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"THE GOLDEN LEGEND" By Jacobus de Voragine. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde in London at the Sign of the Sun in Fleet Street, 1527.
Large, Folio measuring 11.5" x 8.25" (29 x 21cm) Bound in 1700s Full Calf Leather with double gold lines bordering both boards and Gilt Title Label on Spine! Contains 554 printed pages (277 folios). It begins on folio 38 and ends on folio 332 with an additional part of a page mounted and loosely inserted in the rear. This particular copy lacks the title page and all preliminaries, and begins on leaf 38 of the text. It is missing leaves 60-62 and 201-215, but otherwise runs complete through leaf 332, for a total of 277 remaining leaves or Folios. Fortunately these are largely in good condition; clean and strong, with ample margins. There are numerous Beautiful Woodcut illustrations throughout the entire book! There are a few scattered stains, spots, and little light browing on a few of the pages though none are severe. Most all of the pages are Clean, Crisp and Fresh! There are closed and open tears in some leaves starting at leaf 300. A few leaves (2 or 3) are trimmed differently, suggesting they may have been taken from another copy. This is a largely Complete Copy as only 2 totally complete copies are known to exist (Pierpont Morgan Library & Ph. & J. Gordon Library)
This 1527 edition of Wynkyn De Worde's was the last medieval printing in English of this historic text. YOU ARE NOT LIKELY TO SEE ANOTHER ONE AS COMPLETE AS THIS ONE AGAIN IN YOUR LIFETIME! INDIVIDUAL LEAVES COMMONLY SELL FOR $250-$1,000 EACH! x 277 LEAVES!
THE GOLDEN LEGEND: (Latin: Legenda Aurea) by Jacobus de Voragine (Jacopo da Varagine) is a collection of fanciful hagiographies, lives of the saints, that became a late medieval bestseller. It was probably compiled around 1260. The Golden Legend is the very first book printed in English to contain any part of the Holy Bible. Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa (1292-98), composed The Golden Legend as a book of devotion for the common people. The stories tell of the struggle of numerous saints with the devil, who appears in every possible form – bird, beast, reptile, and particularly woman. The saints always triumph. It became one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, editions were printed in Latin, Italian, Dutch and English.
A medieval best seller
Initially titled simply Legenda Sanctorum, Latin for "Saints' readings", it gained its popularity by the title by which it is best known. More than a thousand manuscript copies of the work survive, and when printing was invented in the 1450s, editions appeared quickly, not only in Latin, but also in every major European language. It was one of the first books William Caxton printed in the English language; Caxton's version appeared in 1483.
Fanciful etymologies
The book sought to compile traditional lore about all of the saints venerated at the time of its compilation. Jacobus de Voragine typically begins with a (often fanciful) etymology for the saint's name. An example (in Caxton's translation) shows his method:
Silvester is said of sile or sol which is light, and of terra the earth, as who saith the light of the earth, that is of the church. Or Silvester is said of silvas and of trahens, that is to say he was drawing wild men and hard unto the faith. Or as it is said in glossario, Silvester is to say green, that is to wit, green in contemplation of heavenly things, and a toiler in labouring himself; he was umbrous or shadowous. That is to say he was cold and refrigate from all concupiscence of the flesh, full of boughs among the trees of heaven.
As a Latin author, Jacobus de Voragine must have known that Silvester, a relatively common Latin name, simply meant "from the forest." The correct derivation is alluded to in the text, but set out in parallel to fanciful ones that lexicographers would consider quite wide of the mark. Even the "correct" explanations (silvas, "forest", and the mention of green boughs) are used as the basis for an allegorical interpretation. Jacobus de Voragine's etymologies had different goals from modern etymologies, and cannot be judged by the same standards. Jacobus de Voragine's etymologies have parallels in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, in which linguistically accurate derivations are set out beside allegorical and figurative explanations.
Jacobus de Voragine then moves on to the saint's life, compiled with reference to the readings from the Roman Catholic Church's liturgy commemorating that saint; then embellishes the biography with supernatural tales of incidents involving the saint's life from less reliable sources. More than 130 sources have been identified for the tales related of the saints in the Golden Legend; in addition to the Bible, these sources include apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the histories of Gregory of Tours and John Cassian, and the Speculum historiale by Vincent de Beauvais. Many of his stories have no other known source. A typical example of the sort of story related, also involving St Silvester, shows the saint receiving miraculous instruction from Saint Peter in a vision that enables him to exorcise a dragon:
In this time it happed that there was at Rome a dragon in a pit, which every day slew with his breath more than three hundred men. Then came the bishops of the idols unto the emperor and said unto him: O thou most holy emperor, sith the time that thou hast received Christian faith the dragon which is in yonder fosse or pit slayeth every day with his breath more than three hundred men. Then sent the emperor for S. Silvester and asked counsel of him of this matter. S. Silvester answered that by the might of God he promised to make him cease of his hurt and blessure of this people. Then S Silvester put himself to prayer, and S. Peter appeared to him and said: "Go surely to the dragon and the two priests that be with thee take in thy company, and when thou shalt come to him thou shalt say to him in this manner: Our Lord Jesu Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried and arose, and now sitteth on the right side of the Father, this is he that shall come to deem and judge the living and the dead, I commend thee Sathanas that thou abide him in this place till he come. Then thou shalt bind his mouth with a thread, and seal it with thy seal , wherein is the imprint of the cross. Then thou and the two priests shall come to me whole and safe, and such bread as I shall make ready for you ye shall eat."
Thus as S. Peter had said, S. Silvester did. And when he came to the pit, he descended down one hundred and fifty steps, bearing with him two lanterns, and found the dragon, and said the words that S. Peter had said to him, and bound his mouth with the thread, and sealed it, and after returned, and as he came upward again he met with two enchanters which followed him for to see if he descended, which were almost dead of the stench of the dragon, whom he brought with him whole and sound, which anon were baptized, with a great multitude of people with them. Thus was the city of Rome delivered from double death, that was from the culture and worshipping of false idols, and from the venom of the dragon.
Voragine had his limits; he describes the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch surviving being swallowed by a dragon as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369).
Miracle tales of relics
Many of the stories also conclude with miracle tales and similar wonderlore from accounts of those who called upon that saint for aid or used the saint's relics. Such a tale is told of Saint Agatha; Jacobus de Voragine has pagans in Catania repairing to the relics of St Agatha to supernaturally repel an eruption of Mount Etna:
And for to prove that she had prayed for the salvation of the country, at the beginning of February, the year after her martyrdom, there arose a great fire, and came from the mountain toward the city of Catania and burnt the earth and stones, it was so fervent. Then ran the paynims to the sepulchre of S. Agatha and took the cloth that lay upon her tomb, and held it abroad against the fire, and anon on the ninth day after, which was the day of her feast, ceased the fire as soon as it came to the cloth that they brought from her tomb, showing that our Lord kept the city from the said fire by the merits of S. Agatha.
Value to students of medieval culture
Written in simple, readable Latin, the book was read in its day for its stories; any one of which will be well told, but in mass they tend to become monotonous and blur together, with their repetitious accounts of martyrdoms and miracles. The book is the closest thing we have to an encyclopaedia of the lore of the saints in the late Middle Ages; as such it is invaluable to art historians and mediaevalists who seek to identify saints depicted in art by their deeds and attributes. Its repetitious nature is probably explained by the fact that Jacobus de Voragine meant to write a compendium of saintly lore for sermons and preaching, not the popular entertainment it became.
In The Reformation: A History (2003), Diarmaid MacCulloch observed that the Golden Legend inadvertently may have helped trigger the Protestant Reformation by arming scepticism about the cult of the saints, such as that exhibited by Erasmus in his Praise of Folly.
WYNKYN de WORDE: (d. 1534/5):
Wynkyn de Worde, printer, appears in written documents only from 1479; his date of birth and family background are unknown. His name suggests he was born in a place named Wrth. The letters of denization granted in 1496 refer to him as de ducatu Lothoringie oriundo (PRO, patent rolls, 20 April 1496, C 66/57766/578), and though neither Woerth-sur-Sauer (Bas-Rhin, Alsace) nor Wrth am Rhein formed part of the duchy of Lorraine then, one or other is probably his birthplace. From Woerth he probably travelled up the Rhine to Cologne, and became Johannes Veldener's apprentice before joining William Caxton during his visit to Cologne (14712); he went with Caxton on his return to Bruges (1472) and subsequently accompanied him to Westminster (1475 or 1476). In his 1495 reprint Wynkyn refers to Caxton's printing of Bartolomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum at Cologne about 1471 (an edition now attributed to Veldener), which suggests Wynkyn took part in its printing. If so, he may have been born about 1455. In various records Wynkyn is named as Winandus van Worden, John or Johannes Wynkyn or Wykyn, Wynkyn Vort, and even William Wykyn, though there seems no doubt that Wynkyn was his Christian name, and de Worde indicates his family's origin.
Caxton never refers in his books to Wynkyn, though one may assume he worked in Caxton's printing shop until his death in 1492. A document of 1479 (Westminster Abbey Muniments, 17849) records the letting of two tenements in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey to Wynkyn and his wife, Elizabeth, suggesting that Wynkyn had been in Westminster long enough and was sufficiently comfortable financially to marry this Englishwoman. Elizabeth had apparently lived there previously, and she may have been the widow or daughter of John Dardan, saddler, who rented one of these tenements before 1479. On Dardan's death Elizabeth and Wynkyn took out a new lease, but gave it up next year, perhaps because they lived elsewhere. The parish accounts of St Margaret, Westminster, show that Elizabeth and Wynkyn attended that church, rented a pew there, and were members of its fraternity of the Assumption until Elizabeth died, in 1498. They also record that in 1500 Juliane de Worde died and was buried inside the church. Wynkyn had remarried, for he rented a pew for his wife shortly after Elizabeth's death, and Juliana may have been that wife or a daughter.
Caxton's death early in 1492 changed Wynkyn's life. Caxton's will is not extant; although Caxton had a daughter, Wynkyn took over the business. The sacrist's rolls for Westminster Abbey indicate that from 1491/2 Wynkyn rented the shop by the chapter house, formerly rented by Caxton, at 10s. a year. He paid this rent until 1499. Wynkyn's edition of Walter Hilton's Scala perfectionis (1494) was sette in printe in William Caxtons hows(colophon). Besides the premises formerly occupied by Caxton, Wynkyn rented rooms just outside the abbey from 1495/6 until 1499/1500. He began, after Caxton's death, by using Caxton's device, founts, and woodcuts. We know of five books printed in these first two years, some such as the Golden Legend, being reprints of Caxton's books, though with modified colophons. One volume, entitled Here Begynneth the Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis, contained the life of St Katharine and the revelations of St Elizabeth of Hungary, and may have acted as a supplement to the Golden Legend. Two other books represent a new departure: the Treatise of Love is a translation of French devotional tracts, and the Chastising of God's Children is a guide for a woman religious by her spiritual adviser, printed from an earlier English adaptation of a Latin text with Carthusian links. Caxton had avoided spiritual and devotional material associated with religious houses. Although five books in two years represent a modest start to Wynkyn's business, Caxton himself printed only six texts in his three and a half years as a printer in Bruges. Perhaps Wynkyn was finding his feet and deciding how to develop the business. New developments characterize his work of 1494: an edition of Speculum vitae Christi is the first book to refer to Wynkyn by name as the printer; another text, Scala perfectionis, contains a verse explicit in rhyme royal stanzas. Many scholars denigrate Wynkyn's attainments by assuming he was unable to compose poetry, and claim that he employed Robert Copland to write these verses for him. But there is no evidence to support this view, and Wynkyn may be their author, for he is not known to have employed Copland until later. The explicit is followed by Wynkyn's own mark, which occurs here for the first time. Two books published in 1495 also have verse colophons: his reprints of Caxton's Polychronicon and De proprietatibus rerum. Both
were requested by the mercer Roger Thorney, indicating that Wynkyn was in touch with Caxton's former colleagues. That year he also published Lives of the Fathers, which Caxton finished translating on the last day of his life, though why Wynkyn delayed its printing so long is unclear.
In 1500/01 Wynkyn left Westminster for London, where he settled at the sign of the Sun in Fleet Street in St Bride's parish. By 1509 he also had a shop at St Paul's Churchyard at the sign of Our Lady of Pity. The move reflects the importance of London as a publishing and mercantile centre, and a recognition that Wynkyn had embarked on a new publishing policy. He turned away from the courtly material favoured by Caxton, which had led him to settle at Westminster, to religious, popular, and educational books, which were better distributed from London. A base in London let him keep an eye on other printers with whom he alternately competed and entered into partnership. Printers and publishers then formed a close circle. Wynkyn worked, for example, with printers such as Richard Pynson, Julian Notary, and Peter Treveris, for they issued many texts co-operatively and exchanged woodcuts, borders, type, and probably text. Several printers started their careers as Wynkyn's apprentices. Robert Copland referred to him as his former master, and translated books for him and brought some to his attention. Henry Watson was another of his servants who translated books for him. In Wynkyn's will three other printers are identified as former servants: John Butler, James Gaver, and John Byddell; six servants included in the will may have been apprentices, and one servant is identified as a bookbinder. Wynkyn was happy to work with different people and, unlike Caxton, to acknowledge their contribution to his editions.
Features which formed part of Wynkyn's marketing policy include the following. From the beginning he used woodcuts, despite their variable quality, to make his books attractive: his different editions contain over 1100. His editions also opened up new areas ignored by Caxton. One consists of religious and spiritual books, prompted possibly by his association with Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother. He printed Scala perfectionis for her as early as 1494, though unnamed people also recommended religious books at that time. Possibly through Margaret he established links with Syon House, a Bridgettine foundation, and published books from its library and distributed others to its nuns. He may have taken particular interest in his female clientele. He also published books by the monks of Syon, such as Richard Whitford. Through Margaret, whose printer he formally styled himself for the final months of her life in 1509, he published works by John Fisher and other bishops; these included Fisher's funeral sermon for Margaret. Margaret's household accounts contain numerous references to her purchase of books printed by Wynkyn, probably religious texts in the main. Much of this material was English in origin and authorship, like his abbreviated Book of Margery Kempe, though some was based on continental models. This type of material could create problems because of religious controversy and potential heresy. One of his books, William de Melton's Sermo exhortationis, was issued with the imprimatur of John Colet, dean of St Paul's. On 19 December 1525 Wynkyn was arraigned before the vicar-general at St Paul's Cathedral for printing the Image of Love, translated by John Gough and printed on 5 October 1525, of which sixty copies had been distributed among the nuns of Syon, and other copies sent to Oxford and Cambridge. Wynkyn acknowledged that he was present in October 1524 with other printers when all had been cautioned by the bishop of London about heretical material. The Image of Love was declared heretical, and Wynkyn was instructed to recover whatever copies he could and not to distribute any more. Otherwise he appears to have suffered little from this matter.
Educational texts, mainly by English writers, constituted another development in Wynkyn's publishing. He worked with individual grammarians, acting as their publisher. He published over 150 editions of grammatical works by Robert Whittington and over 75 editions of those by John Stanbridge, some of which were issued with other London printers. A third new area was English poetry by past and living writers, including both elevated and popular material. Over twenty editions of Lydgate's works were issued, along with fifteen popular romances, such as Ipomydon. Wynkyn published many contemporary poetsnot only well-known ones, such as Stephen Hawes and John Skelton, but also minor poets, such as William Walter and Christopher Goodwin. He continued the Caxton tradition of printing prose romances translated from French, such as Huon of Bordeaux.
Given the quantity and diversity of the books he published, Wynkyn needed to establish a marketing network. In addition to his links with London printers and bookbinders, trading associations are indicated through his contacts with Hugo Goes, a York printer; John Scoler and Charles Kyrforth, Oxford stationers; Robert Woodward, a Bristol stationer; and Henry Jacobi, Henry Pepwell, and John Gough, London stationers, of whom the first also sold books in Oxford. John Tourner, a stationer, was a witness of Wynkyn's will. He had servants such as Robert Maas with Dutch names who may have formed part of his links with the Low Countries, and he was in contact with French printers. He had links with leather producers, probably through his own bookbinding activities. He also had a wide range of patrons, who requested books from him. Some are unnamed scholars; others are monks, such as Whitford, merchants, such as Thorney, or nobles, such as Margaret Beaufort.
Wynkyn died at some point between 5 June 1534, when he signed his will, and 19 January 1535, when it was proved. He has often been compared unfavourably with his master, Caxton. The former is presented as a mere artisan, but the latter as a scholar and man of letters. The evidence, however, suggests Wynkyn had vision and energy, and achieved success in his profession. His estate, for example, was valued at 201 11s. 1d. in 1523/4. In his will his household consisted of eight servants, and he left bequests to nine people who were publishers, stationers, or bookbinders, also referring to three members of the parish and two leather producers. Some of these owed him debts which were written off. The three witnesses were a stationer and two important merchants. Wynkyn asked to be buried before the altar of St Katharine in St Bride's. All of this suggests a rich and respected member of the parish and a well-connected entrepreneur, who traded in London and the provinces and had links abroad. He makes no reference to any surviving wife or children, and on his death John Byddell took over the business. Wynkyn's various qualities need emphasizing: after Caxton's death he had sufficient vision to embark on a new publishing policy; to imitate his former master might have led to financial ruin. He was personable enough to get on with patrons from many classes and to run a heterogeneous household. No evidence of his involvement in litigation has been found. He was willing to give his helpers the credit they deserved, and he did not ignore their contribution as Caxton did. He probably knew several languages, and there is no reason to underestimate his learning and acumen. Previous assessments fail to give him due credit for his achievements. (N. F. Blake, DNB)
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