Jacobus de Voragine

Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1230–1298), in Italian Iacopo da Varazze, was a Dominican friar who became archbishop of Genoa. He is remembered for the Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives that became one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages.

He was born around 1230, either in Varazze on the Ligurian coast west of Genoa or in Genoa itself, and joined the Order of Preachers in 1244. He served as prior at Como, Bologna and Asti, taught in the order’s schools and preached with success in many parts of Italy. From 1267 to 1286 he led the Dominicans of Lombardy as their provincial. In 1292 he became archbishop of Genoa, where he worked to reconcile the city’s warring Guelf and Ghibelline factions. He also began a chronicle of Genoa and wrote several volumes of sermons. He died in Genoa in July 1298 and was buried in the Dominican church there. Pope Pius VII beatified him in 1816.

He compiled the Golden Legend, in Latin Legenda aurea, between about 1259 and 1266, and said himself that he had gathered the stories and added to them from older histories and chronicles. Its chapters follow the church year from Advent, one for each saint or feast, and each opens with what the saint’s name means, often by a fanciful derivation, before telling the life and the miracles. Written in plain Latin as a stock of material for preachers, it was read above all for its stories. More than a thousand manuscripts survive, and among books printed before 1501 it went through more editions than the Bible. William Caxton printed it in English in 1483.

Painters drew on it for centuries. When a medieval picture shows Saint Nicholas with three bags of gold, Saint George and the dragon, or Saint Christopher carrying the child, the scene very often comes from this book.