Some time between 1255 and 1266, Jacobus de Voragine, bishop of Genoa, compiled Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legend, a manual consisting of a host of saints’ lives, a lectionary for laymen arranged in order of the seasons of the year. His writings had a profound influence on the cult of saints and the imagery which they inspired, and Emile MaAle considered the Golden Legend to be one of ten books from which an idea of medieval thought and knowledge might be formed. Where Jacobus had found hagiographical details to be meagre, there he embroidered them, where absent, there he supplied them. Incidents from the Virgin Mary's life were contained in the Syriac Book of James, Protevangelium, a second-century apocryphal gospel, and it was these episodes which prefigured the story of her life written eleven centuries later by Jacobus. Using these in combination with the sparse facts regarding the Virgin contained within the New Testament, Jacobus revealed an almost complete biography, filling out the lateral ramifications of her family tree. Mary, the human Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, was not only the most popular saint, but also the most influential of intercessors, a close friend, an intimate guide, an earthly companion, a sacred messenger with heavenly power. The Book of Hours, named after her Office, was a later manifestation of the supreme position she held in the Christian West, the hours illustrated with miniatures from her life and that of her son. Another close member of her family, John the Baptist, was second only to the Virgin in intercessory powers, venerated for his humanity, petitioned for his prayers and frequently a subject of imagery.

Every church, the focal point in any parish, was dedicated to a particular saint, of whom even the most apathetic parishioners could not be unaware. In the liturgical calendar, saints were commemorated chronologically and their festivals had long been used for dating documents. By the thirteenth century, this became normal practice for manuscripts in general.