Читать книгу Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race - M. I. Ebbutt - Страница 24

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IT would seem that the Emperor Constantine the Great loomed very large in the eyes of mediæval England. Even in Anglo-Saxon times many legends clustered round his name, so that Cynewulf, the religious poet of early England, wrote the poem of “Elene” mainly on the subject of his conversion. The story of the Vision of the Holy Cross with the inscription In hoc signo vinces was inspiring to a poet to whom the heathen were a living reality, not a distant abstraction; and Constantine’s generosity to the Church of Rome and its bishop Sylvester added another element of attraction to his character in the mediæval mind. It is hardly surprising that other legends of his conversion and generosity should have sprung up, which differ entirely from the earlier and more authentic record. Thus “the moral Gower” has preserved for us an alternative legend of the cause of Constantine’s conversion, which forms a good illustration of the virtue of pity in the “Confessio Amantis.” Whence this later legend sprang we have no knowledge, for nothing in the known history of Constantine warrants our regarding him as a disciple of mercy, but its existence shows that the mediæval mind was busied with his personality. Another most interesting proof of his importance to Britain is given in the following legend of “The Dream of Maxen Wledig,” preserved in the “Mabinogion.” This belongs to the Welsh patriotic legends, and tends to glorify the marriage of the British Princess Helena with the Roman emperor, by representing it as preordained by Fate. The fact that the hero of the Welsh saga is the Emperor Maxentius instead of Constantius detracts little from the interest of the legend, which is only one instance of the well-known theme of the lover led by dream, or vision, or magic glass to the home and heart of the beloved.