Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, in Latin, manuscript on vellum and paper [Italy, fourteenth century (probably first half) with fifteenth-century additions]

283 leaves (plus one paper flyleaf at each end; all apart from the last but one quire vellum, that later addition paper), 155mm. by 112mm., complete, catchwords, collation: i¹³ (i a singleton with contents list), ii-iv¹², v¹⁰, vi-x¹², xi¹⁴, xii-xviii¹², xix-xx¹⁰, xxi¹³ (i a singleton attached in fifteenth century, perhaps misbound, cf. contents list at front of volume), xxii¹², xxiii⁴, then xxiv¹⁰, xxv⁵ (i a singleton), and xxvi² added in late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, the second of which is paper), single column, c.29 lines, written in a small Italian gothic bookhand, written space 115mm. by 85mm., capitals stroked in red, rubrics in red, small initials in red, small stains and occasional cockling to some leaves, many quires now loose in binding, flyleaves and pastedowns with worm damage, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century blind-tooled red morocco over pasteboards with the Virgin of the Apocalypse in the centre, floral motives in the corners and double fillets along edges, scuffed

The Legenda Aurea or Golden Legend is one of the classic works of the Middle Ages. It was compiled c.1260 by the Dominican preacher and archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine, and brings together in a single encyclopaedic volume numerous saints’ lives, etymologies of their names and episodes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, all ordered according to the liturgical calendar. The simple style of the Latin ensured a wide audience for the text in both the educated aristocratic reader and the preacher who needed a storehouse of examples and ideas for sermons. It was probably directly promoted by the Church and nearly 1000 manuscripts survive (B. Fleith in Legenda Aurea: Sept Siècles de Diffusion, 1986, pp.19-24). It has been claimed that its focus on the fantastical may have inadvertently fuelled the Protestant Reformation, providing sceptics of the cult of saints with much material.

This is a fine and early manuscript of the text, written perhaps within the first century of the text’s circulation. It is in pocket format, and must have been written for a travelling preacher. The first leaf contains a contents list, to which further saints’ lives have been added in the first few decades of the book’s life, with further material added at the end of the volume in the fifteenth century.