Alexander Vasiliev discarded the account of this campaign as a typical pious legend, whose interest is purely literary rather than historical.

How can any one call pious legends "traditions"?

Others regard the story as an example of creative symbolism, or a pious legend.

"It sounds like a pious legend," he said.

The pious legend was recorded by George Hamartolus, whose manuscript was an important source for the Primary Chronicle.

The New Testament Apocrypha and early Christian pseudepigrapha preserve various pious legends filling the "gaps" in Christ's youth.

Dramatically, the result is unwieldy, mixing the stylized and the naturalistic, interrupting the action to encompass a detail of Scripture or sometimes of pious legend.

She was the typical Roman matron of ancient legend strong, courageous, modest, witty, pious, fertile and chaste.

Like Joseph, Nicodemus became the object of various pious legends during the Middle Ages, particularly in connection with monumental crosses.

The first real biography is by Ahmad Bayhaqi (died 458H/1066) and is filled with what a modernist eye would qualify as pious legends.