Note 531 — PART III MOSLEM FEATURES IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS PRECURSORY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY

The miraculous lighting of the altar lamps, witnessed by St. Brandan on the isle of the monks, is, as De Goeje has pointed out (loc. cit. 55), modelled upon the similar miracle performed each Easter Eve in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. But the author of the tale need not necessarily have seen the miracle himself, nor heard of it from an eye-witness, in 1,000 A.D., as De Goeje suggests. The news may have been transmitted to him through an Arabic medium, for as early as the eighth century Al Jahiz relates the miracle in his Hayawan, IV, 154.