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( Legenda Aurea)
The Golden Legend (Latin Legenda Aurea) by Jacopo da Varagine is a collection of fanciful hagiographies or lives of the saints, that became a late medieval bestseller. It was probably compiled around the year 1260. 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. 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 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.
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