The . The Monks and tJie Conversion of the Germans 113 The chief sources for the monastic life and the missions are the Lives of the Saints. These are usually very unsatisfactory, for they were in most cases written, or rewritten, long after the death of those whose history they tell. Moreover, their authors did not write with a view of describing in detail the situation and conduct of their heroes. ' The main object was to edify the reader, or to glorify the founder of a monastery by reciting the miracles he performed. Every saint must, like Elijah, raise the dead or, like Jesus, heal the sick, walk on the waves, quiet tempests, and predict future events. (See Molinier, 94 sqq., and Wattenbach, 7th ed., 124 sqq?) The greatest collection of the Lives of the Saints is the vast Acta Sanctorum, begun by the Jesuit, Bolland, in 1643. Although no less than sixty-two folio volumes have appeared in the past two hundred and sixty- five years, the series is not completed, and is now carried on with con- scientious care by a group of Jesuit scholars, commonly known as the Bollandists, from the father of their enterprise. The lives are not arranged historically, that is, in the order in which the saints lived, but follow the order of the saints' " days " as they appear in the church calendar. 1 Hence under January 5, for example, we find men as widely separated in time as St. Telesphorus (d. about 139), Simeon Stylites (d. 460), Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), and a certain St. Gerlach (d. about 1570). A new and perhaps overcritical edition of the more important lives for the history of the Merovingian period, is in the course of publication in the Monumenta. Of the Lives of the Saints for our period, the following in the Monu- menta may be especially noted : That of St. Caesarius of Aries (d. 542) was written almost immediately after his death ; Life of St. Columba by ADAMNANUS, a contemporary (see above, section B}; Life of St. Colum- ban by the monk JONAS (see above, section B}; Life of St. Gall, written in its original form before the end of the eighth century ; WILLIBALD, Life of St. Boniface, written before 786 ; Life of St. Sturmi, abbot of Fulda (d. 779), by a succeeding abbot, EIGIL (d. 822) (see extracts given above, pp. 107 sqq.). German translations of the Lives of St. Gall, Boni- face, Sturmi, and others of this period may be found in the Geschicht- schreiber der deutschen Vorzeit. A very remarkable and weighty source is a collection of the letters of Boniface and his successor, Lull, in the Monumenta. 1 The festival or " natal " day of a saint is usually the anniversary of his death, his true birthday into eternal life.
