High Middle Ages · Europe · Religion
1300
Jacopo da Varagine completes Golden Legend revisions
1300
The aging Dominican archbishop of Genoa polished his vast compilation of saints' lives, the Legenda Aurea, arranging nearly two hundred narratives to follow the liturgical calendar. It would become the medieval bestseller, read aloud in refectories and private chambers, shaping devotional imagination for two centuries. Its fantastical miracles would scandalize Reformers and delight modernist artists.