In the Middle Ages, beneficence, alms and charity represented vivid reality and literary topic. Motifs and topoi of beneficence are formed according to poetic and generic rules, they adapt to particular lives and types of saints, and become part of models of sanctity. The motif of the saint who sells himself into slavery in order to achieve the ideal of beneficence and virtue is noted in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas the Apostle in India, and in lives of St. Saint Sava the Serbian, St. Serapionn the Sindonite, St. Paulinus of Nola, and St. Peter the Merciful. The same motif is noted in Serbian Folktales in altered form, where it is manifested as inversion and assimilation of the model of sale of saints. Further comparative research of medieval literature and folklore should shed more light on these and other relations.
