82. him, i. e. Jacobus Januensis. at the, &c., out of reverence for the saint.
83. hir legende, her (St. Cecilia's) legend as told in the Aurea Legenda. But cf. note to l. 349.
85. The five stanzas in ll. 85-119 really belong to the Legend itself, and are in the original Latin. Throughout the notes to the rest of this Tale I usually follow the 2nd edition of the Legenda Aurea, cap. clxix, as edited by Dr. Th. Grässe; Leipsic, 1850.
87. Several of the Legends of the Saints begin with ridiculous etymologies. Thus the Legend of St. Valentine (Aur. Leg. cap. xlii) begins with the explanation that Valentinus means ualorem tenens, or else ualens tyro. So here, as to the etymology of Caecilia, we are generously offered five solutions, all of them being wrong. As it is hopeless to understand them without consulting the original, I shall quote as much of it as is necessary, arranged in a less confused order. The true etymology is, of course, that Caecilia is the feminine of Caecilius, a name borne by members of the Caecilia gens, which claimed descent from Caeculus, an ancient Italian hero, son of Vulcan, who is said to have founded Praeneste. Caeculus, probably a nickname, can hardly be other than a mere diminutive of caecus, blind. The legendary etymologies are right, accordingly, only so far as they relate to caecus. Beyond that, they are strange indeed.
The following are the etymologies, with their reasons.
(1) Caecilia = coeli lilia (sic), i. e. hevenes lilie. Reasons:—'Fuit enim coeleste lilium per uirginitatis pudorem; uel dicitur lilium, quia habuit candorem munditiae, uirorem conscientiae, odorem bonae famae.' See ll. 87-91. Thus grene (= greenness) translates uirorem.
(2) Caecilia = caecis uia, i. e. the wey to blinde, a path for the blind. Reason:—'Fuit enim caecis uia per exempli informationem.' See ll. 92, 93.
(3) Caecilia is from caelum and lya. 'Fuit enim ... coelum (sic) per iugem contemplationem, lya per assiduam operationem.' Here lya is
the same as Lia, which is the Latin spelling of Leah in the Book of Genesis. It was usual to consider Leah as the type of activity, or the Active Life, and Rachel as the type of the Contemplative Life. See Hampole's Prose Treatises, ed. Perry (E. E. T. S.), p. 29, where the comparison is attributed to St. Gregory. 'Lya is als mekill at say as trauyliose, and betakyns actyfe lyfe.'
(4) Caecilia, 'quasi caecitate carens.' This is on the celebrated principle of 'lucus a non lucendo.' Reason:—'fuit caecitate carens per sapientiae splendorem.' See ll. 99-101.