Sharku:
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Catholic saints legends and Tolkien's Legendarium have one fundamental thing in common: both are completely fictitious.
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I see your point and I also see the nuance you attempted to place upon legends.
I would still disagree that theses 'legends' [and who is to say which Catholic Saints lives are true and which are legends?] of the Catholic saints 'are completely fictitious'. Let us take the voyage of St. Brendan, do think this was 'complete;y fictitious' or as is to me extremely likely to be based largely on real events, adding in to the mix, religious visions, halucinations based on dehydration or somesuch. Let us take St. George [ although I would classify him as an Orthodox and not a Catholic saint] and the 'dragon'. You do not think St. George met somethhing? It is completely fictitious?
If you are insinuating that any miraculous occurance [ such as we see in the New Testament say with jesus multiplying Loagves and fishes, or walkind on water] is fictitious, then please state so clearly.
If you are on the other hand stating that there is legend and myth contained within the lives of some of the Catholic saints, then you picked I think an over-reaching staement to do that.
As for the religous underpinning of the legendarium, one need only look at the Athrabeth ah Finrod Andreth in HoME 10 wherein Finrod hypothesises that the creator himself would have to be incarnate in order to heal the hurts of Arda.
In that dialog between an elf and a mortal woman we see JRRT dealing with essential [central] themes of both the Old and New testemant themes. The fall of man from his original immortality, and the redemption of all of creation by the Incarnation of God.
There is no allegory, it is a direct reference.
There is no question that as JRRT aged the legendarium became ever more closely linked with religious truth as understood by a traditional Roman Catholic.
The seeds of this can clearly be discerned [to anyone not pre-disposed to disregard them] in the LotR and more obviously so in the published Silmarillion.
[ January 08, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]