Value To Students of Medieval Culture
Written in simple, readable Latin, the book was read in its day for its stories. Each of these is well told, but in mass they tend to become monotonous and blur together, with their repetitious accounts of martyrdoms and miracles. The book is considered the closest to an encyclopaedia of medieval saint lore that survives today; as such it is invaluable to art historians and medievalists who seek to identify saints depicted in art by their deeds and attributes. Its repetitious nature is explained if Jacobus de Voragine meant to write a compendium of saintly lore for sermons and preaching, not a work of popular entertainment.
The critical edition of the Latin text has been edited by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence: SISMEL 1998).
A modern English translation of the Golden Legend has been published by William Granger Ryan, ISBN 0-691-00153-7 and ISBN 0-691-00154-5 (2 volumes).
A modern translation of the Golden Legend is available from Fordham University's Medieval Sourcebook.
Read more about this topic: Golden Legend
Famous quotes containing the words students, medieval and/or culture:
“If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they’re killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We’d not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.”
—Spike Lee (b. 1956)
“Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)