The Golden Legend was the most widely read medieval collection of saints'

The Golden Legend was the most widely read medieval collection of saints' lives, originally compiled in about 1260, and without peer until replaced by Butler's Lives four hundred years later. The readings on the saints and on feast days were originally written with an eye toward edification and piety rather than Enlightenment standards of historical accuracy. Not to say that Jacobus was uninterested in history; over 130 sources dating from the second to the thirteenth centuries were incorporated into his work, and he was aware of and tried to reconcile discrepancies between them. But his primary concern was to illustrate the awareness of God present and active in human history, an activity which in the medieval mind presupposed the miraculous as commonplace. The Golden Legend, abridged in this Penguin Classic, is an incomparable source for the study of medieval art history, popular culture, literature, and piety. Lightly shelf-rubbed, a crisp unread copy.

The Golden Legend was the most widely read medieval collection of saints'

The Golden Legend was the most widely read medieval collection of saints' lives, originally compiled in about 1260, and without peer until replaced by Butler's Lives four hundred years later. The readings on the saints and on feast days were originally written with an eye toward edification and piety rather than Enlightenment standards of historical accuracy. Not to say that Jacobus was uninterested in history; over 130 sources dating from the second to the thirteenth centuries were incorporated into his work, and he was aware of and tried to reconcile discrepancies between them. But his primary concern was to illustrate the awareness of God present and active in human history, an activity which in the medieval mind presupposed the miraculous as commonplace. The Golden Legend, abridged in this Penguin Classic, is an incomparable source for the study of medieval art history, popular culture, literature, and piety.