[[237]]
Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of new
myths. Thus, in his _Most Devout Journey_, published in 1608, Jean
Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself troubled by
conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself
sound in the faith that "some vestige of it still remains," and
makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror
to the region--"crocodiles," which, with the serpents and the "foul
odour of the sea," prevented his visit to the salt mountains.
In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions of
his _Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land_. He depicts the horrors of the
Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the
statement that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it
soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the land about it
that not a blade of grass grows in all that region.
In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant
Christopher Heidmann publishes his _Palaestina_, in which he speaks
of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the Dead
Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of Lot's wife
still exists and gives signs of life.
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