[Sidenote: Suggested origin of the custom.] Plausible as is this solution of the problem, it can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. Had this been the real origin of the privilege, we should expect to find the Ascension of Christ either plainly enacted, or at least distinctly alluded to in the ceremony; but this, so far as we can learn, was not so. Again, would it not savour of blasphemy to represent the sinless and glorified Redeemer by a ruffian stained with the blackest crimes? Moreover, the part played by the dragon in the legend and in the spectacle seems too important to allow us to explain it away, with Floquet, as a mere symbol of the suppression of paganism by St. Romain. The tale of the conquest of the dragon is older than Christianity, and cannot be explained by it. At Rouen the connexion of St. Romain with the story seems certainly to be late, but that does not prove the story itself to be late also. Judging from the analogy of similar tales elsewhere, we may conjecture that in the Rouen version the criminal represents a victim annually sacrificed to a water-spirit or other fabulous being, while the Christian saint has displaced a pagan hero, who was said to have delivered the victim from death and put an end to the sacrifice by slaying the monster. Thus it seems possible that the custom of annually pardoning a condemned malefactor may have superseded an older practice of treating him as a public scapegoat, who died to save the rest of the people. In the sequel we shall see that such customs have been observed in many lands. It is not incredible that at Rouen a usage of this sort should have survived in a modified shape from pagan times down to the twelfth century, and that the Church should at last have intervened to save the wretch and turn a relic of heathendom to the glory of God and St. Romain. But this explanation of the famous privilege of the _Fierte_ is put forward with a full sense of the difficulties attending it, and with no wish to dogmatise on so obscure a subject.[539]
Speaking of the one God who reveals himself in many forms and under many names, Augustine says: “_Ipse in aethere sit Jupiter, ipse in aëre Juno, ipse in mare Neptunus ... Liber in vineis, Ceres in frumentis, Diana in silvis_,” etc. (_De civitate Dei_, iv. 11).