LEGENDA AUREA
. The collection of saints’ lives known as Legenda aurea, or Golden Legend, was the
most copied text in the Middle Ages, surviving in more than 1,000 manuscripts and
translated into nearly all the vernacular languages of western Europe. It was among the
first books printed in France in the 15th century and, by William Caxton, in England.
Originally titled Legenda sanctorum alias Lombardica hystoria, the Legenda aurea—its
name attests to its popularity—was composed in Latin ca. 1261–67 by Jacobus of
Voragine (Jacques de Varazze; 1228/30–1298). Jacobus, a Dominican and archbishop of
Genoa, sought to provide a collection of easily understood texts that would serve to
inspire the devotion of the laity. Relying most probably on Vincent de Beauvais’s
Speculum historiale, Jean de Mailly’s Abbreviatio in gestis et miraculis sanctorum, and
Bartholomew of Trent’s Liber epilogorum in gesta sanctorum, Jacobus chose to add
numerous accounts of marvelous and miraculous deeds. His work consists of 182
chapters and follows the order of the liturgical calendar. It reflects the encyclopedic tastes
of its age and includes numerous eastern saints’ lives as well as western lives written
originally in Latin in the early Middle Ages but frequently translated or reworked in the
vernacular. The Legenda aurea itself was translated into French a number of times, the
best-known translation being that by Jean de Vignay; there are three independent Occitan
versions. The popularity of the Legenda aurea diminished in the 16th century, criticized
by reformers for encouraging devotion to the saints rather than to God.
E.Kay Harris
[See also: HAGIOGRAPHY; SAINTS, CULT OF; SAINTS’ LIVES; VIGNAY,
JEAN DE]
Jacobus of Voragine. The Golden Legend, ed. and trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. New
York: Longmans, Green, 1941.
Vignay, Jean de. “The Jean de Vignay Version of the Life of Saint Dominic,” ed. W.F.Manning.
Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 40 (1970):29–4. [Partial edition.]
Reames, Sherry L. The Legenda aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
LEGRAND, JACQUES
(ca. 1360–ca. 1418). A member of the Augustinian order, Legrand is the author of the
Sophilogium (1398–99) and Latin sermons denouncing the corruption of religious and
secular authorities. He was also active in the Armagnac faction after the assassination of
Louis of Orléans (1407). He is best remembered as the author of the French Archiloge
Sophie (ca. 1400), dedicated to Louis of Orléans, which treats questions of rhetoric,
poetics, and spelling; and the Livre de bonnes meurs, dedicated to John, duke of Berry.
The Livre, a treatise on Christian morality, is divided into five parts, which discuss vice
and virtue, the clergy, kings and the nobility, the common people, and death and the
Judgment Day.
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