25 6 POPULAR BELIEFS. 



with him. His name was no longer Joseph or Cartaphilus, but Ahasuerus. 

 He appeared to be fifty years of age ; his hair was long, and he went 

 barefoot ; his dress consisted of very full breeches, a short petticoat 

 coming to the knee, and a cloak descending to his heel. He was present 

 at the Catholic sermon, notwithstanding his creed, and prostrated himself, 

 with sighs and tears and beating of the breast, whenever the holy name of 

 Jesus was pronounced. His speech was very edifying ; he could not hear 

 an oath without bursting into tears, and when offered money would only 

 accept a few sous. The story of his meeting our Lord, as related by Bishop 

 Paul of Eitzen, differed from the original account so far as this, that he was 

 standing in front of his house, with his wife and children, when he roughly 

 entreated Jesus, who had halted to take breath while carrying his cross to 

 Calvary. " I shall stop and be at rest," was the indignant reply of the King 

 of the Jews, " but you will be ever on foot." After this decree he quitted 

 his house and family, to do penitence by wandering over the world. He did 

 not know what God intended to do with him, in compelling him to lead so 

 long this miserable life. In the sixteenth century there was not a town or 

 village but what claimed to have given hospitality to the unfortunate witness 

 of Christ's passion ; and yet, whenever his appearance was announced in any 

 place, it was believed to foreshadow great calamities. Thus the Wandering 

 Jew was believed to have been seen at Beauvais, Noyon, and several towns 

 in Picardy when Ravaillac assassinated Henry IV. 



Another superstition, not less popular than that of the Wandering Jew 

 in the Middle Ages, may also perhaps be attributed to the same origin ; 

 namely, the Prester John, a sort of pontiff-king, half Jew, half Christian, who 

 for centuries had governed in India, or in Abyssinia, a vast empire in which 

 the hand of God had collected more marvels than in the paradise of Mahomet 

 (Fig. 186). It was an Armenian bishop, too, who brought to Europe the 

 first story as to the fabulous personage, and many a traveller, chronicler, and 

 poet capped it with still more wonderful details. In 1507 a letter (evidently 

 written ironically by a partisan of the Reformation) was put into circulation, 

 in which Prester John, who entitled himself, by the grace of God, the 

 Almighty King of all the Christian kings, after making an orthodox profession of 

 faith, invited Pope Julius II. and King Louis XII. to come and settle in his 

 States, which he described as the most favoured upon the face of the earth. 

 The descriptions which he gave of them were very tempting, and it is even 



