Leaf from The Golden Legend

The Legenda aurea, or Golden Legend, is a thirteenth-century manual of ecclesiastical lore, containing a commentary on church services, homilies for saints’ days, and above all the lives of saints, including stories about their posthumous miracles. Exceedingly popular in the manuscript period, it was translated or adapted into several vernacular languages and remained a staple of the early printing press. In England it existed in two translations, an anonymous prose version of about 1438 and William Caxton’s version, adding English saints, in 1483; it also contributed to verse legendaries and provided a source for Chaucer’s ‘Second Nun’s Tale’ (the story of Saint Cecilia) within the Canterbury Tales. From 1483 until 1527 the Golden Legend was published about twice a decade in Westminster or London, by all three of the major early printers, William Caxton (two editions), Wynkyn de Worde (six editions, a leaf from the second of which is shown here), and Richard Pynson. But the work’s clear Catholicity led to its demise, and over three hundred years elapsed before it was printed again.