Jacobus De Voragine Research Articles

Traduir a l’edat mitjana: el repte d’editar la Legenda aurea de Jacobus de Voragine en català

The Catalan translation of the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine has been considered by Meyer and by Corominesas a version very close to its Latin model. However, a review of the preserved manuscripts allows us to note remarkabledifferences from the Latin model as well as among the Catalan manuscripts. In this work we take as a basis the manuscriptE (ms. N-III-5, Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial) to analyse structural, editorialand textual changes in the Catalan compilation: structural changes, such as those related to the arrangement of chapters;editorial changes, such as the deletion of extensive fragments in some chapters or the replacement of the version of achapter with another one other than that by Voragine; and textual changes, such as the variants that characterize the twobranches into which the translation evolves. These changes allow us to characterize the formation and the evolution of thiscompilation. We take as a point of reference manuscript E, representative of one of the two branches of the translation,in contrast with P (ms. Espagnol 44, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France), representative of the other. In E thereare important internal differences in the wording of each chapter and differences with respect to the other preservedmanuscripts. In some chapters, the wording of E is very different from that of P, with a less literal version of the Latin text,a wording that will serve as a model for the later print tradition. Editing this compilation based on manuscript E involvestaking into account the rest of the preserved manuscript evidence, as well as the Latin text, in addition to considering thechapters added in this manuscript.

Simplify and Doctrinalise, Historify and Personalise: How Two Less-Known Works of Anti-Islamic Polemic fromc. 1370–1440 Adapted their Sources

Throughout the long history of Christian-Muslim engagement, finding reliable information on Islamic faith has always been a challenge for European Christians, and existing sources were often re-used. This contribution focuses on two little studied works who both use parts of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea and Riccoldo da Monte di Croce's Contra legem Saracenorum in order to formulate their own views. The two texts, Peter de Pennis's Tractatus contra Alchoranum and the anonymous Epitome bellorum sacrorum, re-use their pretexts extensively, but they also display very specific strategies in selecting, adapting, and arranging the borrowed passages. Studying these derivate works can therefore help to reconstruct the late medieval image of Muhammad and the Qur’an in Europe and to understand what role such knowledge played in a broader context.

On the Symbolic Use of Dragons by Jacobus de Voragine and J. R. R. Tolkien

This article focuses on the symbolic use of dragons in several works by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Golden Legend, a popular compilation of saints’ lives by Jacobus de Voragine. In the medieval tradition, as recounted by Voragine, dragons serve as symbols of powerful evil through which the inherent weakness of postlapsarian (“after the Fall”) humans can be emphasized. The sudden, miraculous defeat of dragons also illustrates what is possible through faith and the grace of God, anticipating Tolkien’s notion of eucatastrophe, the unexpected reversal in fortune that characterizes the best fairy tales, which is now recognized as a key component of his own approach to mythopoeia.

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography. Edited by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt

As the epilogue to this important new contribution to medieval studies rightly recognizes, the fantasy of an ethnically unified Europe, where men were men and women knew their place, is one that has frequently been bandied about by white supremacists eager to seek historical support for their Islamophobic or transphobic views. St Joan of Arc, scrubbed of queerness and essentialized as the Maid of Orléans, has been transformed into a left-wing working-class hero or a right-wing nationalist while Christ has been figured as the very archetype of masculinity, and thus a reiteration of the supposed primacy of Adam over Eve, and, by extension, of man over woman. The essays in this volume, which adopt a range of approaches to trans and genderqueer issues, reveal that nothing could be further from the truth. Medieval authors and artists, fascinated by questions of fluidity, repeatedly reveal how identified gender is not necessarily synonymous with the sex or the gender assigned at birth. The result is a fascinating and provocative insight into medieval production that raises clear implications for a range of broader interdisciplinary debates. The essays themselves, skewed heavily in favour of AFAB subjects (assigned female at birth), cover a range of topics. In addition to two treatments, by Vanessa Wright and Amy V. Ogden, of St Euphrosyne, who lived as a eunuch in a monastery, M. W. Bychowski offers a fascinating reappraisal of St Marinos/Marina, focusing on questions of exemplarity. The novelty of Bychowski’s approach lies in dismissing outdated terms such as ‘transvestism’, and instead focusing on the saint’s decision to self-identify as male. This raises implications not just for Margaret and Pelagia, to whom Marinos/Marina is etymologically and conceptually related, but for later texts such as Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea, which performs a spectacular act of queer cleansing by reappraising the decision to don male attire as a mandate issued by the saint’s father, thus invalidating the display of agency and instead refocusing the narrative in part on notions of hegemonic masculinity. One slight criticism is that some essays are partially decontextualized. Caitlyn McLoughlin’s treatment of St Catherine of Alexandria, for instance, advances a number of informative observations but is weakened by the absence of references to previous critical studies of the saint or the broader theological or intellectual context of concepts such as her status as sponsa Christi [bride of Christ]. Conversely, a notable strength of the volume is Sophie Sexon’s treatment of Christ, who is approached from a non-binary perspective in which the wound in his side — appraised in conspicuously vulvic terms — is envisioned as the organ from which the Church was born. His depiction thereby succeeds in destabilizing the bounded categories of male and female. The volume is completed by essays on a range of other topics, including Kevin C. A. Elphick’s discussion of the much-neglected figure of Juana de la Cruz, as well as an extensive jargon-busting appendix which offers a number of invaluable pointers as to how language should be employed by those as yet unfamiliar with this fascinating emerging field.

What is being Illustrated? Case Study of a “Revised” St. Agnes Vita in the Earliest German Translation of the Legenda Aurea (1362)

Abstract Very few copies of Jacobus de Voragine’s Latin “best seller,” the Legenda aurea, were supplied with illustrations. Yet a large number of its vernacular translations were generously illustrated. Accordingly, these “visual narratives” must also be “read” and interpreted. For, as Mieke Bal observed, an illustration “does not replace a text, it is one.” The image of St. Agnes painted in 1362 for the earliest German translation is a surprising example unlike any other depiction of the saint before or after it. Examining what was behind this image casts light on alternative ways in which different medieval audiences understood the text.

What is being Illustrated? Case Study of a “Revised” St. Agnes Vita in the Earliest German Translation of the Legenda Aurea (1362)

Abstract Very few copies of Jacobus de Voragine’s Latin “best seller,” the Legenda aurea, were supplied with illustrations. Yet a large number of its vernacular translations were generously illustrated. Accordingly, these “visual narratives” must also be “read” and interpreted. For, as Mieke Bal observed, an illustration “does not replace a text, it is one.” The image of St. Agnes painted in 1362 for the earliest German translation is a surprising example unlike any other depiction of the saint before or after it. Examining what was behind this image casts light on alternative ways in which different medieval audiences understood the text.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Vitae as a Subject Source in the West European Pictorial Art of the 14–17th Centuries (On the Example of the Image of Saint Jerome of Stridon)

For many centuries, Western European art drew its subjects from ancient history, mythology and the Bible. The artists paid great attention to the depiction of saints, for each of whom, over time, a pictorial canon with its own attributes and certain subjects was formed. As a result, the viewer not only easily recognized a particular saint, but he could also get acquainted with the facts of his biography and the role he played in the history of the church. Saint Jerome of Stridon was one of the most popular among artists, of all the Fathers of the Church he was portrayed more often than others. The article discusses the formation of this canon on the example of Jerome’s life and work. It is based on a literature review of this topic and it contains the main studies of the biography and literary activity of Jerome, from which the artists drew subjects for their works. The article describes chronologically the vitae of St. Jerome, his hagiography from Jacobus de Voragine’s “The Golden Legend”, biography and posthumous legends, miracles and appearances of the saint from “Hieronymianus” by Giovanni d’Andrea. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a historical biography of Saint Jerome. Since the 19th century a large number of scientific studies of Jerome’s life and work has appeared. The article analyzes specific works of Jerome, which were also sources for pictorial images. Special attention is paid to a review of art history literature, as well as medieval bestiaries, since the paintings with St. Jerome are filled with numerous symbolic animals. A review of literature and sources on the stated topic will help stimulate researchers to further study the relationship between the lives of saints and their iconography in art, identify gaps in research on this topic and specify aspects that researchers have not yet paid attention to.

From Mystical Asceticism to Heresy and Heterodoxy: Rewriting St Antony in Late Medieval Spain

This article examines the malleability of hagiographic identity, commenting on the representation of St Antony in the two most influential early sources of his life, the Vita Antonii and the Apophthegmata Patrum, drawing on sources that had for many years circulated in the oral tradition, together with their conflation in the context of Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea. It shows how Voragine’s text was subsequently reworked into Castilian in two different ways: the Gran flos sanctorum, which appears to have been designed for scholarly reception, and the Leyenda de los santos, which is characterized by a series of more popularizing features. A striking distinction between the two texts is that the Leyenda de los santos, as is the case with its treatment of other saints, fails to transmit episodes centred on descriptions of mystical ecstasy or the prophetic visions experienced by the saint, thus producing a very different Antony. It seems possible, therefore, that it was shaped by an awareness of the dangers of heresy and the possibility of unorthodox interpretation

Dziadowskie pieśni o Sądzie Ostatecznym i końcu świata wobec tradycji biblijnej i apokryficznej

In the late Middle Ages, it was an accepted belief that the end of the world would be announced by fifteen cosmic signs. Similar motifs can be found in relatively numerous beggar’s songs from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their sources can be located in medieval Latin hymns, Apocrypha, and Old Polish literature. These inspirations include the Bible, Apocrypha, De Civitate Dei of St. Augustine, Crisias of Verecundus da Iunca, The Golden Legend written by Jacobus de Voragine, Przeraźliwe echo trąby ostatecznej ( The Terrifying Echo of the Doomsday Trumpet ) by Klemens Boleslawiusz and others. This article is an attempt to prove that authors of beggar’s songs establish a dialogue with the tradition and introduce their own motifs, which are characteristic of the times in which they lived.

A Revelation of Purgatory

A Revelation of Purgatory

The Literary Contexts and Early Transmission of the Latin Life of Judas

Abstract The apocryphal legend known as the Life of Judas developed in the twelfth century, and soon after became a popular medieval text, included in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend and translated into many vernacular languages. While most studies of this tradition examine later versions, this article focuses on the earliest surviving Latin Life in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 14489. The article argues for situating this apocryphon among preaching exempla, which also developed in the twelfth century. Understanding the Life in the contexts of such preaching texts allows for new ways to interpret the framing of the Latin apocryphon with biblical material at the beginning and conclusion, as well as to identify literary parallels that speak to the early transmission of this text. These associations reveal that the Life emerged within more general developments as religious literature brought together intellectual and popular culture in the high Middle Ages.

Una «Vita breve» di san Gregorio

Until to XIII century Passiones and Legendae sanctorum were mostly ad usum chori, especially in monasteries and cloisters. Mendicant orders, particularly Dominicans, pursued preaching and didn’t need large choral codices, but light booklets, often summarizing lives of saints, to stimulate believers. By the time incomprehensible, Latin was necessarily abandoned and since begins the season of great volgarizzamenti (translacion into the vernacular). Next to devotional booklets, with prayers and precepts for good Christians, other works, like Dialoghi by Gregory the Great, grow and are made accessible; these works, like Vitas Patrum, are condensed and become exemplary moment of preaching, coming down from pulpit, as happened for some tales: Paulinus of Nola is outlined in Novellino, according to that correlation of osmosis between sacred and profane that’s at the origin of novella. So lives of saints in large collections, like Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, work of dedication and extent and complexity, updated even after the death of Jacobus. But also individual lives, because the devotion of a village, confraternity, private citizen, needed a choice. So we have many versions and in this case two lives of Gregory: the first, opening manuscripts, is anonymous, maybe born in Florence in volgare around at the half of the fourteenth century; the second, anonymous too, closing manuscripts with four books of Dialoghi, is volgarizzamento from Legenda Aurea. We examine, according to texts, what may seems a ‘theory of translation’, seen though the eyes of four volgarizzatori of Dialogi and we public an unpublished live of Gregory the Great.

In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend by Jacques Le Goff

In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend by Jacques Le Goff

Jacques Le Goff.In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.

Jacques Le Goff.<i>In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend</i>. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.

A Middle English Version of Saint Ursula's Prayer Instruction in Nijmegen, Universiteitsbibliotheek, HS 194

Dating back to the late antique period, the martyrdom of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins became a focus of devotion in the late medieval and early modern period in continental Europe and the British Isles. Jacobus de Voragine discussed St. Ursula's martyrdom in detail in the Legenda Aurea , which included a prayer instruction that St. Ursula revealed to a dying monk in return for his faithful devotion to her. Taking their cue from St. Ursula's revelation in the Legenda Aurea , late medieval narratives such as the Shropshire Miracle expanded the prayer instruction revealed by St. Ursula and contextualized it in the historical setting of the life of the fifteenth-century English hermit John of Warwick. The Shropshire Miracle, in turn, was embedded in lives of St. Ursula, which were exported from England to Germany, and subsequently imported back into England. The key feature of these late medieval and early modern sources is the prayer instruction revealed by St. Ursula, a form of reciprocated devotion which cemented the reputation of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins on the one hand, and on the other hand ensured protection in this life and access to heaven for the petitioner. While Ursuline prayer instructions survive in large numbers in Latin, the number of instructions in English is limited. The fifteenth-century English manuscript Nijmegen, Universiteitsbibliotheek, HS 194 contains a uniquely attested and re-contextualized version of St. Ursula's prayer instruction that is here situated within the medieval and early modern development of the cult of St. Ursula and printed for the first time.

La « tragédie » de Judas. La légende de Judas d'après le manuscrit 1275 de la bibliothèque municipale de Reims

Medievalists are familiar with the Oedipal legend of Judas as it appeared in the Golden Legend by the Dominican monk Jacobus de Voragine. In the Middle Ages, this was one of the best-known versions of the traitor’s Vita. From the twelfth century, however, several other accounts circulated through the West. The Vita Jude Scarioth in Manuscript 1275 in Reims (at the end of the XIIIth century) was one of the longest and most elaborate versions of the Judas legend. The originality of this long prose narrative is in its wealth of descriptive and narrative detail. This version may have drawn on a variety of literary and vernacular traditions, and is evidence that Judas developed from an initially ill-defined presence to a fully-realized character, independent of the Gospels. In this text, Judas appears as more tortured than wicked, and his life becomes, in its own terms, a “tragedy”.

John Mirk’s Festial: Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II, Vol. I, ed. Susan Powell

John Mirk’s Festial was the most widely-used vernacular sermon collection in later medieval England. Explicitly designed for clergy impaired by ‘defaute of bokus and sympulnys of lettre’, the Festial sets out an entertaining and easy-to-use series of sermons to be preached on all the important feast-days of the year. As one might expect, the text draws very heavily on Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, with some fascinating local material added for the feasts of Winifred and Alkmund. These were saints local to the Augustinian abbey of Lilleshall in Shropshire, where Mirk served as a canon, and later prior, in the mid- to late fourteenth century. Biographical details on both Mirk and his monastic community are thin on the ground; we know nothing of the abbey’s library, or whether Mirk’s pedagogical outlook was shaped by a university education. The ongoing popularity of the Festial across the fifteenth and early sixteenth...

Edmund Spenser and Continental Humanism: The St. George Legend in The Faerie Queene, Book I, and Mantuan’s Georgius

This article contends that in his treatment of the St. George legend Edmund Spenser utilized a heightened sense of historical perspective that developed in Italy among Quattrocento humanists like Mantuan (Baptista Mantuanus). A commonly held assumption that humanist poets could not have taken the legend seriously has obscured the fact that Mantuan and Alexander Barclay composed poems using the material and that Spenser, who modeled his Shepheardes Calender partly on Mantuan’s eclogues, would almost certainly have known the Georgius, Mantuan’s hagiographic epic on St. George. In comparison to Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea, Spenser’s most commonly accepted source, the Quattrocento Italian poet forged a new, humanist relationship between truth and fiction in his Georgius, transposing Alcyone’s lament and the fen with its dragon into a poetic mode of discourse which, following the implications of Anne Moss’s Latin language turn, resists categorization as being either “true” or “false.” In representing his Christian saint as converting the pagan citizenry and reorienting the Graeco-Roman gods within a changed, New Testament world, Mantuan gave Spenser a model when he envisioned the Red Cross’s struggle with the dragon as the concluding, climactic event within Judeo-Christian history. The Georgius would thus seem to supply the missing term between de Voragine’s version and Spenser’s visionary reimagining of the story, encouraging the English poet to go beyond the contempt of sixteenth-century Reformers for saints’ lives and use the material to shape “an empire nowhere,” a transcendent spiritual and material potentiality rooted, like Mantuan’s hagiographic epic, within a humanist treatment of Judeo-Christian time.

The Origins of a Miraculous Image: Notes on the Annunciation Fresco in SS. Annunziata in Florence

IN CONNECTION WITH the recent interest in the early modern cult image within the discipline of art history there have been considerable debates and confusion on how to treat the image, which was, o...