M. Champollion explains with probability the hieroglyphic of the

two serpents, each with the human head, seen in the church of St. Laurence at Grenoble, by the proverb " Serpens et draco devorabunt urbem," rendered by the vulgar tongue into these two verses : —
" Lo serpein et lo dragon Metront Grenoble en savon,"
alluding to the situation of the town at the mouth of the Drac (Draco), in the Isère, represented by the serpent whose sinewy windings are pretty well imitated by the course of this river. f The comparison between the windings of a river and the writhings of a serpent are, indeed, as frequently found in common language, and in ordinary names as in poetical metaphors. Near to Heleno- Pole, a town in Bythinia, flows the river Draco, Dragon ; this name says ProcopiusJ was given to it from its numerous windings which obliged travellers to cross it twenty times together. It is doubt- less for a similar reason, that a river which rises in Mount Vesu- vius and waters the walls of Nuceria (Nocera), received the name of dragon. ||
This explanation is strengthened by a confession, the more remarkable, because the author, with whom it originated, had col- lected and tendered as positive facts, all the popular stories of dragons and monstrous serpents which, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, were broached in the interior of Switzer-
* Description of the actual State of Peru, extracted from the Mercurio Peruviano. — Annals of Travel, by M. Malte-Brun, vol. 1. p. 92.
f Dissertation upon a Subterraneous Monument existing in Grenoble, in 4to. année xn. — Encyclopedical Magazine, ixth year, vol. v. pp. 442 — 443.
X Procop. De édifie. Justin, lib. v. cap. n.
|| Procop. Hist. Miscell. lib. i. cap. lv.
282 ILLUSTRATIONS.
land. Scheuchzer* allows that the name of Drach (Draco) was frequently given to impetuous torrents which suddenly burst forth like avalanches.
The dragon, the multitude would then exclaim, has made an irrup- tion (Erupit Draco). The cavity in which the torrent rose, or that in which the waters were absorbed, were consequently naturally called the Dragon's hole, or the Dragon's Marsh, names which we find in many places celebrated by some one or other of the legends which have occupied our attention. In spite of the pro- bability which many of these affinities present, two grave objec- tions refute the system they are destined to establish.
Firstly. — If it is as easy for a supernatural power to arrest the inundations of a river, or the sea, as to put to death a monstrous serpent, such a comparison cannot be applied to the limited strength of an ordinary man. Now, in these legends we shall see figuring chevaliers, soldiers, banished men, and obscure malefactors, who no celestial grace could have called out to work miracles. And who can be persuaded that a single individual, whatever may be his zeal or his power, would be able to turn back into their beds the Loire and the Garonne, widely inundating the plains with their waters ?
Secondly. — The multitude of the legends does not allow us to suppose that, in times and places so different, it would have been agreed to represent by the same emblem, events, which although similar, yet were peculiar to each period. An emblem always the same, supposes a fact, or rather an allegory received in all ages and in all places. Such as that of the triumph obtained of the principle of good and light over the principle of evil and darkness represented by the serpent.
* Scheuchzer. Itinera per Helvetia Alpinas Regiones, Sfc. torn. m. pp. 377 —397. Vide pp. 396 et pp. 383, 384, 389, 390.
ILLUSTRATIONS. 283
§ IV.
THE LEGEND OF THE SERPENT HAS BEEN TRANSPORTED FROM ASTRONOMICAL PICTURES INTO MYTHOLOGY AND HISTORY.
We shall not here retrace, in its details, the astronomical picture of this triumph so frequently renewed. Let us only observe that three accessory objects are grouped, almost always with the principal subject : namely a virgin, a young girl, or a woman ; a precipice, a cavern, or a grotto ; and the sea ; a river, a fountain, or a well* We find one part of this legend put into operation, if I may so express myself, in the manner in which the sacred dragons of Epirus, Phrygia, and Lanuvium received their food. It was carried to them in their cavern by a young girl, who was exposed to terrible punishment if she was not a virgin. f A woman also, the magician, whom the unfortunate Dido expressed a desire to consult, presented the nourishment to the sacred dragon which guarded the Hesperides.J
The Greek mythology is rich in legends, the astronomical origin of which is not dubious. Is it necessary to explain why a serpent or a dragon figures so often in the celestial planisphere ? In the war of the gods against the giants, an enormous serpent attacked Minerva. The virgin goddess seized the monster and threw it towards the heavens, where it became fixed among the stars. || Ceres placed in the heavens one of the dragons that drew her chariot. Triopas having offended the same divinity, the goddess punished him first by the torment of an insatiable hunger, and then put him to death by a dragon, which from that
* A. Lenoir. Du Dragon de Metz, &çc. Mémoires de V Académie Celtique. tome ii. pp. 5 et 6.
t Aelian. De Nat. Animal, lib. xi. cap. n. et xvi. — Propert. lib. iv. Eleg. vin.
X Virgil. ^Eneid. lib. iv. vers. 483—485.
|| Hygin. Poet. Asironom. Serpens,
284 ILLUSTRATIONS.
time took a place with her in the heavens. According to other mythologists, Phorbas, the son of Triopas, merited this honour, for having delivered the island of Rhodes from a monstrous ser- pent. Some observe in the constellation of Ophiucus, Hercules upon the borders of the river Sagaris, vanquishing the serpent which Omphalus had commanded him to combat.*
Themis, the heavenly virgin, answered the petitions of mortals at Delphi. Python, the monstrous dragon approached, and the oracle was deserted ; nor did any one dare to resort to it until Apollo (the sun) had pierced Python with his irresistible arrows. f Let us observe that the tradition in these narrations, does not omit the divine nature of the dragon. Apollo after having destroyed the monster was obliged to submit himself to a religious aspiration ; and the sacred serpents of the Epirus were supposed to have owed their being to Python. J
Near the river in Colchis, Jason, assisted by Medea, who was yet a virgin, triumphed over the dragon which guarded the golden fleece. Hercules and Perseus delivered Hesione and Andromeda, virgins who were exposed as prey to the voracity of a sea monster. A woman learned in the arts of enchantment saved the inhabitants of Tenos, by destroying a dragon that threatened to depopulate their island. ||
According to a legend, preserved by the Christian faith in the figurative sense only, but adopted literally by painters, and which has a host of believers, St. Michael felled to the ground, and pinned down with his lance, a dragon which was vomited forth from the infernal pit, and which was the same that, according to Dupuis, in the Apocalypse, pursued the heavenly virgin. Half- a- mile on the road to Baruth (the ancient Berythe), is to be seen the cavern
* Hygin. Poet. Astronom. Ophiucus. t Pausanias. Photic, cap. v.
J^Aelian. Var. Hist. lib. m. cap. i, etc. De Nat. Animal, lib. xi. cap. u. — Plutarch. De Oracul. Defectu.
|| Arist. De Mir alii. Auscult.
ILLUSTRATIONS. 285
where dwelt the dragon killed by St. George, at the moment when about to devour the daughter of the King of the country.* According to another legend, it was on the borders of a lake, the asylum of this monster, that St. George saved the King's daughter and twelve other virgins, whom an oracle had commanded to be given up to this horrible drag on. f
Almost all mythologies contain, with some variations, the same legend ; and, we may add, in how many of the Greek myths may it not be traced ! Hercules, conqueror of the dragon of the garden
* Voyages de Villamont (1613). liv. in. p. 561. — Thévenot. Relation d'un Voyage fait au Levant, etc. 4to. Paris, 1668. p. 442.
f Memoirs and Observations made by a Traveller in England. (La Have, 1698. pp. 214—232.) This work is attributed to Max. Misson.
As this celebrated religious hero, St. George, is the patron Saint of England, it is proper that some account of him should be here given. He was born in Cappa- docia, of noble Christian parents. After the death of his father he went into Palestine with his mother, who had a considerable estate there, which fell to him. He became a soldier, and after having served as a Tribune, he was raised to the rank of a Colonel, and afterwards to higher rank, by the Emperor Diocle- tian, as a reward for his courage and conduct. But being equally strong in his faith, he threw up all his well-merited honours when that Emperor began lus persecutions of Christianity ; an act, in conjunction with his reprobation of the Emperor's cruelties, which cost him his life. He was thrown into pri- son, and cruelly tortured, and on the following day he was beheaded.
St. George became the patron Saint of military men ; and, like all the other Saints of the Romish calendar, did many wondrous acts and performed many miracles, both during his life and after his death : hence churches were erected in honour of him in various parts of Europe. He was constituted the patron Saint of England by our first Norman Kings ; and, under his name, Edward III. instituted the most noble order of knighthood in Europe. The promulgation of the pretended apparition of St. George to Richard I. in his Saracenic expe- dition, had such a beneficial effect on the spirits of his troops, as insured them victory. He is usually represented on horseback, slaying a dragon, an emble- matical representation of his Christian fortitude in overcoming the Devil, the arch-dragon. — Ed. — See Butler's Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, 8fc.
286 ILLUSTRATIONS.
of Hesperides, a monster whose defeat was followed by the disco- very of a fountain till then unknown ; again, a dragon dwelt in a gloomy cavern, and guarded the fountain of Mars, until killed by Cadmus, who was himself afterwards transformed into a serpent ; and it was a dragon from which Diomedes, on his return from Troy, delivered the Corcyreans.* Cenchreus was implored by the inhabitants of Salamis to be their King, as a reward for his victory over a dragon that had devastated their territories. f
Upon a monument discovered in Thebes, Anubis is represented, as St. Michael and St. George are in Christian paintings, armed in a cuirass, and having in his hand a lance, with which he pierces a monster that has the head and tail of a serpent. %
In a succession of narrations, the marvellous portions of which have been principally borrowed by their compilers from the ancient mythology of Hindustan, we see some monstrous figures : now in the form of enormous serpents ;|| then as gigantic dragons, flapping their tails against their scaly sides ;§ and having their voracity yearly satiated by young virgins, but yielding to the valiant attacks of warriors aided by supernatural powers, at the very moment when the king's daughter is about to become their victim.
Chederles, a hero revered among the Turks, we are told " killed a monstrous dragon, and saved the life of a young girl exposed to its fury. After having drunk of the waters of a river which rendered him immortal, he traversed the world upon a steed
* Heraclides. in Politiis.
f Noël. Dictionnaire de la Fable, art. Cenchreus.
% A. Lenoir. Du Dragon de Metz, etc. Mémoires de V Académie Celtique, tome ii, pp. 11 — 12.
|| The Thousand and One Nights, translation of Ed. Gauthier. 7 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1822—1823. vol. v. pp. 425—426.
§ Ibid, tome vi. pp. 303—305. et tome v. pp. 423—424.
ILLUSTRATIONS. 287
as immortal as himself."* The commencement of this recital recals to mind the Hindoo myths and the fables of Hercules and Perseus. The termination may be regarded as an emblem of the sun, the immortal traveller, who ceases not his revolutions around the earth.
Among the figures sculptured on a granite block, discovered in the deserted town of Palenqui-Viejo, was remarked a serpent, from the throat of which issued the head of a woman, f One is tempted to connect this emblem to the legends of monstrous dragons. It is, at least, difficult not to imagine that the legend had passed into the New World. The Caribbees believe that the Supreme Being made his Son descend from heaven, in order to kill a dragon, which, by its ravages, desolated the nations of Guiana.J The monster succumbed ; and the Caribbees sprung from the worms generated in the decomposition of its corpse ; and on this account they regard all those nations with whom the cruel monster had formerly waged cruel war as their enemies. At first sight this is but the myth of Python ; but what are we to think of the strange origin that the Caribbees attribute to themselves ? We can but suppose that they had formerly received this tradition from a nation superior to themselves in strength, who wished to humiliate and degrade them ; and that they had preserved it from custom, and to justify their national hatreds and thirst for conquest. A no less singular belief is to be found among the same people. The Caribbees of Dominica assert that a monster, having its re- treat in a precipice surrounded by rocks, bore upon its head a stone as brilliant as a carbuncle, from which issued so bright a light that the neighbouring rocks were illumined by it.|| Similar legends have for a long time been received in countries with
* Dictionnaire de la Fable, art. Chederles. f Revue Encyclopédique, tome xxxi. p. 850. X Noël. Dictionnaire de la Fable, art. Cosmogonie Américaine. || Rochefort. Histoire Naturelle et Morale des Isles Antilles. (Rotterdam 1658), p. 21.
288 ILLUSTRATIONS.
which it is supposed the Caribbees could not have had any com- munication.
At some period, which chronologists have had pretensions enough to fix, St. Margaret overcame a dragon, and from the head of the monster this virgin, afterwards raised to a heavenly abode, extracted a ruby, or carbuncle, an emblem of the brilliant star of the northern crown (Margarita), placed in the heavens near the head of the serpent.
In the history of Dieudonné of Gozon, we find mention also of a stone taken from the head of the dragon killed by this hero at Rhodes, and preserved, it is said, in his family. It was the size of an olive, and displayed many brilliant colours.*"
Two Helvetian traditions describe a serpent offering to a man a precious stone, as a token of homage and gratitude.f Faithful to these old superstitions, the popular language of the Jura still designates under the name of voupvre, a winged and immortal ser- pent, the eye of which is a diamond .|
Pliny, Isidorus, and Solinus|| speak of the precious stone which the dragon carries in its head. An eastern story teller, § who des- cribes a miraculous stone, the real carbuncle that shines in dark- ness, states that it is only to be found in the head of the dragon, the hideous inhabitant of the island of Serendib (Ceylon) . Phi- lostratus also assures us that in India a precious stone, concealed in the heads of dragons, was endowed with a powerful brilliancy and wonderful magical virtues.^
That error which, by transforming an astronomical allegory into a physical fact, decorated the heads of serpents with a brilliant
* Dictionnaire de Moréri. art. Gozon (Dieudonné). Gozon died in 1353.
t Scheuchzer. Itinerar. per Helvet. Alp. reg. tome ni. pp. 381 — 383.
% Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires, tome vi. p. 217.
|| Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvu. cap. x. Isidor. Hispal. Origin, lib. xvi. cap. xiii. Solin. cap. xxxiii.
§ Stories of Cheikh El Mohdy, translated from the Arabian by J. J. Marcel. 1833.
If Philostrat. De Vit. Apollon, lib. ni. cap. II.
1LLUSTRATATI0NS. 289
stone, had its rise in a great antiquity. " Although the serpent has a ruby in its head, it is, nevertheless, injurious," says a Hindoo philosopher, who has collected into his proverbs the precepts of the most ancient times.* This legend, arising from the figurative expressions of the relative positions the constellations of Perseus, the Whale, the Crown, and the Serpent occupy in the heavens, has been, we have seen, first connected with the victory of the spring sun over winter, and of light over darkness. The car- buncle, or ruby, which there held its place, and with which Ovid decorated the palace of the sun,f was, in fact, consecrated to that orb from its colour of flaming red. J
§V.
THE SAME LEGEND CREPT INTO CHRISTIANITY, ESPECIALLY AMONG THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST.
As long as oppressed Christianity strove in secret against Poly- theism, its worship, no less austere than its code of morals, only admitted in its ceremonies, still concealed by the aid of mystery,
* Proverbs of Barthoveri, etc. inserted in the work of Abraham Roger. The Theatre of Idolatry ; or, the Door Opened, etc. : a French translation, 1 vol. 4to. (1760). p. 328.
f Flammasque imitante pyropo.
Ovid. Metamorph. lib. n. ver. n.
% The Cardinal Dailly and Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, said Cartaut of La Villate, distributed the planets among the different religions. The sun fell to the lot of the Christian religion. It is for that reason we have always held the sun in singular veneration ; that the town of Rome is called the solar town ; and that the Cardinals who reside there are habited in red, the colour of the sun. {Critical Thoughts on Mathematics). 1 vol. 12mo. Paris, 1752 ; with permission and approbation.
In India an idea universally prevails that a stone exists in the head of serpents ; and the snake charmers pretend to extract it from the head of the Cobra de Capella. — Ed.
VOL. II. U
290 ILLUSTRATIONS.
simple rites, unencumbered by material representation. The researches and cruelties of persecutors could only tear from the Faithful their holy books and sacred vases ; they had few or no images.*
But public worship could ill dispense with remarkable outward and visible signs : for, in the midst of a large assembly, words could hardly be conveyed to the ears of all the audience, but the images would speak to the eyes of all ; they could awaken the most natural, the most universal inclinations. The multitude, therefore, delight in the magnificence of religious acts, and think that it cannot multiply too many images.
This would necessarily happen, even to Christianity, when (on the ruins of Polytheism) it publicly established its temples and worship. The progress was much more rapid, because the reli- gion of Christ succeeded a religion rich in pomp and emblems ; and it feared to repulse, by too rigid a simplicity, men accustomed to see and to touch what they believed in and worshipped.
Hence, as it was difficult to destroy and utterly to proscribe the former objects of a veneration, the Christians often preferred appropriating them to their own faith. More than one temple was changed into a church ; more than the name of one God was honoured as the name of a Saint ; and an immense number of images and legends passed without difficulty into the new faith, and were preserved by the ancient respect of the new believers.
The legend of a heavenly being overcoming a serpent, the prin- ciple of evil, was conformable to the language, the spirit, and the origin of Christianity. It was received, therefore, and reproduced in the religious paintings and ceremonies of the early Christians. St. Michael, the first of the archangels, was presented to the eyes of the faithful, piercing the infernal dragon, the enemy of the human race.f
* Encyclop. Method. Théologie, art. Images.
f This mode of representing the triumph of the faithful over the evil prin- ciple was general over every Christian country in the middle ages. The ser- pent, or dragon, was usually placed in the painting or the sculpture, under
ILLUSTRATIONS. 291
In the fifth century in France,* and rather later in the West, were established the processions known by the name of Rogations.f For three days the image of a dragon, and winged serpent were presented to the observation of the faithful ; and his defeat was depicted by the ignominious manner in which he was borne about on the third day. J
The celebration of the Rogation varied according to the Dioceses, from the first days of Ascension week to the last days of the week
the feet of the Saint : hut the populace could not understand the allegory . and as it was the interest of the monks to nourish their credulity, a fable or legend was attached to these representations, detailing the victory of the Saint over a true dragon or a real serpent. Thus, the allegorical representation of the patron Saint of England, St. George, destroying the dragon, is still ex- tensively believed by the multitude as the record of a real victoiy over a material dragon : and to prove how eager the monks were to maintain the belief, " the monks in Mount St. Michael, in France, did not hesitate to ex- hibit, as pious relics, the sword and shield with which St. Michael, the Arch- angel, combated the dragon of the Revelations." a — Ed.
* Saint Mammert, Bishop of Vienna in Dauphiny, instituted the Rogations in 468 or 474. Encyclop. Method. Théologie, art. Rogations.
f The fasts termed Rogations were established by St. Mammestus on the occasion of an assumed miracle, said to have been performed through the in- fluence of his prayers. A terrible fire broke out and raged in the city of Vienne, in Dauphiny, where he was Archbishop, in spite of every effort to ex- tinguish it ; but suddenly went out in consequence of the prayers of the Saint : and the same result followed his supplications on the occurrence of a second great fire, which alarmed the city more than the first. The worthy Prelate then formed the design of instituting an annual fast and supplication of three days to appease the Divine wrath, by fasting, prayers, tears, and the confes- sions of sins.b This fast gradually extended to other churches ; hence, we find the Rogations kept in many other parts besides Vienne ; but why the proces- sion of the Dragon was engrafted upon those of the Rogations does not ap- pear.— Ed.
X Guill. Durant. Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. fol. 1479. folio 226 recto.
a Foreign Quarterly Review, vol, xxxvi. p. 331.
b Butler's Lives of Fathers, Sfc,
u 2
292 ILLUSTRATIONS.
of Pentecost. It corresponds to the time in which, the first half of the Spring being passed, the victory of the sun over winter is fully achieved, even in our cold and rainy climate. It is difficult not to perceive an intimate connection between the legends of the allegorical dragon and that period in which its appearance was each year renewed.
Other circumstances increase the strength of this argument. In the sixth century, St. Gregory the Great ordered that Saint Mark's day, 25th April, should be annually celebrated by a pro- cession similar to that of the Rogation. The origin of this cere- mony was as follows. Rome was desolated by an extraordinary inundation. The Tiber rose like an immense sea to the upper windows of the temples. Innumerable serpents, it is said, have emerged from the overflowing waters of the river, and finally an immense dragon,* a new Python, was born of this new deluge .f Its breath infected the air and engendered a pestilential diseased by which the inhabitants were cut off by thousands. An annual proeession perpetuated the remembrance of the scourge and of its cessation obtained by the prayers of the Pope and his flock. The date of the 25th of April, less distant than that of the Rogations from the equinox, is suitable to a country in which the spring is always more forward than in Gaul.
Whether by chance or by calculation, those people who trans- ported to Lima under a southern hemisphere the Tarasque, the dragon of a northern nation, have fixed it on the 7th of October, the fete day of St. Francis of Assisi. This period approaches
* Guill. Durant, fol. 225 verso. — Siffredi Presbiteri Mimensis. Epitome. lib. i. De Miro Prodigio.
f " Ut Noe Diluvium renovatum crederetur." Platina. De Vitis Max. Pontifie, in Pelag. II.
% " Pestis inguinaria seu inflatura inguinum." These are the expressions made use of by the author of the Rationale (loco citato) ; he adds, that the Pope Pelagius II., successor to St. Gregory the Great, suddenly died of the same disease, with seventy other persons, while in the midst of a procession.
ILLUSTRATIONS. 293
still nearer to the equinox of the Spring. But in equatorial countries, as under the moderate climate of Lima, the victory of the sun is not so long undetermined as in our northern regions where the first weeks of spring seem but a prolongation of winter. Pliny has spoken of a mysterious egg,* to the possession of which the Druids attributed great virtues, and which was formed by the concurrence of all the serpents of a country. The inhabi- tants of Sologne, the echo of the Druids after two thousand years have passed, assert, without doubting the antiquity of the myth, they repeat, that all the serpents of the country assemble to pro- duce an enormous diamond which, superior to the stone of Rhodes, reflects the liveliest colours of the rainbow. The day assigned for their miraculous production is the 13th of May,f a day belong- ing to the second half of the spring, like the days when the serpent of the Rogations was paraded. The epoch of this apparition furnishes us with a remark which is not devoid of interest. Its fixedness alone proves contrary to what we have hitherto advanced, that the dragon was not the emblem of inundations, of overflow- ings of rivers which could not every where have taken place on the same day. How then, it may be asked, came such an opinion to be established ? When the original emblem was lost, the atten- tion would naturally be arrested by a circumstance occurring in all the legends, which reproduced it, namely that the scene of action was always upon the shore of the sea, or banks of a river. The idea of the cessation of the ravages of the water must have ap- peared the more probable, from the procession of the dragon being regularly celebrated at a period of the year when the rivers, which had been swelled by the fall of snow, or the equinoxial rains, returned to their usual course.
* Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxix. cap. in.
f Légier (du Loiret). Traditions et usages de la Sologne, Mémoire de l'Académie celtique, tome il. pp. 215, 216.
294 ILLUSTRATIONS.
§ VI.
ALLEGORICAL EXPLANATIONS OF EMBLEMS IN WHICH THE FIGURE OF THE SERPENT OCCURRED.
Every church had its dragon. The emulation of exterior piety had, in these representations, the effect of making them excel in a desire to excite in the spectators sensations of admiration, astonishment, and fright. The visible part of the worship became soon the most important part of the religion to men who were solely attentive to that which struck their senses : the dragon in the Rogation processions was too remarkable not to attract the attention of the populace, and to usurp a prominent place in their belief. Each dragon had soon its peculiar legend, and these legends were multiplied without end. To those who would throw a doubt upon the probability of this cause we shall answer by one fact, that among the lives of the saints revered by the christians of the East, who did not adopt the institution of the Rogations, the victory achieved by a heavenly being over a serpent is rarely to be found.
The word dragon, contracted to that of Drac, designated a demon, a malevolent spirit, whom the credulous Provençal sup- posed to exist beneath the waters of the Rhone, and to feed upon the flesh of men. To act the drac was a term synonymous with doing as much evil* as the devil himself could be supposed to desire. Persons bitten by serpents were cured as soon as they approached the tomb of Saint Phoeas, owing to the victory which this Christian hero, by undergoing martyrdom, achieved over the devil, the old serpent. f "When in the eighth century, it was related that an enormous serpent had been found in the
* Du Cange. Glossar. verbo Dracus. — Millin. Travels in the interior of France, vol. III. pages 450 — 451.
t Gregor, Turon. De Miracul. lib. i. cap. xcix.
ILLUSTRATIONS. 295
tomb of Charles Martel,* was anything else meant, but the in- sinuation, than the demon had taken possession of this war- rior, who though he saved France, and probably Europe from the Mussulman yoke, had had the misfortune to thwart the ambition of the heads of the church, and the cupidity of the monks.
It seems then reasonable to believe, as the author of the Ratio- nalef expressly teaches, that the serpent or dragon carried in the processions of the Rogations, was the emblem of the infernal spirit, whose overthrow was supplicated from heaven ; and that this defeat was attributed to the saint more particularly revered by the faithful in each diocese and parish. This kind of explanation has been reproduced under different forms by sensible christians who could not believe, in a physical sense, recitals too often renewed ever to have been true.
The demon is vice personified ; victories achieved over vice may then have been figured by the same emblem. At Genoa, upon a small spot near the church of Saint Cyr is to be seen an ancient well, which, it is stated, formerly concealed a dragon, the breath of which was destructive to men and flocks. St. Cyr exorcised the monster, and forced him to come out of the well and to throw him- self into the sea.:}: This miracle is still represented in pictures, and is allegorically interpreted by the erudite as the victory achieved by this holy preacher over impiety and libertinism. The same inter- pretation might be applied to the triumph of Saint Marcel over the serpent that ravaged Paris, since they say : " This serpent first appeared outside the town near the tomb of a woman of quality who had lived an irregular life."||
* Mézérai. Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France, année 741. f Guill. Durant. Rationale divinorum officiorum. folio 226 recto. % Desertion of the Beauties of Genoa. 8vo. Genoa, 1781, pp. 39, 41. Millin. Travels in Savoy and Piémont, vol. n. p. 239.
|| Lives of the Saints for every Day in the Year, vol. n. p. 84.
296 ILLUSTRATIONS.