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How did the Buddha Become a Medieval Saint?

posted on July 14, 2014

At Religion Dispatches, Peter Manseau reviews In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint, a new book by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Peggy McCracken. The work traces the story of Buddha, an Indian prince who renounced his wealth in favor of a religious life, which reached Medieval Europe and provided the inspiration for the Christian Saint Josaphat. According to Manseau, the book follows the story in “its movement from Persian to Arabic to Georgian to Greek to Latin, and from there to all Romance languages and eventually back toward Asian dressed up in Japanese and Tagalog.”

Read at Religion Dispatches