Legenda Aurea By Jacobus de Voragine

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One of the central texts of the Middle Ages, The Golden Legend deeply influenced the imagery of poetry, painting and stained glass with its fascinating descriptions of saints' lives and religious festivals. By creating a single-volume sourcebook of core Christian stories, Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1229-98) attracted a huge audience across Europe. This selection of over seventy biographies ranges from the first Apostles and Roman martyrs to near-contemporaries such as St Dominic, St Francis of Assissi and St Elizabeth of Hungary. Here, witnesses to the true faith endure horrific tortures; reformed prostitutes win divine forgiveness; while other women live disguised as monks or nobly resist lustful tyrants. Lucid and compelling, The Golden Legend offers an enthralling insight into the medieval mind. Legenda Aurea

I read this book after it was noted in Mont St.Michele and Chartres as further reading option. Like mentioned in the book it really is a must read to understand medieval thought and art.
What else could I say Saints are always cool.
The ones i likes the most are St.Elisabeth of Hungary and St.Martin of tours.
Elisabeth was particularly interesting because I visited the places where she lived like the Wartburg or Magdeburg myself.
Very enjoyable however sadly this version is incomplete...that’s why I only gave 3 stars Legenda Aurea Like when your young nephew corners you and jabbers on and on breathlessly about his favorite Ninja Turtle and how strong and unbeatable he was and how all the bad men tried so hard to beat him up but just couldn't do it because the Ninja Turtle was so powerful and brave. And it seems kind of like a mania, this feeling your panting little nephew has for his Ninja Turtle, and you wonder if something might be a little wrong with the kid, because he's getting really into the gory details about the bad men and how they tried to impale and crush and tear to pieces the Ninja Turtle, and boil him in oil and drown him in the sea and cut him open and stuff him with salt. But your nephew is very proud to tell you, like this is the big clever ending he's been working towards, that in the end the bad men were so tired and outmatched they just gave up and stabbed the Ninja Turtle in the neck, and for some reason it worked that time, but only because it was supposed to. Because it was supposed to! Legenda Aurea „Byłoby pożałowania godnym nieporozumieniem, gdyby ktoś brał tę książkę do ręki z myślą, że znajdzie w niej żywoty świętych. Zdziwiłby się bowiem w takim razie bardzo, widząc w niej »życiorysy« osobistości takich, jak Herod, Piłat, Judasz czy Mahomet. A nawet tam, gdzie chodzi o autentycznych świętych, przykro zaskoczyć by do musiał brak wszelkiej chronologii i tła historycznego, bezgraniczna często naiwność opowiadanych z całą powagą scen, jaskrawe anachronizmy i szereg podobnych usterek. Jednym słowem Złota legenda nie jest bynajmniej wiarogodnym źródłem wiadomości o tych wszystkich osobach, o których jest w niej mowa.

Czymże jest zatem? Wieńcem legend w starym, średniowiecznym znaczeniu tego wyrazu, wielkim skarbcem, w którym fantazja stuleci złożyła swoje najpopularniejsze wytwory, a z którego pokolenia czerpały następne wątki dla swego piśmiennictwa, malarstwa, rzeźby i architektury”.

Przeczytałam „Złotą legendę” Jakuba de Voragine z czystej ciekawości, hagiografia raczej nie należy do kręgu moich zainteresowań. Mimo to muszę przyznać, że nie było to aż tak nudne, jak się spodziewałam.

Autor żył w drugiej połowie XIII wieku i jego praca polegała głównie na odtworzeniu i spisaniu najpopularniejszych wyobrażeń i podań o poszczególnych świętych. Mimo iż legendy te są pełne naiwności i momentami wręcz elementów fantastycznych, odzwierciedlają realia swojej epoki.

Kult świętych i męczenników pojawił się w chrześcijaństwie bardzo wcześnie. Wierni byli zainteresowani kim byli ci ludzie, jak żyli, w jaki sposób dawali swoje świadectwa cnót chrześcijańskich. Oraz jakie wyczyniali cuda – chyba najbardziej fascynujący element historii, no może poza opisami przeróżnych okrucieństw, jakim byli poddawani:

„Opisy te, zawsze bardzo jednostajne w doborze i kolejności mąk, są równocześnie niesłychanie krwawe i dla dzisiejszego czytelnika przykre. Średniowiecze jednak było przyzwyczajone do widoku publicznych egzekucji […] i ówczesnemu człowiekowi nie byle co w tej mierze potrafiło zaimponować. Jeśli więc stałość męczennika miała wzbudzić podziw, to musiał on cierpieć jakieś bardziej wyszukane męki niż zwykły przestępca, którego ćwiartowano czy łamano kołem”.

A na koniec moja mała zagwozdka:
„Opat Makary szedł raz pustynią, a na noc wszedł do grobowca, w którym pochowani byli poganie, wyciągnął ciało jednego z nich i położył na nim głowę jak na puchowej poduszce. Tymczasem diabły, chcąc go przestraszyć, udawały, że wołają jakąś kobietę, i mówiły: Wstań i chodź z nami do kąpieli! Z ciała zmarłego zaś, na którym leżał święty, wydobywał się głos innego diabła: Jakiś obcy leży na mnie i nie mogę przyjść. Lecz on nie przestraszył się wcale, tylko uderzył owe ciało i rzekł: Wstań i idź, jeśli potrafisz. Słysząc to diabły uciekły, krzycząc głośno: Zwyciężyłeś nas, panie!”.

Jestem w stanie przyjąć bez większej szkody na umyśle informacje o cudach wszelakich, ozdrowieniach, wskrzeszeniach i tym podobnych, ale dlaczego Opat Makary chciał użyć zwłok jako poduszki – to już przekracza moje możliwości :) Czy jest jakieś wyjaśnienie tej zagadki? Legenda Aurea St Martin of Tours was born in the year 316 in the Roman province of Pannonia, quite far from Tours, where he eventually served as bishop. He first came to Gaul as a young soldier. The most famous story about St Martin describes how, on a winter evening, he passed a half-naked man begging alms at the gates of Ambianum (Amiens). Martin cut his cloak in two with his sword, giving half to the man. That night in a dream Martin saw Christ conversing with the angels, wearing the same half cloak he had given the beggar. Jesus said, “Look! Though he is only a catechumen, Martin has covered me with his cloak.” In the morning Martin ran to the church and asked to be baptized immediately.

You won’t find a “Life of St Martin of Tours” without that story. It’s central to his biography in even the most sober-minded presentations. In The Golden Legend, a compilation of saints’ lives by thirteenth-century Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine, however, you will find much, much more. Some of the most amusing tales about St Martin involve animals. Once, for example, St Martin passed by a sheep that had recently been shorn. “That sheep has obeyed the Gospel mandate,” he said. “She had two tunics and gave one of them to someone who had none.” Another time, he was bathing in a river when a venomous snake came swimming toward him. In Christ’s name he commanded it away. “At the saint’s word the reptile turned around and crossed back to the opposite bank,” de Voragine says, and then adds with a wink: “Martin groaned, ‘Serpents listen to me, and men do not!’”

An even more delightful tale involves a demon-possessed cow:

“There was a cow that was possessed by the devil, and she roared and raged and gored many people. Once this cow rushed in a fury at Martin and his company as they passed on the road. Martin raised his hand and ordered the cow to halt. Halt she did, and he saw a demon sitting astride her. Martin rebuked the demon, saying: ‘Get off her back, O evil one, and stop tormenting this harmless animal.’ The spirit departed immediately. The cow then fell to her knees at the bishop’s feet and then, at his behest, ambled peaceably back to the herd.”

In Christian art there are thousands of depictions of St Martin cutting his cloak in two for the naked beggar. I’ve never seen a single one of the grateful cow bowing to him in thanks.

It would be foolish, of course, to insist on the strict historicity of every tale that comes down to us about the saints or (for that matter) most any other historical figure. After the material fact of a person passes out of tangible experience, accretions may cling to his memory like snow compacted around a stone as it tumbles downhill. And yet in a certain sense all these things really did happen, even the most absurd, the most outlandish. What I mean is explained, perhaps, by this passage from Paul Valéry’s Dialogue of the Tree:

“Don’t you think, O wise man that you are, that our knowledge of anything whatsoever is imperfect if it is confined to the exact notion of that thing, if it is limited to the truth? …I certainly think, for my part, that reality, always infinitely more rich than the true, comprises, on every subject and in every matter, the quantity of misunderstandings, of myths, of childish stories and beliefs which the minds of men necessarily produce.…I have noticed that there is not a thing in the world that has not been adorned with dreams, held for a sign, explained by some miracle, and this all the more as the concern with knowing the origins and first circumstances is more naively potent. And that is doubtless why a philosopher whose name I have forgotten coined the maxim: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE FABLE.”

Valéry gets a little carried away at the end, but who can deny that reality is always more comprehensive than the merely true? This is not to say that we should neglect, or cease to insist, on facts. Some facts we cannot do without. The Christian faith itself is based on facts which, if they were not facts, would put us pretty high up the list of the most deluded fools ever to have lived. But a life made only of facts would be rather poor. If we were always trimming off bits of fabric here and there in the interest of strict historicity, we might end up with something less than half a cloak – and the world can get chilly.

One thing is certain: if by God’s grace I’m ever granted a personal introduction to St Martin, I’ll definitely ask him about the cow.

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Note: If you’re looking for a copy of this book, get the Princeton edition translated by William Granger Ryan and with an introduction by Eamon Duffy. It’s not cheap but it’s worth it. Legenda Aurea Compendio de apenas trescientas páginas que escoge solo treinta y cinco de entre las ciento ochenta biografías originales, y está destinado no tanto a la consulta del estudioso como a la lectura de principio a fin. Esto le aporta, por un lado, una virtud en cuanto que acerca al lector actual un texto medieval que de ningún modo se pensó para ser leído en silencio, sino interpretado en viva voz. Por otro lado, debido a las limitaciones de su propio formato, he echado en falta un aparato crítico que apuntale el material y sirva para completar la información en él contenida, así como para explicar la razón de esta selección escogida por Alberto Manguel, pues el libro solo posee un brevísimo prólogo, ofreciendo a continuación el texto original, traducido al castellano, sin un solo pie de página.

Lo que nos puede interesar hoy de la 'Leyenda dorada', pese al estilo anquilosado, es que su lectura supone viajar en el tiempo hasta una de las principales fuentes de la inspiración artística e iconográfica de la tradición cristiana. Cada cual tenemos nuestras debilidades a este respecto, y en mi caso, mi entrada a este libro llegó a través de mi interés particular por el Bosco y sus Tentaciones de san Antonio. Legenda Aurea

This book came to my attention through two separate experiences in teaching middle ages history and literature. The first was reading Cervantes classic Don Quixote, which created an entirely new historical fiction genre. Cervantes alludes to the devotion of the masses to this work, which was second to the Bible in popularity. Secondly, in researching books for Valentine's Day, it turns out The Golden Legend is primary source material on this saint.

When I'm ready for this text, I would like to read this translation.

Don Quixote, Cervantes, 1605
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Story of Saint Valentine, Odden, 2007
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Legenda Aurea My own copy a arrived yesterday. Read a hardcover version in the mid-1990s for one particular part of Mirrors on which dust has fallen, so time to put it in the Read column.

A religio-historical curiosity. To be consulted, and dipped into, as the spirit moves you. Legenda Aurea Not recommended to read from cover-to-cover. This is at best a reference book. Even if you want to read through it along with the church calendar (as I did), I wouldn't recommend that you force yourself to read the details of say, the greater and the lesser litanies.

I decided to read this book because I read in The Gothic Image that it was the most popular book in Europe in the thirteenth century after the Bible. It does help to provide a lot of details about the saints. The saints' stories are pretty repetitive though. In many cases, the stories about the lives of the saints are short, and the legend is instead documentation about the miracles that happened after the saint's life to show that the saint was indeed a saint. To me, this is no more spiritually inspiring than reciting the rosary, which is not my preferred way of practicing the faith.

Other stories are more interesting. After a while, reading the stories of the saints makes you notice what stands about one of them instead of another. Often, it sounds like monks or priests added in lurid details to make the stories more exciting for their audience. E.g., it wasn't enough to have these martyrs thrown into the coliseums to be eaten by leopards like so many other saints that you've already read about. These particular saints had their buttocks bared and were dragged through the streets before they were thrown to the leopards... after reading so many hagiographies, these are the unfortunate details that you are drawn towards and wonder why they were included.

My understanding is that the Catholic Church stepped away from The Golden Legend sometime around the Renaissance. It's understandable. There's a lot of implausible stuff here (dragons, for one, but also absurd stories like the legend of St James the Dismembered). Even beyond the implausible, there are plenty of anti-Jewish sentiments throughout. There's also a tacked on history of Islam at the end of the book that's anti-Islam, of course (but not nearly as bad as I would have thought). It's really hard to recommend this book. You'd have to be pretty deep into Catholicism or the European Middle Ages to have the stomach for it. My understanding is that Butler's Lives of Saints is a better contemporary way to walk through the holy calendar. Even without having read Butler, I'd suggest starting there before going to the Golden Legend unless you really like the Middle Ages. Legenda Aurea The Penguin translation is BAD. No footnotes, they omitted some very important saints in lieu of lesser-known ones (St. Anne is missing from their translation). Legenda Aurea The version I have is absolutely horrible! It is riddled with typos, misspellings, incomprehensible nonsense, and is a piece of crap. I just read the first story (up to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba) and I gave up. Do not order books from the publisher General Books. There is a disclaimer with the copyright information that states that the books are scanned in and converted into readable text, but that it doesn’t always make sense and causes misspellings and they don’t have time to check for these errors. None of it makes sense. This is a shoddy piece of garbage that should not be sold to anyone. Legenda Aurea