of poets. Thus the deeds of the paladin Orlando and, in general, those of the Carolingian cycle live on, albeit altered, in the poems of Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto.
VII. HAGIOGRAPHIC LEGENDS
From Gr. ἄγιος = saint, they are legends of a supernatural kind that relate to the life and deeds of some martyr or hero of holiness. All normative religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) possess them, but Christianity has the greatest number and has subjected them to more careful and profound study.Even hagiographic legends, though containing fantastic elements, are connected to reality by some historical or topographical detail. Thus, in the Roman Forum, the Mamertine Prison gave rise to the legend of Peter’s imprisonment in that place, and, still in the valley of the Forum, within the church of Santa Maria Nova, the slab is preserved with the supposed impressions of the knees of St Peter, who, while praying there, is said to have overcome Simon Magus, who had claimed to fly by virtue of magic.
Hagiographic legend can transfer to Christian figures older elements, even non-Christian ones, without much concern for geography or history. Thus the significant legend of the Domine quo vadis may have been localized at that point on the Appian Way because nearby was the sanctuary of the god Rediculus, which recalled a beneficial return for the city—that is, Hannibal’s advance (though in reality not from that place) against Rome. Likewise, an adaptation of the legend of Buddha is that of Sts Barlaam and Josaf (= Bodhisattva); Josaf, a young son of an Indian king, by his father’s order lives isolated in a palace of delights that must hide from him the pain of the world; one day, secretly leaving it, he encounters, as in the legend of Buddha, a blind man, a leper, and a corpse, and is disturbed by them; but the Christian ascetic Barlaam, in the guise of a merchant, presents himself to him, converts him to Christianity, and persuades him to devote himself to the ascetic life in the desert (v. BARLAAM AND JOSAF).
For the sources, method, various periods, and the work of historical criticism concerning Christian legends, V. HAGIOGRAPHY. For the Acts of the Martyrs, which constitute the basis of the legendary material, their classification according to regions of origin, and their varying historical value, V. ACTS OF THE MARTYRS.