Five-minute digest
Christ Legends
Summary
Christ Legends is a book of eleven stories in which the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf retells and invents legends about the life of Jesus, from the night of His birth to the Crucifixion and after. Some come from old Christian tradition, some from folk tales, and some are her own; all are told in a simple, warm voice suited to reading aloud. The book opens with The Holy Night, framed by Lagerlöf's memory of her grandmother, who died when she was five. On a Christmas Day when the household has gone to church, the grandmother tells how a poor man went begging fire to warm his wife and newborn child. A surly shepherd's dogs will not bite him, the thrown staff swerves, and the live coals he carries in his mantle do not burn him. When the shepherd, moved at last, gives a sheepskin for the child, his eyes are opened and he sees angels everywhere. In The Emperor's Vision an old sibyl shows Augustus, about to be honored as a god on the Capitoline Hill, a baby in a stable, and he builds an altar to the Child instead. In The Wise Men's Well a personified Drought tells three strangers how three poor wise men lost the Star through pride and found it again reflected in the well; the strangers are the Magi, who refill it with water from Paradise. Bethlehem's Children follows a Roman soldier who serves Herod and pursues the Holy Family into the desert, but finds he cannot kill the sleeping Child who once did him a kindness. In The Flight into Egypt an ancient palm bows to give the Child its dates. In Nazareth shows the five-year-old Jesus making clay birds beside the boy Judas; when Judas stamps on them, Jesus bids His birds fly. In the Temple sends the twelve-year-old wandering the Temple courts until He sounds a great trumpet no one else can lift. Saint Veronica's Kerchief, the longest story, follows old Faustina from the diseased Emperor Tiberius on Capri to Jerusalem in search of a healer; she arrives on the day of the Crucifixion and brings back a cloth bearing His face, which heals the Emperor. Robin Redbreast explains how a gray bird got its red breast by pulling a thorn from the brow of the Crucified One. Our Lord and Saint Peter tells how Peter's mother, lifted from hell by an angel, falls when she pushes away the souls who cling to her. The Sacred Flame closes the book with Raniero di Raniero, a quarrelsome Florentine crusader gentled by carrying a candle lit at the Holy Sepulchre all the way home. Kristuslegender appeared in Stockholm in 1904. Velma Swanston Howard's English translation, with decorations by Bertha Stuart, was published by Henry Holt in New York in 1908.
Top Lessons
Eyes that can see
In The Holy Night the shepherd cannot see the angels until he does one merciful thing. The grandmother teaches that seeing God's glory is not a matter of lamps or candles but of a softened heart.
Pride hides the Star
The wise men of The Wise Men's Well lose the Star when they scorn a poor Child in a cave, and find it again only when they are humbled. Augustus, too, learns that the true God is the baby in the stable, not the emperor on the hill.
Small creatures, great love
A little bird, an old palm tree and clay cuckoos all serve the Child in these stories. Robin Redbreast, shy and weak, still does what he can for the suffering Lord, and is marked forever by that love.
Saving yourself alone
In Our Lord and Saint Peter, Peter's mother could have been lifted to Paradise with others clinging to her, but she pushes them all away and falls. The legend teaches that a selfish heart cannot rise.
Verified Quotes
“When I was five years old I had such a great sorrow! I hardly know if I have had a greater since.”
“What kind of a night is this, when the dogs do not bite, the sheep are not scared, the staff does not kill, or the fire scorch?”
Frequently cited
“It is not revealed by the light of lamps or candles, and it does not depend upon sun and moon; but that which is needful is, that we have such eyes as can see God’s glory.”
“In place of it he built a sanctuary to the new-born God-Child, and called it Heaven’s Altar”
“There are things which are drier than the desert sands, but there is nothing more barren than the human heart.”
“What would happen to any one of us who undertook to compete with one who paints with sunbeams and blows the breath of life into dead clay?”
“Even if I am little and weak, I can still do something for this poor tortured one,”
“The bees and the lilies have requited his good deeds,”
Medical Lens
The legends are devotional, but two touch the history of disease as a literary motif. In The Wise Men's Well one of the three poor sages is shunned for leprosy and is made whole by the Child, following the Gospel pattern of healing the leper. In Saint Veronica's Kerchief Tiberius suffers a disfiguring disease, said to come from the East, that changes his features and voice and rots his fingers and toes; the description resembles leprosy, though the story does not name it. Lagerlöf has the illness rooted in the Emperor's contempt for mankind and lifted when he feels compassion, a moral and spiritual account of healing rather than a medical one.
- The Wise Men's Well
The three wise men of Gebas, one old, one leprous and one scorned as a foreigner, are healed and renewed by the Child.
- Saint Veronica's Kerchief, sections III–IV and IX
The Emperor's disfiguring illness, the despair of his physicians and court, and his healing on seeing the kerchief.