Gautama Buddha Beatified! The St Josaphat Story

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 7 pages

A short file on one of the odder transmissions in religious history. Barlaam and Josaphat was among the most widely disseminated of medieval religious romances, and it is a Christianised version of the story of Gautama Siddhartha, agreeing with it not only in outline but in essential detail. The Christian form first appears in Greek among the works of John of Damascus in the early eighth century, who had held high office at the court of the caliph al-Mansur before taking up monastic life.

The Greek story is summarised here: the king Abenner, long childless, is given a son of matchless beauty named Josaphat; astrologers foretell glory, and one adds that the glory will belong to another and higher kingdom, and that the boy will adopt the faith his father persecutes. Blavatsky's point, quoted at the head of the file, is that the early Roman saint-makers claimed the Buddha as one of their own converts and registered him under the pseudonym St Josaphat in the Golden Legend and the Martyrology as an orthodox beatified saint.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.4 MB, 7 pages)