VIRGIL, the Magician, is the character in which the great Roman poet presented him self to the popular imagination of the middle ages. The origin of this singular delusion may be thus explained. From a very early period—almost, we may say, from the age in which he flourished—Virgil was acknowledged to be the prince of Latin poets. His poems threw all others into the shade, and this, not so much because they exhibited a finer. and more original genius, as because their style was perfect, the subject of his magnum opus thoroughly national, and his immense historical and antiquarian lore devoted to the glorification of the Roman people. From him the grammarians selected the examples of their rules, and even composed treatises on special questions suggested by his poems. The rhetoricians, too, found there material for their themes and decla mations, and the later poets imitated his phraseology. Very soon the idea sprung up that in his verses there lay hidden quite a peculiar wisdom and mystic meaning. Thus it happened that, as early as the 3d and 4th c., even Christian authors (e.g., Minutius Felix, Lactantius, and Augustine) had contracted the habit of regarding him reveren tially, a feeling which, in its turn, induced them to use him for polemical, or at least theological purposes. Hence they sought to prove the beginning of the fourth eclogue a Messianic prediction, and would have it that Virgil foresaw the day of Christ. This view rooted itself so deeply, that Virgil and the Sibyl (q.v.) were actually introduced into the liturgy of the church, along with the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testa ment, and in the "mysteries" of the middle ages, arc frequently cited as bearing wit ness to a coming Messiah. Furthermore, when the first ages of polemical theology arrived, biblical critics and controversialists did not hesitate to quote .the verses of Virgil in elucidation of passages of Scripture, and in confirmation of their views, Later still, some of the scholastics endeavored to give a "moral" significance to the whole ./Ezu3id; and an epitome of sacred history even was manufactured out of its contents (see CaNTO). Another use, or rather misuse of the verse of Virgil had already begun during the Roman empire, and affords additional evidence of the superstitious reverence that was gradually encircling the name of the poet: we allude to the custom of trying to discover one's fortune by selecting lines at random from his epic. See SORTES BIBLICtE, SORTES VinGimaxzE. Ultimately, as may be seen from the Divina Oommedia of Dante, Virgil came to be considered as a representative of pure enlightened reason; a highly-gifted genius standing midway between paganism and Christianity.
We have remarked that this deep, half-religious veneiation for Virgil displayed itself at a very early period. Soon after his death, statues were erected,to his memory, even in the domestic chapels of the emperors; the anniversary of his birth was held sacred; pregnant women and poets made pilgrimages to his tomb, and hence it became inevit.
able that all sorts of myths should spring up and attach themselves to his history; but the predominant conception in the middle ages was that of a wise, pure, and patriotic teacher, endowed with magic power and lore—quite a different kind of being trom the evilly disposed and dreaded "sorcerer" of popular fancy. The Virgilian myths estab lished themselves more especially in connection with the places where he was born, where he chiefly lived, and where he died--Mantua, Rome, and Naples; and there they even yet survive, in some measure, on the lips of the people. But, curiously enough, it was not from the Italians, but foreigners, that they first obtained literary consideration. The oldest document bearing on the subject of which we have any knowledge, is the Ofia Imperalia of the Englishman, Gervase of Tilbury, who collected his stories from the mouths of the Neapolitan populace. A fuller account is to be found in the Citron icle of Arnold of ',neck, who got His information from Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim,. chancellor of the emperor Henry VI. These were followed by their contemporaries, Helinandus, whose legendary history of Virgil is embodied in the 6th book of Vincen tius Bellovacensis' Speculum ILWoriale, and the English monk, Alexander Neckam, in his De Naturis Berm, the best parts of which (relating to Viroil)are preserved in the repeatedly published Vits Philosophorum of Gualterus BurIwus. From these four main sources the later Virgilian myth-mongers have chiefly borrowed; of whom the two chiefly deserving notice are Buonamente Aliprando (author of a chronicle of Mantua in terra rima, about the beginning of the 15th c.), and the so-called Pseudo-Villani (author of Le Croniche dell' inclita cilia di Napoli (Naples, 1526). Particular stories and allusions are found pretty thickly scattered through the whole literature of the middle ages after the 13th century. The first complete collection, however, of the Virgilian myths was the French "people's hook," entitled Faictz Mareueilleux de Virgille, pub lished in the beginning of the 16th c., byJehan Trepperel at Paris, translations of which soon after appeared in Dutch and English. Even the distant Icelanders had heard of the great magician, and there still exists in MS. an Icelandic Virgilius-Saga. The greater part of the Virgilian myths collected in the "people's books" are of various ages and origin, and have come down to us in different forms. Some have decidedly been shaped after eastern models, but the majority arc of Catin and Italian growth.—See Zappert, Virgil's Fortleben im Mittelalter (Vienna, 1851); Siebenhaar, De Fabulis qua Media 4'tat4 de Virgilio circumferebantur (Berl. 1837); and Edelestand du peril, De VIrgile 1' Enchane teur in his Melanges Arcbeologigues et Litteraires (Par. 1850).