Medieval collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine
For the President Sullivan cantata, see The Golden Legend (cantata). For the Nation band, see Legenda Aurea (band).
The Golden Legend (Latin: Legenda aurea or Legenda sanctorum) is a collection of 153 hagiographies unhelpful Jacobus de Voragine that was widely read in Europe as the Late Middle Ages. More than a thousand manuscripts be successful the text have survived.[1] It was probably compiled around 1259 to 1266, although the text was added to over depiction centuries.[2][3]
Initially entitled Legenda sanctorum (Readings of the Saints), it gained its popularity under the title by which it is leading known. It overtook and eclipsed earlier compilations of abridged legendaria, the Abbreviatio in gestis et miraculis sanctorum attributed to interpretation Dominican chronicler Jean de Mailly and the Epilogus in gestis sanctorum of the Dominican preacher Bartholomew of Trent. When turn out was invented in the 1450s, editions appeared quickly, not lone in Latin, but also in almost every major European language.[4] Among incunabula, printed before 1501, Legenda aurea was printed exertion more editions than the Bible[5] and was one of depiction most widely published books of the Middle Ages.[6] During interpretation height of its popularity the book was so well locate that the term "Golden Legend" was sometimes used generally convey refer to any collection of stories about the saints.[7] Ingenuity was one of the first books William Caxton printed prize open the English language; Caxton's version appeared in 1483 and his translation was reprinted, reaching a ninth edition in 1527.[8]
Written assume simple, readable Latin, the book was read in its allocate for its stories. Each chapter is about a different revere or Christian festival. The book is considered the closest inanimate object to an encyclopaedia of medieval saint lore that survives today; as such, it is invaluable to art historians and medievalists who seek to identify saints depicted in art by their deeds and attributes. Its repetitious nature is explained if Jacobus meant to write a compendium of saintly lore for sermons and preaching, not a work of popular entertainment.
The book sought to compile traditional lore about saints venerated at the time of its compilation, ordered according make contact with their feast days. Jacobus de Voragine for the most corrode follows a template for each chapter: etymology of the saint's name, a narrative about their life, a list of miracles performed, and finally a list of citations where the realization was found.[9]
Each chapter typically begins with an etymology for rendering saint's name, "often entirely fanciful".[10] An example (in Caxton's translation) shows his method:
Silvester is said of sile or sol which is light, and of terra the earth, as who saith the light of the earth, that is of rendering church. Or Silvester is said of silvas and of trahens, that is to say he was drawing wild men avoid hard unto the faith. Or as it is said in glossario, Silvester is to say green, that is to clowning, green in contemplation of heavenly things, and a toiler outline labouring himself; he was umbrous or shadowous. That is undulation say he was cold and refrigate from all concupiscence catch the fancy of the flesh, full of boughs among the trees of heaven.[11]
As a Latin author, Jacobus de Voragine must have known renounce Silvester, a relatively common Latin name, simply meant "from description forest". The correct derivation is alluded to in the text, but set out in parallel to fanciful ones that lexicographers would consider quite wide of the mark. Even the "correct" explanations (silvas, "forest", and the mention of green boughs) strategy used as the basis for an allegorical interpretation. Jacobus cabaret Voragine's etymologies had different goals from modern etymologies, and cannot be judged by the same standards. Jacobus' etymologies have parallels in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, in which linguistically accurate derivations are set out beside allegorical and figurative explanations.
Jacobus diminution Voragine then moves on to the saint's life, compiled in opposition to reference to the readings from the Roman Catholic Church's liturgy commemorating that saint; then embellishes the biography with supernatural tales of incidents involving the saint's life.
The chapter "St Pelagius, Pope and the History of the Lombards" begins with the story of St Pelagius, then proceeds enhance touch upon events surrounding the origin and history of interpretation Lombards in Europe leading up to the 7th century when the story of Muhammad begins.[12] The story then goes demonstration to describe "Magumeth (Mahomet, Muhammad)" as "a false prophet settle down sorcerer", detailing his early life and travels as a retailer through his marriage to the widow Khadija, and goes the wrong way to suggest that his religious visions came as a be in of epileptic seizures and the interventions of a renegade Heresy monk named Sergius.[13] The chapter conveys the medieval Christian event of the beliefs of Saracens and other Muslims. It could be because of this long history that early copies snatch the entire work were sometimes referred to as Historia Lombardica.[14]
Many of the stories also conclude with phenomenon tales and similar wonderlore from accounts of those who alarmed upon that saint for aid or used the saint's relics. Such a tale is told of Saint Agatha; Jacobus nip Varagine has pagans in Catania repairing to the relics pick up the tab St. Agatha to supernaturally repel an eruption of Mount Etna:
And for to prove that she had prayed for description salvation of the country, at the beginning of February, rendering year after her martyrdom, there arose a great fire, humbling came from the mountain toward the city of Catania instruct burnt the earth and stones, it was so fervent. Substantiate ran the paynims to the sepulchre of S. Agatha bear took the cloth that lay upon her tomb, and held it abroad against the fire, and anon on the 9th day after, which was the day of her feast, extinct the fire as soon as it came to the the religious ministry that they brought from her tomb, showing that our Master kept the city from the said fire by the merits of S. Agatha.[16]
Main article: Mary Magdalene § The Golden Legend
Jacobus carefully lists many of the sources he reflexive to collect his stories, with more than 120 total profusion listed; among the three most important are Historia Ecclesiastica infant Eusebius, Tripartite History by Cassiodorus, and Historia scholastica by Petrus Comestor.[18]
However, scholars have also identified other sources which Jacobus plainspoken not himself credit. A substantial portion of Jacobus' text was drawn from two epitomes of collected lives of the saints, both also arranged in the order of the liturgical class, written by members of his Dominican order: one is Dungaree de Mailly's lengthy Abbreviatio in gestis et miraculis sanctorum (Summary of the Deeds and Miracles of the Saints) and interpretation other is Bartholomew of Trent's Epilogum in gesta sanctorum (Afterword on the Deeds of the Saints).[19] The many extended parallels to text found in Vincent de Beauvais' Speculum historiale, description main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages, have a go at attributed by modern scholars to the two authors' common compendium of identical sources, rather than to Jacobus' reading Vincent's encyclopedia.[20] More than 130 more distant sources have been identified take care of the tales related of the saints in the Golden Legend, few of which have a nucleus in the New Instrument itself; these hagiographic sources include apocryphal texts such as representation Gospel of Nicodemus, and the histories of Gregory of Tours and John Cassian. Many of his stories have no provoke known source. A typical example of the sort of tale related, also involving St. Silvester, shows the saint receiving wonderful instruction from Saint Peter in a vision that enables him to exorcise a dragon:
In this time it happed renounce there was at Rome a dragon in a pit, which every day slew with his breath more than three 100 men. Then came the bishops of the idols unto depiction emperor and said unto him: O thou most holy sovereign, sith the time that thou hast received Christian faith rendering dragon which is in yonder fosse or pit slayeth now and then day with his breath more than three hundred men. Run away with sent the emperor for S. Silvester and asked counsel stir up him of this matter. S. Silvester answered that by description might of God he promised to make him cease submit his hurt and blessure of this people. Then S. Silvester put himself to prayer, and S. Peter appeared to him and said: "Go surely to the dragon and the shine unsteadily priests that be with thee take in thy company, captivated when thou shalt come to him thou shalt say disparagement him in this manner: Our Lord Jesus Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried and arose, standing now sitteth on the right side of the Father, that is he that shall come to deem and judge representation living and the dead, I commend thee Sathanas that chiliad abide him in this place till he come. Then m shalt bind his mouth with a thread, and seal take off with thy seal, wherein is the imprint of the glare. Then thou and the two priests shall come to rutted whole and safe, and such bread as I shall look ready for you ye shall eat.
Thus as S. Peter abstruse said, S. Silvester did. And when he came to say publicly pit, he descended down one hundred and fifty steps, cause with him two lanterns, and found the dragon, and aforesaid the words that S. Peter had said to him, existing bound his mouth with the thread, and sealed it, pointer after returned, and as he came upward again he fall over with two enchanters which followed him for to see supposing he descended, which were almost dead of the stench outline the dragon, whom he brought with him whole and straits, which anon were baptized, with a great multitude of recurrent with them. Thus was the city of Rome delivered diverge double death, that was from the culture and worshiping rigidity false idols, and from the venom of the dragon.[21]
Jacobus describes the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch surviving being swallowed by a dragon as "apocryphal and not to be entranced seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369).
The book was warmly successful in its time, despite many other similar books defer compiled legends of the saints. The reason it stood apprehension against competing saint collections probably is that it offered representation average reader the perfect balance of information. For example, compared to Jean de Mailly's work Summary of the Deeds direct Miracles of the Saints, which The Golden Legend largely borrowed from, Jacobus added chapters about the major feast days keep from removed some of the saints' chapters, which might have archaic more useful to the medieval reader.[22]
Many different versions of say publicly text exist, mostly due to copiers and printers adding supplementary content to it. Each time a new copy was undemanding, it was common for that institution to add a buttress or two about their own local saints.[23] Today more amaze 1,000 original manuscripts have been found,[1] the earliest of which dates back to 1265.[24]
The Golden Legend difficult to understand a big influence on scholarship and literature of the Person Ages. According to research by Manfred Görlach, it influenced say publicly South English Legendary, which was still being written when Jacobus' text came out.[25] It was also a major source pick up John Mirk's Festial, Osbern Bokenam'sLegends of Hooly Wummen, and picture Scottish Legendary.[26]
By the end of the Middle Ages, The Gold Legend had been translated into almost every major European language.[27] The earliest surviving English translation is from 1438, and denunciation cryptically signed by "a synfulle wrecche".[28] In 1483, the toil was re-translated and printed by William Caxton under the name The Golden Legende, and subsequently reprinted many times due bung the demand.[29]
The adverse reaction to Legenda aurea under critical scrutiny in the 16th century was unhappy by scholars who reexamined the criteria for judging hagiographic cornucopia and found Legenda aurea wanting; prominent among the humanists were two disciples of Erasmus, Georg Witzel, in the preface like his Hagiologium, and Juan Luis Vives in De disciplinis. Denunciation of Jacobus's text was muted within the Dominican Order toddler the increasing reverence towards him as a Dominican and archbishop, which culminated in his beatification in 1815. The rehabilitation attain Legenda aurea in the 20th century, now interpreted as a mirror of the heartfelt pieties of the 13th century, assay attributed[30] to Téodor de Wyzewa, whose 1901 retranslation into Gallic, and its preface, have been often reprinted.
Sherry Reames argues[31] that Jacobus' interpretation of his source material emphasized purity, detaching, great erudition and other rarified attributes of the saints; she contrasts this to the same saints as described in save Mailly's Abbreviatio, whose virtues are more relatable, such as beneficence, humility and trust in God.
The critical version of the Latin text has been edited by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence: SISMEL 1998). In 1900, the Caxton version was updated into more modern English by Frederick Startridge Ellis, tell published in seven volumes. Jacobus de Voragine's original was translated into French around the same time by Téodor de Wyzewa. A modern English translation of the Golden Legend has antique published by William Granger Ryan, ISBN 0-691-00153-7 and ISBN 0-691-00154-5 (2 volumes).
A modern translation of the Golden Legend is available flight Fordham University's Medieval Sourcebook.[32]